The Big Lie (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 Jeff Kliewer)

That music there was just a juke to get people to come in, we're not actually starting singing yet. All right, I'm going to do the announcements, if I could have your attention, the announcements. Does anybody know the date of our big day here at Cornerstone?

June 12th. Okay, June 12th, some big things happening. The biggest of them is baptism. Baptism is very important because that's how we proclaim our identification with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.

So we have a number of people getting baptized on June 12th. We will do that out here on the field, but we're going to take advantage of that after second service, also to have a picnic. So you'll want to stick around, enjoy the picnic.

We may even have some great things for the kids out there. On June 12th, we also have Hamilton. How many of you guys know Hamilton? He's come quite a bit. He's from Malawi, and at the end of the month, he's going back to Malawi to open a Christian orphanage.

James 1 tells us that this is true religion, to look after orphans and widows in their distress. So we want to be a part of opening a Christian orphanage in Malawi. So on June 12th, Hamilton will tell about that ministry.

Also on June 12th, we're taking a special offering. It's a one-time gift towards the building fund because we are purchasing land just five minutes away from here, and once we have the income in order to put a building up there, that's our intent to do that.

So if anybody wants to make a special contribution on June 12th toward the capital fund, pray about doing that. And then lastly, on June 12th, we also have a movie here after the prayer meeting at 7 p .m.

So if anybody wants to come early and go to first service, you could be here from 9 in the morning until 9 at night. Just go from the baptism to the picnic to the prayer meeting to the movie, or maybe you'll want to pick and choose and come do what part you feel like.

We didn't just try to put everything on one day. It's just that next week, we're having communion, and we wanted to take time to celebrate the Lord's Supper. And the week after that, we have graduations and Father's Day.

I mean, the week after June 12th. So we had to put it all in. A lot of things happening. So praise the Lord. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you so much for all that you're doing here at Cornerstone Church.

We want to thank you for the 11 people who are, even as we speak, meeting with Rob to learn about baptism and plan to be baptized. We pray, Lord, that their proclamation of faith in you would be a testimony to their family and friends and that we would all witness and agree that Jesus died and was buried and rose from the dead.

Lord, we thank you for the opportunity now to come into this place and sing worship to your name. You desire worshipers to worship you in spirit and in truth. So we pray that your Holy Spirit would come and fill us as we sing, that you would give us the joy of the Lord and that we would sing in truth, that we would not withhold any areas of our lives from you, but that we would bring the best of our lives, our whole attention and everything we are to sing praise to your name because you are worthy.

Pray for the preaching of the word, that your word would transform us to be lovers of truth. Thank you for this opportunity to gather in your name and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. Let's stand and sing. Let's pray. Father, your word says in Ephesians 5 16,.

Making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Lord, we look out at the world in which we live with two mass shootings recently and we see that the days are evil. Lord, help us now to make the best use of the time, that this Sunday hour would be spent in your word, that your word would lead us into all truth.

We pray that you would strengthen our resolve for truth and give us courage to speak truth in a godless culture. Relieve us of our fear of man and give us boldness to tell the truth. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Some of you might have seen Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, pound the table and blame Mitch McConnell and guns for what happened last week with the mass shooting. I'm here to tell you that guns are not the problem.

It is hearts without God and homes without discipline. Hearts without God. Many people believe lies. In fact, our culture for the last 60 years has been exchanging the truth of God for lies. The Bible is mocked as mere myths and man-made traditions.

Creation of the world in six days is considered unscientific. Darwinian evolution is taught in its place that we evolve from some primordial soup and that whatever organism came from that soup eventually became a monkey and a monkey became a man.

And if that were the case, then there would be no morals, there would be no basis of right and wrong, there would be no purpose because there would be no God. This culture also teaches sexual expressiveness and children are steeped in pornography often before the time they reach puberty, resulting in a debased mind.

Minds that can no longer think rationally and logically, let alone morally. And the debased mind is fueled by godless lies such as the irrational thought that a boy could actually be a girl trapped in a boy's body.

And these things are pushed upon the culture and those who would deny such lies are treated as if we're haters or some other way irrational. When in fact, the lies are obvious on their face and they are the reason for the things that we're seeing.

Consider what the Lord says about lying. Proverbs 6, 16 to 19. There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him. Now, the six corrected by seven is actually a Hebrew poetic method of stressing how important this is.

It's a poetic thing. And so he lists seven things and notice that two of them have to do with lying. The first is pride. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

Proverbs 6 says it's an abomination and the Lord hates it when people lie, a lying tongue or a false witness against somebody else, breathing out lies. John chapter eight verse 44, Jesus speaking to the Pharisees says of them, you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character or another translation, he speaks his native language.

His language is lies for he is a liar and the father of lies. Jesus says in Matthew 15, 19, out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. There's no wonder that murder and all kinds of lawlessness come about in a culture that has rejected the truth of God's word.

I have a friend who's actually spoken in this pulpit a couple of times when we had apologetics conferences. His name is David, David Wood. When he was young, he believed the lies of the culture that were just evolved space dust and therefore purposeless and there's no God who will one day hold the sinner accountable.

There's just nothingness after this life so there's nothing to fear with murder and so carrying that godless worldview, he attempted murder of his own father. Running from the police, they eventually caught him and imprisoned him but in that cell, after many days of reading the scriptures, the Lord gloriously saved him, washed him clean, forgave him and gave him the new birth and the holy spirit of the living God and David Wood has become one of the great defenders of truth, one of the great truth warriors in the world today.

He has done as much as probably any other in exposing the lies of Muhammad, the false prophet. David Wood has led hundreds of thousands of people, I think, to leave Islam through the videos that he puts online.

He's a truth warrior but first of all, he was saved by meeting the one who is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by him. So one factor that explains the depravity of our culture is a lying spirit, believing the lie.

The second thing that I mentioned is the home without a father, fatherless homes. You think of the atrocity that happened and we won't mention the name of the person who did it in Uvalde, Texas. Did you know that for the last two years the perpetrator's father has been out of the home and has refused to see his boy because the father is so scared of COVID?

He was afraid of contracting COVID and passing that on to his mother and so he rejected his own son and a month ago his son stopped talking to him because of these COVID precautions. And you think of Steve Kerr pounding the desk while wearing a mask on his face only to pull it down to yell at his players and put it back up.

It's nothing but a virtue signal to further and propagate lies. What that boy needed was a father. What that boy needed was discipline in the home as he went the way of the earth. But there was no father in the home and there was no discipline and things went out of control.

What you are seeing and what I'm seeing in the culture today is the restrainer of Second Thessalonians 2 beginning to lift his hand of restraint, judgment falling upon a nation. This is a nation that since 1973 has been murdering millions of babies in the womb every year and yet those lives are not put on the news.

They're counted as worthless and expendable and God is angry. There is wrath in heaven against this godlessness and at times like what happened in Uvalde, God lifts his hand of restraint to allow the world to see the trajectory and where it ends.

But where does it end? It ends in the worship of antichrist which we'll go to in a minute but a few more things about lies. Have you heard the expression the big lie? The big lie is often used to refer to voter fraud and to say that anyone who makes the claim of voter fraud in the 2020 election is a big liar.

But where did the term the big lie come from? It came from Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler blaming the loss in World War II not upon German aggression but upon the Jews began to use the term the big lie and nowadays many others are using the term the big lie for anyone who exposes voter fraud.

I watched a movie this week called 2000 mules. Anybody seen it? In 2000 mules there's documentation of 2000 people who went collecting ballots and stuffing them into these ballot boxes. One person that they video doing so visited 20 boxes more than 53 times there in Philadelphia.

Imagine the number of ballots that were stuffed. There's video evidence of this. This happened but the response of the media, the response of the ruling governing officials is not to go interview that man and say what were you doing at the ballot box 53 times.

The response instead is to label that movie and any other claims as the big lie. Proverbs 18 17 says one man seems right until another comes to examine him and lovers of truth, those who agape alatheon, they love truth, are willing to examine claims to get to the bottom of a matter to go and investigate but in a culture that has rejected truth there is no such thing.

Equal weights and equal measures of the book of Proverbs. Rather there is simply the knee-jerk reaction to cancel anyone who disagrees with the narrative. This is symptomatic of a rejection of truth and this is the culture in which we live.

The rise of post-modernism where each person has their own truth explains what we're seeing in a culture that's falling apart. Truth is the issue. Truth matters. So we've talked about Hitler's big lie and the so-called big lie of voter fraud but what is the biggest lie?

The big lie is the exchange of worshiping the true God to worship idols and that will culminate in the worship of the antichrist. Turn with me to second Thessalonians chapter 2 and today we're going to study verses 9 to 12.

We're going to finally finish this section on eschatology in times and move on as the text moves on but we have four more verses before we can do that. Verses 9 to 12. Before I read it let's remind ourselves of the context.

So everybody turn to second Thessalonians 2. I want to begin at the beginning of the chapter where the author Paul sets up the discussion of end times of the parousia, the coming of Christ and the rapture, the being gathered together.

When reading verses 1 and 2 many people assume that the day of the Lord in verse 2 is parallel to the parousia when Christ puts his foot on the Mount of Olives because it almost reads that way as you read it.

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him we ask you brothers not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

It almost sounds like the day of the Lord is when Christ returns and puts his foot on the Mount of Olives. But we need to set a better context to fully grasp what's happening here. In verse 1 he's addressing end times issues and setting as a category concerning the return of Christ, the second coming of Christ and the rapture.

And his point in this section is to clear up some misunderstandings. To do that he will then remind them of what he said earlier in first Thessalonians and what is said in the broader expanding kind of concentric circle of all that's been taught before in the Bible.

So let me remind you of some context here. The day of the Lord is a very specific category. It's something that is spoken of clearly in the Old Testament and the New. In the book of Isaiah the 13th chapter, Zechariah 1, Amos, many times the day of the Lord is spoken of as a day or a period of wrath unlike anything that the world has ever seen.

Now it appears that justice is not done on earth. Wicked things happen and God doesn't seem to punish evil. But the day of the Lord is a day of wrath. It's a day of judgment. That's what the prophet spoke of.

Jesus spoke of it in Matthew 24 and he says of this day, this period, there's not been anything like it nor will there ever be. It's drastically different. It's a day of wrath. In Revelation chapter 6 verse 17, we are told explicitly that the day of the Lord refers to these judgments that we read about in the book of Revelation.

The breaking of the seals in heaven, the blowing of the trumpets, the pouring out of bowls of wrath are the day of his wrath. And this is how Paul used the terminology in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 10 when he says we will be rescued from his wrath.

Then he says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 17, we will be caught up to meet the Lord, not in Jerusalem but in the air. And lest they get confused about the timing of how this all fits together, in chapter 5 verse 2 of 1 Thessalonians, we're told that the day of the Lord will be like what?

A thief in the night. Everything will seem good and, you know, it's just groovy. Everything's good. And then all of a sudden, boom, the day of the Lord will come. Now 1 Thessalonians 5 9 says that the church, 5 8 9, that we will be raptured, we will be rescued because we will not endure this wrath.

You get that? The church is not destined for wrath. So then when you come to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 1 and 2, it almost sounds like the day of the Lord is the second coming, the parousia, when he puts his foot in Jerusalem because that's how the verse began in chapter 1.

But I want you to think of it like this. There's the category of the second coming and then he specifically addresses the day of the Lord. In context of 2 Thessalonians, what is the day of the Lord? The day of the Lord is a period of affliction, of persecution, of suffering.

And so the whole first chapter of 2 Thessalonians is about afflictions and persecutions and sufferings. So what is the teaching in verse 2 that has them tripped up? Someone has come along by a spirit claiming to be ecstatically carried away by the spirit and they speak a spoken word and there's even a letter written from one of these false apostles to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

Consider the context there. They're losing their jobs. Some of them have been martyred. They're being persecuted. Everything seems to be falling apart and some prophet comes and says that's because you're in the day of the Lord.

And Paul will go on to say in verse 3, do not let them deceive you. It's not the case. Three things have to happen before the day of the Lord which have not happened yet. The apostasy, the antichrist, the abomination of desolation, and God is restraining this day of the Lord.

He's still got the restraint until the restrainer is taken out of the way. What strange language? Out of the way. And that is when the Holy Spirit takes his church, takes the church of Christ to be with him in heaven.

Now some are still doubting that point but I want you to consider the alternative because the alternative makes absolutely no sense. Look at verse 2. Don't be quickly shaken or alarmed either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to come from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

If I'm right in this case and if I'm handling the text right then they're understanding the day of the Lord as a period of suffering. The seven years, the day of his affliction of the earth. But if the alternative is true then what's the day of the Lord?

It's when Christ puts his foot on the Mount of Olives and slays the wicked which makes absolutely no sense because they're still living in Thessalonica. If they thought that Christ was in Jerusalem what would they do?

They just go to Jerusalem. If the parousia has already happened then Christ has already split that mountain and he's setting up his millennial kingdom. If they believe that the day of the Lord is the parousia then there's no problem here.

Go to Jerusalem. Make sense? And so clearly from the context when you read 2 Thessalonians 1 and you move into 2 Thessalonians 2 the lie is believable to them because they're suffering, they're being afflicted, they're being persecuted, some of them killed.

They're answering that and saying we're living through the day of the Lord and Paul says don't be deceived. It hasn't started yet. There's no apostasy, there's no antichrist, there's no abomination. The restrainer is still keeping things at bay okay until he's out of the way.

That's the context. So we return in verses 9 to 12. I needed to set that up because we're back to the coming of the lawless one. Yet future which means the day of the Lord is yet future. It all fits. Verses 9 to 12.

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who do not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. The big idea here is that there is a big lie.

The big lie of the antichrist sets him up to be worshiped. Exchanging the worship of King Jesus for an anti-king. A false, a pseudo-king. Exchanging the glory of God for a lie. This we see. Let's break down verses 9 to 12 to really understand how and when this takes place.

Not like a thief in the night but with a discernible sign. Three and a half years into the tribulation there is what's called the abomination of desolation. Jesus spoke about it and he referenced Daniel.

Matthew 24 verses 15 and following. Daniel had foretold that there would be a final week. Daniel 9 24 to 27. And the lawless one would make a peace treaty for that final week and halfway through the peace treaty he would set up the abomination of desolation.

Now when you're reading Matthew chapter 24 maybe you notice that there's a repetition of things. You have false Christs appearing and false prophets and then after the abomination there are these false Christs and false prophets again.

But what's different about the great day of his wrath the last three and a half years and what we saw leading into the day of the Lord? The difference is in Matthew 24 24 the false Christ and false prophets are able to do astonishing supernatural false signs and wonders.

Isn't that interesting? Jesus foretold that in Matthew 24 24. Paul in second Thessalonians 2 9 is saying that this is going to happen during the great day of his wrath after the abomination of desolation.

Wouldn't you like to know what are these signs going to be? Well great news. John in the apocalypse actually saw some of those things. You want to read it? It's kind of crazy. Revelation chapter 13. Aren't you glad we're not going to have to live through this?

Revelation 13 verses 13 to 15 says of these false signs miraculous in a negative sense. Revelation 13. Before I read it you need to understand this. God has always been trinity father son and holy spirit.

The devil is the father of lies and he sets up an antichrist to mimic Jesus and a false prophet to mimic the holy spirit. So the devil has for himself this unholy trinity. The devil the antichrist and the beast spirit the false prophet.

So look what they do. Revelation 13 verses 13 to 15. It performs great signs even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.

Even back in the days of Daniel when they were in exile the wicked king set up an idol of himself and he commanded all people to bow down. Imagine the cultural pressure to bow down to that image. With everybody else bowed there stood Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Hananiah, Misael, Azariah in a different order because that was their true Hebrew names not the gods that the nations renamed them by.

And these men of God stood boldly before that statue refused to bow down and they were thrown into the fire because of it but God rescued them. Think of that courage. How much more courage will it take if that statue all of a sudden can speak and call down fire from heaven not just a man-made fire.

Supernatural signs. As you read the book of Revelation the first three and a half years are very ordinary even though they're devastating. Jesus breaks the seals in heaven and the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride out on earth but that looks like on earth war and famine and pestilence and then an earthquake and martyrdom.

After the abomination of desolation in the second three and a half years of the tribulation things get really weird, really supernatural, and by false signs and wonders the nations are all in with the antichrist.

They've taken the mark of the beast and if you don't you can't eat. There are demon locusts coming out of the pit to sting people and torment them for a period of time. Things have gotten drastically supernatural in the last three and a half years of the day of the Lord.

That is what Paul is talking about in second Thessalonians 2 .9. That final period of God has taken his restraint away and demonic evil is cut loose in the world. Guys we saw a glimpse of demonic evil last week.

That's what the whole world would look like without the restrainer holding back the forces of the kingdom of darkness. Did you know that? So then look at verse 10. And with all wicked deception for those who are perishing.

This is a truth war. There is a deception afoot in the land. It's backed by now in the end times these false signs and wonders but why? What's the nature of the war? It says in verse 10. Because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

They refused to love the truth and so be saved. Love is agape. Truth is alatheon. They refused to love truth. Church how much do you love the truth? A Christian is one who's come into the light and the light makes everything visible.

A Christian loves the truth. That means we cannot keep pockets of our lives hidden in darkness. The one who's entertaining a habit of looking at pornography and lying about it. This darkness is hatred for truth.

The Christian must come into the light and all the light makes everything beautiful and visible. I want to show you something in Romans 1 that explains our culture a little bit better. Look at Romans 1 18 to 23.

There are really only two kinds of people in the world. Those who love the truth and those who suppress it. The dividing line in the world is between those who submit to God's truth and love the truth even.

Not just give a nod and a wink and a tip of the hat to the truth but love truth and those who suppress truth in order to please themselves and worship idols. Now the scary thing that we're going to see is that suppression of truth in this direction can get to a point where God gives a person over to believe their own lies.

That's where our culture is going. Actually believing blatant lies. Let's look at Romans 1 18 to 23. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness, what?

Suppress the truth. We're in a truth war. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So there without excuse. Pause there for a second. We were having a conversation with somebody last night and this person was not a believer in the scripture and we were telling about our worldview how God created everything and we believe he did that in six days.

He made man and put him in the garden of Eden and this person was indignant and said wanting nothing to do that with that said I believe in science. Science. Science was her idol but you know it's blatantly unscientific to believe in a ball of mass and energy that came from nowhere without a God.

And to believe that this ball exploded in the big bang and from this lifelessness gave birth to life. Where does life come from? Without God. And to believe in the ordering of things from meaninglessness and and just the chaos of the universe into the design of the human eyeball where the baby in the womb has optic nerves from the different parts of the eye to reach the brain stem numbering in the hundreds of thousands and the complexity of the eye the irreducible complexity of the eyeball from the cornea and the lens to the interpretation of the signals in the brain.

These things cannot evolve meaninglessly. My wife had a great analogy she said if you if you got a book this thick would you ever believe that the words order on the ordered on those pages just came into being by random chance or would you believe that there's an author that wrote the book how much more the complexity of the human body and the world the universe in which we live.

Listen these things are not debatable they are plain to everyone. Everyone according to this knows that there's a creator. But what do they do? They suppress the truth in ungodliness to exchange the truth of God for a lie.

That's where we left off in verse 21. For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise science.

I believe in science as they look down their noses claiming to be wise professing to be wise what does it say they became fools and what exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things that will culminate in the worship of the antichrist but even now men make idols go to India you can see them still and here in America you can see them in the worship of all manner of sports and money and anything but the glorious God.

Now I said that this is one of the most dangerous moments in the truth war. Listen if a person suppresses truth stuffing it down and ignoring it and pretending that it's not true exchanging the glory of God for a lie God in his judgment being a righteous judge will at some point give people over verses 24 26 and 28 refer to the giving over of a mind that suppresses truth to believe their own lies and to descend farther and farther into irrationality.

Look at verse 24 therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their heart to impurity. We live in a nation under judgment in the 1960s and then 70s and beyond there was what is called the sexual revolution where people rejecting the the natural God-given gift of marital sex exchange that for a lie and were given over to do what ought not be done and then in verse 26 we see another giving over and that is to disordered desires.

It says for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions and then it goes on to refer to lesbianism and men who sodomize men which is the large cause of monkey pox in our land. And then in verse 28 and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to what a debased mind.

Those who reject the truth and believe lies can be given over to sexual immorality and then to homosexuality and then to a debased mind and I would say a boy believing that he's a girl trapped in a boy's body that is a debased mind but worse when the entire culture affirms that in irrationality that insanity you see a culture developing a debased mind and read on what it says they're filled with all manner of unrighteousness evil covetousness malice they are full of envy murder.

Prior to the giving over you didn't see mass shootings but there were far more guns and they were far more accessible than they are today. What's changed in the last 60 years? It's not availability of guns because kids out on the farm could grab the gun that was leaning up against the table there was no thought of a child shooting his parents or such things.

What's changed in the last 60 years? It's the giving over to a debased mind and this murder it goes on to say strife deceit maliciousness this is our culture this is American culture they are gossips slanderers haters of God insolent haughty boastful inventors of evil disobedient to parents foolish faithless heartless ruthless.

This is what the scripture describes as the giving over from the suppression of truth to be given over to one's own lies which is what brings us to verse 11 in second Thessalonians 2. We've seen the worship of the antichrist because of the suppression of truth being given over to believe lies but I have a question for you.

Is it that God on one side is promoting truth and an equal and opposite force namely the devil the activity of Satan on the other side is pushing the lies? No. Dualism is a lie. Hear me. God and Satan are not an equal match.

They're not equal and opposite forces. God is sovereign over all things including evil and when he lifts his hand of restraint to allow evil for his own purpose he is still good and glorious. He's not the author of sin.

He allows sin for a reason. He allowed his son Acts 4 27 and 28 to be crucified for his own predetermined plan. He has reasons. Look at verse 11. This will be shocking to some. It says therefore God sends them a strong delusion.

Who sends them a strong delusion? God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false, what is pseudo, what is a lie. He allows them the deceit that they've chosen for themselves. This is a doctrine called judicial hardening.

There comes a point in a person exchanging the truth for a lie where God may give a person over. Now he in his freedom can open the eyes of a David Wood in the prison even after attempting this this horrible thing and save him.

God can rescue the sinner. But here's the scary thing that each person who's been rejecting truth needs to take to heart. There could come a day when God gives you to your delusion. Why did Jesus speak in parables?

In Sunday school maybe you our Sunday school teachers wouldn't miss this point but maybe in Sunday school you've heard that parables are stories of life that are relatable and it makes it very easy for you to understand a spiritual truth.

The farmer he throws seed on the ground every which way and some of its spark comes up and others that you know gets destroyed by the sun. Here's a parable that relates to life and now you can make a connection in your brain and you can understand something spiritual, right?

That's what we think parables are for. Well when Jesus gave the parable of the seeds, the parable of the soils in Matthew 13, nobody understood what he said and so his disciples came to him and asked him, Jesus why do you speak in parables?

And he answered from Isaiah chapter 6 to make this people's heart hard. That seeing they would not see and hearing they would not believe that they are dead in their sin. Now what was he referencing? Isaiah chapter 6 when Isaiah sees the throne room holy holy holy and he's undone and the angel takes a coal from the fire and touches his mouth and now he's clean and he says here I am send me and God says to him go and tell these people that seeing they would not see.