You've crowned him with many
crowns. Let's all stand together. Crown Him with many crowns, the
Lamb upon His throne. Hark how the heavenly anthem
drowns all music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of Him
who died for thee. and hail Him as thy matchless
King through all eternity. Crown Him the Lord of love, before
His heaven-side. Rich wounds yet visible above,
glorified. No angel in the sky can fully
bear that sight, but downward bends his wandering eyes at mystery
so bright. Crown Him the Lord of life, who
triumphed o'er the grave, who rose victorious to the strife
for those He came to save. His glories now we sing, Who
died and grows on high, Who died eternal life to bring, And lives
that death may die. Crown Him the Lord of Heaven,
One with the Father known, One with the Spirit through Him given,
From yonder glorious throne. To thee be endless praise, for
thou for us hast died. Be thou, O Lord, through endless
days adored and magnified. Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to be looking at
some verses in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. 2 Thessalonians chapter
2 this morning. If you'd like to turn with me
there in your Bibles. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on our time together. Our Heavenly Father, promised
that where two or three are gathered together in thy name, there you
are in the midst of them, that you inhabit the praise of
thy people. Lord, we've tried to join our
voices and our hearts in worship to thee this morning, and we
turn now to thy word, and we ask, Lord, that that you would
bless us with the fulfillment of those promises. We pray that
your Holy Spirit would open the eyes of our understanding. We
pray that you would enable us to look unto Jesus, who is the
author and the finisher of faith, to set our affections on things
above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. We
pray for your Holy Spirit to open what no man can shut, Lord,
that the mystery of the gospel would be made clear to our hearts
and that we would find ourselves able to worship Thee in the power
of Thy Spirit and according to the truth of Thy Word. For we
ask it in Christ's name. Amen. This past week I received an
email It's one of those spam mails, but the headline was so
appealing that I had to open it and watch the video. And the
promises that were made were pretty amazing. And I thought,
boy, if there's any truth at all to that, that's what I need.
But I did have the wherewithal to go online and to read some
of the critiques of this particular offer and discovered from those
who had tried it that it was an absolute total scam. I give you that illustration.
You've probably had a similar experience with that. Have you
ever been lied to? Have you ever been deceived? Have you ever had promises made
to you that weren't fulfilled? Have you ever found yourselves
holding a bill of sales in the end without any product to show
for it? You've been deceived. Deceit
can be very costly. Lies can be very hurtful. But
no deceit and no lie is more costly and more hurtful. than the lie that Satan tells
about how it is you can be made right with God. The Lord Jesus
Christ, well God in his word here in 2 Thessalonians chapter
2 calls it the lie. The lie of all lies, the great
lie. I want you to have discernment
about the lie. I want you to discern the lies
that are being told about Christ. I want you to discern the lies
that you deceive yourself with. The scripture says that the heart
is deceitful and wicked. Who can know it? It's desperately
wicked. We, if the Lord doesn't give
us discerning ears, if he doesn't open our eyes and enable us to
understand ourselves, we'll lie to ourselves. And we'll believe
the lie. And the Lord has given us so
much revelation and light so that we will not be deceived,
so that we will not be hurt so that we will not pay the ultimate
price for having believed the lie, which is the damnation of
our very souls. In 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 11,
and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that
they should believe Now you see that next word, a, I looked it
up, it's actually the word the. A is an indefinite article, the
is a definite article. It is the definite article in
the original language. I don't know why the translators
put a, because the literal translation is the. This is not just a lie,
this is the lie. This is the lie of all lies. This is the lie that if believed
will damn your soul. And separates you from all eternity,
for all eternity, from God. And the Scripture says that God
sent them the lie. That they might all be damned
who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. I want you to know what the lie
is. I want you to know why God sent
the lie. I want you to know what the result
of the lie is. And I want you to know the freedom
and the joy and the hope of being able to discern the difference
between the lie and the truth. What is the lie? What is the
lie? The lie is any message of salvation
that denies Christ His glory and gives man something to do. Whatever it is, gives man something
to do. The most believed lie in the
world today is that man has a free will. that it's God's will for all
men to be saved, but when the... When the force of God's will
comes up against the object of man's will, man's will always
reigns sovereign. And so we see in the previous
verses where the scripture says that this man of sin, this son
of perdition, which not only defines the lies that are in
religion, but it defines our own flesh. The man of sin resides
with us. The son of perdition resides
with us with all lying wonders and deceit. And God has given
us the opportunity to live with this lie within ourselves. When he regenerated us and gave
us his spirit, He could have completely made perfect the old
man had he wanted to. But in fact, he didn't make anything
about the old man perfect. He didn't make any changes in
the old man. He put the new man in with the old man, so that
now Jacob and Esau are living together. And the scripture says
that the older, that's the old man, shall serve the younger,
that's the new man. And so the presence of this lie
that we have within us, and we do, we cry with Job, I am vile. We believe that our hearts are
deceitful. We know that we can't really
know ourselves apart from the grace of God. And yet the old
man, the older, shall serve the younger. So God has put these
two men together in one man in order to drive us to Christ. The deceitfulness of the old
man, the one that is always there, is the one that reminds us every
single day, every moment of every day, of our need for the Lord
Jesus Christ. And in fact, the more we grow
in grace and in the knowledge of Christ, The more we see of
that old man, and the more the battle rages, and the more the
old man drives the new man to find his hope in the Lord Jesus
Christ. So, God has said it that way. The lie, the lie, is the lie
that we see in the world. It's the lie that we see in ourselves. It's this thought, it's this
hope that somehow we can earn favor with God through something
that we do. It denies Christ His glory in
salvation. It sets man up on the throne
of God and makes the final analysis, the final decision of His salvation
based on something He does. I've got a will. I can choose
God. Your will is in bondage to your
old man. It's in bondage to your nature.
We can't just decide against our nature. The Lord's got to
give us a new heart. And so, this lie is, in short,
a works salvation. It believes that God has made
himself subject to the powerful will of man, and that man, in
the final analysis, is the one who holds the keys. He's the
one who makes the decision. He's the one who determines the
outcome of his soul. The lie is that God loves everybody. That's the lie. And wants everybody
to be saved. And the truth is that God's love
is very particular. God's love is found only in Christ. That's the truth. But men are sold out to the lie. They believe the lie. The lie is that Christ died for
everybody. You've got to do something in
order to make what the Lord Jesus Christ did on Calvary's cross
work for you. So there's some contribution
that you have to make. That's the lie. It's free will
works religion. And it's seen in every corner
of the world. Even for those who would not
give any recognition whatsoever to the Lord Jesus Christ being
the Christ, they have a form of religion that gives them something
to do. That's the lie. And back to ourselves,
within each one of us, within each one of us there is a recovering
Pharisee. Within each one of us, there
are thoughts that, you know, surely, surely I can do something. Surely I can do something to
improve my position with God. If I just quit doing this and
quit doing, start doing the other, then somehow that's going to
obligate God to bless me. Do we not have those thoughts?
Do we not think like that? That's the lie. That's the lie. The truth is that all the blessings
of God are to be found in the heavenlies in Christ. The only
hope that we have that God would bless us is that he would enable
us through faith to look to and rest in and rely upon the Lord
Jesus Christ for all our salvation. God has sent the lie. The lie is seen in what men believe
about faith. Faith, most people believe, is
the cause of your salvation. That's the lie. If you'll believe,
God will reward your faith by giving you eternal life. In fact,
the truth is that faith is not the cause of our salvation, it
is the result of our salvation. If you believe, it's because
you've been saved. Salvation is a work of free and
sovereign grace, and the evidence of salvation, not the cause,
the evidence of salvation is faith. But men want to do something. They want to bring something
to the table of salvation. Why? Because they hate Christ.
They believe themselves to be their own savior. And so they
deny Christ his glory and they believe the lie. The lie is that
this book is a rule book for Christian living. It's a set
of do's and don'ts, and if you'll obey them, if you'll do your
best to keep them, that God will reward you for your good efforts
in the end. Or that the way that you prove
the evidence of your salvation is by comparing yourself to the
precepts of Scripture. And all men do is they put themselves
back under the law in order to try to give evidence of salvation,
which is no different than being under the law in order to earn
salvation. It's the same thing. It is the
lie. It's the lie. The truth is just
the opposite of the lie. And no lie, as John goes on to
say, is of the truth. Men believe that God is obligated
to forgive them of their sins because they ask Him to. They really do. I've talked to
two people this week. Two people this week who told
me that exact thing. Well, I know I've committed sins,
but I ask God to forgive me. And He's obligated, because I
ask Him. There's only one person that's
able to obligate God, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And the
only hope that you and I have of having our sins forgiven is
not that we ask God to forgive us. but that the blood that the
Lord Jesus Christ shed on Calvary's cross covers our sin from the
sight of God. That He's able to say, when I
see the blood, I will pass by you. I remember your sins no
more. But the lie It's so invasive. It's everywhere. It is work salvation. Paul said in Romans chapter 1
verse 25 that they changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped
the creature rather than the creator. That's the lie. The truth is there's something
in each of us. There's something in each of
us that exalts the creature above the Creator. That's the lie. That's the lie. Oh, Lord, expose
the lie to me. Don't let me be deceived by some
slick advertisement. Don't let me buy something that's
not real. Invest in something that's a
scam. That's exactly what it is. It
is the lie. You read it again. For this cause
God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. The lie is that your acceptance
before God Your acceptance before God is based on something other
than the Lord Jesus Christ alone. That's the lie. And people believe
it. It is a strong delusion. I mean, they're sold out to it. They're as committed to the lie,
if you're a child of God, as you are to the truth. They're
that committed to it. And they've been deceived by
it because they can't see. You can talk to them about it. Somebody told me this week what
a good person they were. I was talking to them about it,
and they are. She would do anything for us.
As far as man's standard of goodness, she's about as good as they get.
And I was able to say to her, I said, you know, the truth is
God requires perfection. And nothing that you and I have
ever done measure up to that. Everything we've ever done is
sin in the sight of God. And you know, it was just speaking
just this simply and this clearly to her. And went on to, and she's
sitting there looking at me like a deer in the headlights. I mean,
shaking her head like she's not hearing a word I'm saying. And
after I got finished, she said, well, yeah, yeah, I see what
you're saying. You know, I did do something wrong a few months
ago. Just a strong delusion. I mean, sold out to the lie. Can't see it. Can't believe it. Bound up in the lie. The scripture says that when
God deceives a person, they're deceived. You read that? God
sent them this strong delusion that they should believe a lie. It's like trying to talk to a
deaf person. They can't hear you. And they
don't even read lips. It's like trying to tell a blind
person what a sunset, a person born blind, what a sunset. They
just can't see it. Why? Because they've been deluded
by the lie. They have believed the lie. They're committed to it. They
know that the hope of their salvation is based on something that they've
done. Some decision that they've made
or something that they haven't done. They believe that with
all their hearts. Don't believe the lie. It's a
lie. Don't believe what your old man
tells you. And don't believe... I don't mean that in relation
to young people. I don't mean that in relation
to your fathers. Don't believe it. It's a lie.
And don't believe what the world tells you. Don't believe what
religion tells you. That's what the Lord's saying
here. They have believed the lie. Listen to what the Lord
Jesus Christ said in John chapter 6 verse 43. Why do you not understand
my speech? And I've had this conversation
with people. Why do you not understand my
speech? Even because you do not hear
my word. For you are of your father the
devil. He is a liar and the father of
all lies. What's the first lie that Satan
told? First lie Satan told was, the
reason God doesn't want you to eat that fruit is because he
knows in the day in which you eat of it, your eyes will be
opened and you will have the power of choice. What Satan was
saying to Eve was, you're just a robot. You're just a robot. You don't know the difference
between good and evil. You're just living your life on God's
just control. God doesn't want you, because
he doesn't want you to know the difference between good. But
if you eat of that fruit, you're going to be like God. You're going
to have the power of choice. You're going to have free will.
You're going to be able to discern the difference between good and
evil, and you're going to be so virtuous as to choose good
over evil every time. Same lie, isn't it? It hasn't
changed. The lie hasn't changed. It's
exactly what men believe, and they believe it with all their
hearts. Why do they believe it? Well,
verse 10 tells us the reason that they believe it is because
they love not the truth. They have no love for Christ.
They hate Christ. They hate Christ. They would
rob Him of His glory in salvation and credit themselves with something. Something. And so God sent him a strong
delusion. Just like when Israel said, we want a king, we want
a king. And God said, I'm your king. We don't want you as our king.
We want a king we can see. And God said, okay, I'll give
you what you want. Gave him Saul. Why did God send them a strong
delusion that they should believe a lie? Because they have no love
of the truth that they might be saved. They have no love of
the truth. The Lord said, if you're not
for me, you're against me. If you don't love Christ, you
hate Christ. There's no middle ground. This
gospel doesn't give you an opportunity to be neutral. You're either
gonna hate it or love it. It's gonna be a saver of life
or a saver of death to you. And every time the gospel of
God's free grace in the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ
is preached, and Christ has given all the glory, every person who
hears that is either gonna hate it or they're gonna love it.
And the people who don't hate it or love it have not heard,
just like the lady I was talking to this week. They're just standing
there looking at you, shaking their head, and every word you're
speaking is going right over their head. That's why I'd a
whole lot rather somebody get mad than to show no response
whatsoever. At least you know when they get
mad that they've heard something. They've heard something. If you hear the gospel, you're
either going to love it or you're going to hate it. They hated Christ, so God sent
them a strong delusion. They are of the son of perdition,
the man of sin, whose coming is after the working of Satan
with all, there it is, look at verse, we're right here, we got
your Bibles open, look at verse nine. Even him whose coming is
after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying
wonders. Oh, I can do better. I can be
better. I can get better. I can be more savable. That's a lie. It's a lie. The Lord exposes the lie to you.
Your love for Christ, here it is. The more you fall in love
with Christ, the more you're gonna fall out of love with yourself.
It's just, that's just the way it works. You will, you will loathe yourself. Because you'll know that that
old man is a liar. He's a liar. And he's just seeking
to deceive you and lead you astray. Why else would the Lord send
men a strong delusion that they might believe the lie? Let me
answer that question by making this statement first. Everything
that God does in this world is for the salvation of his people.
Everything he does in this world is for the good and comfort of
his church. Everything. Everything the evidence
of that is that when the last of God's elect come to know Christ
It's over It's just over Why because this world serves no
other purpose with God It serves no other purpose other than to
provide his church a place to live until they are all brought
together into Christ and brought into glory. It's the only reason
this world exists. No other purpose. All the governments,
all the economies, all the things of this world, they are of no
value to God. Now, if that's true, if that's
true, then what would you have in this world? With a world full
of men who hate Christ and don't believe the lie. In other words, men who hate
Christ and at the same time they are thoroughly convinced, they
are thoroughly convinced that nothing they do good earns them
any favor with God, and nothing they do bad gives them any reason
for God's judgment. They believe that. They don't
believe the lie. The lie is work's religion. You see, God sent a
strong delusion that the haters of Christ might believe the lie
in order to provide for us a place of relative peace. The reason
why your neighbors are good people, the reason why your family members
are good people, the reason why they're not breaking into your
home and stealing from you, the reason why they're not killing
you is because they believe the lie. They believe the lie. Can you
imagine if the world was filled with people who had no concern
whatsoever for their standing with God? They had no belief
in the lie whatsoever. In other words, they were thorough.
You see my point? The only thing that makes this
world a relatively peaceful place to live is the lie. And God sent the lie to restrain
men's evil, to keep men in check. That's why they do what they
do, because they believe the lie. just like having the law. I mean, you know, we live in a
nation of laws, and it's the presence of the law and the threat
of the law and the retribution of the law that keeps men from
doing things that they would otherwise do. The Wild West was
wild because it was lawless. And it would be that way here
if there was no law, if there were no police, if there were
no courts, if there were no jails, if men were free to do whatever
they wanted to do without any fear of the law or without any
retribution whatsoever. What kind of society would that
be? And so the lie puts men under
the law God put them there to keep them in check, to keep
them from being what they otherwise would be. And the very thing
that they're doing in hopes of saving themselves will be the
thing that will condemn them to eternal judgment. The fact that they believe the
lie, the fact that they believe that their obedience to the law
is somehow earning them favor with God will be the very thing
that will serve to judge their souls to an eternal hell. That's why God sent the lie.
You see that? Well, here's the result of believing
the lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Now back to your own old man,
back to your own flesh. There's going to come a day when
your flesh is going to get what it deserves. Why? Because the flesh doesn't
believe the truth. The truth is only believed in the new man.
The old man doesn't believe the truth. All these things we've
been saying about the lie are with you. And that old man's going to get
what he deserves. He's going to be judged. He's
going to be put back into the ground from where he came. And the corruptible is going
to be made incorruptible. And the mortal is going to be
made immortal. Oh, what a glorious day that's
going to be for the child of God. But for those who believe
the lie wholly, completely, who have no new man to expose the old man, you don't
know you've got an old man until you get a new man. You just don't. You don't know you're a sinner
until you become a saint. You don't know that you've got
that evil flesh until God gives you
a new nature. Verse 12, they shall be damned. Is that not what the Lord said
when He said on the Day of Judgment when He separates the sheep from
the goats? And He said to those on His left, I was hungry and
you gave me not to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me
not to drink. I was in prison and you gave me not to visit.
Lord, when did we do those things? Lord, we've done many wonderful
works in your name. We've cast out demons in your
name. We've been very religious. We lived by the lie all our lives. We believed the lie. Depart from me, you workers of
iniquity, for I never knew you. Men who believe the lie, who've
been deceived by the lie, will die by the lie. You've heard stories of people
going to the doctor to get treatment for something and they give them
the wrong medicine. And the medicine that was supposed
to cure them kills them. That's what the lie does. What
they think is going to be their cure ends up being their death
sentence. It's the lie. It's the lie. Don't believe it. Don't believe
it. For in fact, no lie is of the
truth. Listen to what the Lord said
in Revelation chapter 21. There shall in no wise And here's the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking, there shall in no wise enter in anything that defileth,
neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie. He's talking about those who
receive into glory, but them whose names are written in the
Lamb's book of life. Nothing that makes a lie will
be received into glory. That's why your flesh can't go
to heaven. Because it's making a lie all the time. And God's
gonna have to kill it. And give you a new body. And
your new body won't ever lie to you. Won't ever lie to you
again. Turn to me quickly to 1 John
chapter 2. Look at verse 20. Child of God, believer, here's
your hope. Here's your hope. Look at verse
20 of 1 John chapter 2. But you have an unction from
the Holy One, and you know all things. If you have the Holy
Spirit, you know what we've been talking about's true. And I have
not written unto you because you know not the truth, but because
you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. You can't have
just a little bit of lies, any more than you want to drink.
I would not drink this glass of water if you put one drop
of arsenic in it. I'm not going to drink it. The
whole thing's going down the drain. It's mostly water. No lie is of the truth. Problem is, you put a drop of
arsenic in there, it's going to infect every molecule of water
that's in this glass. And so it is with the lie. Any
part of the lie, a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump. So John says, I've not written
unto you because you don't know the truth, but because you do
know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but
he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He's the liar. Here's
the lie. Here is the lie. Denying that
Jesus, Jehovah saves, is the Christ, the anointed one, the
Messiah, the one sent by God in the full power of the Spirit
of God to accomplish the salvation of God's people, and that's what
the lie does. It denies Jesus being the Christ. He is an antichrist. that denieth
the Father and the Son. When you deny that Jesus is the
Christ, you're denying God, the testimony that he's made about
who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Whosoever denieth the Son, the
same hath not the Father, but he that acknowledges the Son
hath the Father also. Let that therefore abide in you
which you have heard from the beginning. If that which you
have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, you also
shall continue in the Son and in the Father. You say, well,
I believe what I'm hearing right now. If you do, you'll believe
it to the end. And if you ever stop believing
it, you never believed it. That's clear in verse 19 of the
same chapter. Don't read it now, let's move
on. Verse 25, and this is the promised, that he has promised
us even eternal life. These things I've written unto
you concerning them that seduce you. Oh, getting scam emails are pretty
easy to research and figure out whether you're being seduced
or not. There's a lot of seductions that are a lot more seductive
than that, aren't there? That's what we want. We don't
want to be seduced. We don't want to be deceived.
We don't want to be like Eve. We want to be able to discern
the truth between the lie and the truth. But the anointing
which you have received of him abideth in you. And you need
not that any man teach you, but as the same anointed teaching
you of all things and is truth. and is no lie, and even as it
hath taught you, you shall abide in him." You know this is true, don't
you? If you're a child of God, you know the difference between
the truth and the lie. Why? Because you've got the Holy
Spirit to confirm that truth to your heart. We don't need a man to persuade
us. That's what the word here is.
The man doesn't do the persuading. God uses a man to speak the truth
about the lie and about the truth, but that man knows that it's
the Spirit of God that does the teaching. I'm not teaching you
anything. If you've learned anything from
what I've said, it's because the Spirit of God has taught
you. Let's take a break. Thank you.