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Today's talk comes from Pastor Ben Stewart.

Well, if you follow the basic sentence structure through this passage, it's actually pretty simple.

We tried to see you, we couldn't do it, we sent Tim, he says you're good, we're happy about that.

That was that whole passage, five sentences.

And yet there were 17 verses. There we are.

Why is that? Well, some of you might say, Ben, that's just the Bible being weird.

That's how it always is. It's a strange book. And yet, let me say this, before we dismiss it as being unnecessarily verbose,

you have to understand what's happening in this passage and why it matters.

This is the Apostle Paul, writing to the Thessalonians.

Now the Apostle Paul, by honestly any metric, was one of the most influential human beings who ever walked on this globe.

That much of the New Testament was penned by Paul and his writings has shaped human culture, government, society,

in ways that few other human beings ever have.

He is demonstrably one of the most influential human beings in history who's ever walked on this planet, the Apostle Paul.

And even in his day, they understood that this was a man of significance.

It's interesting, when he preached for the first time in Thessalonica in Acts chapter 17, his detractors, his enemies said this about him in Acts 176.

It says when they could not find them, the mob looking for Paul in his team, since they dragged out Jason and some of the brothers before the city authority shouting,

these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

That these people who didn't believe in what Paul was selling said, but we know this man is turning the world upside down.

That when he and his team arrive in a culture, they don't shift to the culture, the culture changes.

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