Let No One Deceive You

here and I have the privilege of bringing you the word today. So if you've got a Bible, open it, find a small letter called 2 Thessalonians or if you have a super skinny scripture journal, I'm kind of feeling like the five bucks we asked for is a bit of a ripoff, but we don't price them.

We don't price them. If you've got a scripture journal, pull that out. We're in chapter two today, chapter two of 2 Thessalonians and we are making our way through this letter about half way today. I'm going to take the first 12 verses. So if you would follow along with me as I read these

first 12 verses and I want to say right away, this is a deep chapter. It's a little bit complex and we're going to take two runs at it. So today we'll take the first 12 verses and honestly most of our attention will be on the first 10. And then next week we'll kind of double back and look at some

themes again from the first part that we took today and we'll finish the chapter. So these two sermons kind of go together. So come to church twice. How about that? Come back next week. All right, let me

begin reading for us in verse one. Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered 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 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. 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 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. 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 who had pleasure in unrighteousness. Let's pray, shall we? Heavenly Father, we come today, we submit ourselves to your word. Father, we want to learn, we want you to teach us and so Lord, by your spirit today,

please block anything that would distract us, Father. May my words be clear and Father, may we just feast our eyes upon you and what you have in store. We pray this in the name of our resurrected and soon coming King Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.

Like I said, I think I'm going to have to agree with a scholar named Leon Morris. He described this passage as, quote, this is what he says, the most obscure and difficult passage in all of Paul's writing.

You know, there's this book of Romans that has some obscure passages, but this one he thinks is the most obscure. I mean, we've got talk about the second coming of Christ, talk about this man of lawlessness whom Paul describes as already here, but then kind of not yet.

And then there's this mysterious force or person who currently restrains the man of lawlessness somehow. What does all this mean? Well, today it's my hope that if nothing else, we can get some clarity

on what Paul is saying here, what he's warning us against, and what we should expect in our world, both right now, right now as we live and breathe, and up ahead in the future.

When Jesus does come again. And I want to just emphasize that. He is coming again. Now, some of us who've studied a little more eschatology than others, and I know there's some of you out there that use eschatology geeks.

That's the end time stuff. You've got your charts, and you've got your plans and timelines, and I want to just acknowledge right away today, we may not all agree on every last detail.

Some of us change our minds even as the years go on, and we keep studying the Bible. So if you disagree with the way I'm going to arrange the eschatology for us today, I want to say that on some level that's okay.

That's okay. There's room to disagree somewhat. I'm going to share with you what I view this passage as teaching. I'm going to bring in a couple of other key passages with us.

I'll allude a little bit to Daniel, but mostly it will be Matthew 24 and Revelation 19 and 20, because I think those passages will help us. The biggest thing that we need to agree on is that God and Satan are real,

and that there is a day coming when Jesus, his son, will come back, and all will be made right when he does. There will be judgment and reward.

We can agree on that, right? So we're ready to dig in, but let's again just remember this is an occasional letter, meaning it was written to people living in a situation.

Let's refresh ourselves. What do we have here? We have a Thessalonian church, city of Thessalonica. We have a very young church left prematurely by the apostle Paul.

But by God's grace, we learn that they've been holding up pretty well. So Paul, prevented from being able to come to them in person, sends Timothy to them.

Timothy comes back with a good report. Paul writes a first letter to them. Then we think there are some other reports that come to Paul a bit later, maybe a month or two later, and Paul hears some different things, and now Paul has a few concerns.

There appear to be some questions that the Thessalonians need some answers for. Some of the things Paul had written to them in the first letter were maybe not entirely clear to them.

At the very least, from today, from what we just read, we know that the topic of Jesus' second coming was bothering some of them. Apparently, whether through well-meaning itinerant teachers who were mistaken, or through outright false teachers,

or even, get this, Paul alludes to what appear to be some nefarious individuals who are writing false epistles in Paul's name, some people are getting unsettled by what they're hearing.

Somebody was alarming them, verse 2, saying things like, Hey, you know what? The second coming has already happened. The day's already come.

And so, I want you to understand, Paul's main purpose here in this chapter is to clear this up, to clear up this major misconception, mainly about the second coming.

Now, the topic of the second coming, I don't know if you're aware, but it's kind of a big deal in the church. It kind of ebbs and flows through history, and maybe even through your own lifetime.

Interest in the second coming. Even predictions as to when it's supposed to be. Although the Bible says, we can't know. We shouldn't try. In the last 150 years or so, we've had some pretty big moments where some pretty well-known people have made big predictions about the second coming.

There's this little group called the Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't know if you've heard of them. They said it was going to happen in 1874, and when it didn't, they said, Oh, we got it wrong, and they revised it and then said 1914.

Wrong again. Then there was this guy named Joseph Smith. Not a good guy. Founder of the Mormon Church. He pegged his 85th birthday, which would be the year 1890, and said that's going to be the second coming of Christ.

Wrong again, right? A little closer to home. We have an author like the late, great Hal Lindsey. Wrote a book in 1970. The book became very popular through that decade and the next, the 1970s and 80s when I grew up.

And in this book, he made a prediction that it's going to happen by the end of the decade, by the end of what we think was the 80s. I remember being a sophomore in high school, and I had a very good friend who was completely caught up in a book that was published that year titled, 88 Reasons.

Jesus is coming back in 1988. 88 Reasons. Sold a lot of copies. The author, a man named Edgar Wisenant, a former NASA engineer, had studied something like 13,000 clues, he claimed, that pointed to a specific date.

And so he wrote that it was going to happen, get this, sometime between Sunday, September 11th, and Tuesday, September 13th. Gave himself a little window.

Well, even after 4.5 million copies sold, we got up Wednesday morning and went to school. Jesus had not returned. And then a little more closer to home.

Some of us remember Y2K. Remember that? Going into New Year's, 1999, what's going to happen? Are the computers going to blow up? Are they going to take over?

Is Jesus coming back? And then it happened again in 2011, a man named Harold Camping. And then again in 2012, because of course, the Mayan calendar, right?

Hollywood even capitalized on that one, made a disaster movie, 2012. So what's my point? My point is that we're probably due for another prediction.

So just get ready. But seriously, if you've ever had a friend or a loved one, or even if it was you yourself, and you got caught up in these kinds of things, or they did, then you know what an alarmed mindset looks like, right?

You know what it looks like to have so much concern, not wanting to miss out. What? FOMO of the nth degree, fear of missing out. Nobody wants to miss out on the second coming.

And that's exactly what Paul, I want you to understand, is trying to nip in the bud in verse 3. He starts out by telling them, hey, listen, I don't want anybody to deceive you in any way.

Don't be deceived. Don't be shaken in mind or alarmed. And that's about the clearest thing Paul says, right? Because he goes on for the next several verses, and honestly, he gets pretty fluid in these verses that follow.

He goes from mentioning a rebellion to this man of lawlessness, to talking about the temple, and the guy taking a seat there. He says that the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

You know that. And he even speaks about somebody restraining him for a while. You got the false miracles. You got the delusion God sends to certain people.

Paul covers a lot of ground here. And what further complicates things is that we don't have the benefit that the Thessalonians did. They got to have several conversations with Paul about this.

That's what he alludes to in verse 5. He's like, guys, don't you remember we talked about this when I was still with you? We talked about these things.

I told you about these things. It sounds like they had repeated conversations with Paul, and we are only here catching a little part of it. So here's what I'd like for us to do.

I would like to try to draw out what I think are the main points here. Three main lessons from Paul. And these lessons, I want you to understand, they're not just for the believers in Paul's day.

They are for them, but not only for them. They, like us, are not to be deceived. And these lessons are very much for us because are we not constantly at risk of being misled and deceived by false teaching.

It's not just a first century thing. So let's get started. Here's the first one from Paul. The first lesson from Paul is this. Number one, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

The mystery of lawlessness, a spirit of lawlessness, that mystery is already at work. I know we're jumping ahead, verse 7, but bear with me.

This is really the first thing that we need to know and understand. That there is a lawlessness, a satanic spirit of lawlessness that's already at work in our world, that's been at work in our world, and that will continue to be at work in our world until there is a final manifestation.

We'll get to that later.

This is probably what's driving the confusion these believers are having. And what is this mystery of lawlessness Paul is referring to? Well, it's not complicated, to be honest with you.

It's the fact that there is an unseen spiritual force at work in our world. An enemy who has been prowling around like a roaring lion looking to devour people ever since the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

This one who is a deceiver, who was once an angel of light, who rebelled, and who the Bible says was cast down out of heaven. He tempts, he deceives, and he's the ultimate lawless being defying and rebelling against God's law.

And he's not alone. The devil has legions of demons working with him, and he has influence in our world and on people in our world. And what Paul is highlighting here is his work of deceiving, of undermining God's truth specifically.

So yes, Paul mentions a particular manifestation of the man of lawlessness who will appear in the very last days. But even now, he says, the spirit, the spirit of lawlessness is already at work.

And Paul goes on to give us a sense of what characterizes his work, doesn't he? Verses 3 and 4. Check it out. Verses 3 and 4. He leads rebellion, specifically rebellion against anything godly or in line with what God wants.

Remember, he is lawless in contrast to the great law giver. And he's described as the son of destruction in that his lawless ways and influence lead to just that.

They lead to destruction. They lead to destruction in people's lives now, and they lead to ultimate, final destruction later in eternity. And this spirit of lawlessness very much manifests in people.

In the future, when the last days are concluding, yeah, it will be that mysterious man of lawlessness. But lawlessness has also been manifesting and continues to manifest in particular people throughout our history.

Starting even in the first century. Did you realize that? The apostle John had a different name for them, the men of lawlessness. He called them antichrists.

Yeah, there's a final antichrist, capital A, but there are many semi-fulfillments and what you might call forerunners of antichrists with a lowercase a.

Here's what John says in 1 John 2, verse 18. He says, children, get this, it is the last hour. Not it's going to be. It is the last hour. And as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.

1 John 2:18

Therefore, we know it is the last hour. You know, that's interesting that for apostles like John and for Paul and for the writer to the Hebrews, whoever that is, they are convinced that Christians are already living in the last days.

We are in the last hour. We are in the end times. They were inaugurated with the first coming of Christ. And so there were these false teachers in the apostles' day, these men of lawlessness as Paul calls them or antichrists as John refers to them already at work in the first century and we've seen them

in the second century and beyond all the way down through history. We have a variety of some of the more famous or infamous individuals who we think fits this bill.

Some of the bigger names started out in the intertestamental period. This guy named Antioch Epiphanes, he's kind of a big one because the prophet Daniel referred to him, was referring to him when he prophesied.

Others would point to many of the Roman emperors. Clearly, manifestations of lawlessness against God. Literally, they are antichrists because they're claiming to be divine.

You know, it's funny, as you survey church history and you get up to the Protestant Reformation, it seems like everyone was calling the other side's leader antichrist.

So, you had Luther, I think correctly, referring to the corrupt popes as antichrist. But, you know, the Catholic critics of Luther said the same thing about him.

And history also gives us some other very clear-cut figures that I would say fit the bill of an antichrist. The prophet Muhammad who started Islam claiming what?

Divine revelation and a special status for himself. A variety of high-profile leaders who, some led in the civil sector, some were military leaders, but who did things religiously to try to take faith away from people.

Hitler, Joseph Stalin, but whoever fits this category, Paul would remind us, again, they are forerunners, they are anticipations of a final and decisive manifestation of the man of lawlessness, the final antichrist who has not yet been revealed.

And here's what these antichrist men of lawlessness do. Verse 4 says, they do what? They oppose and exalt themselves against every so-called God or object of worship.

Again, you think about someone like a Joseph Stalin or an Adolf Hitler, that's exactly what they did. Worship me is what the emperor said right here in Paul's own day.

I, Caesar, am Lord. Or later again, the false prophet Muhammad who said that all other religions are false, there's only one God, Allah, and I am his prophet.

And again, I'm honestly inclined to side a bit with Luther when he says, you know, some of these corrupt popes. I mean, did you realize that there came a point where the pope actually said, I speak from the throne infallibly?

I speak ex-cathedra? Nobody's infallible. I'm not infallible. You're not infallible. The pope's not infallible. The word of God is infallible.

Period. The end.

And notice how at the end of verse 4 Paul says something that might sound kind of strange to us. He says, where these antichrists like to set up shop, where the man of lawlessness you should expect to come, where he will take his seat, is in the temple.

God's temple. Verse 4. So that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Now here's where, again, scholars are not completely agreed on this.

We don't know for sure what Paul's talking about. Some wonder, is it an actual temple? Is it the Jerusalem temple that stood in Paul's day? Is it some future physical temple that's going to be built?

But I follow scholars like Greg Beale. New Testament scholar Greg Beale makes a great point. He points out that every single time in the Bible, outside of this place, every other time, Paul uses the word temple, he never means a physical building.

It's always in reference to God's people. God's people are the temple now, not a physical building. Check this out. Here's what the apostle Paul says over in another letter.

In 1 Corinthians 3, verse 16, he says, Do you not know that you, talking to the church, you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells not in some building but now in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16

He says it again a few chapters later in chapter 6. He describes our physical bodies as God's temple. Ephesians 2, he says that the people of God's church grow into a holy temple.

And even Peter, in his first epistle, talks about how you, yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, a temple.

So what does that mean? It means that when Paul says that he takes his seat in the temple of God, he's talking about the church. And he's warning us, he's warning us that these antichrists, these forerunners of the final man of lawlessness that we have seen throughout history

and that we continue to see. They like to set up shop in the church. And when he says that they take their seat there, that's language of authority.

A ruler takes his seat. What that means is they like to lead. They want to lead. They want to call the shots. They want to teach others. And I would submit to you that this phenomenon has been ongoing and it's very much alive and well today.

Only the seats that they take up in our churches, they come in a variety of manifestations. Do they come in pulpits? Yeah, sometimes they do.

But other times they come in classrooms or they come in print in a published book or a blog or a podcast or a conference. But they use these platforms to lead God's people away from God's laws.

Lead them away from the clarity of His word. And where they lead them to is right into destruction. And that's why we have to be on our guard and not be deceived by anyone in any way no matter the platform, no matter the title that they have,

no matter who it is that's recommending them because people make mistakes in their recommendations sometimes. We must remember verse 7, first thing, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

So that's a first big lesson but it's not Paul's only one. He gets to this next one now. Lesson number two. Number two, the full manifestation of lawlessness now restrained will be seen just before Christ's second coming.

The full manifestation of lawlessness now restrained will be seen just before just before Christ's second coming. Now this second lesson here is really Paul's big push for these fretful,

frightened, shaken Thessalonian believers, right? To tell them, no, you've not missed the day. You have not missed the Lord's second coming.

And the reason you can be sure of this is because the final man of lawlessness has not yet been revealed. Now had they seen forerunners? Had they seen various manifestations up to this point?

Yes, they had. Apparently, based on what John says again over in 1 John, many antichrists had already appeared. And for us, some 2,000 years removed, right?

We've seen a few more. But the final man of lawlessness has not manifested in full and final and even physical form yet.

Again, if you're familiar with the Lord of the Rings, how can you not think of the character of Sauron? Right? A fantastic example of what we're talking about.

Because if you've read the books or watched the movies, you know that throughout the journeys of these various characters, you've got in the background the dark lord Sauron wanting to manifest in physical form, but he can't yet.

That's why he's after the ring of power, to manifest in physical form. But that doesn't stop him from exerting his influence, does it? He's got many agents, he's got many would-be manifestations in people he controls.

Doing his evil bidding. And in a lot of ways, I want you to understand this is how it is with the final man of lawlessness Paul talks about here.

Only, it's not a fictional character from a fantasy series. He is real. And he is coming. But Paul says he hasn't yet. And you know he hasn't yet.

Paul says, and because you know he hasn't yet, you know you haven't missed out on Christ's second coming. Because Paul goes on to tell us in verse 8 that the one event triggers the other.

The revelation of the final man of lawlessness is not for very long that he gets. And it triggers the coming of Jesus. His second coming.

Jesus himself talked about this. Again, I mentioned Matthew 24, a very interesting chapter. Jesus discussing the signs of the end with his disciples.

He talks to them about the tribulation that is coming. Some of us think that word tribulation. Oh, that's way up ahead. Jesus speaks to his disciples as if they're about to enter it.

And they were.

And he tells them it will intensify your persecution. It will get rough. Lawlessness, he says. Lawlessness will increase around you guys. And you will be persecuted.

The church will be persecuted. And then he says, looking ahead to a future point, there will come a point where it really intensifies like it never has before.

Matthew 24, verse 21. I want you to hear this. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.

Matthew 24:21

He's talking about something unprecedented, unparalleled, up ahead. We have not seen this yet. And then he says this, and if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.

Cut short by what? Well, it's more like by who? Because it's by Jesus. Jesus himself. And really, I think this framework that Paul is describing for us here that I think Jesus is also describing over in Matthew 24.

Honestly, it has helped me understand a passage from Revelation that has always puzzled me. I'm talking about that part of John's vision in Revelation chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

I want to read a little bit of it for you. This is Revelation chapter 20, verses 1 through 3. John writes, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain.

Revelation 20:1–3

And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended.

After that, he must be released for a while. That angel seized the dragon in the vision John had. Or another way you could say it is he restrained him.

And right here in 2 Thessalonians, what does Paul talk about? Someone else restraining or holding back that satanic man of lawlessness. Verse 6, And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.

Is Revelation chapter 20 and 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 talking about the same events? Yes, I think so. Because Paul goes on in verse 7, he says, Only he who restrains it will do so until he is taken out of the way,

Revelation 20 · chapter mention 2 Thessalonians 2 · chapter mention

until he is removed. Again, scholars debate who is the restrainer? At first, it sounds like it's a force, something impersonal, but then it gets a very personal pronoun.

He, who is it? And I think the material from Revelation chapter 20 makes it clear for us who it is. It's an angel. Probably the archangel Michael, if I had to guess, sent from heaven to restrain or bind Satan

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

for a period of time. Jesus himself in his earthly ministry talked about seeing Satan fall like lightning. There's a lot of opinions on when that happened, what he saw, but I think there's at least some fulfillment happening in Jesus' day.

There will come a time near the end where he will be released for a little while. You say, Well, why? I don't know. I don't know. But it seems that this is what Paul is referring to when the restrainer, again, probably the archangel Michael, is taken out of the way, removed, pulled back from his work

of restraining the evil one over that symbolic 1,000 year period. We know that sometimes numbers in scripture are very literal. We also know that in apocalyptic literature they rarely are.

A symbolic number, a period of 1,000 years. I happen to think we are in that right now. The symbolic 1,000 years. I don't know how long it's going to be.

It's been 2,000 so far. Maybe it'll be 3. Maybe it'll be 10. Maybe it'll end tomorrow. But as Jesus says, this evil man of lawlessness will not be released for long.

No, he says in Matthew 24, those terrible days, they'll be permitted to be unrestrained and wreak havoc on our world. They will not be permitted to last very long.

They will mercifully be cut short. And I want you to see how this brings us to a third lesson from Paul. Lesson number three. Lesson number three, and you need this one.

God is in complete control. And when Jesus does appear, he wins quick and easy. Quick and easy.

A little later in that same chapter in Revelation 20, John will go on to write that when the 1,000 years are ended, Satan will be released from prison and will come out to deceive the nations in full force.

Talks about how the enemy will completely surround the camp of the saints. That's us, God's people. And then I want you to hear what John says next.

Verse 9, Revelation chapter 20, verse 9, And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints in the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them.

Revelation 20:9

How's Paul describe it here? Chapter 2, verse 8, Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, And then the lawless one will be revealed. And then it's instant.

There's not even any more to say. Whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

Wow. That sounds like it's going to be quick. That, I don't know, almost sounds to me like it's not much of a contest, is it? It's not like a fourth quarter Hail Mary that God's going to need, Jesus is going to need to beat Satan.

It sounds like somebody gets blown away, literally, by the breath of Jesus' mouth. Which we know in Scripture, breath is often a metaphor for a person's word.

And that's exactly what this is. A metaphor. For the word of Jesus. We know this because in the vision just before this, a chapter earlier, in Revelation chapter 19, Jesus appears in a parallel vision, talking about the same events, and he appears with a very unique thing

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

protruding from his mouth, doesn't he? It's a sharp symbol of his word. Here it is, Revelation 19, verse 15. As he's writing down from heaven, we're told that from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.

Revelation 19:15

A sharp sword. An image for the double-edged word of God, living and active. Yes, in the flaming fire, with his angels, that Paul just described in chapter 1, in Thessalonians.

Jesus is going to finally appear and instantly, instantly destroy this evil one. With eyes of flames of fire, as John writes in Revelation, he's going to come with the armies of heaven at his side, and he does it, he wins it all, Paul tells the Thessalonians,

by the breath of his mouth, by his sheer word, the word of God, sufficient to quickly and immediately end this no, I should say non-contest, so that all the satanic players, from the false prophet,

to the man of lawlessness, to Satan himself, all end up in the lake of fire.

What's Paul saying here? He's saying that yes, lawlessness is already at work. Yes, there will be a final, terrible manifestation in an incarnate satanic being, in a man of lawlessness, who though restrained for now, won't be at the end.

But the refilling of this evil person will usher in the glorious finish of that rider on a great white horse, the conquering Jesus. He's not come yet.

God's in control. Jesus has not yet come, but he will. And when he does, he wins, and he wins quick. So you got people running around telling you that you somehow missed all of this?

That Jesus has already returned, and he's already gathered his church to him? Do not be quickly shaken in your minds. Do not be alarmed. That has not happened.

The day of the Lord has not yet come, and now you know why. Don't you remember how I told you all these things, Paul writes?

Now we can see that Paul goes on, and like I said, we've only dealt with about eight verses, honestly, and he gives some other really powerful points, says some very almost controversial things, and we're going to save those for next week.

Today we're going to stop right here, and as we think about these three key lessons, I want to think a bit about our takeaways, because what does this mean for us, and how does any of this apply to our lives right now?

And I would suggest to you that there are a couple of very basic ways for you and I to respond. First one is this. First and foremost, be aware and be on your guard.

That's your first takeaway. To be aware and be on your guard. As a believer, realize that the mystery of lawlessness, the spirit of lawlessness, is already at work.

Yes, there is an ultimate bad guy coming at some point in the future, but even before he comes, his presence is still at work. Just because Sauron has not taken on human form doesn't mean he isn't doing his work.

We have forerunners. We have false teachers. We have people who peddle in a spirit of lawlessness. Paul warns us about this. People who will even assume positions of leadership in the church.

People who will try to take up a seat in God's temple, that's with God's people, and do lawless things and teach others to do lawless things.

They promote lawless teaching. They almost always promote themselves. They contravene God's laws by saying that what we have traditionally believed is somehow too restrictive or that times are different or the ancient world was a different place than our modern world.

and frankly, they'll say, oh, those limited authors of Scripture couldn't be expected to keep up. But I want you to see that for what it is.

It's lawlessness. It's the spirit of lawlessness. So whether it's a book that you read that everybody's talking about or a popular podcast or a blog or a conference speaker or a very intelligent professor, it doesn't matter.

If it contravenes what's clearly written in God's word, then it's rebellion. It's an example of people setting themselves up over God. Even, get this, even when they do it under the guise of being loving or merciful, listen,

we cannot out-love God. We cannot out-mercy God. Do you really think you're going to be more loving than God? God is love. So that's one takeaway, but I want to give you a second one.

The second one is this. Don't be shaken or alarmed about the future. So be on your guard now. That's the first takeaway. But the other one is, I don't know when the next prediction is going to come, but don't be shaken.

Don't be alarmed about it. God is not done. Christ has not yet returned. And our world has not yet been set right, but it will be. Remember that God's in control and that the events of history unfold at His discretion and according to His plan

and in His timing. And there's nothing that surprises God. Evil may seem like it's not being restrained, but the Bible's telling you it actually is.

Paul says that for now, evil is being restrained and that at some point it's going to get a lot worse. But not for long. Because that event, the revelation of the man of lawlessness, will trigger the return of Christ.

And remember, when that happens, when Jesus appears, He wins and He wins easy. So as our team comes up now to lead us in our last song, and as we get a chance to sing again about the love and work that our Savior has done for us,

let's sing with remembrance in our minds that He is coming again and He has not forgotten His people. Will you stand with me as we pray?

King Jesus, what a day of rejoicing that will be when we are called, Lord, home to be with You. When we see You, if we are alive to see it, You coming on the clouds of heaven, You give us assurance, Lord, that all the saints who have gone, fallen asleep,

who have died, who are in the earth, Lord, they will be resurrected ahead of us even. And You make promises, Lord, that You will come and You will deal justice and You will punish and You will reward.

And so, Lord, in this meantime, will You please steady Your church? Will You help us, Lord, to be aware and to be on our guard. Let us see the attacks of the enemy.

Let us be able to spiritually sniff out a spirit of lawlessness at work. And Lord, as we wait and as we raise our families, as we do the work You have given us, as we are lights in the world, in the places that You have put us, help us not to be shaken.

Don't let us become alarmed about the future. let us trust in You and let us trust in Your Word. We pray this in the name of our King, in Jesus' name.

Amen.