Does God Send ‘Strong Delusions’ into the World?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.680 | Good Friday morning. Thanks for listening.
00:00:07.380 | Well, as most of you know, maturing in our Bible knowledge
00:00:11.280 | means facing the hardest questions that the Bible raises.
00:00:14.080 | And on the podcast, we're working through three of those hard questions
00:00:17.520 | prompted by your readings in the first two chapters of 2 Thessalonians.
00:00:22.760 | Namely, is God present or is He absent in His eternal judgment?
00:00:28.320 | 2 Thessalonians 1.9 seems to say that He's absent.
00:00:31.240 | We addressed that question in APJ 18.01.
00:00:34.160 | Then many of you have asked about the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2.
00:00:38.240 | Who is that? That was a week ago in APJ 18.03.
00:00:42.000 | And now finally, the third question, one about God sending strong delusions into the world.
00:00:46.440 | Does He still do that today? If so, how so? And what does it mean?
00:00:50.160 | That's a question raised by 2 Thessalonians 2.11.
00:00:53.600 | That one is on the table today.
00:00:55.840 | Pastor John, on Monday in that man of lawlessness episode in APJ 18.03,
00:01:00.800 | you read our text for today, 2 Thessalonians 2.11,
00:01:04.480 | that God "sends them a strong delusion so that they might believe what is false."
00:01:12.480 | We've never addressed this text on APJ, but it has been asked several times,
00:01:17.680 | particularly from two listeners. Deborah asks it this way, "Pastor John, hello.
00:01:21.920 | Can you explain God's providential work in 2 Thessalonians 2.11 and His sending of a strong delusion
00:01:27.360 | on those who do not love or obey the truth? I stumble over this text. Thank you."
00:01:32.560 | And David writes in to ask it this way, "Hello, Pastor John. Can a professing nominal Christian
00:01:37.280 | who doesn't think they're saved ask God for them to be able to love the truth
00:01:41.440 | when they've previously not embraced it in faith?
00:01:44.640 | Or would such a one be given to strong delusions like we read about in 2 Thessalonians 2.11?
00:01:50.320 | In fact, what does that phrase even mean?"
00:01:54.880 | So, both Deborah and David are asking about the meaning of God's
00:02:00.960 | sending a "strong delusion"
00:02:05.840 | on people at the end of the age in connection with the man of lawlessness
00:02:10.880 | and the great deception that Satan worked through him just before the Lord's coming.
00:02:16.480 | And David, more specifically, is asking about whether a person in the midst of this kind of deception
00:02:22.960 | can cry out to God with any hope of acceptance that God would enable him
00:02:29.280 | to love the truth when in previous times he's deformed it.
00:02:34.880 | So, let's get the text in front of us. It really is a sobering text,
00:02:39.600 | and in some ways a surprising one in the way it talks about deception and truth and pleasure.
00:02:48.480 | At least I've learned a lot about the nature of saving faith and the nature of deception in this text.
00:02:56.320 | So, here's a few verses. This is verses 9 through 12 of 2 Thessalonians 2.
00:03:01.600 | The coming of the lawless one, that would be the final manifestation of Antichrist
00:03:07.280 | just before the return of Christ. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan
00:03:14.720 | with all power and lying signs and wonders and with all deception of unrighteousness.
00:03:24.560 | Now, that's not yet the strong delusion from God, but rather the deception from the lawless one.
00:03:32.320 | Okay, so we haven't even got yet to God's kicking in with deception.
00:03:37.200 | Here you have the satanic deception for those who are perishing because,
00:03:43.280 | that's important because this is happening before God's strong delusion,
00:03:48.960 | deceived because they did not welcome the love of the truth in order to be saved.
00:03:55.520 | Therefore, and that's crucial, therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe
00:04:06.000 | what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
00:04:13.920 | Now, let's see if we can put some of these pieces together.
00:04:18.240 | It's true that there are passages in the Bible that ascribe to God the right and the power
00:04:29.200 | to decide from eternity who will believe and who will not.
00:04:36.240 | But this is not one of those passages.
00:04:39.600 | This passage only traces unbelief back to the resistance of the human heart to welcome a love for the truth.
00:04:49.920 | Now, that's a strange phrase, "welcome a love for the truth," but it's a literal translation.
00:04:55.520 | Verse 10 says they are perishing because they did not welcome a love or the love of the truth in order to be saved.
00:05:07.040 | In other words, this is a worse indictment than saying they did not welcome the truth in order to be saved.
00:05:16.160 | They were not just resistant to the truth.
00:05:20.400 | They were resistant to a love for the truth.
00:05:25.680 | This is a love issue in the human heart.
00:05:28.400 | They didn't want truth in their head.
00:05:29.760 | They didn't want love for truth in their heart.
00:05:32.000 | They were totally resistant.
00:05:34.960 | It reminds us of Ephesians 4, 18, where Paul traces unbelief down, down, down to the bottom
00:05:43.520 | of the human problem, which is not ignorance, he says, but hardness.
00:05:50.080 | This is what verse 18 of Ephesians 4 says.
00:05:53.360 | They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of
00:06:00.320 | the ignorance that is in them, and then he goes deeper, due to the hardness of heart.
00:06:10.400 | So here in 2 Thessalonians, Paul is describing that hardness as a refusal to welcome a love for the truth.
00:06:21.120 | It's as if love for truth is being offered and the human heart says, "No, no, not only do I not want truth,
00:06:30.080 | I do not want to love the truth.
00:06:32.640 | I don't want truth in my mind.
00:06:34.400 | I don't want love in my heart."
00:06:37.520 | And that condition, that deep resistance to truth, to God, to gospel, to reality, and
00:06:46.720 | to love for truth and love for the gospel and love for God, that resistance is described
00:06:53.840 | as the reason for both Satan's deceiving and God's deluding.
00:07:01.760 | It says Satan, in the form of this lawless one, comes with "deception of unrighteousness
00:07:10.480 | for the perishing," and then it says "because," because they refuse to love the truth.
00:07:16.720 | And verse 11 says God sends a strong delusion because they refuse to love the truth.
00:07:24.160 | So Paul doesn't explain how God does this, that is, how he sends this delusion.
00:07:30.960 | It may well be that God does it by means of removing all the barriers to that satanic deception.
00:07:40.160 | There are many places in the Bible where God governs the acts of unrighteous men and demons
00:07:49.440 | in order to achieve his righteous purposes.
00:07:54.240 | So this is not unusual.
00:07:56.560 | It's as if God would say, "Okay, if you want to love falsehood and love unrighteousness
00:08:06.000 | instead of loving the truth, I'll see to it that your delusion is overpowering."
00:08:13.280 | In other words, God gives them up to their own mind, just like Paul says in Romans 1:28.
00:08:20.160 | He says, "Since they did not approve of having God in their knowledge," that's so close to
00:08:27.520 | what 2 Thessalonians is saying.
00:08:29.440 | They refuse to love for the truth.
00:08:30.880 | They don't want God in their knowledge.
00:08:32.080 | They don't want to love God.
00:08:33.760 | Therefore, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
00:08:39.840 | That would be a great delusion.
00:08:41.840 | So their deception comes not only as their crime, but also as their punishment for the
00:08:50.480 | crime.
00:08:51.840 | I said a minute ago that this text is surprising to me in the way it talks about deception
00:08:58.080 | and truth and pleasure.
00:09:01.520 | Looking at this idea of pleasure helps get at David's question, his other question that
00:09:08.160 | we haven't touched on yet, about whether we can pray to God to deliver us from deception
00:09:14.800 | and delusion when up till now we haven't welcomed the love of the truth.
00:09:20.240 | We've been resistant to it.
00:09:22.000 | Are we hopeless?
00:09:22.880 | What's surprising is the way pleasure figures into this text.
00:09:29.920 | Verse 12 says that the reason people are condemned is because they "did not believe the truth,
00:09:38.400 | but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness."
00:09:44.160 | What an interesting contrast.
00:09:45.840 | Believing versus pleasure.
00:09:48.240 | Hmm.
00:09:48.740 | These are full of implications.
00:09:51.040 | Back in verse 10, their deception is called "deception of unrighteousness."
00:09:59.280 | So I put it together like this.
00:10:00.960 | Their unwillingness to welcome a love for the truth was owing to their love for, that
00:10:08.800 | is, their pleasure in unrighteousness.
00:10:11.840 | I love it.
00:10:13.200 | I love it.
00:10:14.480 | I find pleasure in it.
00:10:16.400 | This was their most basic condition, deep, deep heart love, heart delight, heart pleasure
00:10:24.400 | in unrighteousness.
00:10:26.880 | And since the truth stands over against unrighteousness, that more basic love for unrighteousness prevented
00:10:35.600 | them from loving the truth.
00:10:37.360 | So at the root of our human condition is a strong pleasure in sin, strong preference,
00:10:46.080 | gladness, delight.
00:10:48.320 | Oh, how delectable is selfishness and self-exaltation and pride.
00:10:55.440 | Sin feels good at the depth of our being, and that pleasure in unrighteousness prevents
00:11:02.960 | a welcome of a love for the truth and surprisingly prevents belief in the truth, as he says in
00:11:13.600 | verse 12.
00:11:14.640 | So here's David's question.
00:11:16.000 | Can a person pray in that condition?
00:11:18.080 | Can a person pray for deliverance from deceptive bondage to pleasure in unrighteousness, which
00:11:25.280 | prevents love for the truth and belief in the truth?
00:11:27.680 | And my answer is yes.
00:11:31.040 | In fact, the bondage is so great that God is the only one who can cause a reversal of
00:11:41.600 | this dreadful bondage.
00:11:43.120 | That's what has to happen.
00:11:45.040 | And so that's how we ought to cry out in desperation for God to act in our lives and in the lives
00:11:52.720 | of those we love who are blind to this.
00:11:55.440 | Remember, in the book of Lamentations, oh my goodness, this is encouraging.
00:12:01.360 | Lamentations, the most horrible book in the Bible in one sense because of the descriptions
00:12:06.160 | of the devastation of the apple of God's eye, Jerusalem.
00:12:11.200 | It says in chapter 4 verse 11, "The Lord has afflicted Jerusalem for the multitude of her
00:12:18.000 | transgression."
00:12:18.560 | So you would think this is hopeless.
00:12:21.360 | She's under judgment.
00:12:22.480 | But here's how the book ends.
00:12:25.280 | The book ends.
00:12:26.080 | Lamentations 5, 21, "Cause us to return, O Lord, that we may return."
00:12:34.640 | What a prayer.
00:12:36.160 | What a prayer.
00:12:37.840 | That's the same way people pray in Jeremiah 31, 18, "Cause me to return and I will return."
00:12:44.160 | Same thing in Psalm 80 verse 3, "Cause us to return, O God."
00:12:49.680 | Ultimately, I don't think it matters whether Satan is deceiving or God is deluding.
00:12:54.640 | It's not hopeless to cry out, "Oh God, I cannot change my heart.
00:12:59.920 | It's hard.
00:13:00.720 | It's lifeless.
00:13:02.880 | It's cold.
00:13:03.520 | And it takes pleasure in unrighteousness.
00:13:06.480 | Oh God, do anything.
00:13:08.240 | Do whatever you have to do to take out my heart of stone.
00:13:13.840 | Cause my heart to find pleasure in your truth, your gospel, yourself.
00:13:19.040 | If you don't do it, O God, I am undone."
00:13:22.480 | I don't think that's a hopeless prayer.
00:13:24.640 | Yeah, not a hopeless prayer at all.
00:13:26.720 | Thank you, Pastor John and Deborah and David.
00:13:28.800 | Thank you for the excellent Bible questions.
00:13:31.200 | We love to get Bible questions, even hard ones.
00:13:33.360 | Send those to us.
00:13:34.240 | You can ask the hardest Bible questions you have or search our growing archive to see
00:13:38.720 | if we've already addressed it.
00:13:40.080 | Or you can subscribe to the podcast and listen along in real time.
00:13:43.360 | Do all of that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:13:48.640 | Well, what's the key to knowing and doing the will of God in our lives?
00:13:53.040 | That's always a great question.
00:13:54.240 | It's always a question that we get in the inbox.
00:13:55.920 | It's always relevant.
00:13:56.800 | And so we're going to address it again when we return on Monday.
00:14:00.880 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:14:01.840 | We'll see you back here in a few days.
00:14:03.520 | Thank you for listening and have a wonderful weekend.
00:14:06.960 | We'll see you soon.
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00:14:09.620 | [END]