 We've been looking at one epistle after another all the way from Galatians and now we have finally come to Thessalonians, the two letters to the Thessalonians, the last bit of Ark portion. So let's just kind of summarize what we have gone through so far, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. Basically this is how the these churches got planted and this is basically when and where Paul wrote the letters, the first missionary journey. In the first missionary journey Paul's main goal was to reach out to Southeast Asia Minor, that was the burden that God had laid on his heart. So he goes into Asia Minor and starts traveling from one place to the next and that is basically when during his first missionary journey he plants the Galatian church. So the Galatian church is planted during the first missionary journey and then in the second missionary journey his plan was to go back to Asia Minor and you know just go back to each of those churches which have been planted, encourage them, pray for them, you know spend time with them but then God had a different purpose. So even as he's trying to get into Asia Minor he gets that vision from the Macedonians asking him to go to them. So instead of going back to Asia Minor, he goes into Greece. He basically steps into Europe for the first time. So you know the gospel has now entered into the borders of Europe. So he goes over there and there he plants the Philippian church. So the Philippian church gets planted at that during the second missionary journey and then of course even the Thessalonian church which is also in Macedonia that also gets planted during this second missionary journey but then he's not able to spend much time in Thessalonica because the Jewish people over there oppose him very very strongly and even though he has planted the church he is forced to leave the church and leave the city and in fact these Jewish people are opposing him, they follow him to Berea and try to create problems for him even in Berea. So you know it's a very tense situation that he goes through when this Thessalonian church is planted. So during the second missionary journey he goes into Europe for the first time. There in Macedonia he establishes the Philippian church and the Thessalonian church. Then after you know facing all the opposition in Berea and in all the other places there on the way back to Asia Minor that is when he enters, re-enters into Asia Minor and there he plants the Ephesian church. So the Ephesian church gets planted around this time. So he plants it at this time, he leaves it in the hands of Akila and Priscilla and from there he moves to Corinth, he spends some time in Corinth. So while he's staying in Corinth that is when he writes a letter to these Thessalonians because you see they kind of drove him out of the city, he could not spend much time with them, he was very concerned about them. So at some point of time he sends Timothy over there just to inquire about them and find out what's going on. So Timothy stays for some time with the Thessalonians, comes back and reports to Paul in Corinth. So at that time Paul sits down in Corinth and he writes the first and second letters to the Thessalonians. So that's basically the background and then just for us to know about the third missionary journey, the third missionary journey not much travel happens because he decides to spend three entire years in Ephesus. So that's one major thing about the third missionary journey where he spends three entire years in Ephesus. At that time he writes to the Galatians and at that time he also writes fast Corinthians. So it was around this time during those three years when he was training a lot of people at Ephesus, one of the persons who got trained, Epaphras, goes to Colosse and plants the church in Colosse. So these are all the things which happened. So then after this three missionary journeys, he ends up in prison because he wants to visit Jerusalem and then when he visits Jerusalem they arrest him and he ends up in Rome. So it's after the three missionary journeys that he goes to imprisonment to Rome and then during that imprisonment he writes to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians and he writes a separate letter to Philemon. So all of this happens. So this is just a kind of you know overview of how these letters were written, when they were written and when these churches were planted, you know during which journeys they were planted. So let's move into the Thessalonian letter. Let's begin by looking at the background of the city. We don't really know much but we do know that Thessalonica was the capital of the entire Macedonian province. So in Macedonia you have Philippi but Philippi is just one of the cities. Thessalonica on the other hand is the capital of the Macedonian province. Now Thessalonica was a coastal place and this particular coastal city was situated on something called the Ignatian Way. You know you had all these land trade routes and the sea trade routes. So the Ignatian Way was one of those trade routes and Thessalonica was sitting right there on the you know at a natural harbour where you can have a lot of ships coming in and bringing their merchandise and all of that. So because of that Thessalonica became a very important commercial city. It was a rich city and usually wherever you have riches you also have low moral standards. So Thessalonica was rich. Thessalonica was also into a lot of immorality. So the challenges which the Thessalonian church was facing they were basically five different things that Paul deals with you know many rights to them. First they were facing a lot of persecution from their local people you know because the local people were very unhappy that these Thessalonians have turned to the Lord. They have given up idol worship. They have you know forsaken all their idols so the locals are very against them. They go through extremely severe persecution is what we get to know from Corinthians yeah from Corinthians and we also hear a little bit about that in the letter to the Philippians and we also have mentioned made of it over here in the Thessalonian letters as well. There was a lot of persecution that these poor people went through the believers in Thessalonica and there was a temptation you know to take the easier path because the locals had very low moral standards. There was a lot of sexual misbehavior so they were the temptation was always there and so Paul writes to them asking them you know to stay faithful to the Lord. Also there was a lot of very childlike trusting you know confidence that Jesus is going to come soon and it's going to take them home so they really believed the gospel which was given to them. They really believed that Jesus will come and take them but what happened is that some people they gave up their jobs you know because they kind of assumed they made an assumption that Jesus is going to come in the next one or two years so their idea was why should we work hard you know let's just live off their more wealthy believers so that was a really bad attitude. So some of them instead of working hard and standing on their own feet happily relying on upon the other believers to support them which is a very nasty thing to do because these believers were on the whole in a rather pathetic condition financially they were in a very bad state because the locals had taken a strong dislike to them so they were no longer you know given job opportunities they were ostracized from you know from any social activities so in a condition like that where each family is trying to just survive it was very very wrong that some of them had given up their jobs and were just happily relying you know on others to feed them and close them. So that was another issue that Paul had to deal with and because they were very eagerly waiting for the second coming of Jesus they got really worried when Jesus was delayed you know in their mind they felt that Jesus had delayed his coming and in the meantime there were some of the believers were dying I mean in the sense they grew old and they died so they got really concerned they were like oh my goodness are my family members have died and Jesus has not yet come so what's going to happen to the ones who died because he has not come to collect us and they died in the meantime so Paul assures them don't worry you know they've gone to heaven to be with the Lord so when Jesus comes back at the second coming they'll come along with him you know said you'll actually get to see them so he gives them assurance regarding that and yeah some of them were kind of wanted to know about when exactly Jesus will return so that was another doubt which they had in their minds. So this is basically the data which Timothy collects from the Thessalonian church you know when he goes there to spend some time with them and inquire about them and he takes back all of these issues to Paul who is right now staying in Corinth and when Paul hears about this he prays about all of it and then he sits down and starts writing a letter to them to D to address these specific issues so that's basically the background regarding the first Thessalonian letter. So let's actually get into the letter itself. If we could have someone read out for us maybe verses 1 up to verse 7 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 1 to 7 if someone could read out please. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 1 to 7 Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you all making mention of you in our prayers remembering without seizing your work of faith labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father knowing beloved brethren your election by God for our gospel did not come to you in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake and you became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Akhaya who believe Amen. Yes thank you so much so we see that there are three leaders together writing this letter so Paul includes you know Silvanus and Timothy with him in addressing the church in Thessalonica. Silvanus is nobody but basically Silas that's just the Latin name that is given you know when they translated the Bible into Latin they made Silas into Silvanus but basically it's your it's your Silas you know who was along with Paul in prison you know they both were singing over there in the Philippian jail when they were thrown into the jail so that's basically your Silvanus is nobody but Silas so Paul and Silas they were you know persecuted at Philippi and then the angel comes and sets them free so we know the background of that Silas was in fact quite an important missionary because not only did he accompany Paul on two of his missionary journeys he in fact even accompanied Peter on missionary journeys and in fact he was very helpful to Peter in writing the you know the letter the epistle which we call as first Peter in fact it is Silas who does the work of a scribe and writes it out for Peter. Peter probably would not have known that fancy way of writing letters you know the way letters need to be written and all of that so Silas who probably had a more educated background would have assisted Peter in putting his you know Peter's thoughts into the right kind of wordings so which basically means that the Holy Spirit would have inspired Peter and would have also have assisted Silas in putting down the right wordings when that particular letter was being composed so Silas was an important figure Timothy we already are kind of familiar with him so these three leaders you know are addressing the Thessalonian church and Paul says over here we always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers doesn't this remind us of something that we read earlier you know in another letter that we thank you that we thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers sounds very familiar and when you look at verse three it sounds even more familiar it's he says over there we remember before our god and father your work produced by faith labor produced by love and your endurance provided inspired by hope so this whole the same trifecta of faith hope love is being mentioned even over here so where did we hear about here all this earlier that was in the collusion letter at the beginning of the collusion letter where Paul talks about the faith that they have in Christ Jesus the love which they are showing towards God people and God's people and how this faith and love is bringing up out of that hope which they have regarding their future so you have that almost the same thoughts being echoed over here to the Thessalonian church so in two letters if Paul has talked about faith hope and love and in fact you have it mentioned also in our Corinthians where he talks about how three of them are there are three great things faith hope and love but the greatest of these is love is what he says in the Corinthian letter so if faith hope and love are something that Paul emphasized again and again they must be important so we should you know look at ourselves examine ourselves and ask ourselves where is my faith you know what is the level of my love and in what condition is my hope so this is something that Paul regarded as important I guess when he looked at each church he kind of assessed them to see where their faith was at which level their love was and in what condition their hope was maybe it was one way of him to assess one way that he could assess the spiritual condition of these churches so it's something that we should ask ourselves you know regarding our own personal walk with God and also regarding the churches that we are ministering in so what kind of a faith do we have is it a faith which is producing works you know that that that are you know contributing to the kingdom of God because here it says we remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith and he says your labor prompted by love and he says your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus so what kind of work were these people doing it was not work which they were doing just for material benefits because somehow somewhere along the way work has become very business like and money oriented you know so even in ministry you know people just kind of know the same way they would search for jobs they search for ministries asking themselves okay which ministry can pay me the highest I'll go join there ministry was never meant to be money oriented so these people their work was produced by faith you see they had placed their faith in this Jesus they were excited that he had given them this high status they were excited that he's going to come one day and collect them so they were working out of that enthusiasm not in a business like manner thinking okay how much can I get out of this no and in fact um not even in so much you know in terms of what heavenly reward will I get will I get a big crown or a small crown it is not very business like at all so you know we need to learn from the attitude that these believers had so we'll dwell further or no on the on these three aspects when we come back from our break thank you