What a blessed thing to think
upon. My Lord has done it all. No work
is left for me. Now, I changed those words from
the way the original text read. What the original text said is
true in the proper context, but it leaves you with the impression
that, um, God's grace planned it all, and
now it's left up to us to believe it. And I thought that that needed
some clarification, so I changed the words. He hasn't left anything
for us to do. You say, well, faith is doing.
Strictly speaking, yes, it's a verb. It's something you do.
But faith is something that God works in us. It's written, he
works in us to will and do of his good pleasure. And therefore it wasn't, I think
the original lines, when his grace has planned it all, tis
mine but to believe. It's not even mine to believe. I'm called on to do it, but I'm
not left to do it. He works in us. And I'm so thankful
for that. And that's the hardest thing,
I think, that we wrestle with in spiritual warfare within ourselves. The hardest thing to lay hold
of and not let go of is this truth. He's done it all. There's nothing left for me.
That's why the writer of Hebrews made that seemingly contradictory
statement Let us therefore labor to enter his rest. The only work we'll ever do in
our salvation is laboring to rest, because as soon as we get
comfortable in resting, that old conscience will come up again,
doesn't it? And it says, well, yeah, salvation's
by grace, but you better, well, no. Salvation is by grace, period. Period. All right, 2 Thessalonians
chapter 2. I entitled this, Here They Come,
for two reasons. Titles attract people's attention.
When we put these up on the internet, if you have a title that piques
a little curiosity, they might click and listen to it. Not necessarily
interested that they listen to me as opposed to other gospel
preachers, but we do want all men to hear the gospel, don't
we? So whatever we can do that doesn't disgrace the gospel,
whatever we can do to get people to sit down, sit still, listen
for a few minutes, we do that. But I also titled it Here They
Come for this reason. Look at verse one, concerning
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. and then skip down to
verse nine, the coming of the lawless one. So I said, here
they come, and they do. We rejoice in the thought that
is spoken of in the book of Revelation when it says, behold, he comes
with clouds. Our Lord Jesus is coming, shall
come. And we rejoice in that, but we
also realize this, that in the present circumstances, there
is this one whom Paul calls the lawless one, and he's coming
too, and has come, and will come. People are interested in prophecy,
so am I. There's nothing wrong with wanting
to know what's gonna happen. And we want to learn anything
and everything the scriptures may tell us about what lies ahead. But here's what we always must
do when we search the scriptures for what lies ahead. Believe
what the scriptures say and don't go an inch further. Don't try
to figure out anything beyond what the scriptures say. Now,
concerning what shall come between now and the day of Christ, the
day of the Lord, Judgment Day, whatever, it's all known by that
name. Whatever happens between now
and then, that we need to know has been revealed. But I will
be honest with you, not much has been revealed. You know, it says of the Old
Testament prophets, remember, it was revealed to them what
would come. And yet it says that they diligently
studied and thought about and looked into those things that
the Holy Spirit was telling them about the coming Christ. And
yet, if you read the Old Testament without a New Testament, say
you'd never read the New Testament, all you did was read the Old
Testament, you wouldn't be able to figure anything out. And they didn't. They were surprised. In fact,
so surprised were the Jews by the fulfillment of the Old Testament
prophecies that they didn't believe it was the fulfillment. Jesus
Christ, who the scriptures say fulfilled all the promises made
to the fathers. Even when it was happening before
their eyes, they could not look at the New Testament and say,
this is what it was talking about. Now, do we think that it's going
to be any different when it comes to those prophetic words that
our Lord gave to the apostles in the New Testament? And here
I'm using the word prophetic in the sense of telling us what
is yet to come. He told us some things, but not
enough. Now, we're going to be able to
set dates, line everything up, you know, like you line up, kids
line up dominoes, you know, so that we can get them all lined
up and then just watch them all tumble out. He doesn't talk that
way. In fact, he speaks the prophetic words
to his people not so that they will be able to discern what
will happen ahead of time in detail, so that when it begins
to happen, they'll say, oh, that's what he meant. So that we can
recognize it when it does happen. And also, I believe that the
prophetic statements that we find in the New Testament are
vague, not given out in detail, because they don't have just
one fulfillment. You know, most of the Old Testament
prophecies did not have just one fulfillment. There might
be fulfillments that happened very soon after the prophet spoke
of them. Especially when you look at the
prophets from around the time of the captivity. Their prophecies
had an immediate, or maybe we should say relatively immediate
fulfillment in the Jews being taken into captivity and sometime
later brought back. Yes, they were fulfillments of
those prophecies, but we look at them, and by the grace of
our Lord, we've been taught to understand those historical fulfillments were simply a picture and an
illustration of what God is doing spiritually in calling his people
from every kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation. And so we realize
that the word of the Old Testament prophets so far as the as gathering
his people from out of the nations is not done yet. He's still gathering
his people to himself from the nations. And so when we look
at the prophecies in the New Testament, we can say, you know,
there was probably a fulfillment of them that happened maybe even
during the apostles lifetime. for the next generation, and
there have been fulfillments of it since. But all of them
are pointing to a grand fulfillment, an absolute and complete fulfillment
in the day of Christ. Now, I want to first look at the coming
of the lawless one. And the reason I want to look
at that one first is I don't want to end this message on a
dark note. We'll get the dark stuff out
of the way first. And it says, he's telling them in the opening
verses of this chapter that he didn't want them to be concerned,
all shook up because of some prophecy, some report or letter
that supposedly came from them saying that the day of the Lord
had already come. Now, prophecy has always had an attraction
to people, and those who are charlatans in the ministry recognize
people are intrigued by prophecy, and so there were people latching
on to the subject of prophecy, even way back here, and disturbing
the church by setting forth things that simply are not true. And
evidently they were claiming they got their information from
Paul. Paul says, no, if you've heard,
if anybody's told you, whether they say they got some spiritual
revelation, or they got a written report, or that maybe they heard
me say this, it's not true, the day of the Lord has not yet come. And he says, don't let anyone
deceive you in any way. Now it's important that we not
be deceived about this or Paul wouldn't have bothered to write
about this. We realize that prophetic matters
are not the most important issues in the scriptures, but being
deceived concerning them can cause a lot more trouble than
simply being ignorant of them. And I remember the church that
I was raised in, you know, that form of religion had a particular
view of prophecy and they could hardly stand up and preach without
making some mention of it. And, you know, they were talking,
they'd say, just open the newspaper and you can see prophecies fulfilled.
And they were always talking about Israel. And I remember
hearing people saying that they've already got all the marble cut
and ready to go somewhere in Indiana to build the new temple. I guess that marble has been
sitting there for the last 50 or so years. Nobody's building a
temple. Nobody's even acting like they're
ever going to. But it's not so much that the things they were
saying were wrong. They were, but I mean, you know,
if you got that wrong, you're not going to die and go to hell
for it. But what it does is distract
you from what you should be thinking about. causes you not to have the proper
response to the concept of the Lord's return. So he said, don't
be deceived. For that day will not come, that
is the day of the Lord, until the rebellion occurs and the
man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. So Paul says that the day of
the Lord will not come, and our translation uses the word rebellion,
Our English word apostasy comes from that word. It means to fall
away. The man of sin will not come
until there is a great falling away, and then he is revealed. Now, here's the interesting thing.
The man of lawlessness is not the one who causes the falling
away. He just takes that opportunity. to show himself. Now, this falling away tells
us something about the man of lawlessness. He doesn't come
from the irreligious world. In fact, he doesn't even come
from the non-Christian world. He comes from the church, and
by that I mean the visible church of the Lord Jesus. This lawless
one takes advantage of this falling away in order to exalt himself as
a leader of Christians. See, everybody thinks the Antichrist
is a political figure. I mean, you say the word Antichrist,
which, interestingly enough, I think the word only shows up
four or five times, and all of that in the books of 1 John and
2 John. So only one of the apostles ever
even used that word, but you hear some people preach and you'd
think the word Antichrist was all through the Bible. But Antichrist
And we might identify him with the man of lawlessness. Certainly the man of lawlessness
is an antichrist. But John makes it clear when
he uses the word antichrist. He says, you've heard that the
antichrist should come. I tell you, there's already many
antichrists in the world. And the same thing might be said
of this man of lawlessness. There may, at the end of time,
there may be one that rises up and has more influence in this
world than all the others that came before him. But there have been many men
of lawlessness who have risen up in the church. They take advantage of people
falling away. So where do they fall away from? Paul said in the book of Galatians,
concerning those who would go back to the law, who would add
any of their works to the process of salvation, he says of them,
you have fallen from grace. What is apostasy in the church? Apostasy in the church is not
simply that someone isn't going to the assemblies. That's a bad
thing, but that's not apostasy. Apostasy, this falling from grace,
is not a matter of going off into a life of sin. At least that's not the way Paul
was using the word. This falling away is falling
away from the truth of the gospel, which says to us in very plain
words, for by grace are you saved, through faith. It's not of yourselves,
lest any man should. It's not of works. It's a gift
of God. It's not of works so that no
one will have a good reason to boast. And the moment that we begin
to move from the gospel which says that indeed my Lord has
done it all, no work is left for me, an inch of movement away
is a fall. Now, we all have those thoughts
in our minds. We all wrestle with that concept.
So when we talk about falling away, we're not talking about
someone just having these thoughts go through our minds and maybe
even spending some time wallowing in needless sense of guilt and
condemnation. We all do that. We're talking
about someone who with purpose of heart leaves off that truth
to lay hold of another truth. As Paul said in Galatians chapter
1, I'm amazed that you have left the one who called you by his
grace and have run off into another gospel which is not really a
gospel at all. If you move away from the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ, it has to be considered a fall because
there's nothing any higher than the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Every move away from that is a move downward. Even
if someone is able to deceive you into thinking that trying
to please God by the works of your own hands, and I mean to
please him in such a way as to turn his blessings towards you,
whenever you do that, People may think that you're, you know,
boy, he's making progress. He's going up. No, he's going
down. He's falling. He's being taken away from his
liberty and once again chained. You say, well, no true believer
would ever do that. That's true. That's true. But here's one way we know who
the true believers are. They never do that. Paul would not mention these
things, were it not that we need to be, like the Apostle Peter
said, sober and vigilant, knowing that our adversary, the devil,
goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Now, this man of lawlessness,
who is he? In reading the commentaries,
there were suggestions made. And the most prominent one they
mentioned was the Pope. Well, here's one thing for sure.
He does fulfill the characteristics mentioned here. But I don't want
to say it's the Pope. Why? Because then we'll think,
OK, we found him. We don't need to be sober and
vigilant anymore. We're not part of that, so it's
not going to bother us. Now, the Pope. is just one example
of what he's talking about here. Notice what it says. He will
oppose and exalt himself over everything that is called God.
I think that the newer version of the NIV says every so-called
God, and I think that's a pretty good way. You know, Paul was
writing there in the context of a world filled with false
gods. So he exalts himself over everything that is called God
or is worshiped, meaning the actual images or whatever that
people worship, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming
himself to be God. Now, what is God's temple? He's
not talking about the temple in Jerusalem. Yes, it was still
standing when Paul wrote this, but it wasn't going to stand
for very long. And anyway, it had already been
made clear to anyone who believed the gospel, that temple was not
really the temple of God. Paul said to those in Athens
that the unknown God does not dwell in temples made with hands. What is the temple of the living
God? You, his church. Where is God in this world? I
know he's everywhere. You know, it's one of the things
you're taught in Bible school, but even in Sunday school, remember,
you know, they teach you the big words. He's omnipresent. That's true. But he is especially present
in that living temple, that temple made of living stones, otherwise
known as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this man of
lawlessness, right there in the very temple of God, opposes everything
that could rightly be called God and sets himself up as God. You say, well, I don't know of
anybody that calls himself God. Well, they're smarter than to
do that overtly. Here's what they do. They deny
God his godly rights and claim them for himself. They say things like, God wants
to save you, but you won't let him. Now, as we sing a song, come
down here. Where is that person calling people? to himself. Now, not everybody that used
the invitation system did that. I grew up in that, and I've seen
it used ignorantly, and I have seen it, I believe, used in such
a way that the preacher was not calling men to God, he was calling
men to himself. And even if he did not intend
to, It had a deception about it that made many people think
that by coming forward, down to the front, and talking to
the preacher, that was the way to God. But they have opposed everything
that might rightly be called God. And you know, I've heard
many of our brethren say it, and I agree with them wholeheartedly,
that God that's waiting on you to do something before he can
do something else, whoever he is, he's not God. And to set
him forth is to stand in opposition to the real God, the only one
who really has the right to claim to be a God. He says, I made
this universe, and I control it, and that makes me God. And as soon as they deny that
he made it, or as soon as they deny that he controls it, they
have opposed the only one who might rightly be called God. It says in verse five, don't
you remember that when I was with you, I used to tell you these
things and now you know what is holding him back so that he
may be revealed at the proper time. Okay, this man of lawlessness
had not yet been revealed. And he tells the Thessalonians,
now you know what's holding him back. Now here's the interesting
thing. They knew it, we don't. Because he didn't tell us. But
I think, and I can't say this with any certainty, once again,
you know, you ask a question, well Paul, they knew it, why
didn't you write it down for us? Because it might not be the
same thing in our day. Now, again, the commentators
I read, and this is plausible, it makes sense, that which was
holding back the rise of this lawless one in his day was nothing
less than the Roman Empire. They said, wait a minute, how's
the Roman Empire used as a tool to the benefit of God's people? Didn't the Roman Empire persecute
them? Yes. Wasn't the Roman Empire
ruled by godless men? Yes, but remember those godless
men were ruled by God. And what did they do? He, God, used the very thing about the
Roman Empire and really virtually every empire since that time. He used that to hold back this
man of lawlessness. And what was that? One thing
the Roman Empire would not tolerate is anyone else rising up and
having power and authority over the people. And that's exactly
what this man of lawlessness wants to do. He wants to set
himself up as the one in charge. Now, the Roman Empire mistakenly
thought that the Lord Jesus Christ was such a person. And that's
why Pilate consented to his death, because he had called himself
the king of the Jews, which would have made him to be standing
in opposition to the empire of Rome, because Rome had set up
their own fake king of the Jews, and they didn't need somebody
subverting that. But the Lord told him, my kingdom's
not of this world. But this man of lawlessness,
whatever kingdom he tried to set up is gonna be a kingdom
of this world. And any of them in that day who
may have risen up within the church and become famous, become
like the celebrity preacher and begin gaining some power and
some followers, the Roman Empire would have smacked him down.
Because the Roman Empire wasn't gonna tolerate that. Now, is that what Paul was referring
to? I can't say for sure, but if
we look at history, here's one thing we do learn, that as the
Roman Empire weakened, that's when the Roman Church
began to ascend. And so we find that at that time,
in Paul's day, the Roman Empire was used by God to keep this
man of lawlessness in check. And in our day, and I was thinking
about this last night, you know, you and I, if you're like me,
you sure can get aggravated if things go on in Washington, D.C.
Sometimes I feel like steam comes out of my ears. And this is true
no matter who's there. It seems like they're always
doing something that just doesn't make any sense at all. And yet,
and yet, One thing that they are doing is keeping anyone like
this man of lawlessness from rising up and being a terrible
threat to us. The ones who framed our Constitution,
God worked a great wisdom in them when they put that First
Amendment in there. It had both positive and negative
aspects to it. First one is, the government
is not going to sponsor religion. The second one is, the government's
not going to stop you from worshiping according to your conscience.
Because what men have always tried to do is join the powers
of government and the power of religion together. Because if
you've got the power of government, you rule over men's temporal
lives. And if you've got the power of the church or the religion,
And you can make people think that you do. You have the power
of eternity in your hands. There are people in our country
right now who call themselves Christians, who would love to
get a grip on the levers of political power. And as much fault as I
might find with some of the godless people that are in our country,
excuse me, in our government, I am less troubled by them. then I would be troubled by a
religious zealot. Let all the religious zealots
preach their message all they want. If preaching's all they're
allowed to do, they're no threat to us. But if they ever got the power
of the state in their hands, then would real and serious persecution
begin on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So what's holding him back? The
Lord has all kinds of things by which he may held back that
he might be revealed at the proper time. There is a time for God
to let this person have his way. And it's a dark time in the sense,
in the sense of troublesome time for believers. But even in that
troublesome time, this man of lawlessness may look like he's
in control, but he's not. Now, He says the secret power
of lawlessness is already at work. That is, this spirit, this tendency
to grasp power was already there. It was being held back, and it
was going to be held back until whatever it was that was holding
it back was taken out of the way. And there is and always
has been within the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, those
who want to have power. And they begin by trying to have
special power within the church. And they start to invent this
hierarchy. And men climb up as high as they
can. In the book of Revelation, there
is mentioned a group called the Nicolaitans. Now, there's been
a lot of speculation about who they are, and you can't say with
certainty what they are, but some have said that it was the
early ones who were trying to set up this whole thing about
the church, and then you have priests, and then you have bishops,
and then you have cardinals, and all this. In other words,
this human institution Now, we believe that God gives gifts
to everybody in the church to perform certain functions for
the welfare of the church. But there is no one in the church
of the Lord Jesus more important than any other one. They are
all the children of God. All of them have all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. All of them are equally
loved, equally cherished, and equally saved by God. And those who are given positions
of what we might call leadership are always told you don't use
that to lord it over others. It's not within my rights. To go around and inspect your
lives and act as though I'm your king in all the details of your
life. As a pastor in this congregation,
I open this book, tell you what's in it, urge you to follow it,
and leave you alone. Trusting that the true shepherd
of the sheep will lead his sheep. according to his word. But it says this, verse 9, the
coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work
of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs,
and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who
are perishing. They perish because they refuse
to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them
a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that
all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have
delighted in wickedness. Now this man of lawlessness might
sound like a really scary person and no doubt if the Lord removes
that which holds him back, yes, it's a troublesome time for the
church, but you notice what he does? With his deceptive way, he draws
out of the true church those who really never believed in
the first place. I remember I mentioned one of
the false prophets of our day that's on the TV all the time.
And I said something crabby about him on Facebook. And Brother
Jean-Claude said, well, Joe, God put him there to keep the
goats out of our church. And I thought, well, yeah, come
to think of it. Because people are religious. They're going
to go somewhere. It's not that we don't love them. It's not
that we don't want everyone to believe this gospel, but if they're not interested
in the truth, we don't need them among us to disturb our peaceful
enjoyment of the truth. And so God lets these men rise
up, draw away the goats. And God gives their deception
power. You know, sometimes, I'm sure
you feel this way, you just kind of scratch it. How can people
believe that? You know, when you hear what some people believe.
Well, they were born unbelievers. They didn't love the truth. And
so God allowed them to become even more deceived than they
were before. And to follow after the most foolish things. Let
me touch on the lighter side of this, and I don't mean lighter
and like humorous, but that which is more uplifting, and maybe
next week we'll go into it in more detail, but concerning the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him.
The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is not something that
any believer ought to look forward to with trepidation. We ought
to rejoice in the thought of it. In the book of First Thessalonians,
it describes it and says, wherefore, comfort one another with these
words. Brethren, our Lord's coming. Now, he has come many times in
what we might call an invisible way and saved his church in a
time of great trouble. He's come to you. He came to
you when you were dead in trespasses and sins, and he made you alive
and created faith in you and delivered you from the spirit
that works in the man of lawlessness. What Paul calls in another place,
the God of this age. Not meaning God that we worship. Talking about the devil. We were
held captive by him at his will. And the Lord came and rescued
us from that. And he may have rescued us from
some religion, maybe even some preacher that somehow or another
had held us in bondage and blinded our eyes to the truth. Locking
up the kingdom of God, refusing to go in themselves and making
certain nobody else did either. you were held in bondage by a
man of lawlessness and Christ came and set you free and gathered
you to himself as you came to him seeking his salvation but
there's going to be a fulfillment of this brethren in days to come
and we don't know when but the trumpet of the Lord shall sound
the trumpet of Jubilee the trumpet that sets free all the captives. And our Lord shall descend from
heaven with a shout, and he shall call all his who
are alive to himself, and all those that lie slumbering in
their graves are going to come out, and we're all going to be
gathered to him. Now tell me what's the downside
of that? There isn't one, is there? That's all good for the
believer. And why is it good for the believer? Down to verse 13. But we ought
always to thank God for you. Yes, the world's full of godless
people. Yes, there are those within the
church wanting to cause trouble. And sooner or later, whatever
is holding them back is going to be taken out of the way, and
there's going to be real trouble in the church. He said, but we
always thank God for you, brothers, loved by the Lord. How blessed
to be among those who are loved by the Lord. People say, well,
God loves everybody. No, he doesn't. God's love is
such that everyone upon whom it rests will have everlasting
salvation. He says, for all things work
together for good to them who love God, who are the called
according to his purpose. And why were they called? Because
he loved them. My mother would make supper and
she'd open the door and she called us to dinner. And her call was
not to everybody in the neighborhood. Her call was to her children. And we heard it. And we may have
been in a group of other children. And we heard the call and we
went. And none of the others did. Why? Call wasn't for them. Call wasn't
sent to them. Because my mother's intention
in making supper. was to take care of those children
she loved. Loved by the Lord because from
the beginning, God chose you. People hear about God's election
and they get mad. It is a cause for thanksgiving. If God had not chosen a people
to save, brethren, how many people would be saved? Why didn't he just leave it up
to us? Because if he left it up to us, we'd all go to hell.
That's why. He chose. And he chose you not
simply to be in a place where you might hear the gospel and
maybe believe. He chose you to be saved. He chose you with a purpose in
mind. This is what the word predestination means. He predestined us to be
conformed to the image of his son. That is salvation. To be made like Christ. He predestined
that we be heirs. He chose us to be saved. And here's the means that he determined to bring that about,
the sanctifying work of the spirit. That word sanctify means to set
apart. The Holy Spirit comes and he sets his God's chosen
people apart from the rest of the world. The same line that
divine election drew before the world began. Jesus Christ drew that same line
in his blood, and the Holy Spirit draws that same line with his
drawing power, coming through the preaching of the gospel,
through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and belief of the
truth. And he called you to this through
our gospel. that you might share in the glory
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if that's why he called us,
that's what's gonna happen. God's purposes never fail. So
them brothers, despite the fact that this man lawlessness is
out there, he's coming. And who knows? We may live long
enough to see that whatever is holding him back is taken out
of the way. And there will rise up such a monstrous religious
force that we go through some very dark and troublesome times. But you know what? It says that
when the Lord comes, he will destroy this man of lawlessness.
It's up in earlier verses here. Destroy this man of lawlessness
by the splendor of his coming. All he has to do is show up.
and man's lawlessness is done. What should we do? Well, just
stand firm. He didn't say advance, he just
said stand firm. Don't be moved. Hold to the teachings
we passed on to you. Somebody comes to you with something
new and clever, say, listen, that ain't in the Bible, I'm
not listening to it. Neither my Lord nor the apostles
ever spoke a word like you're speaking, so you just go speak
somewhere else. not interested. When they say that they've got
a New Testament of the Lord Jesus, don't need one, already got one. Hold to the teachings we passed
on to you whether we did it by word of mouth or by letter and
then he blesses them with these words, may our Lord Jesus Christ
himself and God our Father who loved us and by his grace gave
us eternal encouragement and good hope. A lot of people have
a bad hope. It's going to fail them. A good
hope. May he encourage your hearts.
Well, I'd like to. And I can give words of encouragement,
but if you're encouraged this morning, it's the Lord that does
it. May he encourage your hearts. And that word encourage is an
excellent word there. I mean, to give courage is what
it means. Encourage is what it takes. Encourage
your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word. May the Lord cause you, give you strength to do what
is good and helpful to all men, says Paul, but especially to
those who are of the household of faith. And may He enable you
to speak good words of His grace to a world that's in desperate
need of it. Here they come, but we know who's gonna win.
When He comes, the man of lawlessness in every version he ever has
appeared or shall appear, he gonna be slapped down and that'll
be the end of him. And you and I shall live in endless,
undisturbed peace and joy in the presence of our Savior.