As I said earlier I wasn't going
to look at this Lord willing over the next two or three weeks
because I think the words are so powerful, the words are so
commonly throughout the scriptures. and the words are so explicit
about the world that we live in. And Paul writes to the Thessalonians
this second letter and he's reminding them at the beginning that he's
actually, all that he's saying to them now is exactly what he
said to them when he was with them. He was with them for three
short weeks, he's written the first letter to them and in verse
5 he says, remember ye not But when I was yet with you, I told
you these things." And so again, he's reminding them in the first
letter, he brings to remembrance the way he came, the character
that he and his friends displayed, the gospel that they brought,
and the power of that gospel in their lives. The Word of God
came to them and it came in much affliction and much contention.
They preached the Gospel, there was much opposition, and the
opposition continued. But we are prone to forgetfulness,
aren't we? And we are prone not only to
forgetfulness, we are prone to being troubled, shaken in mind,
verse 2, or troubled. We are in our flesh so prone
to being deceived or beguiled by any means. And as we have looked at these
verses in various ways over many, many years and I have often reminded
us of what it says in verse 12, is all the deceivableness of
unrighteousness. And I believe, and we'll see
I hope very clearly from the scriptures, that unrighteousness
is the righteousness of men. It's the deceivableness of unrighteousness. It's the deceivableness of a
righteousness performed by men. But then it talks about in them
that perish. And then at the end of that verse,
those words that I've used often, because they received not the
love of the truth. It's one thing to acknowledge
the truth of God. It's another thing altogether
to love it. They receive not the love of
the truth, but they might be saved. There are two things that
caused me great anguish as I study these verses and I've been studying
them for some considerable time as we've gone through First Thessalonians
and in many other places where this same theme is recited again
and again. There's hardly a page of the
New Testament that doesn't issue extraordinary warnings about
false religion, Satan masquerading as an angel of light. and at
the same time that black flak backdrop is the background against
which the glory of the Gospel and the wonder of salvation by
our triune God is actually revealed to us. And I think the thing
that so happens to me is that we live in this world where things
are so often so beautiful and we live in a land where we are
so relatively free of the troubles of the rest of this world and
I'm prone, as no doubt many are, to the deceitfulness of riches.
We can actually think that this world we live in is sort of stable
and we think that this world we live in provides a safe home
and haven for us and the people that we love. The thing that
troubles me most, the thing that I pray the Lord would actually
cause us to all ponder again and again, is that these are
just serious, serious words from God. And these are words that
are written about people that we know. They're written about
circumstances around us. And I just pray that the Lord
would cause me to feel something again and again of the weightiness
of the words that are before us, and that's why I'd like to
spend two or three Thursday evenings, if the Lord allows, to go through
these verses, and that He might write the seriousness of it on
our hearts, because those who have been forgiven much, as the
Lord reminds us, they love much, and those last five or six verses
are just a remarkable remarkable testimony to how the Lord saves
His people, chosen to salvation, chosen by God. And Paul is writing,
as he says in verse 17, he says he's writing to comfort your
hearts. These people have been troubled.
These people have had their minds disturbed. And they've been disturbed,
as the minds of men always are, by lies. Lies masquerading as
truth. So he begins in verse 1, he says,
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ and our gathering together unto Him, It's interesting, isn't
it? He almost uses it as a means
of swearing an oath by the coming of the Lord Jesus and our gathering
together under him. And so he wants to establish
two things very, very clearly in their minds. The Lord Jesus
is coming again. In fact, He's on his way back. Revelation chapter 1 says, Behold,
he cometh. Behold, he is in the process
of coming. He says, I've gone to prepare
a place for you. And when he's prepared that place,
he's coming. But he says in Revelation, he's
on his way back. that all things in heaven and
earth are now the preparation for His coming in glory. And
we looked at some of that in the last few weeks. But His coming
in glory is a coming together. I love that word, isn't it? It
means collecting. Collecting all that's His. You see, the church is now The
bride of Christ is in three states, aren't they? There are some in
heaven who delight in the glories of the Lord and they worship
Him and they sing those songs of heaven around the throne. But they don't have physical bodies,
they have a real existence, a real spiritual existence and they
can communicate and they can sing and they can see and they
can rejoice. And then there are the saints
on earth, that they are the ones that are born again, the saints
that are here. And there are at this stage still
some of God's children who are not born again, they are here
and they are really God's children and they are not born again.
And there are some that haven't had a physical existence in this
world. There will come a time when The
church will be just in two states, won't it? There'll be those in
heaven and those on earth, born again on earth. And then when
he comes to gather them, they'll just be one. We'll see him as
he is because we'll be like him. He'll come to be glorified in
His saints, and He's going to be glorified in His saints by
gathering them, collecting them all together. And there are no
signs and prophecies yet to be fulfilled before the Lord's return.
All is in readiness, and we're not told to look for signs, but
to look for the Lord Jesus. So we are beseeched, we are entreated,
we are begged, to be constantly aware of the Lord's return, to
order our affairs accordingly, and to order our thoughts about
ourselves and about this world accordingly. I love what the
Lord says in Matthew 6.33, but seek ye first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness. And all these things shall be
added unto you. Turn and be turned continually
for your own righteousness and look to Him. And don't ever let
anyone lead you to believe or trouble you to think that they
know when He's coming. Every single person in all of
the last 2,000 years of history that has predicted the Lord's
return has lied to people. multitudes have been lied to
you. It's not for you to know, says the Lord Jesus in Acts 1.7,
it's not for you to know the times nor the seasons which the
Father has put in his own hands. He beseeches them by this coming,
the coming that's a reality and the gathering that's a reality. He says in verse 2, that you
not be so soon shaken in mind or be troubled. Shaken in mind,
it means to be agitated, like a reed disturbed, agitated in
your mind, like the sea that's been troubled by the wind, have
been shaken in mind or troubled. It means to continue in a state
of agitation following a shock received. As Ephesians 4 says,
these people are tossed to and fro and carried about by every
wind of doctrine and by the slight of men and the cunning and craftiness
whereby they lie in wait to deceive. And so, as we saw in Galatians,
Paul is writing that you not be so soon. Believers can be
soon shaken. Even these believers who Paul
rejoices in because they're staying so firm in the faith have been
shaken in this one particular area about the Lord's return. It's amazing isn't it? Believers
are fragile creatures. They have hearts of flesh. They
have hearts that have been made sensitive to sin. They have At the return of the
Lord's coming to them in saving grace, they've been made aware
of what they are. Paul was a self-righteous man.
He became the chief of sinners when he met the Lord Jesus Christ.
Believers are aware of the sins of omission and the sins of commission
and also they're aware of the holiness of God and the righteousness
of God and the justice of God in punishing sin. The self-righteous,
from my experience, and it might be yours as well, and it seems
to be what the scripture keeps saying again and again, they
just never seem to be shaken. It's almost as if the words of
God and the warnings of His people just sort of roll off them like
water off a duck's back. But God's children can soon be
shaken, and that's why the instruction to the Lord's people is, comfort
you, comfort you, my people, saith the Lord. And Paul's writing
to comfort these people. Speak comfortably to Jerusalem,
cry unto her. Her warfare is accomplished. Her iniquity is pardoned because
she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. We can be shaken, but how thankful
we need to be for God's Word. God's Word settled in the heavens. God's word stands firm despite
all the things that happen in this world. God's word is truth,
isn't it? Thou hast magnified thy word
above all thy name. We have, says 2 Peter 1, we have
a more sure word of prophecy than they had, as a light that
shines in a dark place. How thankful we need to be for
reminders that His Word is light and life and truth. How thankful
we need to be that we have a means of assessing with the use of
His Word and by the power of His Spirit. We have a way of
assessing with these men that come here to trouble them. that
you shouldn't be troubled and shaken in mind, neither by spirit,
neither by someone who comes with another revelation, or comes with another word. These people that come, it's
extraordinary the brazenness of the false teachers. They actually
come claiming that they've actually had a word from Paul, or they
come claiming even a letter as from us. They had in their hands
a forgery of a letter that claims to be Paul's. And here they are
claiming to speak words to the eternal souls of people. Here
they are claiming to be preachers of righteousness. not to be shaken. We are, according
to 1 John 4, we are to test all the spirits. They are called
seducing spirits in 1 Timothy 4. Paul will say to the Galatians,
who has bewitched you? Who has beguiled you? Who has
led you astray? That the day of the Lord is at
hand. And what they meant by that is
that the Day of the Lord is so imminent that you can down tools. Don't have to worry about driving
that bus next week, John Muir. He's coming back. Wrap up all
your affairs here. Down tools, stop work. The Day
of the Lord is at hand. The Lord is at hand. He's always
with His people. He never leaves them nor forsakes
them. And He is the One who cannot
be separated from His Bride. There is no separation. But nevertheless, What is meant
by the words in this day of the Lord is not going to come in
the age of the Thessalonians. Let no man deceive you by any
means. beguile you by any means. See, the shaking and the troubling
of minds brings deception by any means, by flattery, by pretended
love, by self-righteous zeal and great knowledge, by morality,
by reasonable arguments. by misrepresenting God's word,
by forging letters, claiming apostolic authority. Don't let
anyone deceive you by miracles. Don't let anyone deceive you
by prophecies that come true. Don't let anyone deceive you
by demon exorcisms and other things. Eve was beguiled by the
subtlety of the serpent. And Paul is writing to these
people as he wrote to the Corinthians, But I fear less by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety. So your minds should
be corrupted from the simplicity that's in Christ, the singleness
and the oneness that's in Christ. I think as we grow in grace and
knowledge of the Lord Jesus, the doctrine, just the one doctrine
that describes our great, great God becomes more and more simple,
doesn't it? When we're talking about sovereignty,
we just mean absolute sovereignty. Is there anything in this universe
that wriggles outside of His control? When we're talking about
love, we're talking about a simple love, a love that's from everlasting,
a love that never waxes or wanes, a love that doesn't change between
here and heaven. When we're talking about the
substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus, we're talking about
a simple thing, isn't it? He came on behalf of His people. He died bearing their sins in
his own body on the tree and he carried their sins and he
carried them away. We have simple, simple message
of the Gospel. Isn't it remarkable how how Satan
can use such extraordinary means to deceive God's people. You
would think that the one place that Satan would want to avoid
dealing with would be the return of the Lord Jesus. Colossians
tells us very clearly, doesn't it, and many other places, that
the Lord Jesus defeated him in the most extraordinary way by
His death on the cross, completely defeated Satan. Satan is a wounded
foe and the one time when Satan will be exposed for who he really
is and will be, according to the Word of God that he knows
better than us, will be sent to that lake of fire forever. And yet, Such is the brazenness
of Satan, such is the brazenness of sin that exalts itself above
God, that he would actually send these false teachers using that
very doctrine, the very doctrine that Paul had spoken about so
clearly when he was with them, that he'd written about so clearly
in 1 Thessalonians. It's a frightening thing, isn't
it? that Paul says that he fears, lest by any means, as the serpent
of Gaul did through his suffering, so your mind should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ, that you might well bear
with him. You might well bear with someone
who brings another Jesus and another spirit and another gospel
which you have not accepted. You might well bear with him.
Not only is Satan a brazen foe, that he has in the flesh of men
a weak and corruptible element to work with. The only hope,
the only hope of protection from the deception that comes by any
means, is the grace of God and the power of the triune God to
preserve and to protect His own. Only a new nature, created anew
in Christ Jesus, can heed the warnings given in Scripture. Only a new heart can love the
Lord Jesus and hate all that dishonours Him. Only a new life
can live by faith upon his word of promise and wait. Only one born from above can
see the Gospel as good news and see every corruption of the Gospel
as wicked and evil deception. Only one taught by the Holy Spirit
can see that all the learnings and the traditions of men, all
the good works of men, are nothing but filthy rags and dung. And only one empowered energised
by the Lord Himself, will persevere under the trials and the troubles
and the persecution, the contending for the faith once delivered
to the saints." This is Paul's confidence, isn't it, with the
believers. In the midst of this deception, he can comfort their
hearts and he can pray that they'll be established because he knows
amongst them their election of God because they believed. I love what 2.13 in 1 Thessalonians
says, You received the word of God which you heard of us. You
received it as the word of God and not as the word of man. You received it as the word of
God works effectually, and works effectually, and works effectually,
continuously, in you that believe. So beguiling is common. The whole world, it seems, lies
in the arms of the evil one. And believing is precious. And like all precious things,
it's rare. There must be heresies among
you, says 1 Corinthians 11 19, that those who are approved may
be revealed. There is a promise. 1 Timothy
4, 1-3 Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits, doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, their
consciences seared as with a hot iron." Seared so that it no longer
has any feeling. no longer responds with any sensitivity. They have heard and found a place
of comfort. They have heard warnings and
found a place of comfort again and again and again. They go
back to a comfort in their tradition, a comfort in their works, a comfort
in the masses that go with them. How many times have you, brothers
and sisters, given someone something that's powerful to read, powerfully
challenging them, sent them to scriptures which confound their
notions of the character of God and the work of the Lord Jesus.
And you come back expecting, expecting when you see them that
they will be transformed and they will just take this, and
they'll take these words away and they'll just give careful
thought And they'll be troubled. They'll be troubled about their
souls and they'll be troubled about the fact that one day they
will stand before a holy and righteous God who knows absolutely
everything about them, better than they know themselves. A
holy God who will only accept absolute perfection. And you're
troubled because they think they'll come to this God on that day
and there they'll be bringing bringing their righteousness,
bringing their works, bringing their worth, and they'll be expecting
on that day to get extra jewels in their crown because they have
performed. And the Word of God seems to
burn in the hearts of God's people, and yet this Word that we bring
to them just meets a conscience seared as with a hot iron. The scriptures are just full
of warnings about the last days. The Lord Jesus spoke about it
again and again, the deception which reaches to the very elect,
the perilous times in the last days. We live in an age where
it's promised that things would go from bad to worse. But there are two events in verse
3 that will precede the Lord's return. For that day, the day
of the return of the Lord Jesus, that day shall not come until,
that day will come, I was talking to Simon this morning and the
Lord Jesus in Matthew 24 talks about his return in light of
the fact that Jerusalem there, they talked about this, they
looked out at this magnificent temple and these magnificent
stones and the Lord Jesus says that not one of these stones
shall remain another. And then he speaks, with the
same certainty that those stones would be removed from that magnificent
building in Jerusalem, the certainty of his return is exactly the
same as the certainty of those stones being removed. Are those
stones in Jerusalem? They are not there, and they
never will be put back. Those stones, the absence of
those stones is speaking today, according to Matthew 24, of the
certainty of the Lord's return. That day shall not come, that
day will come, but it shall not come except there come a falling
away first. That's the word which we have
for apostasy. It means a forsaking. So there must be a falling away. It must be huge, it must be general
and encompass many. But to fall away from something,
there must be something to fall away from. there must be a falling
away from established faith. And so the falling away is always,
as the warnings in scripture are, it's warning about religious
apostasy. We live in a world where the
troubles and the wars and the earthquakes and the famines and
all of those disasters which are so troubling and disturbing
are happening all the time and will happen until the end. But
the big issue, the big, big issue is what's happening with the
Church. See, Satan is not much troubled about what happens in
the world, but the Church is the focus of his lies. Lies are
his native tongue. Murder is his aim. The glory
of the Lord Jesus being removed from the eyes of people. is his
established aim. The Lord Jesus has defeated him,
but Satan as an enemy will not give up until that last day. There must be a falling away
first. There must be an apostasy, a
huge desertion from the truth. We'll talk more about that in
the next couple of weeks. And the son of man, the man of sin,
be revealed, the sun of perdition. So there must be a falling away
and there must be a revealing, a revealing of this sun of perdition. He has a number of names in this
passage of scripture. He's called here the man of sin. He's called a bit further on
the mystery of iniquity. He's called that wicked or that
wicked one. which shall be revealed, whose
coming is after the working of Satan, with all powers and signs
and lying wonders, and all deceivableness of unrighteousness." For many of our forebears, if
you read the old commentaries, it was in many ways much simpler. A few hundred years ago they
just had one enemy of the Church. It was Rome. It was burning God's
people. Antichrist is the Pope, and Roman
Catholicism is the activity of the enemy, and the evil one. And there's absolutely no question
that what was true hundreds of years ago is exactly true now.
It's dressed up in all sorts of fancy clothes these days,
and it seems to be extraordinarily accepted. And it's had an amazing
revival in lots of ways in the minds of people. But it's still
the same evil religion that never needs to be spoken of except
with derision and deep, deep concern. But the Antichrist,
the man of sin, was in the world in the days of the Apostle. 1
John speaks of the Antichrist. And the Greek preposition anti
means two things. It can mean two things. It can mean someone who directly
opposes the Lord Jesus, directly opposes Him. But the preposition
anti can also mean someone who stands in the place of, who mimics
Him. And so Satan has two ways of
operating. One is to mimic the activities
of the Lord Jesus and His work in the Church, and the other
one is to stand in direct open, flagrant opposition. But the
Antichrists are around, won't they? Little children, this is
the last time, says 1 John. This was written 1900 years ago. And as you have heard that Antichrists
shall come, even now there are many Antichrists, whereby we
know it is the last time. Verse 19, they went out from
us. So they had their beginnings
in the church of the apostles, but they were not of us. For
if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued
with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that
they were not of us. Antichrist. has been around for
a long, long time. Paul had to deal with Antichrist
in Galatia, in Colossae, in Philippi, in Jerusalem. It's interesting
that the man of sin is given another name here. It's called
the son of perdition. And it's used with reference
to one other person in the New Testament, and that is Judas. And the word perdition is the
word from which we get apollyon, that you might read about later
on in the scriptures, or the destroyer. And it's remarkable,
isn't it, to trace something of Judas' history in terms of
understanding the man of sin. He was appointed by the Lord. He had three and a half years
of preaching and healing and casting out demons, and he was
only revealed at the very end of the Lord's ministry on this
earth, before his crucifixion, and none of the other apostles
had a clue it was him. In fact, they thought that it
might have been themselves. And He betrayed the Son of Man
with a kiss. And He went to His destruction,
didn't He? He went back to those people
who were anti-Christ in those days, weren't they? And they
cared nothing for Him. He was sad. but lost forever. The son of perdition, the man
of sin is his title. And here we have his activities
in verse 4, who opposes, opposeth and exalteth himself above all
that is called God or that is worshipped. That's his works. We know his
titles, we know his works. He exhorts himself. Isaiah 14
has a remarkable description of Satan and his fall and his activities. How thou art fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning, Isaiah 14.12. How art thou cut
down to the ground, which did weaken the nations, for thou
hast said in thine heart, great words of Satan, aren't they,
the great words of free will works religion, I will ascend
into heaven. I will exalt my throne above
the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount
of the congregation. In the sides of the north, I
will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like
the Most High." Do you want to know what your heart is like? as a child of Adam, there's a
great description of it, isn't there? The great I will. He exalts himself and the result
of it so that he as God sits in the temple of God showing
himself that he is God. We'll have more to talk about
this in the next few weeks. But Antichrist is any system
of religion any man, any preacher, any church, any denomination,
any creed that makes salvation to be depended upon or determined
by the will, the works or the worth of man, rather than the
will, the works and the worth of God. The names that they bear
doesn't matter. There are only two religions
in all of this world. There is the religion of the
grace of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there
is everything else. So it doesn't matter what their
name is. You need to forget about their names. What do they say
about Jesus Christ and Him crucified? What do they say about the character
of God? What do they say about the character
of man? What do they say about how God,
in revealing His character, saves sinful man through the death
and the dying and the rising and the righteousness of His
dear and precious Son? Who gets the glory? Who gets the glory? Does man
get any glory at all? Can man rise himself up in their
system of religion on the basis of anything he ever does? Or does God get all of the glory?
We hear it again and again, don't we? God cannot. unless you. God wants to, but. God wishes to, but. God loves
you, but. God's will, they say, can be
changed, or challenged, or hindered, or thwarted by man's will. According to Colossians 2, that
is real worship, not God worship. They are antichrists. So often
we hear almost people with expressed zeal about their own activities
saying how hard it is to get God to do things, how hard it
is to get people to be motivated. Our God is a sovereign. He sits
on the throne of this universe and He does all things according
to the counsel of His own will. And they speak of the Lord Jesus
as if His death opened the door for salvation if you, or the
Lord Jesus made salvation possible if you, if the merit and the
efficacy of Christ's atonement is in any way dependent upon
man's will, decision or faith. They are antichrists. And if the operations of the
Holy Spirit can be resisted, It's the religion of Antichrist,
and people have been deceived by subtlety. If grace can be
forfeited or taken away by man's activities, it's the religion
of Antichrist. The consequences are grave. And they are serious. May the
Lord cause us to treat the religion of Antichrist and the words that
the Holy Spirit has given us here as given in so many other
passages of Scripture. May He cause us to treat them
with the seriousness that they deserve. That we might be led
to honour Him. Look at the consequences of it.
It's them that perish. They suffer from a strong delusion,
verse 11, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be
damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Not pleasure in the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ, but pleasure in the righteousness
of God. The end of this man of sin, this
son of perdition, is in accordance with God's sovereign purposes.
He cannot operate outside the sovereign will of God. And we
need to know how he sits in relation to our God, because as evil and
as deceptive and as pervasive as he is in this world, compared
to the Lord of glory, what's 2 verse 8 say? Then the
wicked shall be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the
spirit of his mouth. and shall destroy with the brightness
of His coming. Our God sits on the throne, brothers
and sisters. He rules all things. He reigns. He reigns. He reigns on the throne
of this universe. May He work in our hearts that
we would have a love of the truth. a love of Him who is the truth,
a love of His Word that speaks of Him who cannot lie. Let's
pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank
You for the words of warning and we pray, Heavenly Father,
that You would cause Your Word to be written on our hearts and
You would cause it to be remembered again and again and You would
cause it to be the thing that governs the way we see this world
that we live in. And it would cause us, Heavenly
Father, to be people who have profound gratitude and are caused
to love much because we have been forgiven much, our Father.
We thank you and praise you for the rescue, the redemption, the
righteousness, the justification, the sanctification that is one
for all of your people in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we pray,
Heavenly Father, that we, like these Thessalonians who are tossed
around and troubled by the things that we see around us so often,
might Go with David into the Temple of the Lord and see the
end of all of these things and see with clarity through the
lens of your word and through the lens of the imminent and
real return of the Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered
to Him. What a great day, Heavenly Father,
that is, when your dear Son will be revealed from Heaven and he'll
gather his people, his bride together, and she will be adorned,
gloriously adorned. Help us, Heavenly Father, to
know that that adornment is what your people wear in your eyes,
because it's all the work of the Lord Jesus and none of theirs
whatsoever. We praise you, Heavenly Father,
for sovereign grace and redeeming love and the sanctifying work
of your Spirit in our lives, Heavenly Father. Help us to honour
your dear and precious son in all things. We pray in his name.
Amen.