Immanuel Sermon Audio
2 Thessalonians (53:66)
All right. You've got second Thessalonians. If you closed it up, go ahead and pull that out again. One ground rule before we talk about second Thessalonians. We're going to talk a lot tonight about the second coming of Christ. And it's a debated thing. People disagree about it. And second Thessalonians is not the only book or first Thessalonians, not the only books in the Bible that talk about the return of Christ, but two important books that talk about the return of Christ. And what I'm going to do tonight is what I always promise that I will try to do as your pastor. And that is to say, this is what the text says. This is what it seems to be saying. Not to say, well, this is the system of how we think things work. So then we're going to try to cram the text into that and do textual, hermeneutical, interpretive gymnastics to make it all fit together. But just to say, this is what it says. And if it doesn't fit well with our system, then we need to change our system. And so some of the things we're going to talk about tonight, you may disagree with. And I'm perfectly fine if you disagree with me. And there may be things we talk about tonight that you want to discuss or debate or you have questions about. And I'm perfectly happy to do that. As long as what we do in here and what we do after is saying, what does the text say? What does scripture tell us? And not, well, this is how it is. So this is how you have to understand the text. That's backwards. So our approach is to be is tonight is to be listening to the text and going wherever it leads us. So last week was spring break means it's been a week longer between the last time we met. And since the last time we talked about first Thessalonians and now we're talking about second Thessalonians. I'm going to do a tiny bit of review just so you sort of refresh your mind about the church in Thessalonica and what's going on here. So let's talk about the city first of Thessalonica. It was founded by an ancient king named Cassandra. He was the king or the emperor of the kingdom of Macedon, sometimes called Macedonia. It wasn't a particularly big empire, especially when you compare it to some of the other ones were more familiar with Rome, Assyria, Persia, things like that. But it was his own little empire and you can see it in that circle there. He founded the city and he named it after his wife who was named Thessalonica. And so he named this city after her. His kingdom fell in about 168 B.C. So about 168 years before Jesus was born. Rome took over and when Rome took over the city of Thessalonica became a free city. Not all cities in Rome were free cities. Most of them had to do whatever Rome told them to do. But Thessalonica for one reason or another is recognized as a free city. Basically means as long as you don't act like idiots we're going to let you govern yourself and do things your own way how you want to do them. So it's a free city in Rome. It's a capital of a province. It's a large city. It's sat on a major trade highway. And the neat thing we talked about this a couple of weeks ago about Thessalonica is you can go there today and it's not just a bunch of ruins. It's actually a city which is bad on the one hand because archaeologists can't dig up underneath high rises and cities and things. But kind of cool because people actually still live there. So here's a few pictures of the city. It's a port city. It wraps around the other side of that bay. There's about a million people that live here. You can go to the next slide. That building right there I think is called the White Tower something like that and it's a famous old building that people go visit. Next picture it's a beautiful city. A lot of picturesque places in the city and then this is a church in Thessalonica. It's sort of a sister city to Constantinople and it's a major part. It's part of Greece now. It's a major part of the Greek economy. We talked about that last week. The city alone makes up about 10% of the whole economy of the country of Greece. So it's a big time city even today. Back in Acts chapter 16 we've talked about this as we've gone through some of these letters that Paul wrote. Paul was on a mission trip and Paul wanted to go to Asia. Not the continent of Asia but the province of Asia which is what we know of as Turkey. He wanted to sort of take this loop around. He's up there at that star and he kind of wants to go up and to the right into Asia taking the gospel. And in Acts 16 it just basically says God won't let him do that. The Holy Spirit forbid them to go that way. And Paul has this vision of a man from Macedonia calling out saying come help us. And so instead of going this way that they wanted to go he goes first to Philippi. You remember at Philippi he meets Lydia, wealthy businesswoman. He cast a demon out of a slave girl and we presume that her owners were upset. They couldn't make money off of her. We assume they didn't want to take care of her if they couldn't make money off of her. So she probably becomes a believer and joins the church. And then when he's in prison the jailer and his family become believers and many others have become believers because he's been there many days. And this is the church in Philippi but he got run out of town and his very next stop was Thessalonica. This is an important hinge in the in the book of Acts. Acts 16 where he goes to Philippi and then to Thessalonica. This next map backs it out a little bit and sort of puts it into perspective. You see where they're at and Paul wanted to go up into the right northeast. And instead the Holy Spirit sends him northwest. And for the very first time the church the gospel goes to Europe instead of just being a Middle Eastern or an Asian faith. And you can overanalyze things sometimes I guess but we can say the gospel spreads to Europe here, to Western Europe, to the United States of America. In part we're believers because in Acts 16 the Holy Spirit would not let Paul go northeast and made him go northwest in this direction. So go to the next map, he goes to Philippi, he goes to Thessalonica, next stop is Berea, then Athens, then Corinth. He stays about 18 months in Corinth and when he gets to Corinth he's worried about, he's concerned about the church in Thessalonica because he didn't get to stay there very long. And so he takes Timothy and he sends him back to check on the church in Thessalonica. This is review from last week, this is not on your outline. These are the problems that Paul was addressing in 1 Thessalonians just to remind you and sort of jog your memory. Some people said Paul was a money-grabbing mooch who left town as soon as things got tough. And at this point in his ministry there's a little bit of evidence that would sort of make you think that. He goes to Philippi, he doesn't stay a really long time, doesn't stay months and months and months, and he gets in trouble, in jail, beaten, and he goes to the next town, Thessalonica, same thing pretty much happens. And so some people came behind and said, look, this guy Paul, he's just a fly-by-night here today, gone tomorrow, preacher, you can't trust him, you can't lean on him, whatever. Another issue that he's addressing in 1 Thessalonians is that people were teaching if you died before Jesus returned you're lost. This is bad eschatology, right? Eschatology is doctrine of the last things, doctrine of how it ends. And some of these guys who come in behind Paul, wherever they get this from, what they're teaching the church is, I sure hope you guys live to see Jesus come back because if you don't live to see that, you're not going to heaven. Well, these are brand new Christians, that sounds silly to us, but they didn't know up from down, back from right, good theology from bad, and they're just sort of terrified by that. And so Paul's correcting that issue. Here's the three problems he's addressing in 2 Thessalonians. One is persecution, just like Paul was persecuted, they are being persecuted, so he's going to address that, chapter 1. He's addressing false teachers generally, and the specific area of false teaching is eschatology, the end things, end times, bad teaching about the return of Christ. And then he's also addressing the problem of idlers, lazy people, mooches, bombs, people who didn't want to work and just wanted everybody to take care of them. And I want you to understand that more than likely the false teaching about eschatology resulted in the third problem which was idlers. More than likely you had some people saying, look, Jesus is going to come back any day now, you should just quit your job and get ready for it. And so you had a bunch of people say, well, if he's about to come back, why do I need to go punch in at work today? It could be coming back next week, it sounds like, well, I don't want to waste my last week at work, so I'm just going to hang out at home. And then a week turned into two weeks into a month into six months, and they're still waiting, and Paul says, look, knock it off, go to work. Somebody's not going to work, don't let them eat. That's pretty simple. Jesus is going to come back, but until he does, you need to be working. So that's the third thing that he's addressing in this letter. And here's what's interesting about 2 Thessalonians. Each of those issues he frames, he addresses in light of the return of Christ. And the fancy word for the return of Christ is an ancient Greek term called the perusea, P-A-R-O-U-S-I-A, the perusea. And all that word means in Greek is presence, arrival, or official visit. But it's used in the New Testament as a technical term for the second coming of Christ, the perusea. So as Paul is talking about persecution, as he's talking about bad doctrine, as he's talking about people who won't go to work, he addresses each of those issues in light of the truth about the second coming of Christ or the perusea. So here's the outline of the book. It's really a simple outline. At the perusea, God will judge those who persecuted his people. That's chapter one. At the perusea, God will destroy the man of lawlessness, or you could say the anti-Christ. Paul doesn't use that term, but I'm putting it in there to help you understand who he's talking about. That's chapter two. Thirdly, until the perusea, God wants his people to live Christ-honoring lives. Chapter three, meaning it's not enough just to say, I have faith in Jesus and I'm ready for him to come back. You actually have to live like a decent person until he comes back. In the language, I don't know if you noticed in Philippians 3, the language is pretty strong. He just basically says, look, we're not asking, we're telling. We're commanding you. This is straight from Jesus Christ. You have to do this. This is a command. It's not optional. You just sort of almost browbeating them with the importance of what he's trying to get across. One last thing of review, and then we're going to jump into this book. Here's the things we talked about, the one up there, return of Christ to one. That's talking about first Thessalonians, okay? So if you were here a couple of weeks ago, you have all of these on the outline. This is the summary of what Paul said about the second coming in first Thessalonians. Those who die are not lost forever, right? Bad teachers, false teachers saying the opposite. Paul says, no, no, no. That's not how it works. He says, eschatology changes grief. It changes the way you grieve over the loss of loved ones. And this is where he says, we don't grieve as those who don't have hope. We have hope. The death and the resurrection of Jesus are a foundation. That's a solid rock underneath everything we believe. Jesus will descend with music. This is a cool thing. We talked about, we like movies and we like these moving scenes with the strings coming in and the horns coming in. And it's just sort of an emotional thing. That's going to happen at the end. He's going to come back and the trumpet's going to be played. Everybody's going to hear that. The dead in Christ will be raised. Those who are alive will be caught up. And we just sort of table that. We didn't talk about it two weeks ago. We're going to talk about it tonight. What does it mean that those who are alive will be caught up? And then we will be with Jesus forever. So some pretty basic ideas there from first Thessalonians. Let's jump into second Thessalonians and pretty much all we're going to talk about is what the book teaches us about the return of Christ. And then we'll end with a time of prayer based on some of the prayers in this book. Okay, so the return of Christ in second Thessalonians. Here's the first thing you've got to get. Suffering is the lot of the Christian until Jesus returns. That's what you should expect. Until Jesus comes back, you should expect suffering. So you take all those health and wealth guys that are so popular today, all those word of faith people, all of them, you know who they are and some of them, you'd be shocked if I told you they were part of this stuff. You'd say, "Oh, I like that person." But all these nut jobs, they just need to read second Thessalonians. Suffering is part of the deal until Jesus comes back. Look at chapter one, verse five. He says, "This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are suffering." The fact that you're suffering is evidence that God has counted you and made you worthy to be part of his kingdom. Don't look at your suffering as, "Is God mad at me? Is God angry with me? Is God disciplining me? Is he trying to tell me something?" Paul just says, "The fact that you're suffering is proof that you have been made worthy of his kingdom." So suffering is part of our life until Jesus comes back. Second idea from the book. The second coming will not be like the first coming. That's a pretty big understatement, but it's true. Look at chapter one, verse seven. He says, "He's going to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus." Think about the first coming. He comes quietly. The only people that know about it are a bunch of shepherds and some pagan astrologers who come from a foreign country. He comes to a woman who isn't married. He comes in the middle of the night, not a lot of fanfare, and Paul says, "The second time it's going to be way, way different." First time was very quiet, very humble, very unsuspecting. The second time you're going to know about it. He's going to be revealed from heaven with his angels, and he is going to come to bring vengeance. Think about what the angels told the shepherds, "Run to you is born to stay in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord." He said, "Peace on earth." He's bringing peace on earth. And now Paul says, when he comes back, he is not coming to bring peace in the short term, although that will be the end. But he is coming to bring vengeance on who? This is interesting to me. Vengeance on those who don't know God and those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Vengeance for those who don't know God and those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Saw a social media post yesterday a couple days ago, and I've seen these before you've seen them. It says something cute, see like Jesus did not come to bring a bunch of rules he came to offer your relationship. It's not about rules, it's about relationship. You see that kind of stuff all the time. It sounds good, right? But when I read through the Gospels, it certainly sounds like Jesus tells us to do some things and not to do other things. And I guess you can play with words and be cute, but in my book, that's like a rule, right? If your parents say, "Do this, don't do that," they're making rules. Jesus says, "You need to do this." We can give all kinds of examples. When you pray, pray like this. It's not a suggestion. That's a command. Do it this way. Go make disciples of all nations. Not if you feel like it, I'm telling you, that's what you're going to do. It's a command. It's a rule. And so you read those sort of cutesy things and you say, "Oh yeah, he just wants a relationship." What that does in the United States of America is it lets people off the hook by saying, "Well, I love Jesus, so it doesn't matter if I keep the rules or not." And Paul says right here, it's not just those who don't know, but it's also those who don't obey who are going to be visited with this vengeance. So something to think about. Second coming will not be like the first coming. Thirdly, the final judgment will have eternal consequences. Eternal consequences. Verse 9, "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might." Eternal consequences. Before I give you this next one, I want you to look at chapter 2, verse 1. He's talked about the issue of persecution and those who were given them a hard time. He says concerning, chapter 2, verse 1, "Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning the perusea when Jesus comes back and our being gathered to Him." Remember we talked about that up on the screen in 1 Thessalonians when we're gathered up with Jesus or you could use the word raptured if you wanted to use that word. He says, "Let's think about the return of Jesus and when we're gathered to Him." Verse 2, "Do not be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed 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." Then this is what he says next. You can fill in the blank with this. Second coming of Jesus, put this next one up. "Christ will not return until the man of lawlessness is revealed." He will not return until the man of lawlessness is revealed and is really plain. "Concerning the coming of Jesus and when we're gathered to Him, don't be scared." Verse 3, "Don't let anyone deceive you in any way." Verse 3, "That day will not come unless the rebellion comes first." And you say, "What's the rebellion?" Paul says, "Well, the rebellion is when the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction." You say, "Who's the man of lawlessness?" Well, verse 4, "He's the guy that 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." Don't be scared about people who try to confuse you about the return of Jesus and when we're going to be gathered to Him. "I want you to understand this," he says. "That will not happen. Jesus will not return and we will not be gathered to Him until the man of lawlessness is revealed." Who's he? He's the guy that exalts himself as an object of worship that he takes his seat in the temple of God proclaiming to be God. Okay? When Paul uses the term man of lawlessness in your mind, you can just equate that with in the book of revelation. Dragon, you're going to equate that in the book of revelation with Antichrist, you're going to equate that in the book of revelation with beast. Okay? All the same guy that we're talking about here. And he says, "Jesus is not going to come back. We're not going to be gathered to Him until this guy is revealed, the man of lawlessness at the end." Okay? So we've got about three more things, but we just got to hit a time-out and talk about something. This is where you might want to throw tomatoes at me. Okay? I can take it. Just take a time-out. If there's anything in my life in theology, I hate. It's charts about the end times. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. But I'm about to put three of them up on the screen. Because if I don't, it's really hard to explain to you some of these ideas, at least for me. Maybe you can just conceptually get it all, but I got to see it. Okay? So I'm telling you, I hate what I'm about to do, but I'm going to put them up there. Okay? Three charts about the second coming. And I know some of that's kind of small. Don't worry about it. You can see what you need to see. Okay? This is talking about when Christians are snatched up, gathered to Jesus, when Jesus is going to come back, when the tribulation is going to take place, and when we read about the man of lawlessness, he kind of plays a big role in the tribulation. You understand that, right? And then when the end is ushered in, okay? Three different views. One is called a pre-tribulation rapture. That means believers get taken before the tribulation. Second one is called mid-tribulation rapture. In the middle of the tribulation, they get taken up. The third one is called post-tribulation rapture. At the end of the tribulation, believers get taken up. And so you can look at this first one with the red box on the top, okay? The cross is the cross, okay? Just in timeline. That's when Jesus dies on the cross. And then that line is the church, and then there's a blue arrow coming down. And it says rapture of the church, that first little thing there. That's when, according to this view, believers get secretly, suddenly taken. Just, it happens. Left behind movie, okay? This is what they're saying right here. And then there's a period of tribulation, okay? Most people who hold to this top view would say it's a seven-year period of tribulation. And then that red arrow coming down, red arrow down, is the second coming of Jesus. And then that little gray box is the millennium. That's the thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth, and then the last judgment, and then eternity, the new heavens, and the new earth, okay? So here's what you need to understand on this view, how they make sense of this. They say, believers are taken first in one event, and then there's a waiting period, and then Jesus comes back. Those two things don't happen at the same time, okay? There's some variations on that, but that's the gist of it. Here's the next view, mid-tribulation, move our box down. I'll just be honest with you. If you hold to this view, I'm honestly not trying to make fun of you, but almost nobody believes in this. There's a few people, and again, that's not to say you're dumb. There's not very many people who believe in this view, and basically what they say is you have the cross, you have the church, then you have the beginning of the tribulation, that's that first little black line, then you have blue arrow, church, halfway through the tribulation, church is gone, and then you got a little bit more tribulation, and then Jesus comes back, and then it ends up all the same. Third view, post-tribulation rapture. This view says, here's how it's going to go down. Jesus dies on the cross. We have the church age for a long time. At the end of that church age, we have a period called the tribulation, and at the end of the tribulation, when the man of lawlessness has revealed himself, set himself up as this object of worship. This great abomination has been made public. Jesus comes back, and he gets his people all in the same event. That's when it happens. Because of certain study Bibles that became very popular in the United States of America, the most common view in this country today is the top one. Go back to the slide with the box on the top one, pre-trib, and a bunch of fiction books, quasi-fiction books, they would say, have been written about this, and movies made about it, and Christians in this country like it, because who wants to be here for the tribulation? I'd rather not be here for the tribulation. It sounds like some really terrible stuff's going to happen, so I just soon be gone, and so this plan fits that idea. A couple of study Bibles that a lot of people read, read the notes in those Bible, just as if the notes were as binding as the words up on the top. And so a lot of people hold to this view. I already told you almost nobody believes in that middle one, so it really comes down to pre-trib and post-trib, and here's what I found in my experience. If you want to have a system that fits together really nicely and is logical and laid out step by step and can give you even more detail than I put up here, go with the top view. They've got a great system of thought and how it all fits together. If you want to follow what the text says, I think you end up down at the bottom view, and I know that's not very popular, and I know a lot of people in a lot of Baptist churches hear that and say, oh my goodness, this preacher, he doesn't even believe the Bible. I can't believe what he's saying right now, but you just got to go with what the text says. And 2 Thessalonians is a bomb in the middle of that top view. It's just hard to get around what 2 Thessalonians says in that top view. So here's a couple of things I'll tell you about the pre-trib rapture idea. Just a few things to think about. First thing to think about, this is an American doctrine. When you leave this country, you go outside of our borders, you don't find very many Christians today or in the history of ever who have believed in a pre-tribulation rapture. A few, but I'm telling you, it's not very many. Doesn't mean it's right or wrong. I'm just telling you reality. Outside of the United States, especially when you go back in church history, you don't find many people who hold to this idea that we, the church, are going to get sucked out of here before the tribulation comes. Second thing to think about is if you're going to take that top view, that before the tribulation, Christians get sucked out of here, you got to explain to me the first thing I had you fill in on your bullet point, that suffering is the lot of the Christian until Jesus returns. Jesus just talked an awful lot about if they persecuted me, they're going to persecute you. New Testament says, "Anyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ is going to be persecuted." Paul says right here, "Your suffering is a sign that you've been counted worthy for the kingdom." In the book of Revelation, John writes to a group of churches in the province of Asia, and he says to some of them, "You are going to die." He says that to some of those churches, "You are going to suffer. It is going to happen." And so you have to square. I'm not saying this is a seal-to-deal argument, but you have to square the idea that all throughout the church age, we should expect to suffer. And then at the end, we shouldn't expect to suffer? I don't know. I don't know how that fits. Here's the real problem. The real problem is 1st and 2nd Thessalonians and what the text says. And flip back over to 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians 4. Just look at the elf who will descend from heaven. That sounds like the perusea to me, right? When Jesus comes back, and he says, "He's going to descend from heaven with the cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ, those who have died will be raised from the dead out of their graves." When Jesus comes back, and it sounds like that's going to be a public thing to me, right? When he descends with the cry of command, the voice of the archangel, and the sound of the trumpet of God, the dead in Christ will rise. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And then we'll always be with the Lord. It sounds to me like what the text is saying is, when Jesus comes back, everyone's going to know he's coming back. He's going to be archangel, he's going to be screaming at the top of his lungs, trumpet's going to be blaring, he's going to be this loud cry, and the dead are going to be raised, and then those who are alive are going to be caught up to be with him. And then you flip the page to 2 Thessalonians. You say, "This is the same guy." Right in this book is 1 Thessalonians. He's right into the same church. They're talking about the same thing because they're confused about how it's all going to end. And he says in verse 1, "Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him." Textually, the way he wrote that, that's one event. That's not two events. The coming of Jesus and us being gathered to him, it happens at the same time. Let's talk about this. When Jesus comes and we're gathered to him, this is how it's going to go. And he says in verse 3, "Don't let anyone deceive you. That day, what day? The day when Jesus comes and we are gathered to him, that day. That day will not come until the rebellion comes first. The man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, the one that opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship. So he takes his seat in the temple of God proclaiming himself to be God. Here's the thing. When you read 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, one thing that everybody agrees on, on the top and the bottom here, everyone agrees that when the church goes to be with Jesus, is when Jesus comes back. The strange thing about the top view is they basically say, Jesus is going to come back twice. He's going to come back once and it's going to be a secret and he's going to snatch everybody up. And then he's going to come back a second time and it's going to be public and the rest of them are going to come. And all I'm telling you is, I don't see that in 1st 2nd Thessalonians. You can show me some other verses and we can talk about those verses. But in 1st and 2nd, it sure sounds like the coming of Jesus and our being gathered to him are the same thing and that it will not happen until the man of lawlessness sets himself up in the temple of God as an object of worship. So there you go. Like I said, if you are a preacher, a rapture person, that's perfectly fine by me. We can discuss it. We can debate it. We can argue about it. We can be in the same church. You don't have to go down the street. I don't need to resign. We talk about this in our new member class. It's one of the things we tell people. We say, look, here's what you have to believe to be a member at a manual. Jesus is coming back. He is going to come back for his church that will happen. Scripture is clear on that. And we're not going to stake out any one particular. You have to line up this and this and check your initial, this chart and sign your name on this side and this and this. We're not going there. But I would also say it was pretty important to Paul that the guys in Thessalonica understood this. He says, I don't want you to be alarmed. I don't want you to be misunderstood. I don't want you to be confused about it. Listen, this will not happen. Jesus coming back and are being gathered to him until these things take place. So he does want him to understand and we should want to understand. And honestly and truly, if this is something you say, I think you're a crackpot and a nut and I need to tell you how wrong you are. As soon as we're done, you come tell me and we'll talk about it and I'm fine with that. But Thessalonians says, Christ will not return until the man of lawlessness is revealed. Here's the next thing we read, something and someone are restraining the revelation of the lawless one. That's what he says in chapter 2, verse 5 and 7. This is one of the most interesting things and all the letters that Paul wrote. Because look what he says in verse 5. He says, don't you remember that when I was still with you, I told you all these things. We don't know exactly what that conversation included. But Paul says, hey, I was there with you face to face and we talked about all this stuff. Don't you remember that. And then he says in verse 6, you know what, not who, but what is restraining the man of lawlessness so that he may be revealed in his time for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he, not what, but he who now restrains it will do so until he's out of the way. You can open up commentaries of really smart guys and the one verse says that it's a what restraining him and the next verse says it's a he restraining him and there are as many explanations for that as you want to read. I think the best one is to say it is God and his power restraining him. The what is the power and the sovereignty of God. The he is God. He's restraining the lawless one. So something and someone restraining this revelation. I don't know what number we're on, but here's the next one. Jesus will return and he will destroy the man of lawlessness with the word. We all agree on that. Chapter 2 verse 8 says the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing. When will he bring the lawless one to nothing at the appearance of his coming at the perusea. At the second coming when Jesus comes back is when he will destroy the lawless one, the man of lawlessness and he'll do it with a word with the breath of his mouth. Last idea is this and this is kind of a strange thought, but it's right here. God and Satan will both be at work through the lawless one. You remember the story in the Old Testament? It's kind of a strange one with King David and he's already committed adultery with Bathsheba and his family life has started to spiral out of control and it's sort of chaotic and there's this weird story where he decides he's going to take a census of the people. Remember that? And his general comes to him and says this is a bad, bad idea. You should not do this. And he says no, go count him up. And God gets really angry with him for taking a census of the people and we presume that's because he's trusting in the power of the nation, the number of men in his army, things like that. But it's interesting that story is told twice in the Old Testament and one time it says that Satan incited David to take the census. And in the other story, it says God was behind that. Satan was behind it. God was behind it. And you read that and you say, well, which one was it? They both can't be behind the same thing, right? But the answer is yes, they're both behind it. Satan, we know from the book of Job, can do nothing apart from the permission of God. I want to ruin Job. Okay, you can go this far. I want to take it a step further. Okay, you can go that far. And you read Job and you say, well, where did these sufferings of Job come from? Did they come from God or Satan? And the answer is yes. God could have stopped it. He was in control of it. So in that sense, it came from him. On the other hand, Satan was the direct hand in it. The same thing is true of David and the same things true here in 2 Thessalonians. Look at verse 9 in chapter 2. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan. That's pretty clear, right? Coming to the lawless one, by the activity of Satan with all power and fake signs and wonders, 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. Verse 11, therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they would believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure and unrighteousness. I'll just be real straight with you. When it says, the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan. I feel like I can kind of wrap my brain around that. And then when it talks about God sending them a strong delusion, all I can tell you is that's what the text says. And I know from the Scriptures from the book of James that it says God does not tempt anyone. He is not tempted by evil. I believe that. And I believe it when Paul says that he sends them this delusion. And I think the best way I can explain that or help you make sense of it is just to send you back to Romans 1 where Paul says there's a bunch of people on this earth and they want sin, they want it really, really bad and sometimes God gives them over to exactly what they want. He just gives them over to it. You want this? You got it. You want to believe these false signs? Believe them. Gives them over to it. He sends them this strong delusion. That helps me a little bit but I'll be, again, I'll be honest with you. In my brain, it's one thing to say God gives them over to it and another thing to say he sends a strong delusion. That's what the text says. And sometimes you bump into a verse like this and you just kind of got to wrestle with it a little bit. And you got to say does this fit my system? If it doesn't, I need to change my system. I don't need to explain the verse away but I need to wrestle with it till I can come to grips with it and say this is what the text says. This is what I believe. So it says God and Satan both at work through the activity of the lawless one. So there you go. A few thoughts about the second coming from second Thessalonians. Again, I really, really mean it. If you have questions or concerns or things aren't quite clear and you want to discuss that, I'd be happy to discuss it. Here's how we're going to end. On your outline, I gave you some references. I think I gave you some references. Yeah, gave you some verses. Verses that are examples of prayer in the book of second Thessalonians. And the book is best known for what it teaches about the second coming of Christ and the end times and some of the clarity that it brings to that event. But it's really a remarkable book when you study it for what it teaches us about prayer. How Paul prayed for this church and how Paul wanted this church to pray for him. And so what we're going to do as we end is really, really simple. You got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 verses. And we always have a time of prayer on Wednesday nights. And what I want you to do is to read through, maybe not all of them, but pick a couple of these verses out and read how Paul prayed for this church or read how he wanted them to pray for himself, for Paul. And think about how should that impact my prayer life? If Paul prayed like this for the church in Thessalonica, I should pray like this for my church, for a manual Baptist church. If Paul wanted the church to pray for him in these ways, I should pray for other people in these ways. And so I'm going to give you three or four minutes to look up some of these verses, to think about these verses, and then to pray. And to pray like Paul did for our church, for the people sitting around you, for your spouse, for yourself. But I'll give you three or four minutes looking at these verses, meditating on these verses, and praying through these verses. And then I'll close us in prayer and we'll wrap up. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for your word. And we're grateful for how you used Paul and Thessalonica, grateful for the Spirit, inspiring him to write these words to the church there. We believe that they're true. We know that there's things in here that are hard to wrap our brains around. And Father, we don't expect to be able to understand you completely or your ways, but we do ask that you would give us wisdom to see the truth in the text and to apply it to our lives. Father, we thank you for the model of prayer in the Apostle Paul, how he prayed for these churches and how he wanted these churches to pray for him. And as I look at these lists, these verses, this list of prayers, I thank you for the people in this church, for their faith and their love, and I pray that they would grow, our faith in you and our love for other people. I pray that both of those things would grow. Father, we ask just as Paul prayed, we ask that you would make us worthy of the calling that you have placed on our lives. Father, we thank you that you have called us to be sanctified. You've called us to be set apart. You've called us to be holy. And Father, we need your help to live out that calling. So again, we pray that you would make us worthy of that calling. We pray just as Paul did, that you would comfort us and establish us in our faith, that circumstances, that suffering, that tragedy would not shake us, would not make us fearful. Father, we pray that the word that we study, that we preach, that we teach, would spread not only in our church and not only in our homes, but in this city and to the ends of the earth, that you would use us to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. We pray, as Paul did, that you would direct our hearts to the love of Christ. We pray that you would give us peace. We pray that you would be with us. Father, I thank you for those who have come to study and pray that they would wrestle with your word. Even after we leave this place, that they would think about it, that they would meditate on it, that they would reflect on it. Father, we pray for our kiddos down the hall who are learning your word. They're hiding it in their heart, and Father, our prayer is that it would bear fruit in their life, that they would be like a tree planted by streams of water yielding its fruit in its season, that they would prosper, that they wouldn't be shaken. Father, we pray for our youth. For Hunter, as he shares the word with them tonight, we know that they face many, many temptations, many, many struggles, and Father, help us to be an example for them, help us to be a support for them, help us to be bold in sharing your word with them. Father, we pray that you would use our young people, not only that you would keep them from sin, but that you would use them to push back the darkness in the places of influence that they have. Father, we love you. We're grateful for the warm weather, for the change of the seasons, for the sunshine. Father, we're reminded in all of these things that you are faithful to your word and that when we read these things about the end, that you will do what you say you're going to do. It will happen. It may be slow in coming, it may not be on our timetable, it may not fit our understanding of how it's all going to play out, but you will keep your word. We believe that and we rest in that. Thank you for the chance to be together, to sing, to study your word, to talk with you. We love you and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright.