📖 New Testament Survey — Unit 9: 1–2 Thessalonians: The Day of the Lord

I. Two Letters to a Young Church

Paul, Silas, and Timothy founded the church at Thessalonica during Paul's second missionary journey (Acts 17). Paul had preached in the synagogue for only a few Sabbaths before opposition drove him out of the city, leaving behind a young congregation under real pressure. Both of Paul's letters to the Thessalonians were written soon afterward, close together in time, to a church that was suffering for its faith and unsettled about the future. First Thessalonians steadies a grieving, persecuted church with the hope of Christ's return; Second Thessalonians corrects the confusion and idleness that an over-heated expectation of that return had produced. Together they are letters about living faithfully with your eyes on the horizon and your hands at work.

II. Salvation of the Whole Man — Turned from Idols

The Lord Jesus Christ died on a Roman cross between two thieves. One of them looked up to Christ in faith and cried out, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom," and Jesus answered, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). That man was saved in the last moments of life — but that is the salvation of the soul only. It is not the salvation of the whole man. He was saved — but think of what he missed: a whole life that could have been poured out in service to Christ. He gained heaven, yet forfeited the abundant life on earth. That is the difference between the salvation of the soul and the salvation of the whole man. Salvation of the whole man includes the salvation of the life as well as the soul, and that is why we plead with people to give themselves to Christ early. In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul describes three stages of a complete salvation: they turned to God from idols, they served the living and true God, and they waited for His Son from heaven.

Turning is the beginning of salvation. Everyone who wants to be saved must make a turn — from self and sin to the Savior. The Thessalonians had turned from idols to God. Now, none of us has bowed to the kind of idols they worshiped, but an idol is anything chosen above God. You can never be saved until you have turned that thing down and chosen God instead. Some worship the idol of beauty or pleasure; some the idol of money and security; some bow at the shrine of power. If some idol holds your heart today, turn from it and come to God through faith in Jesus Christ. A "turning from" is the first point in salvation.

III. Salvation of the Whole Man — Serving the Living God

Our works do not save us, but if we are truly saved we will serve the Lord — "by their fruits you shall know them" (Matthew 7:20). Service is one of the fruits of salvation. How can we serve Him best? First, by the way we live. The best service you can render God is a consecrated Christian life; no one can fully measure the influence of a good life. The early Christians lived so wonderfully that their neighbors said, "These people have been with Jesus." Second, by giving Him our time. Too many say they have no time for the things of Christ, while giving their hours and energy to the things of the world that will die with the setting sun. Third, by giving Him our talents. God gives every talent we have, and every talent ought to be used for Him; if you cannot speak or sing, you can still be faithful.

Fourth, we serve God by telling others about Christ. The greatest trust God has placed in our hands is the gospel of salvation — the old, old story that transforms lives. We can tell it at home in person, and around the world through our gifts and our prayers. Fifth, we serve God by the right use of our money. The least any Christian ought to give is the tithe, given through the local church, and when you give God His tenth the other nine-tenths goes farther. Think of what the church has done for you — it taught you the Bible, brought you the message of salvation, prays for you when you are sick, and comforts you in sorrow. Every other institution asks what you have to offer; the church opens wide its arms and says, "No matter who you are, come in and let us help you."

IV. Salvation of the Whole Man — Waiting for His Son

We are to turn from idols, serve the living God, and wait for His Son from heaven. One day we will face Christ, and when we meet Him face to face we want to be able to say, "Lord, I did my best for You." The people of Martinique once sent representatives to the smoldering volcano Mount Pelée; the reports came back false, the city slept on in its vice, and when the mountain finally erupted some forty thousand people perished. They heard the warning too late. There are those today who give false reports about Christ's coming — some say He will never come, others that He will come only after the world reforms itself. These are false reports. Christ said, "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour" (Matthew 25:13). Do not be caught unready. Be ready when the trumpet shall sound.

V. Facts on the Second Coming — The Cemetery

A great deal of excitement has been stirred up through history over the end times. Amid all the difficulty, one certainty is that the coming of Jesus is not for us to schedule or even to read from signs, for it will take place "in the twinkling of an eye" (1 Corinthians 15:52). Everyone who has predicted a date has been wrong. Christopher Columbus predicted a date for the end of the world, and he, like all the date-setters, was mistaken. The Thessalonians had a problem with the Second Coming: expecting Jesus at any moment, they worried about fellow believers who had already died, fearing they would miss the glory of that day.

Men have always wondered about life beyond the grave. In the pagan world, people faced death with despair — one ancient writer said, "Once a man dies, there is no resurrection"; a grim epitaph read, "I was not; I became; I am not; I care not." But the early Christians adopted a beautiful word for the burying place of their dead. Our word "cemetery" comes from it, and it means a resting place, a sleeping place. When I must be away from home and stay in a distant city, my family does not grieve, for they know that in a little while I will leave that sleeping place and come home. Paul says we do not grieve as others grieve, because our loved ones in Christ are only asleep in a resting place.

VI. Facts on the Second Coming — The Coming

Again and again the Bible tells us that Jesus is coming back. There are those who would explain away the Second Coming just as others explain away the resurrection or the virgin birth — some say it is only a "spiritual" coming. But in Acts 1:11 we are told that He will come back in the same way He ascended into heaven (Acts 1:11): personally, visibly, actually. His coming will be in the air, accompanied by many sounds — the Lord's shout, the kind of shout of command He gave outside the tomb of Lazarus; the sound of a trumpet, which in the Roman world announced the arrival of a great person; and the voice of the archangel, as even the angelic hosts share in the victory.

And His coming will be sudden and unexpected — Paul says the day of the Lord comes "as a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2). Years ago, when President Eisenhower was vacationing in Denver, he read of a dying boy who wished to meet the President, and he decided on the spot to grant the request. The big limousine pulled up outside the home, and the boy's father answered the door in old work clothes and a day's growth of beard, amazed to see the President so unexpectedly. He never forgot how unprepared he was when the great man arrived. So it will be when Jesus comes again — many will be caught with their lives out of order and their souls unready.

VII. Facts on the Second Coming — The Change

The Second Coming will be so revolutionary that it will change everything on this planet. One of those changes will be in the bodies of those who have fallen asleep. This world is called the land of the living, but it might better be called the land of the dying. Yet Paul makes it clear that our consciousness does not sleep — the soul goes immediately to be with the Lord. Jesus told the thief, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise," and Paul said, "absent from the body, present with the Lord." God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep; He cannot bring them unless they are already with Him. It is not the soul that sleeps, but the body.

When Jesus returns He will bring the soul with Him, and "the dead in Christ will rise first" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). This does not mean the old body is reassembled — some believers were buried at sea, some dissolved to dust — but that we receive new, glorified bodies like the resurrected body of Christ, who ate, passed through walls, and appeared and disappeared. This taking up of believers is sometimes called the Rapture, and on that day there will be a great separation: only those who belong to Christ will be taken. There will be many left behind — many who never heard, many who heard but delayed their decision, and many who were members of churches but did not truly belong to Him. When He comes, it will be too late to repent. Let that sink in, and be ready.

VIII. Quench Not the Spirit

All Christians have felt the difficulty of trying to understand the Holy Spirit. We cannot describe Him fully from human experience, because He is pure spirit and we are not — it is like trying to draw a picture of the soul or give shape to an emotion. When the Bible speaks of the Spirit, it often describes His work: to tell us about Jesus, to bring us to maturity, to comfort us, and to give us spiritual gifts. But today we consider one of the most serious ideas in the Bible — sins against the Holy Spirit. The first is quenching the Spirit. In 1 Thessalonians 5:19 Paul says, "Quench not the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19). To quench means to put out, to dampen, to extinguish. The Spirit is often pictured as a fire, and when we quench Him we put that fire out. Paul was writing against a church losing its enthusiasm, its joy, and its spirit. D. L. Moody once said he had attended a church so cold you could skate down the aisles. When the Spirit is quenched the church is dead — the funeral may not have been held, but the body is surely lying in state.

There are two ways to put out a fire. The first is to take away the fuel: the church exists to serve God, and when we begin to think of it as ours instead, we cut off the fuel. The second is to throw water or dirt on it: willful sin can smother a growing church. Now look at the opposite — the marks of a Spirit-filled church in verses 16 to 19. It is a happy church, full of joy, for God has promised abundant life now and life with Him forever. It is a thankful church — "in everything give thanks" (1 Thessalonians 5:18) — for even on the darkest days there are blessings to count; if we face the sun, the shadows fall behind us. It is a praying church, never ceasing in prayer. And it is a preaching church that does not despise the gift of prophecy — those who forth-tell God's message, the teachers and preachers who interpret the Scriptures. Two extremes must be avoided: some undermine preaching and put the fire out, while others grow fanatical and let the fire burn everything up. Jim Jones had fire, but it led to destruction. Fire without light is dangerous. "Prove all things" (1 Thessalonians 5:21) — let everything a preacher says be tested by the Scriptures.

IX. 2 Thessalonians 1 — He Is With Us in the Storm

The first thing Paul does in the second letter is comfort a persecuted people. This is, in fact, the same message that runs through the book of Revelation. The believers there were facing severe persecution for their faith, and they wondered when it would all end. John himself was imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos. His message was not that the suffering was small, but that Christ was with them in it — and that the persecution would not last forever.

Remember the day the disciples were caught in the storm while Jesus slept in the boat. They were terrified, and they cried out, "Master, do You not care that we are perishing?" He rose and said, "Peace, be still" (Mark 4:39). For the early Christians, and for us, the comfort of this chapter is not a promise that He will always still the storm the moment we ask. The comfort is that He is with us in the storm. God has not lost control, and He will set all things right.

X. 2 Thessalonians 2 — God Is Still in Control of the Timeline

Some in Thessalonica had been shaken by a report that the Day of the Lord had already come. Paul's answer is steadying: do not be deceived. God is still in control of the timeline. The events of the end will unfold on God's schedule, not according to anyone's panic or any forged letter. Paul speaks of a coming "man of lawlessness," and we should be careful here. John reminds us that "even now there are many antichrists" (1 John 2:18). Across the centuries many figures have been confidently identified as the Antichrist — popes, Hitler, and many others — and the confident identifiers have generally been proven wrong, just as every person who has set a date for the end has been wrong. The spirit of lawlessness is real and recurring; our task is not to pin a name on it but to stay faithful.

Behind this chapter lies the Old Testament expectation of the Day of the Lord — God's decisive intervention in history, bringing both judgment and salvation. It is a theme that runs through the prophets. The Jews saw their present as an evil age without hope, and they looked for the coming Day of the Lord as a golden age. The deepest message is this: we humans cannot correct the evil of this world ourselves. God must intervene. Think of the rise of Hitler. As that evil gathered, most of the religious leaders of the day — both Lutheran and Catholic — remained silent. Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke up, and it cost him his life. The world's injustices often go unanswered in our lifetimes, and that is precisely why there must be a Day of the Lord. God will not leave the books unbalanced forever.

XI. 2 Thessalonians 3 — Be Ready, Not Idle

There have always been sincere people who were sure they knew when the Lord would return. Some pastors have been so certain that they led their congregations to sell their possessions and sit down to wait. They were sincere — and they were wrong. When Jesus Himself was asked when He would come back, He said that He did not know the day; only the Father knows. The lesson is plain: we are called to be prepared, not to schedule the Second Coming.

And being prepared does not mean sitting idle. Mankind was created for work. Before the Fall, Adam already had a job — to tend the garden. After the Fall, his labor lost its sheer joy; now he worked among thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:18). But work itself never stopped being a noble thing. "Six days you shall labor" (Exodus 20:9), God said, and the honest work we do is offered up to Him. The believer who truly expects the Lord's return is not the one who quits and waits, but the one found faithfully at work.

Submit Exam & Check Pass ↺ Reset Exam