Participants: Jon Paulien & Jon Ciccarelli
Series Code: TBOTB
Program Code: TBOTB000002A
|
00:21 Welcome to Books of the Book.
00:24 I'm Jon Paulien of Loma Linda University and with me 00:27 is my Pastor Jon Ciccarelli. 00:29 Good to be with you again Jon. 00:31 Alright, well when we are talking about first and 00:36 second Thessalonians here, and looking a little bit at 00:40 the back story to both of these letters. 00:43 The things that happened before Paul wrote them that set 00:47 the context, and today we want to talk about what happened 00:51 after he preached the gospel. 00:53 Previously we talked about how the gospel got to 00:56 Thessalonica, how he preached in the synagogue, how a number 01:00 of people believed and now we are going to get into 01:04 that back story a little bit further through the eyes 01:08 of the book of Acts 17. 01:10 Let me read that to you here in action 17:5-7, it says: 01:50 You know it is a sad thing when jealousy comes up, 01:54 especially in the life of believers and the life of the 01:57 Church, and it is sad because jealousy always seems to be 02:00 stemmed on our own kind of personal empire verses the 02:02 kingdom of God which is what Paul is proclaiming. 02:05 So here we find this right here in the text this jealousy 02:09 surfaces and it reminds me of one of the teachings that 02:13 Jesus taught about the older brother. 02:15 Jesus the Father welcomes his son home and there is this 02:18 brother who won't go in and celebrate. 02:20 So jealous and bitter about what is happening. 02:23 Why would a spiritual person be jealous? 02:25 You know that is a rough thing. 02:28 - So you have experienced it in the local church? 02:30 - oh yeah! Yeah, well you know of course we face our own 02:34 issue sometimes of being jealous ourselves. 02:37 You think somebody feels the way this church is or the 02:40 way I think or something is really critical to me and 02:43 you can't take away, or this other person is taking away 02:47 my position and we take our eyes off of God and 02:51 we often end up looking at ourselves. 02:53 - right, right! - One other interesting thing in this 02:57 text, we mentioned in a previous program. 02:59 How archaeology and history sometimes give us some 03:04 intersections with biblical material. 03:06 It's interesting it said in this text, the translation that I 03:12 gave, and the translation here is actually from the ESV and it 03:18 says, "that these men has caused trouble all 03:22 "over the world. And now have come here." 03:25 I think you could translate this, they turned the world 03:28 upside down and now they have come here. 03:32 Now there is a background to this. 03:34 I mentioned in the last program about this highway that 03:38 runs from Northwest, north- eastern Greece, over to 03:41 Northwest Greece and how Thessalonica is in the 03:44 middle of that highway. 03:46 Well that highway goes all the way to the coast where 03:49 you can get boats from Italy and Rome, 03:51 the capital of the Empire. 03:52 Now we know from history, that around 49 A.D., the Emperor 03:59 Claudius threw all the Jews out of Rome. 04:02 All of them, and according to a Roman historian, 04:06 they were rioting over some guy called Crispus. 04:09 The scholars believe probably that's a Roman historian 04:14 trying to figure out what Christ means, Christos, 04:17 the Messiah and so forth. 04:18 Apparently Christians had arrived in Rome sometimes in the 04:23 40s and the Jews of Rome are arguing about the Messiah. 04:27 Apparently the arguments got excited enough that 04:32 the Emperor finally said, all of you out. 04:33 So you see Jews would have left Rome, many of them 04:37 would've headed east and landed in Greece and come up 04:41 the same highway, and probably arrived in Thessalonica 04:45 from Rome around the time Paul is arriving from 04:48 the other direction and they meet in Thessalonica. 04:52 So hot and fresh right here is the idea Hey, this teaching 04:56 about Jesus, this Messiah stuff is going to get us 05:00 in a whole lot of trouble. 05:01 These are not people that we can afford to listen to. 05:06 So there was a real live contest going on. 05:11 It would sound to the Romans like this Messiah is a rival 05:14 to Caesar, he is going to take over from Caesar. 05:17 So it becomes a political threat, not just the religious 05:21 story anymore. 05:23 Why don't you read further and see what happens? 05:25 Okay, in Acts 17:8, 9 goes on to say: 05:41 - all right, this idea of city authorities is an 05:44 interesting translation. 05:46 The original word is Damus, and it seems that Thessalonica 05:50 had a unique form of government. 05:52 It was quite a bit different from most cities. 05:54 Actually a city Council, some- times people call it oligarchy, 06:00 ruled by a few, you see. 06:02 They didn't have a mayor, they didn't have a governor 06:05 that the Romans sent, it was a free city within the 06:08 Roman empire and it was governed by a city council, 06:11 probably five to eight people. 06:13 So these were the ones that collectively dealt with 06:16 issues and actually they seemed to behave 06:19 pretty impressively here. 06:20 Imagine yourself being an official of Thessalonica, 06:23 strangers are coming in one side of the city, and a mob 06:26 it's coming in from the other side of the city. 06:29 Things are in turmoil, and what you want is to calm 06:32 things down, pull things together. 06:35 They seem to have acted actually pretty coolly 06:37 in the situation even thou it was detrimental to the church. 06:41 They basically said, okay, Paul, Silas, you guys are 06:44 the instigators, leave town. Okay! 06:47 The rest of you Christians here, you are going to put 06:50 up a bond, put up an amount of money and if 06:53 they come back you lose the money. 06:55 So you keep them out of town and everything is cool. 06:58 So they basically sent Paul and Silas away. 07:02 Took a bond from the church and let everybody go. 07:05 So unlike Philippi, where they beat them up before 07:08 they ask questions, the rulers of Thessalonica seem 07:12 to have been fairly cool and tried to be even-handed about 07:17 this whole situation. 07:18 So, when Paul and Silas leave Thessalonica, 07:21 where do they go? 07:22 Well they then move on to a place called Berea. 07:25 - How do you know that? 07:26 Well, right here in Scripture in Acts 17. - okay! 07:30 Verses 10 through 15. - alright! 07:31 We see the story were Paul and Silas go away to Berea, 07:34 and there they find what the Scriptures says a more 07:37 fair-minded people, people who would listen to what 07:40 they would say, and then check it with Scriptures 07:43 to see how that panned out. 07:45 So, they have a good balance in what they are doing. 07:48 They are listening, but they are looking at Scripture 07:50 at the same time. 07:51 Interesting so these are people that have an open mind 07:55 but they are not gullible and taking in anything you say. 07:59 So they have an open mind, but they are also going to 08:02 check it out, they're also going to test it out. 08:04 I recommend that our viewers do the same. 08:07 When you are listening to what we are saying here on 08:10 this program, go look up the text for yourself. 08:13 Go get a history book out and take a look at some of 08:16 these things and I think what matters is the Word of God 08:19 more than what I say, or what you say. 08:22 Bereans seemed to have caught that balance. 08:25 Of course the opposite is sometimes the case. 08:27 As a Pastor you may have discovered some people are 08:30 both close minded and gullible at the same time. 08:33 - That's not a good combination. 08:36 - that's the dark side of the Bereans. - right. 08:39 So here Paul went to Berea, and once again even though 08:43 the people are open minded, some other Jews came from 08:47 Thessalonica and stirred things up a little bit. 08:50 Where did Paul go from there? 08:51 Well from there we can go on to Chapter 17 of Acts verses 08:55 16 to 34 and Paul has a different approach it seems this 08:58 time because not only are the Jews there at the synagogue 09:01 but he is also in the marketplace and he meets these 09:04 philosophers and he talks to them about God through nature 09:08 and uses some of their own poets when he talks to them. 09:11 So it's pretty interesting and quite different. 09:14 Share with us a little more about that? 09:15 What that is interesting because I see Paul as being 09:20 quite flexible as he goes from place to place, 09:23 he is thinking about his experience. 09:25 His burden is that people receive the Gospel, 09:28 that they understand and appreciate the Gospel. 09:31 He is going to come at them anyway that he can to get that 09:36 message across, so unlike Thessalonica, he doesn't go to 09:41 the synagogue here to preach, instead he goes to consult. 09:45 He realizes that in Athens the big challenge is not the 09:49 Jews, the big challenge is the pagans and the philosophers 09:53 there so he comes to the Jews as allies in that fight. 09:56 So he consults with the synagogue and says what's going 10:00 on here in Athens? How should we approach these people? 10:05 Then he goes to the marketplace, he is fact finding. 10:08 He is looking around, he's looking at monuments, 10:11 he is studying their religion and then when he gets the 10:15 opportunity, as you say, he presents the message without 10:18 Scripture, he presents it on the basis of logic, 10:22 creation, nature, poets, that they were familiar with. 10:26 So he tries to reach in a different way then what 10:30 he had tried before. 10:32 After a while he leaves Athens and where does he go 10:36 from there? - Well then he heads on to Corinth. 10:39 We can read about that in Acts 18:1-8, and again he 10:43 goes to the synagogue every Sabbath persuading both the 10:46 Jews and Greeks, he gets quite frustrated with them here 10:49 though, he just wants to say I'm done with you, 10:52 but God speaks to him and says no, keep going. 10:54 But then he comes before some of the authorities there in 10:58 Rome and just continues to fight this battle once again. 11:02 Who was the authority that they got to meet there? 11:06 They got to meet Gallio. - alright! - Gallio. 11:09 So Gallio is there as governor, and I mentioned earlier 11:13 that there is intersections between the Bible and history 11:18 of what we know. 11:19 A place called Delphi in Greece that has an inscription 11:23 about Gallio, the very same guy. 11:26 If the Bible was fairy tales, this would not happen. 11:29 - right, right! - this Gallio was a real person in 11:32 history and we have got stones that remind us and even 11:35 told us when he was governor of Corinth. 11:37 It was a one-year term that he had in Corinth. 11:40 We know that that was like 50, 51 so Paul when 11:43 he is dragged before Gallio, it is right around 50, 51, 11:47 the Jews were cast out of Rome in 49, and so all this 11:51 stuff, this history and coming together right in the 11:54 middle of these letters and it impacts the letters that 11:57 Paul will write to the Thessalonians. 12:00 So I think that as we are approaching this thing we want 12:05 to keep all that background in mind. 12:07 Then we are going to get more deeply into the letters 12:11 of Thessalonians themselves. 12:13 So I think one thing we can see in all of this, is that 12:17 as Paul is going from place to place, he doesn't give the 12:21 same message in every place, but he is thinking, 12:25 he is visiting his audience. 12:27 If he knows the audience, if it is a typical Jewish 12:29 audience he knows what they are thinking. 12:31 He knows the questions they are asking and he goes 12:34 after that and he takes their Scriptures and so on. 12:36 When he is talking to the Gentiles, he's talking to the 12:40 governor, each time he is thinking very carefully who 12:43 he is talking to and how he is going to go about it. 12:47 So when we come back from the break, let's get into 12:51 1 Thessalonians and begin to see what Paul is thinking 12:54 when he is there in Corinth. - Sounds good! |
Revised 2023-01-25