Good Friday morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
Here’s an important question to start our conversation today: What do you do when you read or hear something that sounds contrary to what you have known to be True? Every day, everywhere in the world, this is happening to almost every person, frequently each day. So many voices, so much information, and very little of it in harmony with each other or with God’s truth.
Join me again as we sit with Paul, Silas and Timothy in the city of Corinth in the year 51ad as Paul is writing a letter in response to the report Timothy has brought to him from the city of Thessalonica, Macedonia, and their Christian friends there. Timothy has reported that false teachers had come in after Paul and roused up these new believers by casting doubt on some of what Paul had taught them, specifically about the return to earth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yesterday we concluded by looking at this powerful statement: “…wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.” (2 Thess. 2:10) Do you see why I began today with the question about how you and I respond when information we receive is contrary to that which we’ve known to be true? Do you see the cause and effect here? Refusal to love truth will result in ‘Perish’ as wickedness deceives!
Now ponder that for a moment. Are you being deceived by social media or marketing or the moral revolution or the sexual revolution? Is your deception leading you to reject truth and embrace wickedness? Do you see how this path leads to “perish”? Do you remember “perish” is eternal separation from God?
Now my friends, the next sentence Paul writes can be very confusing, but let’s not ignore it: “For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.“ (2 Thess. 2:11,12) Does that sound like Paul is saying GOD is deluding people into believing the lies of Satan? Is it saying God is doing this so that He can then condemn those who have not believed His truth? Is that the truth about Holy, Merciful God as you have come to understand God? Does God delude people? Does God lead people to believing the lies of Satan? Does God take delight in condemning those who have not believed His truth?
Remember, the key to reading Scripture is to compare any confusing statement to other statements in the Bible on that same topic and then see the consensus.
So, may I give you these other, key Scriptures that shed truth light on this statement in 2 Thess. 2:11, 12?
1. Romans 3:23 says ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
2. Romans 6:23 says ALL sin is punishable by death, the justice of God for our sin. But God, in His great love for us, has provided a way of escape, forgiveness through His Son Jesus Christ.
3. Romans 5:8 says while we were still deep in our sin, God took the initiative to send Jesus and sacrifice Jesus as payment for our rebellion.
4. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us God is NOT willing that anyone should PERISH but that EVERYONE comes to repentance for their sin, and trusts Jesus Christ’s atonement death on the cross to be sufficient payment, so God can forgive them of their sin.
5. And finally, here’s the big one… Romans 1:18-32 is a very powerful paragraph in which Paul makes it very clear humanity is guilty of turning away from God, even though God is easily knowable. Humanity has rejected what they know about God, and we have embraced evil, wickedness, we even fabricated our own truth, rejecting God’s truth and believing Satan’s lies.
Now, may I urge you to take a few moments to look up each of those verses in your Bible? When you set those verses alongside 2 Thessalonians 2 and what Paul has been writing about Satan’s lies, the AntiChrist, the redeeming power of God, I wonder what you see?
Here’s another fundamental principle of God’s Truth: God sometimes allows us the full experience of that which we crave, even if it will lead to great pain and even our destruction! There are multiple examples in the Old Testament, particularly with Israel continuing to pursue false gods, the idols of surrounding wicked nations. (Jeremiah 2&10) This is the key message of Romans 1:18-32 in the New Testament.
God will not force a person to stop their intentional pursuit of evil, their embrace of Satan’s lies. In that pursuit the deception of wickedness will become so convincing the deceived person will totally reject God’s Truth and refuse God’s rescue. This is what I believe 2 Thess. 2:11,12 means.
God, in His great love and almost unlimited patience, invites humanity to see that our appetite for evil is constantly leading us away from God. We follow the lies of Satan into his wicked traps which are self-destructive. Look around my friends, it should be very easy for you to see this in practical real life. It’s alcoholism, drug addiction, porn addiction, child abuse. It’s rejection of God given gender identity, it’s rejection of God designed love and marriage, it’s rejection of God’s offer of salvation, Jesus. God has given us full freedom to think, reason, feel and choose. God has sent His son Jesus to pay our sin debt price with His atonement death on the cross. Still, humanity rejects God, refuses to believe and accept Jesus His Son, and humanity pursues a path of PERISH, REFUSING to love God’s truth and REFUSING God’s offer of rescue, salvation.
God will not force us to love Him, to believe Him, or to accept His Son’s full payment of our sin debt. Rather as we more and more reject God, refuse to love His truth, our hearts will naturally become hard toward God and our minds will embrace and celebrate the lies of Satan. Eventually, we will totally reject anything of Holy God. Justice then, will be eternal condemnation for those who have rejected God and delighted in wickedness. That, my friends, is the Gospel, and that is what Paul was saying in 2 Thess. 2:11,12.
Now I urge us to ponder that, and with this song celebrate the amazing grace of God which is ALWAYS ready to rescue ANY PERSON who will turn away from the wickedness, their sin, and turn to Jesus and trust Jesus to save them!
Today’s Scripture is 2 Thess. 2:9-12.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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