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We have an early use of the word in Exod. 19: 7 where Moses "laid before" the
people the words of God.
The Apostle's "argument", therefore, was two-fold. First he opened up the Scripture
and saw to it that the understanding of his audience was also so far opened that they
understood the passage cited, and then by bringing passage after passage and placing
them over against their actual fulfillment--that had only just become history--he sought
to prove that the Messiah of O.T. prophecy was the Christ he preached, and that, in spite
of Jewish prejudice, "He must needs have suffered" and that He had risen from the dead.
Paul's first object was to convince his hearers that "Jesus was the Christ", and that He
had indeed died and risen again--a fact of which he reminds the Thessalonians when
writing to them in his first epistle:
"For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again" (I Thess. 4: 14).
We have only two sources of information regarding the subject-matter of the
Apostle's ministry: the record of the Acts where the churches are first founded, and
the subsequent epistles where they are given added teaching. We should therefore read
I and II Thessalonians while we have this chapter in the Acts before us, so that we may
be able to compare the Apostle's line of teaching in the Acts with that in the epistles.
That the Apostle followed much the same method elsewhere is evident from I Cor. 15::
"That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and
that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures" (I Cor. 15: 3, 4).
"Whether it were I or they, so we preached and so ye believed" (I Cor. 15: 11).
The Thessalonian epistles throw considerable light upon the way in which the Apostle
spent his time at Thessalonica. In I Thess. 2: we read:
"Ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail; for, labouring night and day,
because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of
God" (I Thess. 2: 9).
From the Apostle's remarks in Philippians it would appear that, but for the gracious
and repeated contributions made by that assembly, his evangelistic work in Macedonia
would have been rendered almost impossible (Phil. 1: 5; 4: 15). Judged by modern
standards it strikes one as extraordinary, that within the limits of Acts 16: 40 and
17: 1-14, there could be formed a company of believers so fully grown in grace as not
only to have made their own witness secure, but also to have followed the Apostle with
gifts to enable the work in Macedonia to go forward.
To add to the Apostle's burden at Thessalonica, we find at the time of his visit a
famine was raging, and Lewin in his Fasti Sacri No. 1735 says that a modus or peck of
wheat was sold for six times its usual price.