Good Friday morning. Thanks for listening. Well, as most of you know, maturing in our Bible knowledge means facing the hardest questions that the Bible raises. And on the podcast, we're working through three of those hard questions prompted by your readings in the first two chapters of 2 Thessalonians. Namely, is God present or is He absent in His eternal judgment?

2 Thessalonians 1.9 seems to say that He's absent. We addressed that question in APJ 18.01. Then many of you have asked about the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2. Who is that? That was a week ago in APJ 18.03. And now finally, the third question, one about God sending strong delusions into the world.

Does He still do that today? If so, how so? And what does it mean? That's a question raised by 2 Thessalonians 2.11. That one is on the table today. Pastor John, on Monday in that man of lawlessness episode in APJ 18.03, you read our text for today, 2 Thessalonians 2.11, that God "sends them a strong delusion so that they might believe what is false." We've never addressed this text on APJ, but it has been asked several times, particularly from two listeners.

Deborah asks it this way, "Pastor John, hello. Can you explain God's providential work in 2 Thessalonians 2.11 and His sending of a strong delusion on those who do not love or obey the truth? I stumble over this text. Thank you." And David writes in to ask it this way, "Hello, Pastor John.

Can a professing nominal Christian who doesn't think they're saved ask God for them to be able to love the truth when they've previously not embraced it in faith? Or would such a one be given to strong delusions like we read about in 2 Thessalonians 2.11? In fact, what does that phrase even mean?" So, both Deborah and David are asking about the meaning of God's sending a "strong delusion" on people at the end of the age in connection with the man of lawlessness and the great deception that Satan worked through him just before the Lord's coming.

And David, more specifically, is asking about whether a person in the midst of this kind of deception can cry out to God with any hope of acceptance that God would enable him to love the truth when in previous times he's deformed it. So, let's get the text in front of us.

It really is a sobering text, and in some ways a surprising one in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure. At least I've learned a lot about the nature of saving faith and the nature of deception in this text. So, here's a few verses. This is verses 9 through 12 of 2 Thessalonians 2.

The coming of the lawless one, that would be the final manifestation of Antichrist just before the return of Christ. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and lying signs and wonders and with all deception of unrighteousness. Now, that's not yet the strong delusion from God, but rather the deception from the lawless one.

Okay, so we haven't even got yet to God's kicking in with deception. Here you have the satanic deception for those who are perishing because, that's important because this is happening before God's strong delusion, deceived because they did not welcome the love of the truth in order to be saved.

Therefore, and that's crucial, therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Now, let's see if we can put some of these pieces together. It's true that there are passages in the Bible that ascribe to God the right and the power to decide from eternity who will believe and who will not.

But this is not one of those passages. This passage only traces unbelief back to the resistance of the human heart to welcome a love for the truth. Now, that's a strange phrase, "welcome a love for the truth," but it's a literal translation. Verse 10 says they are perishing because they did not welcome a love or the love of the truth in order to be saved.

In other words, this is a worse indictment than saying they did not welcome the truth in order to be saved. They were not just resistant to the truth. They were resistant to a love for the truth. This is a love issue in the human heart. They didn't want truth in their head.

They didn't want love for truth in their heart. They were totally resistant. It reminds us of Ephesians 4, 18, where Paul traces unbelief down, down, down to the bottom of the human problem, which is not ignorance, he says, but hardness. This is what verse 18 of Ephesians 4 says.

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, and then he goes deeper, due to the hardness of heart. So here in 2 Thessalonians, Paul is describing that hardness as a refusal to welcome a love for the truth.

It's as if love for truth is being offered and the human heart says, "No, no, not only do I not want truth, I do not want to love the truth. I don't want truth in my mind. I don't want love in my heart." And that condition, that deep resistance to truth, to God, to gospel, to reality, and to love for truth and love for the gospel and love for God, that resistance is described as the reason for both Satan's deceiving and God's deluding.

It says Satan, in the form of this lawless one, comes with "deception of unrighteousness for the perishing," and then it says "because," because they refuse to love the truth. And verse 11 says God sends a strong delusion because they refuse to love the truth. So Paul doesn't explain how God does this, that is, how he sends this delusion.

It may well be that God does it by means of removing all the barriers to that satanic deception. There are many places in the Bible where God governs the acts of unrighteous men and demons in order to achieve his righteous purposes. So this is not unusual. It's as if God would say, "Okay, if you want to love falsehood and love unrighteousness instead of loving the truth, I'll see to it that your delusion is overpowering." In other words, God gives them up to their own mind, just like Paul says in Romans 1:28.

He says, "Since they did not approve of having God in their knowledge," that's so close to what 2 Thessalonians is saying. They refuse to love for the truth. They don't want God in their knowledge. They don't want to love God. Therefore, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

That would be a great delusion. So their deception comes not only as their crime, but also as their punishment for the crime. I said a minute ago that this text is surprising to me in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure. Looking at this idea of pleasure helps get at David's question, his other question that we haven't touched on yet, about whether we can pray to God to deliver us from deception and delusion when up till now we haven't welcomed the love of the truth.

We've been resistant to it. Are we hopeless? What's surprising is the way pleasure figures into this text. Verse 12 says that the reason people are condemned is because they "did not believe the truth, but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness." What an interesting contrast. Believing versus pleasure. Hmm. These are full of implications.

Back in verse 10, their deception is called "deception of unrighteousness." So I put it together like this. Their unwillingness to welcome a love for the truth was owing to their love for, that is, their pleasure in unrighteousness. I love it. I love it. I find pleasure in it. This was their most basic condition, deep, deep heart love, heart delight, heart pleasure in unrighteousness.

And since the truth stands over against unrighteousness, that more basic love for unrighteousness prevented them from loving the truth. So at the root of our human condition is a strong pleasure in sin, strong preference, gladness, delight. Oh, how delectable is selfishness and self-exaltation and pride. Sin feels good at the depth of our being, and that pleasure in unrighteousness prevents a welcome of a love for the truth and surprisingly prevents belief in the truth, as he says in verse 12.

So here's David's question. Can a person pray in that condition? Can a person pray for deliverance from deceptive bondage to pleasure in unrighteousness, which prevents love for the truth and belief in the truth? And my answer is yes. In fact, the bondage is so great that God is the only one who can cause a reversal of this dreadful bondage.

That's what has to happen. And so that's how we ought to cry out in desperation for God to act in our lives and in the lives of those we love who are blind to this. Remember, in the book of Lamentations, oh my goodness, this is encouraging. Lamentations, the most horrible book in the Bible in one sense because of the descriptions of the devastation of the apple of God's eye, Jerusalem.

It says in chapter 4 verse 11, "The Lord has afflicted Jerusalem for the multitude of her transgression." So you would think this is hopeless. She's under judgment. But here's how the book ends. The book ends. Lamentations 5, 21, "Cause us to return, O Lord, that we may return." What a prayer.

What a prayer. That's the same way people pray in Jeremiah 31, 18, "Cause me to return and I will return." Same thing in Psalm 80 verse 3, "Cause us to return, O God." Ultimately, I don't think it matters whether Satan is deceiving or God is deluding. It's not hopeless to cry out, "Oh God, I cannot change my heart.

It's hard. It's lifeless. It's cold. And it takes pleasure in unrighteousness. Oh God, do anything. Do whatever you have to do to take out my heart of stone. Cause my heart to find pleasure in your truth, your gospel, yourself. If you don't do it, O God, I am undone." I don't think that's a hopeless prayer.

Yeah, not a hopeless prayer at all. Thank you, Pastor John and Deborah and David. Thank you for the excellent Bible questions. We love to get Bible questions, even hard ones. Send those to us. You can ask the hardest Bible questions you have or search our growing archive to see if we've already addressed it.

Or you can subscribe to the podcast and listen along in real time. Do all of that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, what's the key to knowing and doing the will of God in our lives? That's always a great question. It's always a question that we get in the inbox. It's always relevant.

And so we're going to address it again when we return on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here in a few days. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you soon. you