- 00:00
- Welcome back to our daily Bible reading.
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- My name is Pastor Keith Foskey and I'm here at the backyard of Sovereign Grace Family Church and I want to read to you today 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2.
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- 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2 says, 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 spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
- 00:33
- Let no one deceive you in any way for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed the 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.
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- Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things and you know what is happening.
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- I tell you the truth.
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- The Lord is restraining Him now so that he may be revealed in His time for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
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- Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way and then 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.
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- The coming of the lawless one is the activity of Satan with all the power and fault signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
- 01:33
- 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 in unrighteousness." But we ought always to give thanks to God for you brothers beloved by the Lord because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
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- To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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- So then brothers stand firm and hold to the traditions that were taught by us either by our spoken word or by our letter.
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- Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.
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- It's really interesting that we come today to the book of 2 Thessalonians and to the chapter that we're in.
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- Paul is writing this letter to the Thessalonians many of which who were suffering persecution for the faith and he's encouraging them in standing up during persecution and maintaining their faithful Christian witness.
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- But something else that we see in this particular section is that he warns them not to be deceived.
- 02:52
- Look again at verse 2.
- 02:54
- He said that he is asking them not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed either by spirit or spoken word or letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
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- It seems as we're looking at this that some of the Thessalonians had been convinced possibly by some false teacher or maybe even a false letter that had come that Jesus had already returned and that day of the Lord had already happened.
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- And because of that essentially they were confused and they were concerned.
- 03:32
- And so it says right here to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
- 03:39
- It's interesting that we live in the age that's sometimes called the age of fake news.
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- There is all kinds of misinformation that is being sent out on social media.
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- There's all kinds of misinformation that is being disseminated in email and through the Internet and on websites.
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- And it would seem as if this is the first generation where such a thing has been so prolific and so bad.
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- But the truth is there's always been fake news.
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- There have always been people out there that were spreading lies spreading rumors.
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- And it just so happens that in the book of 2nd Thessalonians and in chapter 2 Paul is warning the Thessalonian people and the church of Thessalonica he's saying to them, listen don't believe the fake news.
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- Don't get confused by a spoken word or letter that you think might be coming from us.
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- Don't let it confuse you.
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- Don't let it deceive you.
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- It says in verse 3, let no one deceive you in any way.
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- So that's my admonition to you today.
- 04:41
- As you look out at our world, especially right now as we're dealing with a lot of confusion when it comes to things like the coronavirus and when it comes to bad theology and bad teaching, my admonition to you is let no one deceive you in any way.
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- It's funny.
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- When you think about how much deception there is.
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- There's whole websites that are devoted to producing satire news which is produced in the very same way real news.
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- And often times you can't even tell the difference.
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- Someone will share that because it looks real and they'll proclaim it as real.
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- And the bad thing is very few people are checking on the things that they're sharing.
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- They're not investigating what they're saying.
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- And we've come to a time and a place in history where there's so much rampant deception that it's hard to know what to believe if anything at all that we hear.
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- It's a difficult day indeed.
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- We live in the era of fake news.
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- But as I said earlier, it's been that way since the beginning of time.
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- There have been people who have spread lies and rumors and false truths.
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- We need to be people.
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- If we are Christians, if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is imperative that we be people of the truth.
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- That we be people who are concerned with speaking the truth and believing the truth.
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- And that begins with knowing what this book says because the Bible tells us, Jesus prayed, sanctify them with your truth.
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- Your Word is truth.
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- And so first and foremost as believers we need to be sanctified by knowing the truth of the Word of God.
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- Knowing what it says about where we came from.
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- Knowing what it says about how we ought to live now.
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- And knowing what it says about where we're going.
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- And when it comes to the rest of the world, we need to be as the Bible says, we need to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
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- We do not need to be spreading false information and false truths.
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- And we certainly don't need to be propagating things that are even half true.
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- We need to be people that are truth speakers and people who are trustworthy.
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- And so I would encourage you today if you see something come across your news feed or if you see something come across your email, don't automatically assume that it's true.
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- And don't automatically assume that it's true just because you agree with it.
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- Because that's often what happens.
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- Well this must be true because I agree with it.
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- This must be false because I disagree with it.
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- That's a dangerous type of thinking.
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- We need to be people of the truth.
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- As Christians we need to first and foremost remember that we shouldn't let anyone deceive us, but also that we should not be spreading deception either.
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- We should be people who love the truth.
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- We should be people of the truth.
- 07:40
- There's a lot more in this chapter that I don't really have time to get to now.
- 07:45
- It's an interesting chapter and I encourage your daily reading of Scripture.
- 07:48
- Today we've read 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.
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- It talks a lot about the man of lawlessness.
- 07:53
- There's a lot of different interpretations about the Antichrist and things that come in this passage.
- 07:57
- But I can think of nothing better to say to you today than this.
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- Let no one deceive you.
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- And you especially.
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- Please don't yourself be deceiving anyone.
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- Be people of the truth.
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- Let's pray.
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- Father I thank you for your word.
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- I thank you that we do have truth that we can stand on.
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- And I pray that this word would be an encouragement to the people who listen to it.
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- To be people of the truth.
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- I pray it in Jesus name.
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- Amen.
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- Until we meet again, may God bless you.
