To Love the Truth

The Coming of the Lawless One and the Danger of Deception

So today we'll be in 2 Thessalonians. Once again, if you go ahead and turn to 2 Thessalonians 2, we've been in the series the whole year talking about awaiting Christ. What we should do as we wait for Christ's return in it.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, we have this rather unique passage about the coming Antichrist. The word Antichrist is not used. It speaks of the man of lawlessness. But when people in general talk about the Antichrist, you know, the Bible often talks about Antichrist, plural.

But when people talk about the Antichrist, they're usually talking about what this passage is talking about, the Antichrist. The man of lawlessness. And so, as we look at this passage, it speaks in particular about deception.

About the problem of deception. Many people are deceived. Many people in this world have been deceived by all sorts of things. And as we wait for Christ, it is of extreme importance that we are not deceived, that we continue believing the truth.

So, keep that in mind as we go ahead and read. Please stand for the reading of God's Word. I'll begin in 2 Thessalonians 2, 1, and we'll be focusing in, in particular, on verses 9 through 12. 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.

Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, a son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way, and the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

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 did not believe the truth, but had pleasure and unrighteousness. You may be seated.

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that as we consider this passage, you would guard our hearts, that you would make us ones who would not love our own pleasures, but that we would love the truth, and as such we would believe the truth, and we would be firm, kept against all deceptions.

We are a people of weak minds, of weak bodies, but you are a God who is strong, who can give us great strength, that we might not be led astray. I pray that you would, by your Holy Spirit, through the preaching of this word, guard us for the task we have ahead, that we might be firm against all unrighteousness, that we might be firm against all deception.

In Jesus' name, Amen. So as we look at this passage about deception, I'd like you to consider in your head for a moment someone you know, or any movement you know that is very deceived. You know, maybe it's a religious group like Harold Camping's group that was very certain for some time that Jesus was going to come back on a certain day and take them all away, and never happened.

Or maybe it's some economic thing. You know, there's a lot of people who get very taken away by pyramid schemes, very deceived by them. Or maybe it's a political faction that's very active, that's full of all kinds of nonsense ideas.

Regardless of what it is, what is it that causes people to be so deceived? You know, when you talk to a lot of people, they seem reasonable, but then you get them talking about whatever it is they're deceived about, and suddenly all reason goes out the window.

What is it that leads people to be deceived? Well, there's a lot of different things that affect people and lead them to be deceived, but we ought to consider, we ought to consider all those things, and especially that person's own heart.

What primarily, what primarily is to blame for someone being deceived is their own heart. They have not loved the truth, that they have refused to love the truth, but instead are led away by what they want to believe.

You know, consider those examples I gave. You know, people really want to believe, you know, that Jesus is going to come on a certain day and make him prepare for it, when he has not given us one. People really want to believe they can get a lot of money through some pyramid scheme.

People really want to believe that everything that anyone says against their political side is not true, and everything that someone says for their political side is true, and they're willing to, you know, accept all kinds of, all kinds of things that have no grounding in reality if it confirms what they want to be true.

You know, people's desires have a way of shaping what they believe so that we ought to be on guard to make sure that what we love and what we have pleasure in is something that is true and not something that leaves us open to be deceived by anyone who can appeal to that thing that we love.

So as we, as we look at this, I want us to consider three things in particular, and I'll, I'll repeat these because it's kind of wordy, but first of all, a deception is often spiritually empowered by Satan.

It is willfully embraced by man and is punitively given by God. Spiritually empowered by Satan, willfully embraced by man, and punitively given by God. Punitively means punishing with, as a form of punishment.

So looking at, at verse 9, just to open this up, the coming of the lawless one, the coming of the lawless one. Now, I don't want to, since the past two message has all, have also been about this passage, I don't want to belabor this too much, but it's worth talking about who the lawless one is, even though I'm going to be explaining how this passage applies to much more than the lawless one.

It applies to all forms of deception. But as we have said, but as we have said in past weeks, the lawless one is the papacy. The lawless one is the Roman Catholic Church. So why do we believe this? You know, why do I believe this?

So you have, in this passage, you have the statement in verse 7, For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. So we have this statement, that there is this power that is operative in the time of Paul that will be revealed, and there is this power operative at the time of Paul that will be taken away.

And that power that is operative at the time of Paul that will be revealed is the lawless one, is this Antichrist, the one that will be taken away, he does not say. He speaks of him euphemistically. And so there's a lot of reason to believe, and many people in the early church did believe that this referred to the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire and the Roman Emperor were the ones who, you know, if someone were to arise and call himself the head of all the church, head over the temple of God, that would be painting a big red target on their back, right?

If you've got this Roman Emperor who won't stand for anyone else to claim such high authority. Now as that Roman Emperor is removed, one in Rome would arise who would be head, would call himself head over all the church.

This was a very common interpretation even prior to the Reformation. Now when the Reformation happened, and that took place, when one did arise in Rome who called himself head over all the church, it was very natural for the universal interpretation of everyone during that era who was part of Protestantism—all four branches of Protestantism, you know, Anabaptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, and the Reformed, Calvinists— all of them understood that that was the right interpretation, that, hey, one has arised in Rome who calls himself head over all the church, this is the lawless one.

Now, I think the reason why that interpretation has fallen out of favor today is specifically because you have this phrase and the lawless one will be revealed and the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

And so you have today a Roman Catholic Church that's not as powerful as it once was. You know, the Pope still makes this claim to be head over all the church, but it has less warrant to it. And you know, as we look at that, it's easy to say, oh, well, you know, the the Reformers, you know, the people of that era, they were all just products of their time who, who, you know, they saw this guy and he just really seemed to fit the bill.

But he doesn't fit the bill anymore. Well, there's two things to say about that. One, if he fits the bill, it must be him, right? Paul is giving us instruction what to watch out for and to know that this is the sign that this must come prior to Christ's return.

So to have multiple, multiple people or multiple offices that would fit the bill and not be it, puts God in a position where he's telling us to look out for something that we can't actually look out for.

Secondly, what we see today is exactly what people during, the Christians during the Reformation anticipated. When it said, when it says that he will just kill him with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by appearance of his coming, the Reformers anticipated that with the Reformation, with the advancement of the gospel, the papacy would slowly lose its power until eventually Christ returns and destroys it.

They didn't see those as one thing, killing and destroying. They saw killing as being this process of losing power and destruction as being that ultimate thing. So they were not products of their time because they anticipated exactly what we see now.

Now, that's important to consider as, you know, there are many people who have, especially in Protestantism, who have not only ceased to see the Pope as being the Antichrist, but they have ceased to see Roman Catholicism as being any kind of threat to right religion, right?

They've ceased to see Roman Catholicism as being a false religion that puts people on a treadmill of works that they might merit their way to God rather than receiving Jesus Christ's free grace. So it's important to recognize that the deception of Rome is still going on.

It has not ceased. It doesn't matter if the matter of indulgences is less blatant than it used to be. It is still a great deception. But this passage about deception, it applies to many different kinds of deception, not just the church in Rome.

Satan, while he does not imbue everything with the kind of power that he imbues that deception, he is active in many different deceptions. And so as we read in verse 9, the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders.

Now consider how it is that Satan empowers, he spiritually empowers deception, he spiritually empowers falsehood. You know, you have the example I just gave of Roman Catholicism, all sorts of false miracles, right?

You have statues that they claim have cried. You have, you know, the quote-unquote miracle of transubstantiation, right, where they claim that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus.

They claim to have performed a miracle. They claim to perform that miracle daily. But this is, this is a false sign. And yet it is imbued with the power of Satan because he attracts people to this by means of temptation.

Now you have other, other kinds of false signs as well. You know, there's, there was a guy, I think his name was Peter Papa. Has anybody heard of him? I don't know if it was the 80s or 90s, but you know, he was this popular televangelist who would bring people up to be healed and he would impress them by giving them all sorts of details about their life.

But he had an earpiece where his wife was feeding him details about a survey that each person had been asked before they went in the room. You know, so here you have this sign that this guy is really true.

He's really gonna heal me and it was all just an act. There's a church up in Redding, California where they've done many things, but, but one thing that a lot of people are aware of is, uh, there is, there was a day where glitter came from the ceiling and they claimed it was the glory of God filling the temple.

And there's videos of this online where they're claiming, you know, the glory of God has filled this place, like this is, this is something special. Now, I don't have evidence that someone put gold dust in the air ducts, but it seems obvious that this is what has happened.

You know, what you see there is not something supernatural. It's something very natural, but yet these things are satanically empowered. People might believe them. Now, in addition to the kind of false signs where something non-miraculous has happened and people are claiming that it's miraculous, there's also the kind of false sign where it actually is miraculous.

I do think such things happen. Jesus said in Matthew 7, 22, 23, on that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not done many great things in your name, prophesied in your name, done miracles in your name, cast out demons in your name?

But I will say to them, I never knew you'd depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. So perhaps someone even does a true miracle. That does not show that they are truly of God. That's something a lot of people I talk to don't seem to understand is just because someone, just because someone has done something astounding, just because God maybe even has used this person for some good thing, does not mean that that person is a good teacher or that person is a good person.

You, the two are not the same. We ought not to be persuaded by signs. We ought to be persuaded by truth and allow signs to confirm what is true. The sign itself is not sufficient. You know, 1st Corinthians 1 talk about the folly of seeking after signs and not simply accepting what is true.

Do not be deceived by such things. You know, there's a saying that if it, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is a duck, right? That, that saying makes sense to us because ducks are of no consequence to humans.

But think about what it means for a duck, right? People make duck decoys, right? They make a little duck decoy out of wood and they put it in the pond and then they blow their little duck call and make duck sounds.

So here you have a duck that's moving around like a duck. It looks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. No consequence for a human. What does that mean for a duck that gets deceived, right? Duck gets shot.

You don't want to be like that duck. So do not, do not look for signs to determine what truth is. Signs do not determine what truth is. They confirm truth occasionally, but they do not, on their own, indicate truth.

Do not be deceived by such things. Satan is at work. There is a great spiritual battle going on. 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.

A wicked deception, a deception of unrighteousness. Something where people look at this thing and they say, oh wow, this is, this is righteousness. But it's not. It's wicked. It's deception. And it's people who are perishing.

People who need the truth. People who need to be saved. And yet they, they fall into this. We are people who by nature are perishing. We were born children of wrath. Children who are not right with our God.

We must have peace with him. And so to just embrace whatever comes by, whatever, whatever sign points us anywhere, will not lead us to truth. Now, not only, not only is deception spiritually empowered by Satan, not only is there spiritual power behind it, it is willingly embraced by man.

The Truth, Beauty, and the Gospel of Freedom

So it's not something where we can just point at like, Satan made me do it. Man, man himself, because he does not love the truth, because he willingly embraces these things, he is deceived. Because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.

We must love the truth. People often do not love the truth. They, they find other things they love. They embrace those things. They see things that they want to believe, things that make them feel good about themselves, or things that make them feel good about their immediate future, and they embrace these things wholeheartedly.

This is, this is a great deception. Have you ever heard of a confirmation bias, right? That's a common phrase. So think about confirmation bias. You know, people, if you feed them information that confirms what they want to believe, they will, they will eagerly eat it up.

If you give them information, even if it's true, that is not, they will often reject it. Another common psychological word is denial. A lot of people are in denial because they don't want to believe this thing that's obviously true.

You know, there are women who see all the signs of their husband cheating on them, but they don't want to believe that their husband's cheating on them. They want to believe that their husband loves them.

And so they, they ignore these signs and they're, they're in denial. We ought not be in denial. We must love what is true. What is true is not, not the thing that, that appeals to our, our basis, senses.

What is true is what conforms to reality. What is, what is told to us by the God who created the universe. And it is by loving the truth that we can be saved. Those who are perishing, those who are perishing fall after false signs.

But those who love the truth are saved. It's not, it's not because, you know, some merit in us, some goodness in us that we would love the truth. But by the power of God, he can change hearts that we might love the truth.

You know, we must, we must love, we must love what God has. We must love Jesus Christ and the salvation that he has offered. There's no other way to be saved. Verse 11,. Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion, that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

So God sends them a strong delusion. Now, this is a little, this is a little confusing at first. Well, wasn't it Satan that was sending delusion? Was it man who was embracing it? How is, how is it then that, that God sends this delusion?

It fits together, if you understand what is meant in the Bible, by hardening of heart. If you understand the Bible, what is meant by a giving over? I'd like us to, if you don't mind, turn to Romans 1.

And if you do mind, turn there also. Please turn to Romans 1, and we'll look at what that says about how God gives people over to deception. Romans 1, beginning in verse 18,. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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 and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.

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. So here you have the statement that what God has done is evident in the world, right?

He has created this world, his goodness, his power, his holiness, all these things are evident, and yet people reject it. Why are there so many people who reject God in the world? It's not because it's not obvious that there must be a creator who is good and wise.

They reject him because they do not want to honor him, because that means too much for them, that that would mean— it would mean that they must give of themselves, and they do not want to do that. Their foolish hearts are darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. The people are willing to worship all kinds of things as long as that can resolve their— the tensions in their mind without having to worship the true God, because they like that more.

The gods they can see and touch and handle are more palatable to them than a God they cannot who stands far above them. And we see in verse 24 how God responds to this, this desire of their hearts. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. God gave them over to a debased mind. When someone wants a lie and begins to embrace a lie, God gives them over so that whatever mental barriers they had that were God-given, these good things they might have had that would have kept from going full force into that lie, he takes those things away so that they go full force into that lie.

The analogy I often use is of a rock sinking into the ocean. We are not to imagine that God makes people more sinful, right? Or that he, in hardening someone's heart, is taking this person who is relatively soft and making them a worse person.

No, we are naturally inclined toward hardness. We are naturally inclined toward fulfilling our own pleasures and doing what we want to do and believing what we want to believe. And so God, while he, by his common grace, is upholding every single person, even the wicked, those who embrace lies like this, he gives them over to what they want and slips his hand away.

And so they they fall and fall further and further into this debaseness of mind. So it is not God pushing them down, but rather him giving them over to what they already want. He sees what they are doing and he refuses to continue withholding them.

There's a, you know, there's the old story of Midas, right? He was very covetous, loved counting his gold and his money. And so he asked Dionysus. Dionysus would would allow everything he touched to turn to gold.

And so he's very pleased with this at first. You know, everything he touches is turning to gold. And then he tries to smell a rose, but as he touches the rose, it turns to gold. Then he, you know, he's not able to smell roses anymore.

And then his daughter comes into the room and he goes to embrace his daughter and his daughter turns to gold. And he realized it's the thing that he wanted to fulfill his covetousness that as he was given over to that completely, it's become a curse to him.

God, as he gives people over to the what they want, it's his way of granting them this perfect justice. He says, if you want a lie, I will give you a lie. I will give you over to that delusion. And so it is so important for us to guard our hearts not to not want what our pleasures want.

To not succumb to the baseness of our of our immediate desires, but rather to love what God loves, to love what is true. But this is, you know, this is not what people do. People all the time just go to what they want.

You know, they have a lot of, there's a lot of utilitarianism in religion. You know, a lot of people believe what is, you know, it has a lot of utility to believe. You see that in all kinds of things.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with Jordan Peterson, but, you know, he's this conservative guy who talks about the goods of Christianity, but he doesn't actually believe Christianity. And a lot of people think he might convert soon, but you know, if he does just because he thinks it, it accomplishes a lot of good.

That's not, that's not a real conversion. That's just saying that because of this utility, you know, I'm gonna believe it. A lot of people believe, you know, they go embrace false things because of its utility.

When I was, when I was in high school, I had a theater class and Pauly Shore, you know who Pauly Shore is? The 90s actor? Very goofy guy. Anyway, his father came and spoke to my class and his father is a homosexual and he was telling us about his life and about his career in theater.

And he, he told us that, he told us that he's a Southern Baptist and if, when people ask him how he can be a Southern Baptist and be homosexual, he says, oh, I just, I just don't believe those certain parts of the Bible because I don't believe those parts of the Bible that say otherwise because religion's there to make you feel good about yourself.

And this is what makes me feel good about myself. It was just very straightforward with this utilitarian approach to religion. He refused to love the truth. He refused to love the truth. He loved a lie.

And he knew it. He was, he was open about it. And this is what goes on. People, as they willingly embrace truth, they, they are culpable. They are culpable in their own deception. So it's not just, you know, I'm part of the work of Satan.

It is mankind culpably doing this and then it is God punitively giving them over to their own deception. We ought to love truth. We ought to love Jesus Christ, who is, as he said in John 14, the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus is the truth. Now, that is not, you know, if you've ever wondered what exactly that means for him to be the truth, you know, that's in context, sure, it has a, it has a particular emphasis, but it's not an overstatement.

He is indeed the truth. God is the greatest being in the whole universe. He has created all things. And so, truth is not something that God conforms to, so that when he speaks, he, he conforms to the standard of truth that lives outside him.

He is that standard of truth. And so Jesus Christ, his Son, who has the being of God, is himself truth. That's why Colossians 2, 3 says that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him.

He is the truth. And if we want to know the truth, we ought to go to God's Word, which is written by the apostles that Christ sent out, to find that truth there. And Jesus is beautiful. The Bible says that he is beautiful.

It says in Isaiah 53 that he was nothing special to look at. But elsewhere, it calls, it calls him beautiful. You know, people, people want something aesthetically pleasing. You know, they want to embrace all these different lies that make them feel good about themselves.

They want to embrace all these things they like, but they do not see the beauty that is right in front of them. Jesus Christ, this beauty of God, they'd rather go to idols. You will not find him beautiful if you are just looking with the, the eyes of your head, right?

If you're just looking with the eyes of your body. You will see what's in front of you. You will find these things that are immediately pleasant. You will find those things beautiful. You will not find Jesus Christ beautiful.

But if you recognize why he was sent to earth, that he was sent to earth to save mankind and all who put their trust in him, have salvation so that they can be forgiven of their sins, they can be right with God, they can live forever, that they might not die and remain in the grave.

This is the most beautiful truth that exists. And Jesus Christ, as he has been resurrected, you know, as he walked on this earth, he was nothing special to look at, but now he is actually, physically, someone of this, of special beauty.

There is an incredible beauty to this faith, an incredible beauty to God and his Son, Jesus Christ, that is, that is missed if we are seeking after our own pleasures. But if we have our eyes fixed on what is true, fixed on the truth that God communicates to us, then we will not be deceived.

We will recognize what is good and what is excellent. And it is something that will, that will save us, once again, not, not of our own merit, because this is not something, you know, this is not, it's not something we can do of ourselves, right?

This is, uh, well, before I've explained this, let me explain this to you. This is the gospel, right? When I am telling you that you need to love truth and you need to not love lies, you might ask, well, how is that good news?

How is that the gospel? Well, it might sound like a law to you, but it is the gospel, because this is what Christ has given to us. This is what he has purchased on the cross for us, is to believe. You know, it's not, um, there is this antithesis in this passage between, between, excuse me, oh, I'm in Romans, no wonder.

There's an antithesis in this passage between having pleasure and unrighteousness and believing the truth. You know, the man, the man in the Gospels who said, who said, uh, I believe. Help my unbelief, right?

That's, that's the exact opposite of saying, I don't believe. Give me more of what I, of what I want. Right? That's the exact opposite. I want this thing. Give me more of that. I believe. Help my unbelief.

It is the gospel because faith itself is even a gift from God. Jesus Christ, he wins over our hearts, and as we come to him, he gives us more and more of this faith. He saves us more and more. This is a beautiful thing.

This is good news. This is not, uh, a law to be followed for, uh, uh, for the sake of pleasing God, but it is a, it is a, uh, truth that we have been freed for. Christ has come to free us from deception, that we might follow truth.

Okay, uh, we are here, uh, you know, fulfilling our own pleasures, following what we want to follow, believing what we want to believe, and then Jesus comes, sends his Holy Spirit to free us from those lies, that we might be free to follow what is true and what is good.

So loving the truth is not, it's not some hard work that we have to do in order to please God. Rather, it is because God has saved us in his Son, and given us the mind of Christ, that we are freed to do this.

This is how it is good news. This is not a law to, uh, to make God happy, but it's because he is happy with us in his Son that we have life. So as you, as you consider this, do not be deceived. Do not embrace, you know, just the things that you want to embrace.

You know, your, your sinful self is a magnet, drawn to all these different pleasures and false things. But look to God and pray like the man in the gospels did. I believe, help my unbelief, and he will, he will help you to believe what is true.

He will give you eyes of faith that you might see Jesus Christ, and there you might see truth and beauty and everything that you need, so that you are not tempted to fall away willingly embracing lies, such that God might punitively give you over to deception, so that you might be condemned, in order that all may be condemned who do not believe the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness.

Let us be people who have pleasure in the truth and love the truth. Dear Heavenly Father, once again, I ask that you would guard us from lies. There is a great spiritual battle at play. There's much deception going around.

I ask you to protect us from that, and you would protect us from that by pointing our eyes to Jesus Christ, that we might in him find everything that we need. God, I pray that you would not give us over to our own desires, but that you would more and more give us right desires, that we might love what is good and true and beautiful, that we might love Jesus Christ, the one who has come to save all those who trust in him.

In Jesus' name, amen.