2 Thessalonians 2, 13 through
17. But we are bound to give thanks
all the way to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth. Whereunto he called you
by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast
and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether
by word or our epistle. Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself
and God, even our Father, which hath loved us and hath given
us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, Comfort
your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. Paul begins his word there, or actually continuing
a thought concerning the destruction of the wicked. In verse 11 it
says, For this cause God shall send them strong delusion that
they should believe a lie and the cause that they should be
deluded is because they receive not a love of the truth that
they might be saved. Now some might say and do say that that
verse of Scripture should not be in the Scriptures and it certainly
is seldom ever preached upon, but it is a clear declaration
of the reprobation of God of the wicked. It says that they receive not
a love of the truth that they might be saved. Now, why have
we received a love of the truth? Did we receive a love of the
truth because we love the truth? No, we love the truth because
we received a love of the truth. And how did we receive it except
that it was given to us? We can't say, well, we just decided
we'd believe the truth. No. He plainly says that there
are some who receive not the love of the truth that they might
be saved. Now the implication is had they
received the love of the truth, they would have been saved even
as we. I mean, that is the purpose of
God. Even as we read in the Scripture
in the book of Acts that as many as were ordained to eternal life
believed it. Now, men can argue with that
all they want to. They can explain it any way they
want to, but when it all boils down to the fact that the matter
is that the ordination unto life is in the hands of the Lord.
And well, that it should be lest men would boast about it, would
they not? Well, I believed and you didn't.
Well, if you'd have done this or you'd have done that. No,
the only reason that we did believe was the mercy of God. And that's
one thing that is at the heart of the preaching of the grace
of God, the sovereign grace of God. It's not so that men might
boast of being the elect. But it is so that they might
see that they are the elect because of the mercy of God, that He
might be glorified and magnified in all things. And for this cause,
God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
What was the cause? They received not a love of the
truth. He said, I did not give them a love of the truth. And
because I did not give them a love of the truth, they shall perish. He will send them strong delusion
that they would believe a lie. Now, men believe a lie by nature, but those who are reprobate are
doubly damned because not only do they receive, they have no
natural love of the things of God, but they are blinded. You
see, they are not just blinded by nature, but they are blinded
judicially according to the judgment of God against the deceitfulness
of the wickedness of men. So men have no excuse. That leaves
men in a place where they have nothing that they can say. I mean the man that is guilty
before God, he is just guilty. Now not all men believe themselves
to be guilty before God. But by the grace of God, those
whom the Lord is pleased to awaken to that understanding to see
themselves as utterly condemned before Almighty God in the flesh,
in their natural man, their natural state, they are even as the children
of wrath. They are not the children of
wrath, but by nature, the Scripture says, they were even as the children
of wrath. We were. We acted the same way. I mean, we were guilty of the
same things. And by all rights, we are deserving of the same
punishment. But God, who is rich in mercy
with the great love wherewith He loved us, because as He says
on down here, because He hath chosen you to salvation through
the belief of the gospel. through sanctification of the
Spirit and belief of the truth. Now, he said, but we are bound
to give thanks always to God for you. Now, he says we are
bound to it. Now, the word bound, that means
that he doesn't have any choice. See, we must thank God day by
day for our brethren. Why? because he works in us to
love the brethren. If we don't love the brethren,
he said, the love of God is not in you. Did he not say that?
So it is that the people of God must love one another. It's not
an option. I mean, when John writes to those
whom he wrote his epistles to and he said, Brethren, I write
these things that ye love one another, he's not saying now
you can either choose to love one another or not. No, he's
saying this is the commandment of God. And not only is it the
commandment of God, but it is the operation of God in the brethren
to love one another. For how can we say that we love
God whom we have not seen if we do not love our brethren whom
we have seen. Now a man can boast all day of
being a follower of Christ and that he believes the truth and
all of that kind of stuff, but if he has no love for the brethren,
then he has no reason to believe that that is a true place of
standing for him because the Lord works that in his people.
And he says here, we are bound to give thanks for you, brethren."
Paul prayed for the brethren. He gave thanks for the brethren
because he understood and he had a compulsion in his heart
for their benefit. But we are bound to give thanks
always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord. Now John
called himself that disciple whom the Lord loved because John understood. that
that was the only reason that he was one of the disciples was
because the Lord loved him. And that is the only reason that
any of us can be numbered among the saints is because of the
love of God shown toward us and manifested. You see, if the Lord
loves somebody, He will manifest that love. Now, many preachers
go about and they would speak about that manifestation of love
as being a matter of being able to be felt in a certain way. You have some experience or something. And most assuredly, some of God's
people have different experiences than others. And some are more
moved in the heart than others are. But all of God's people
have the manifestation of the Spirit given to them, and it
shows itself in this way because God has from the beginning chosen
you to salvation through these two things, sanctification of the Spirit
and belief of the truth. The Lord chose His people, but
the choosing of the Lord's people is not in itself what the Scripture
calls salvation. Now, there is no salvation where
there is no election, but election in itself is not salvation. Now, we're kind of splitting
hairs in a way, but it's a very important thing that we understand
that the purpose for which God chose His people was not that
he just chose some people. Now there are some, and you find
this very much among the conditionless primitive Baptists, those that
would say that, well, God just got an elect people out here
and it might be some guy from the tribe of Mumbo Jumbo over
here in Africa that never even heard the name of Christ, but
he is one of the elect. And you've got this fellow over
here that, you know, he has no regard to the things of God,
but when he dies he's in the presence of the Lord because
he was one of the elect. Now according to what Paul says
right here, that is not true. Because he hath from the beginning,
when's the beginning? It's the beginning of anything
that has to do with men. Now let me make this point. God
has no beginning, and when we read about the beginning, it's
not talking about God, because in the beginning, God, He was
already there. So when you talk about the beginning,
you're talking about anything that has to do with anything
that man has any comprehension of or understanding of at all,
and we don't even have much comprehension of that. But we certainly don't
have any comprehension of God as He is, if you want to say
this, before the beginning. Now, as far as we're concerned,
there is no before the beginning because we're not in any wise
affected by that. But in the beginning. He, from the beginning, He has
chosen us. There has never been a time,
and time is the realm of men, it is not the realm of God. God
exists, He is, and He made time. He made time for the benefit
of men. Creatures have to be creatures
of time because we had a beginning. He had no beginning, so there
is no need of time of days with the Lord as a thousand years,
a thousand years as a day. There is no bearing or whatever
on the Lord. But with us there is such a thing
as time. And we understand this, that
from the beginning, so when was there ever a time when the Lord
had not chosen His people unto salvation? No. Couldn't be, could it? Because there's no time before
the beginning. The beginning is the beginning
of time. And from the beginning, at that
point, now, brethren, there's some deep stuff there that you
can't even begin to wrap your mind around. And if we can't
even wrap our mind around the beginning, How could we possibly
wrap our mind in any wise around He who had no beginning? It cannot
be done. That is why He dwells in the
light to which no man can approach. He is immortal and invisible.
And so it is. But He says here, From the beginning
hath chosen you to salvation. Now, if from the beginning, it
certainly is before anything took place, is it not? And that's
plainly what he says in the ninth chapter concerning Jacob and
Esau. He said he chose Jacob as he
loved and Esau as he hated before they had done anything good or
bad. He didn't hate the wicked because
of what they did. He didn't love the righteous
because of what they did. He made the righteous to love
Him, and He made the wicked. Now, dear brethren, you listen
to this. He made the wicked for His purpose, and they were ordained
unto the condemnation that He made them for from the beginning.
Now, that ought to cause us to tremble. Not because we have anything
to post, but, dear brethren, to realize that all that we have
is wrapped up in the One who made all things. And it is just according to His
mercy and His grace that we have any sort of understanding of
the grace and mercy of God, the tender care that He has had for
us. Now some would say, oh, that
makes God into a monster. Listen, dear brethren. Tell me,
upon what platform would any human being ever have to say
God is a monster? He's got no grounds to do it. Shall the thing form say to him
that made it, why hast thou made me thus? Oh, no. No, He is God,
dear brethren, and He's done according to the good pleasure
of His will. And it is in the natural heart and bent of man
to rebel against that and hate it. A man in nature cannot love
a sovereign God. He can't do it. It won't do it. I've known of people that claim
to believe the sovereignty of God. You know, they believed
all these things, but they didn't have a love for the sovereign
God. Oh, they believed it doctrinally. They could tell you right and
left what John Calvin had and everything new and all these
guys that supposedly really had a handle on these things. But
that, dear brethren, doctrinal knowledge is not a love of God.
The work of God in the soul of a man is that wherein the truth
of God is manifested to men. And that's what he said here.
God has from the beginning chosen you to what? To salvation. Now, He chose us from the beginning,
but He chose us to salvation. That is, it is His purpose from
the beginning to save His people. Now, if He chose to save His
people, His people had to be lost, did they not? How did they
get lost? Because He subjected them to
vanity. Why? Because it pleased Him.
Now, I know that the natural man, he says, Wait, whoa! But
listen, dear brethren, we are talking about the absolute God
here. And He is to be worshipped whether
I like it or not. See, I would be lying to you
if I said sometimes that does not just say, That's just not
right. It doesn't matter whether I think
it's right or not. It's humbling because when you
see that God who rules all things is yet rich in mercy and He has
chosen His people to salvation. And in order to manifest salvation,
He manifested them as sinners. in the world. And when Adam sinned,
he sinned because he wanted to. But he sinned according to the
purpose of Almighty God who ordained all things to come to pass as
He willed. Now what can we say about that?
Not a thing in the world other than even so it seemed good in
our sight, O Lord, when we bow down before Thee and worship
Thee. That does not minimize sin. It
doesn't accuse God of anything because we don't have any place
to do that. Sin is what it is. There are both sins and what's
in your heart. See, a man in the natural state
will take the absolute predestination of God and he'll turn it around
to try to excuse his sin every time. That's what the natural
man will do with predestination. He'll say, Oh well, all predestined. It doesn't really matter what
I do. Well, dear brethren, that's the way the flesh would react
to that. But you see, when the man who is taught by the Spirit
of God sees what sin is and that he's false and full of sin, it
doesn't cause him to say, well, I'll just sin that grace may
abound. That's what they accused Paul of, didn't they? He said,
some say I'm preaching that I'm telling people to sin. that grace
may abound. He said, Not so. How can we,
he said, that are dead to sin live any longer in it? Now, did
Paul say that the people of God did not sin? No. But he made
plain that there had been a salvation brought to the people of God
whereby they were brought to recognize sin for what it is,
and they hated it. See, that's one of the things
that makes God's people different from the world. They hate sin. Whose sin do they hate? The guy
down the road? They hate all them Muslims? All
them Muslims that are doing all this stuff, I hear all these
people, all them Muslims. Brethren, quit worrying about
the Muslims. You don't need to worry about
the Muslims. God will take care of the Muslims. You better believe
this. They may come over here and kill us. That's right. They
might. But dear brethren, the Muslims are not who we need to
be worried about. Not the sin in the Muslims. All
the homosexuals, it's the homosexuals, we've got to do them, it's the
abortion doctors, and it's all these things. No, dear brethren,
it's not all that. I'm not saying any of that stuff
is good and it's not right, and it's all wickedness according
to the Word of God. But I'm telling you, the Lord
has chosen us to salvation. through the sanctification of
the Spirit. And how does that work? In that the Spirit of God
works in His people to hate sin, but not that... And now we're
vexed with the sin, just like Job was vexed. Not Job, Lot was
vexed with the sin and the wickedness that was around him. Sure, we're
vexed by all that. But I'll tell you what vexes
the people of God more so than all of that is the sin that's
in their own hearts. And they see that the Lord said
to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy soul and
thy mind. And they look within themselves
and say, I don't even love Him at all. And He said, love our neighbors
as ourselves. He said, esteem your brethren
above yourself. I look at myself and I say, well,
I don't do that. You see, because God who is rich
in mercy, He has chosen His people unto salvation through the sanctification
of the Spirit, the work of the Spirit of God in setting them
apart and making them a separate people, an oddball bunch. You see, the world thinks that
Christians are an oddball bunch because they cut their hair a
certain way. They don't go to the picture show. They don't
chew tobacco, or they don't do this, or they don't do all these
things that people come up with. Oh, Christians don't do that. They're separate. No, I'll tell
you how Christians are separate and completely different from
the world. They hate the sin that is within
them. And they see it every time they
turn the corner. You know why they see it every
time they turn a corner? Because they are dwelling in
a tabernacle that delights in sin. But, dear
Heaven, Paul said, I am not the servant of sin. He said, because with the flesh
I might walk in sin But he said, with my mind I serve the law
of God. Because you see, the sanctification
of the Spirit causes the people of God to love the way of God. And you can't cause a man to
hate the way of God that loves the way of God. A man won't love
the way of God one day and hate the way of God the next. Now
his flesh will rise up with him and say, you don't need to love
that. And he might listen for a season, but then when the Spirit
is pleased to visit that man anew and afresh, he comes to
the place where he says, No, no, that's not right. I love
the way of God. Now, dear brethren, that's the
sanctification of the Spirit, and that is the work of the Spirit
of God alone in men. He's chosen you to salvation. You see, that is the manifestation
of salvation. is the work of the Spirit of
God in a man to show him what he is by nature and to give him
a desire to be delivered from it. And if a man is satisfied
in his religious state and satisfied in his current... See, the rich
young ruler When he came to the Lord, he was satisfied, was he
not? He said, Lord, what must I do? I mean, he was thinking
in his mind, now I've done just about everything the Lord told
me. I mean, he said so, didn't he? When the Lord said, do these
things, he said, well, I've already done that. The Lord said, well,
I tell you what, if you'd be perfect, go and sell all that
you have and give it to the poor. Now, he went away sorrowing.
Now, there's been much speculation about what made him sorrow. Some
people think he was sorry because he loved his possessions so much.
I don't necessarily ascribe to that. I believe he went away
sorrowing because the Lord broke his heart, because the Lord showed
him what he was by nature. The Lord taught him that he did
love the things that he had. And that he broke his heart even
as he does his people. He has from the beginning chosen
you to salvation. And so he taught that rich young
ruler that he could not keep the law. He taught him what he was. And
then he says, and a belief of the truth. Well, brother, we
believe the truth. I mean, what we have is the truth. We got all the Guild commentaries,
and we read all the Puritans, and brother, we just believe
the truth. Well, brother, let me tell you something. You can
never have read any of that stuff and believe the truth. And you
can have read all of that stuff and be as ignorant of the truth
as the man in the moon is. That's not the truth. The truth
is the one that stood before His disciples and He said, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father
but by Me. Now the Lord is going to teach
His people that He has chosen unto salvation these two things. Through the sanctification of
the Spirit, He will teach them what they are. And the belief of the truth will
teach them who Christ is. Now, dear brethren, if a man
is chosen unto salvation, he's going to be acquainted with those
two things. He's not going to look for salvation
somewhere else. But you see, there's a belief
of the truth. Now, I believe that the Lord
in His time and according to His purpose, He brings His people
into a conformity to the truth as they hear it. I don't believe
that there are going to be men who rebel against the truth of
God in the kingdom of heaven because he has given his people
a belief of it. Now, they might not fit my description
of what that might entail, but I'll tell you this. Beyond a
shadow of a doubt, according to what Paul says, there is not
a man on the face of the earth who has been chosen unto salvation,
who has not been chosen unto that through the sanctification
of the Spirit and the belief of the truth. He will bring his
people exactly where he wants them to be, to know what they
are and to know who he is. And that is in reality what it
is that we come to this table this morning to remember, because
we remember His death. The Scripture says, remember
His death until He comes again. Now, there was no necessity for the
death of Christ except that it be that men had
sinned against the Holy God. That is the necessity of the
death of Christ. Now, He was ordained as the Savior
from the beginning, just as sure as God's people were chosen unto
salvation from the beginning. But the necessity that brought about
the death of Christ was your sin if you belonged to Him. It
was mine. It was the sin of all of His
people. And so what Paul is speaking
about here is exactly what is demonstrated right here. And
Paul says to the Corinthians, But let a man examine himself.
Now what do we do? Do we come to examine ourselves
and see if we've been holy enough this week to be worthy to partake
of this? I know some people believe that,
and then some people believe that you've got a board of elders
or a group of men or the church role or whatever it is, and based
on that, somebody else judges whether or not you're worthy
to take it. Well, any man that judges himself
worthy to take it on those basis has missed the point of what
the examination is about. Because, dear brethren, if we
are going to examine ourselves to see if we would be worthy
to take it, then we are not going to take it. Because there is
not a person in this room who is worthy to take it, if that
is what the apostle means. But he said, examine yourself. Because it's necessary for God's
people to examine themselves. What do they need to examine
themselves for? To see that they have a right
mind about what this is. Because He said, when you come
together, this is not to eat. The Lord said, you're just coming
together just to eat. You need to look at what you're
doing here. Now brethren, this table here is spread by the Lord.
It's not the church's table. It's not the deacon's table.
It's not the elder's table. It's not anybody's table. It's
the Lord's table. And he said to his people, as
often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do manifest
the Lord's death until he comes again. You show it. You set it
forth. You confess. that Christ died
for sinners. Now, I can't find anything in
the Scripture that would lead me to believe that I or any other
man has any right to tell another believer in Christ that they
don't have a right to take of that table if they examine themselves. Because the Apostle said something
very important, and a lot of times this is missed, He didn't
say examine yourself and then either take it or don't take
it based on what you discover. No. He didn't say that, did he? He said examine yourselves and
so let him eat. Because you see, the examination
is not to find out whether or not we should eat, but the examination
is to see why it is we're eating and so let him eat. Because,
dear brethren, if we are chosen unto salvation through the sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth, then He has bid us come. And He said, I gave my life for
you. I shed my blood and I gave my
body to be broken. Now what did we have to do with
that? Nothing. How did we come to the place
where we are told to do it? Did we just make that up? Did
we figure it out? No, he said to do it. And so that's why we come here
today. That's the only reason we come
here today. is to remember the Lord's death until He comes again.
Those whom He hath chosen unto salvation through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth, they are those who are
bid to come and do this. And it is not optional. He said, Do this. He said, Do
this. See, men like to come up with
all kinds of things. They've got all kinds of days
and whatnot to remember the resurrection of the Lord, remember the birth
of the Lord, and remember all kinds of different days and whatnot,
holidays that people have. But there's one thing the Lord
ever told us to remember. He didn't say, Remember my birth.
He said, Remember my death. And He said, As often as you
do this, You will show that. Now, the world doesn't have any
interest in this at all. In fact, it's forbidden for them
to even take of this. And that man that takes this
unworthily, he eateth and drinketh to himself damnation. Far better
for a man never to take this than to take it in a state of
being outside of the knowledge of what this death
and what this blood and this bread represents or to have some
lighthearted consideration of it. May the Lord give us grace
as we would partake of it.