Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

If you're doing our New Testament plan, today we finished our seventh and eighth books.

And if you're doing the whole Bible, we've finished our 46th and 47th books.

These two books are Paul's Letters to the Church at Thessalenica. We met them yesterday in

Act 17. Paul, Silas, and Timothy spent a lot of time with them until the local Jews who

were jealous of their ministry formed a mob and basically drove them out of town.

Paul really loves the people of this church, so he writes them this letter to speak

words of encouragement and love. He starts out by telling them a few of the ways their lives demonstrate that God

has chosen them to be a part of his family. First of all, they've received the gospel wholeheartedly

and the Holy Spirit came to them as well. Second, they started spreading the word to other people. They

received and lived out and shared the gospel. Paul says he and the guys mentored them

and then they started mentoring others. They took what they learned from Paul and made Macedonian mentees.

Third, they've turned from their idolatry and worshipped a one true God. We also see here that there

is wrath coming, but Jesus is the one who delivers us from it

because God's kids will never experience his wrath. Then Paul recounts the story of

how they met. He had just been beaten up and imprisoned in Philippi, but he didn't stop preaching.

He came to Thesela and Aikha to share the gospel with them even in the face of opposition.

He didn't come there to be popular or powerful and he didn't come there to get rich.

Even though the Apostles had a right to

demand that the church take care of them, they didn't make use of that right. In fact,

they worked overtime so that they could share the gospel and their lives with

the Thessalonians.

...