Life's Fast Moving Opportunity - 1 Thessalonians 5

    First of all, I want to thank you for all of your care and support for our family over the past week and a half.  Many of you came to visit us.  Several offered to help or brought us meals.  John David is a blessing, but you have also been a blessing and an encouragement to us.
    Second, I want to let you show you some pictures of the newest member of our family, and this is not John David.  Let me introduce you to Elliana Renae Palmer, or Ella for short.  Ella was born on Tuesday - three weeks early.  Michael and Elizabeth went to our hospital for a check up and were holding her in their arms three hours later.   John David and Ella were born 4 days and 32 minutes apart.  Sarah and Elizabeth were in the same hospital, on the same floor, just across the hall from each other.
    These are special times - full times - full of love and meaning and opportunity.  We couldn’t have planned it like this if we tried.  This was a beautiful, serendipitous blessing.  
    But these days will not last forever.  These moments are passing.  We can only experience them now.  You know what parents say to each other: Cherish these moments.  Before you know it, he’ll be riding a bike.  Blink twice, and she’ll be entering college.  They grow up so fast. 

    This is not far from our text today.  This week, we are finishing our study on 1 Thessalonians, so we’ll read all of chapter 5.  It’s pretty long, so we’ll take it in sections.  Let’s start with just verse 1.

1 Now concerning how and when all this will happen, dear brothers and sisters, we don’t really need to write you.

    You can’t catch it very well in English, but Paul actually uses two different Greek words for time here: chronos and chairos.  Chronos is for the simple progression of time - tick, tock, tick, tock.  One second after another, one hour, one day.  Chronos is the kind of time when you say, “Their plane arrives Friday September 2 at 1:05 pm.” 
    But Chairos is a different kind of time.  Chairos is focused on the quality of time rather than the quantity of time.  Chairos is closer to the idea of an opportunity or when we look back on a particular period in our life and say, “Those were good times.”  Chairos is like that moment of opportunity when there is an opening in a horse race, and the rider has to go fast before it closes.
    To help explain the nature of Chairos, the ancient Greeks depicted Chairos as a young man moving fast, with wings on both his back and feet. He is tipping the scales in one direction for now, right now only.  One scholar explains, “His hair is long in front and bald behind; he must be grasped, if at all, by the fore-lock.”  If you want to catch Chairos, you have to get ahead of it, or it will get away.  ...

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Stronger through Sharing (1 Thessalonians 3)

       Tomorrow is 광복절 (Korea’s Liberation Day).  For more than forty years, the Korean people resisted Japanese colonization.  Sometimes, this resistance was public as in the March 1st, Declaration of Independence in 1919.  More often though, the resistance was through guerilla warfare, covert meetings, secret newspapers delivered at night, and hidden educational gatherings.  

Throughout the resistance movement, one thing remained constant.  The resistance became stronger when people bound together.  Isolation led to weakness, but communal sharing led to strength.  As long as people felt that they were alone in their desire to be free and alone in their faith that freedom is possible, then their courage to resist grew weak.  But when people realized that they are not alone, that others stand together with them, that others also share the faith that freedom is possible, then their courage to resist became stronger.  

Isolation leads to weakness.  Communal sharing leads to strength.  This is the message under the text of 1 Thessalonians 3.  Let’s read it now.

 ¹ Finally, when we could stand it no longer, we decided to stay alone in Athens, ² and we sent Timothy to visit you. He is our brother and God’s co-worker in proclaiming the Good News of Christ. We sent him to strengthen you, to encourage you in your faith, ³ and to keep you from being shaken by the troubles you were going through. ...




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Questioning Our Leaders - 1 Thessalonians 2

My ministry here is not a failure.  You know that I have not been wasting my time and yours.  You may or may not know that sometimes I have been misunderstood, criticized, and treated unfairly.  Yet God has given me the strength to continue preaching God’s Good News boldly, in spite of those who may object.  

My teaching is not in error.  My motives are pure.  I’m not doing a bait-and-switch to catch people with a feel-good gospel.

I am called by God to be his messenger, his prophet.  God has entrusted me with his message, and you can be sure that I’m trying to please God not people.  God knows my heart.  God knows why I do this.

I’m not the kind of guy who flatters others or soft-pedals the truth or just says what you want to hear.  You certainly know that I haven’t taken it easy on you.  I’ve given you the truth even when the truth is difficult and unpopular.  Clearly, I’m not in this for the money or the glory.

As a pastor called and ordained by God and the Church, I could push my way.  I have that right, but I always try to side with gentleness.  I’ve cared for you like a mother nursing her own children.  And the truth is I haven’t just shared God’s Gospel, but I’ve been sharing my heart and soul with you.

Don’t you remember how I was bivocational - holding down two jobs so as not to be a burden to you?  Don’t you remember how I turned down pay raises to make room for more missional ministry?  You yourselves stand as witnesses - along with God - that I’ve been honest and faithful and above reproach here.

Like a father guiding the growth of his children ...



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Turning the World Upside Down (1 Thessalonians 1)

For the next five week’s we’ll be walking through a little New Testament book called 1 Thessalonians.  It’s pretty small - just five chapters and only about two pages in my Bible, but it was actually written to a really important city.

Thessalonica (now Thessaloniki) is still the second largest city in Greece, but it is some 2,300 years old.  Around the New Testament times, it was the capital of Macedonia - the northern half of Greece.  And it was rich, very rich.  It had an excellent port, comfortably nestled into the northernmost port of a gulf.  It was also centrally located on the major Roman highway running east and west through the empire.  All of this led to lots of importing and exporting.  They worked hard, and they had lots of cash.

Thessalonians were also very religious.  Like most ancient Greeks and Romans, they worshiped a wide variety of gods.

• Of course, there were the traditional gods of Greek mythology, but the most prominent in Thessalonica were Dionysius and Artemis.  

• Dionysius was the god of wine and ecstasy.  His followers were famous for wild drunken party-parades which “freed” everyone from all their social inhibitions.
• Artemis was worshiped both as goddess of wild animals and goddess of fertility.  

• Thessalonians also adopted two Egyptian gods: Isis and Osiris.

• Isis was the goddess of motherhood, fertility, and magic.  Her statues often showed her nursing a son.  Also known as the Queen of Heaven, she offered salvation and eternal life to all in exchange for humility, confession, and repentance.
• Osiris was Isis’s brother and husband, and he was supposed to be the god of the afterlife and underworld.  Osiris was believed to die every year and be raised from the dead by Isis’s tears.

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