Grace Community Church Ramona Podcast

In our section today Peter will address how the various trials we face should be thought of, and that when we are thinking rightly about these difficulties, there is even joy to be had in the midst of them. That there really is "Good Grief."

Not only was Peter setting out to teach and remind these "chosen foreigners" that they were indeed the children of God, but he wanted them to rightly understand their new birth into God’s family and some of the incredible truths that were part and parcel of being born again.

Peter drew parallels between his readers and Israel.

There were some believers (Christians) in the Thessalonian church who were not working to support themselves. They were ‘walking in idleness’. Instead of working, they were relying on the church or those in the church to provide for their daily needs. This caused discouragement, and unnecessary strain on the rest of the believers.

A Solid Foundation 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17; 3:1-5 Pastor Nate Ingvoldstad

In his previous letter Paul taught the Thessalonians they would be rescued from the day of the Lord (Tribulation) by being gathered to Jesus before the beginning of the day of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Since receiving that first letter, someone, somehow had begun to spread the lie that the day of the Lord had come and therefore, by implication, the Thessalonians would suffer the wrath of the day of the Lord.

2 Thessalonians was written soon after 1 Thessalonians; perhaps within a few months in the summer of 51 A.D. Before writing 2 Thessalonians, Paul received news that both encouraged him and concerned him. He was encouraged to hear the Thessalonians were growing in faith and love in spite of persecution. But he was concerned to learn false teachers were troubling the church family. This prompted Paul to write this letter.

Easter 2024

Paul closes this letter in the same manner as he does his other letters – with instructions how to live out the Christian life as a church family.

The day of the Lord is an idiom used to emphasize the swift and decisive nature of the Lord’s victory over His enemies on any given occasion.  The day of the Lord to which the Apostle Paul refers in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 is the Great Tribulation, the time period Jesus described in Matthew 24:21-22a.