Back in the early 2000s, a movement began to take shape known as the New Atheism. Of course, atheism wasn't new. There have been fools who say in their heart there is no God throughout all of human history. What made the New Atheism a bit different and new is that the main proponents of this ideology all shared a passionate commitment to fully expunge religious views from Western civilization. And you see, that's a goal that wouldn't have gained any traction even 40 years ago. to expunge religious belief from Western civilization. But that's what they wanted, a society with no religion that was governed by a pursuit of truth, they say, guided by autonomous human reason. Another aspect of the movement that made it new was that the New Atheism was actually fully countenanced and promoted by many, if not most, of our institutions of higher learning. In that way, it became the enlightened worldview of our progressive and liberal elites. In short, it became mainstream. The three so-called intellectuals that were most prominent in New Atheism were Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. And they wrote books, they gave lectures, and they all basically sang the same song. Most of the problems in the world can be traced to religion in general and to Christianity in particular. And men like Richard Dawkins didn't want people to move from theism to agnosticism. No, no, no. Now, in his worldview, the only way society can truly thrive is to create passionate, confessing atheists. In other words, he wanted atheism with a vengeance. Dawkins' most prominent book is The God Delusion. It was a New York Times bestseller published in 2006. And as you might gather from the title, the impetus of his meandering book is to say, those who believe in God are suffering from some kind of mass delusion. Dawkins makes his purpose very clear on the opening pages of his book when he writes, in this book, if it works as I intend, religious leaders who open it will be atheists when they put it down. That's what he wanted. Now I have to tell you, I read this book some 15 years ago, and I can tell you for me, it didn't work as intended. But as I was thinking about this morning's sermon, the book came to mind, especially the title of the book. You see, unwittingly, Dawkins' book title communicates something that's altogether true. there really is a phenomenon that we should rightly identify as the God delusion. Only Dawkins has it backwards. It's not earnest believing Christians who are suffering a God delusion. It's atheists and all those who oppose biblical Christianity. They're the ones who are in fact suffering with a God delusion. And this morning, the Apostle Paul will teach us about this true and terrifying God delusion. Let's seek the Lord once more and we'll get to work. Our great God, we thank you that you've enlightened our minds, that you've caused the scales to fall from our eyes. that you've made our hearts receptive to truth. This morning, we pray as we hear the truth of your word. It will have its way in each of our hearts. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let me ask you to turn in your Bible once more to 2 Corinthians chapter, excuse me, 2 Thessalonians chapter two, We're going to read verses 1 through 12. This will be our last morning in this section of scripture. And most of our attention this morning is actually going to be given to verses 9 through 12. Let's go ahead and read this section beginning in verse 1 of 2 Thessalonians 2. Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means. For that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that's called God or that's worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he's taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. The coming of the lawless one as according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. May he bless it to our hearts this morning. Dearest congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, In the second chapter, the apostle has been pushing back hard against an error that has made its way into the Thessalonian church. There were some false teachers who were saying, Jesus might have already come, the second coming might have already happened. And so Paul's refuting this hope-destroying error by reminding the Thessalonians of the truths that he taught them while he was still with them. He tells them that before Christ's return, there has to be two major culminating events in human history. First, there's going to be a great apostasy, a wide-scale falling away from within professing Christendom. And then second, the man of lawlessness will be revealed, who of course we've learned is the Antichrist. Now last week we looked at four of the descriptors that the Apostle gives for the Antichrist. I'll review these briefly. First, he's going to be lawless. That's why it's called the man of lawlessness or man of sin. And the implication here is that ultimately he's going to be one who wants to cast off all moral restraints and be utterly opposed to God's moral standards. He'll promote and advance the very ethic that we find at the end of the book of Judges when everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That's the kind of moral relativism that anticipates the coming man of lawlessness. He's a son of perdition. And of course, that language is meant to make us think of Judas Iscariot. He's going to appear to be a religiously upright person, but in reality, he is a son of hell. And ultimately, for the damage he'll do and for all the havoc that he's going to wreak, one of the things we learn by this designation as man of perdition is that his fate is sealed. He's doomed to the lake of fire that's burning with brimstone. Third, the Antichrist will crave worship. He'll oppose the true worship of God and he'll exalt himself so that he is the sole object of worship. And then fourth, he'll exert his power over the church from the inside. We're told he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Now, when Paul speaks of the temple, in any of his writing, it's almost exclusively the church that he has in mind. It's not some future physical temple in Jerusalem. And that's where we pick up this morning. Now, I've alluded to verses 6 and 7 a couple times in past weeks, but I want to touch on them again and sort of draw them to a conclusion before we move on to verses 9 through 12. In verses 6 through 7, we're told that there's a restraining. that's presently taking place. That is, there's something that's actually holding this final apostasy and holding the man of lawlessness back. There's something that is keeping them from appearing on the stage of human history. And those two culminating events prior to Christ's return, they can't take place till this restrainer permits it. Now, there's no doubt the restrainer is God. The issue that scholars get all bent out of shape over is what instrument or what mechanism is God using to restrain the forces of evil? Now let me mention a couple of the common options that you'll hear if you read through commentaries. Some scholars believe that the restraint is God ordaining and using the civil authorities to restrain the full onslaught of evil, right? It's sort of the law and order of the civil magistrate that has the calling to approve what's good and to use the sword to punish evil. So some suggest that's what the restraining is. It's the civil authority. And of course, the pinnacle of that during Paul's time would have been Rome, but it carries on through history. Another view held by our dispensational brothers and sisters is that God's presently using the Holy Spirit to restrain. And once the church is raptured, The Holy Spirit won't be present on earth any longer, so he won't be here to restrain evil. Now, I'm not going to belabor this. I've mentioned multiple times there's simply no basis for a secret rapture in 1st or 2nd Thessalonians. You actually have to import that into the text. It doesn't naturally arise out of the text. Now, that's a non-starter for me, at least. The third view is the preaching of the gospel is what God is using to restrain evil. As long as God's Word is being proclaimed, it will have the power to push back and push against and advance against the kingdom of hell. And this does seem to line up with the Lord's teaching in the Olivet Discourse. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 24, 14. The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. So that's a possibility. It's very plausible. In fact, that's the view Calvin held, if you're interested in such things. But in the end, I think it's most likely that the restraint here is simply God's providence. It's what some would call common grace. It's restraining evil and wickedness from running amok till God's finished with his redemptive purposes, till he's saved the very last elect person on the planet, until they're brought into his kingdom. Listen how Dr. Strain, David Strain puts this. He writes, God holds evil in check by his common grace. His grace restrains the wickedness of our hearts so that we're not as wicked as we might be. His grace restrains the overflow of evil in society that as dark as our world sometimes gets, there remains vestiges of God's image in human beings and remnants of kindness and mercy and justice in the world. God's holding back the flood. Like the waters in the Exodus when the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea, the flood of evil is being held back and piled up in a heap. Of course, Paul's point is one day God's hand, His providential hand is going to be removed. He's going to take away His restraining grace and the great apostasy and the man of lawlessness will flood over the earth. And so verse 8 says, and then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. I touched on this verse last week and it's meant to be a great comfort because one of the things Paul is telling us is that for all the ferocity of the Antichrist and all the destruction that he's going to bring on this terrestrial ball, Paul is highlighting the ease with which the Lord Jesus will dispatch his enemy, right? The lawless one will think he's finally going to fulfill Satan's agenda, but no sooner will he get started before our great warrior king will appear and destroy him and it will be game over. Now one of the things the apostle is really highlighting in verses six through eight is the comfort of God's sovereignty in all these things, right? The devil and his minions, they never have full free reign, but they're always constrained according to God's sovereign purposes. As Luther once very famously said, even the devil is God's devil. And this is such an important truth for us to embrace because from our perspective, think about where we are right now in this present cultural moment. It often appears as though evil's spiraling out of control. Who's gonna get their arms around it? Who's gonna put? God's hand is upon all of it. It won't progress one inch further than he intends it to progress until he removes the fullness of his restraining hand. So irrespective of what we might see, evil is never spiraling out of control. It's only spiraling out of our control. And that's frustrating. That's why we look to God. Well, that brings us to verses 9 through 11. One of the things that Paul intends to teach us in these verses And something we learned in our study of Revelation 13 is that the Antichrist is aligned with Satan. Look what Paul writes there in verse 9. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders. Excuse me. Now, I trust you'll remember that When we were studying Revelation, particularly Revelation 13, one of the things we learned is that a primary tactic of the devil and his cohorts is to counterfeit the things of God. That's what the devil is truly a master at, counterfeiting. And the Apostle Paul, he intends to highlight that tactic for us too, first in a subtle way. Verse eight, if you glance back at your Bible, it ends by telling us of the Lord Jesus coming, right? That's the word parousia. And if you glance back to verse one of this chapter, it also speaks of the coming or the parousia of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then in verse nine, Paul speaks of the coming or the parousia of the lawless one, you see? To quote John Stott, this is a deliberate and unscrupulous parody of the second coming of Christ, right? So again, that's the devil's MO. He's not especially creative, but he's a master counterfeiter. And I won't walk you through these, but there are three words that are used in the New Testament to speak of Christ's coming. One is parousia, the other is epiphaneia, the epiphany of Christ, and the other is apocalypsis, the revelation of Christ. Interestingly enough, Paul uses them only in this passage to describe the man of sin. Every other time Paul uses them, they're of Jesus. So again, it's this idea that when the man of lawlessness appears, this antichrist, he's going to come counterfeiting as the Christ. And then what's not so subtle is that this counterfeiting will continue as the Antichrist performs power, signs, and lying wonders. And the point here is that the Antichrist is going to be empowered by Satan. He's going to be energized by Satan to perform miracles that will validate his authority just as Jesus performed miracles to validate his. Again, I'm not going to go in great detail here because this is something we talked about for several weeks when we were looking at Revelation. But it's worth remembering that Jesus warned about this very thing in the Olivet Discourse, saying in Matthew 24, verses 24 and 25, for false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So Jesus is saying there's going to be an ongoing problem. False Christs are going to appear. Pseudo-Christs, people in the place of Christ, people pretending to be Christ. They're going to appear. They're going to put on impressive shows. They'll be empowered by Satan, all to make their claims seem legit. And many will be deceived. And let me just pause here. This is why the Apostle John writes in 1 John 4.1, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit, whether they are of God. Oh, how we need to heed this in our day. We need to heed this. We think if a fine-looking, fine-speaking man stands behind a wooden box and says something, we just have to accept it. It must be good and true and right. After all, he is a preacher. The history of the church has been chocked full of false teachers who started right here. By the way, that's why you have to keep me accountable, for my soul's sake. And we need this, we need to be a people of God who test the spirits because there will always be counterfeits. Now what Paul is telling us in 2 Thessalonians is that at the consummation of the ages, when God removes the restraints, the antichrist will appear and it's going to be a supernatural spectacle. And verse 10 tells us, he will rise to power with all unrighteous deception among those who perish. You see, deception is the mask the devil wears to great effect, right? And again, this is one of those truths that we have to have always in the back of our mind, that the devil is a master deceiver. And usually those deceptions come by mimicking something of true religion. And again, if we're not grounded in true religion, we're suspect to fall for every charlatan who has bad ideas. Deception is the mask the devil wears to great effect. And those who are perishing, those whose hearts are hard, they're easy pickings. And while that's true of those who are unregenerate, we shouldn't overlook what we just heard in the Olivet Discourse. We're talking about a deception that's so great and so convincing that it's, if possible, it might even lead the elect astray. Of course, demonic deceptions can't undo God's saving work. We know that. Praise God for that. But we can make a grave error if we fail to recognize just how convincing lying signs and wonders can be. Think about how many prosperity gospel charlatans, prosperity gospel charlatans, packing crowds week after week after week. They promise their hearers good health, fat bank accounts. All you have to do is have enough, the only one whose bank account gets fat is theirs. But people go for it. I shared this with someone, but last week I was at the physical therapist, and my physical therapist is actually Reverend Ken Klett's son-in-law. So it's great fun to have a conversation with this brother as he's wrenching on my shoulder. One of his interns that's working there, a physical therapist intern, last week said, Chip, what do you think of Joel Osteen? I paused for a couple seconds because I didn't know what I wanted to say. And I said, well, I said, you asked me the kind of question that I can't fib about. He's a heretic. And truth is, she's a nominal Roman Catholic. And she was telling me that a lot of her Catholic friends are gravitating to that. And she said, is there anything good about him? And I said, yeah, he's got nice teeth. But he intends to consume you with them, right? And incidentally, it gave me an opportunity to proclaim the gospel to her. So, but again. People are drawn to this. They're drawn to what their itching ears want to be. And so they gather at these charlatan conferences and hear that God wants your life to be perfect on this side of glory. That is so nonsensical, dear ones. I've said this a thousand times. If you think you're going to have your best life now, by definition, you're going to hell, if this is your best life. bad ideas and yet people are drawn to them. And I know in those massive crowds there are some genuine believers and eventually most of those genuine believers will come out of that nonsense, but it's a compelling message to the flesh. And it's often accompanied with fake healings and fake miracles. And it has the effect for those who are destined to perish. Here's the thing that we want to recognize. If folks fall for that now, imagine what it will be like when the man of lawlessness appears and is undergirded by the power of Satan. Well, we don't have to wonder how it is that they fall for it because Paul tells us there in the rest of verse 10, It's because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. And it's not hard to understand why hard-hearted, unregenerate sinners would not love the truth. They're hostile to God who is truth, right? Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. In other words, there's no access to God. There's no reconciliation to God. There's no saving gospel apart from truth. What is truth? It's the question Pilate asked, isn't it? He's perhaps the first postmodernist. Truth is a proposition grounded in reality. Truth is a proposition grounded in reality. And by the way, so if you hear someone saying, that's reality when you know it's not reality. For example, if you have a boy who says he's a girl, That's an untruth because it's not grounded in reality. And make no mistake where that comes from. These are not people who are simply psychologically confused or socially put upon. They've been influenced by the evil one. And this truth-hating posture will eventually accrue God's sealing judgment, a sealing judgment that will confirm them in their hatred of the truth. Look there, verse 11 and 12. And for this reason, God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they, excuse me, that they all may be condemned to did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Now, here we find a large mass of people who are deceived by the man of sin or the man of lawlessness, and what Paul's telling us is that they're not innocent victims. They're ultimately the cause of their own fate. As one writer said, those who fall into the trap of the man of sin's lies perish because they don't receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. It's really that simple. In other words, they're repulsed by the true light and they don't want to leave their darkness, right? Jesus said that. In John 3, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world. But men love darkness instead of light because their deeds are evil, right? And that's what Paul's saying. They enjoy and they delight in their sin. They see that it's not right. They know it's not true, but they don't want to part with their sin. They don't want to part with their sin and follow Christ. But Paul said this in Romans 1, didn't he, right? That they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now think about that. They have a knowledge of the truth. But that knowledge is subsumed and bathed by their love of their sin, their unrighteousness, so they hold it down so that it doesn't make way to their, make a way into their life. They had pleasure, Paul says, in their unrighteousness. And this really exposes the moral cause that lurks behind so-called intellectual claims of unbelief. At the end of the day, people don't reject Christianity because they find it intellectually wanting. They reject Christianity because they adore their immorality. That's it. Many of you have probably heard of Aldous Huxley. He was a famous, atheist and in his autobiography, he admitted that his fierce opposition to Christianity wasn't ultimately intellectual, it was moral. It got in the way of him doing what he wanted to do. Listen, he writes, for myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and a liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. Consequently, I assumed that it had none and was able, without any difficulty, to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. Think about that. You know what Huxley was saying? He was saying, I want to be a Marxist. That's what he was saying by he didn't like that particular political and economic system. He was saying, I want to be a Marxist, and I want to live a full life of fornication without any restraints. Huxley, just like Dawkins, don't have the wherewithal to know that there is a God delusion, and it's been thrust upon man. Delusion's really a sad word, isn't it? Delusion. We're living in days of unprecedented delusion, and because of it, Western civilization is crumbling all around us because a society can't live and flourish without truth. In the world most of us grew up in, it would have seemed impossible for a man who once won the decathlon in the Olympics to later be named as Woman of the Year. But that's where we are. Just a few years ago, you didn't have to worry about a guy dressed like a girl going into the bathroom while your daughter was in there. Now we do. What's the cause of these kind of things? It's delusion. It's delusion. And that spirit is strong in our culture and in our moment. And ultimately, brothers and sisters, the only response to that for the believer is a love for the truth. To be men and women of God who are uncompromising where truth claims are concerned. It used to be that evangelicals in general had this perspective. One of the things the reformed community used to share with the evangelical community is a love for the truth. But in the last 30 years, the evangelical community has come to think that feelings override truth. And we have to push back on that. Truth is what preserves us. is what keeps us safe. Truth will establish healthy families, healthy churches, healthy communities. And truth is the only bulwark against the mass delusion that's all around us. May God make us to be men and women who love and pursue truth. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We bless your great name. We thankful that your word is true. Your law is altogether righteous and true. And we pray that the spirit of truth will create in your people a love for truth. We ask all this in Jesus name. Well, brothers and sisters, as we prepare to come to the Lord's table, the invitation to celebrate this Holy Communion meal with the people of God is extended to all those who are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. Those who don't think their efforts, their abilities, their good works earns them a place at the table. This is a table of grace for men and women who say, I'm a sinner, but I'm fully trusting that Jesus has washed away my sin. He's provided me the righteousness I need so that I am now in a right standing with my Heavenly Father. If you're trusting in the gospel and you're a member in good standing of a Bible-believing church, then this is a sacrament for you. Now, as we come to the Lord's table, as you know, we confess with the historic church what we believe using the Apostles' Creed. You can find that in the back of your hymnal on page 851. 851. So Christian, what do you believe? I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ. his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Lord of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. And then I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 10, verses 14 through 17, and then read the last half of the article of the Belgic Confession that teaches on the Lord's Supper. We read the first half on the previous Lord's Day. But first, give your attention to the reading of God's word, beginning in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 14. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men, judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of that one bread. Observe Israel after the flesh. See, I'm going to stop at verse 17. Let me ask you to turn in the back of your hymnal to page 868, 868 and 869. 869, and we're gonna begin what looks like the third paragraph on page 869, now it is certain. Now it is certain that Jesus Christ did not prescribe his sacraments for us in vain, since he works in us all he represents by these holy signs. Although the manner in which he does it goes beyond our understanding and is incomprehensible to us, just as the operation of God's Spirit is hidden and incomprehensible. Yet we do not go wrong when we say that what is eaten is Christ's own natural body and what is drunk is His own blood. But the manner in which we eat it is not by the mouth, but by the Spirit through faith. In that way, Jesus Christ remains always seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, but He never refrains on that account to communicate Himself to us through faith. This banquet is a spiritual table at which Christ communicates Himself to us with all His benefits. At that table He makes us enjoy Himself as much as the merits of His suffering and death as He nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of His flesh and relieves and renews them by the drinking of His blood. Moreover, though the sacrament and the things signified are joined together, not all receive both of them. The wicked person certainly takes the sacrament to his condemnation, but does not receive the truth of the sacrament, just as Judas and Simon the sorcerer both indeed received the sacrament, but not Christ who was signified by it. He is communicated only to believers. Finally, with humility and reverence, we receive the holy sacrament in the gathering of God's people as we engage together with thanksgiving in a holy remembrance of the death of Christ our Savior and as we thus confess our faith and Christian religion. Therefore, no one should come to this table without examining himself carefully lest, by eating this bread and drinking this cup, he eat and drink to his own judgment. In short, by the use of this holy sacrament, we're moved to a fervent love of God and our neighbors. Therefore, we reject as desecrations of the sacrament all the muddled ideas and damnable inventions that men have added and mixed in with them. And we say that we should be content with the procedure that Christ and the apostles have taught us and speak of these things as they've spoken of them. Let's pray together. Our great God in heaven, again, we bless you that you've given us this covenant meal. We're thankful that it is a real communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. The bread that we take remains bread. The cup that we drink remains wine. There's no change in the substance. Nonetheless, when We eat and drink by faith. Christ communicates himself to us. Christ blesses us. We have true fellowship with the Ascended King. So as we take these elements, grant us, O God, by the power of your spirit, the hand of faith to receive the bread and the cup and to commune with our great Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen. May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, and all of God's people said,