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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Second Thessalonians
chapter two, verses 1 to 12.
Now concerning the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ
and are being gathered together to him.
We ask you, brothers,
not to be quickly
shaken in mind or alarm,
either by a spirit or 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 had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Well, hey everybody,
welcome to the weekend service
here at Christ Community Chapel.
So glad you're with us today.
My name is Jimmy Kosi.
I'm one of the pastors here,
and I'm just so excited to be here.
As we continue our series from first
and second Thessalonians,
which we're calling the church
that God calls good.
And I was really excited
when Pastor Zach asked me
if I wanted to preach this weekend
a few weeks back.
And then I read the passage,
and I
began to wonder if it
was possible
that this was some sort of set up
because I was saying,
let me get this straight.
We've got a passage that God,
a man of lawlessness,
a son of destruction,
there's rebellion.
There's all kinds of things going on.
And you'd like me
to preach this passage five days
following a presidential election.
Buckle up.
Let's go.
But actually, there's
some really great things
that we can get from this passage,
and I'm excited to look into it.
Together.
There's a lot going on.
But what we want to talk about
today
is how the church that God calls good
can move to confidence because of Jesus
and Jesus alone.
So how can we as individuals
and as a church live with confidence
because of Jesus? In order to do that?
I have three points.
So if you're a note taker,
this is good to write down.
If not, it'll just give you an idea
of where we're headed today.
My first will be that,
chaos creates confusion.
Chaos creates confusion.
My second will be confusion
demands clarity.
Confusion demands clarity.
And then I'll finish with clarity.
Breeds confidence.
Chaos creates confusion.
Confusion demands clarity.
And then clarity breeds confidence.
Let's start with that first one.
Chaos. Creates confusion.
One of the things that I do as a hobby
is I coach seventh grade football.
Here in Hudson, I've been doing that.
I think I just finished up
my 12 season
coaching seventh grade football.
I will say this if you've ever wondered
if you're intelligent
or if you've ever thought
that you're intelligent,
you should try to convince
12 year old boys
to do
just about anything
in an organized fashion,
and you'll find out quickly
that you're not nearly as smart
as you think you are.
I had a situation
this past season where,
you know, I'm the head coach
and I call the offensive play,
so it was in between quarters.
And so we had the ball,
which meant
I had an opportunity
to connect with my team
to get us all on the same page.
So, you know, we're walking from
one end of the field to the other.
I'm dialing up the perfect play.
We're getting everybody organized,
and then they head out
to start the fourth quarter.
And you know, I'm
kind of walking down the sideline
just looking off, daydreaming
about how I'm going to break it
to my assistant coaches
that I can't be there next week
because, the Browns
are going to see the tape
and they're going to call me up
because of my incredible play call.
And I looked out on the field
and my team was about to snap the ball,
and all four wide receivers
were facing the wrong direction.
And so I needed to call a timeout
because I needed to get them organized.
And actually,
that's one of the things
that I've learned that as a coach,
one of the most important times to call
a timeout
is when the chaos of
what's been going on in
the game has led to confusion
on the part of my team,
and they need to be organized.
We need to recenter
and figure out what we're going to do,
and that's how
we should think of this passage
in Second Thessalonians chapter two.
If you remember last week,
one of the things
that Pastor Zach pointed out
is that not every letter
that's a part of the New Testament
has a second writing
that comes with it.
There's no second Romans
or second Ephesians,
but there is a Second Thessalonians.
And one of the reasons
there's a Second
Thessalonians is
because there were some things
that were happening within the church.
There was chaos going on
within this church
that was leading to confusion
on the part of the people
who were in the church.
And so the apostle Paul,
who wrote
the letter, needed
to pull them back
together, reorganize,
and give them some clarity in regards
to what was going on.
Let me show you.
Let's read
Second Thessalonians
chapter two, verses one and two.
Here's what it says
now concerning the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ
and our being gathered together 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.
So what was happening
at this point in time
was that there were people within
the church
who were
writing letters,
or speaking or spreading information
that was leading people to believe
that the day of the Lord
had already come.
Or another way of saying that is,
the people in this church were trusting
that someday
Jesus would return
and take Christians to go
and be in heaven with him.
But people were starting to say,
hey, you've missed it.
You've missed that day.
He already came. He already returned.
You missed your opportunity
to be with him.
And so you've been,
you know, left behind.
And as you can imagine,
that would have created some chaos
and confusion within the church
because not only would
people have been concerned
for their own destiny,
they also would have been concerned
for the destiny of those around them,
for their friends, for their neighbors.
And so it had gotten to the point
where this was so rampant
that the Apostle Paul felt
it was necessary
to write another letter
to pull them back together, to clarify
and to make sure they understood
that the day of the Lord
had not yet come.
And I think our current situation is in
some ways similar to this.
What I mean by
that is we live in a culture
that I think at times
could be characterized as chaotic.
Even over this past week,
as we went through an election cycle.
There's information
flying in multiple directions,
and sometimes it's hard to tell
what's true,
what's not,
what's accurate, what's not.
You have to wait and see
and see how things play out.
It's chaotic,
but I think that even on a deeper level
than that,
our culture could be described
as confused
when it comes to spiritual things.
What I mean by that is,
if you ask five
different people on the street
what the truth about spiritual reality
is, you might get
five different answers.
If you ask five different people,
what is our purpose?
What is our meaning?
How are we supposed to live?
What's right, what's wrong?
You might get five different answers.
I think it's clear to say
that our culture
has an element
of spiritual confusion to it.
But here's the thing
when it comes to spiritual reality,
this is a high stakes thing
to have confusion about.
It was high stakes
for the Thessalonians.
If they had missed Jesus return,
the consequences of
that would be devastating.
There's a difference
between a little confusion,
which is something like,
I'm on the highway
and I'm not quite sure
which exit to get off at,
and capital C confusion.
I'm confused about what life means.
I'm confused about my purpose.
I'm confused about who is God,
what does he want from me?
What kind of relationship
am I able to have with him?
That's the kind of confusion
that I'm talking about here.
And the thing
is, I'm
not sure
we can afford
to be confused about these things.
I mean, these are questions
that it's easy
to hit the snooze button on
because tomorrow's Monday
and we've got to go back to work.
We got to go back to school.
But the reality is these are questions
that are on a deep level.
We need answers to who is God,
what does he want from us?
What kind of relationship does
he desire?
How do we know him?
Can we know him?
These questions
and this kind of confusion
demands clarity.
Which leads me to my second point,
which is that confusion
demands clarity.
Confusion demands clarity.
Let's keep reading.
In Second Thessalonians
chapter two,
I'm going to read verses
three through seven. It says this
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.
Okay, so when we read this
passage,
it actually seems incredibly unclear.
There's a lot going on there.
There's it talks
about a mystery of lawlessness,
a son of destruction,
a man of lawlessness.
It's like a grab bag
of a pop apocalyptic terminology.
And throughout the years,
people have tried
to understand this passage
in a lot of different ways.
For example, a question
that often arises,
who is the man of lawlessness?
What does that mean?
And that's a concept in
Christian theology
that's referred to as the Antichrist,
a person called the Antichrist.
And then
maybe the next logical question
is, okay,
if there's an Antichrist, who is it?
How would we be able to identify
a person like that?
As I was studying for this message,
I came across a historian
by the name of Robert Fuller,
who wrote a book
in which he chronicled the history
of Christians trying to identify
who might be the Antichrist.
In that book,
he gives a list of people who,
at one point who have thought,
who have been thought to
maybe be the Antichrist.
That includes,
Martin Luther King George the Second
Napoleon, both sides of the Civil War,
Kaiser Wilhelm,
the League of
Nations, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin,
the United Nations, Khrushchev,
the entire Soviet Union, Pope John
Paul, Ayatollah
Khomeini, Yasser Arafat,
Saddam Hussein, Henry Kissinger,
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan.
This is interesting.
Ronald Reagan's full name
is Ronald
Wilson Reagan,
which there are
six letters in each name.
So that's food for thought.
Jim Harbaugh,
step
Stephan Curry
I may have added
a few names to this list
after I read the book.
One point, Emperor Frederick
the Second and Pope Gregory
the Ninth were engaged
in concurrent camp
competing campaigns against each other,
each declaring the other person
to be the Antichrist.
And it's like the ultimate
mic drop insult.
I have
four children under the age of 11,
so I've heard some things
go back and forth.
This is like, hey, you're mean.
Oh yeah, well you're ugly.
Oh yeah, you're the Antichrist.
Saint Augustine is one of the foremost
theologians in the history
of Christianity,
and he wrote a book called City of God.
In that book,
he offers some commentary,
specifically on this passage
in the book of Second
Thessalonians, chapter two.
And what he said,
I thought was really insightful.
Here's what he said.
Saint Augustine said, I frankly confess
I do not know what he means.
And this is really my point.
It can be tempting to look at a passage
like this and think,
what we need to do
is we need to figure out
all the answers.
We need to figure out
all the information
and the answers
that are connected to this passage.
But the reality is,
the Apostle Paul
wrote this passage
to a specific group of people
at a specific point in time,
and we sit
thousands of miles away
and thousands of years later
trying to figure out
what does it have to say
that is of relevance to us.
And so one of the
things that
we need to
that I want to propose to you
is that
the Bible is clear
on things where it needs
to be clear for us,
and that on things
where it is not clear, we can trust
that God has given us what we need,
that God has given us clarity
where we need clarity
and where we don't have clarity.
We can trust him
because the truth is, God
does not give us clarity
in the form of information and answers.
God gives us clarity
in the form of a person,
and that person is Jesus.
And so if we want to know
what the nature
of our relationship
with God is like,
what what kind of relationship does
he desire?
Who who does he want us to be?
How does he care about us?
We need to look at Jesus.
The life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus gives us everything
that we need to know about who God is,
about what he wants from us,
about the type of relationship
that he desires with us.
Let me show you.
I want to
read a passage from
Hebrews chapter one.
I'm going to read verses
one through three.
Here's what it says.
Long ago, at many times
and in many ways, God
spoke to our fathers by the prophets.
But in these last days
he has spoken to us by His Son, whom
he appointed the heir of all things,
through him
whom also he created the world.
Listen to this.
He is the radiance of the glory of God
and the exact imprint of his nature.
And he upholds the universe
by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins,
he sat down at the right hand
of the Majesty on high.
Well, we can draw from that
is that God has spoken to us.
God has spoken to us clearly,
and he's spoken to us fully.
And he's done, done
so through the person
and work of Jesus Christ,
through Jesus life,
death, and resurrection
as described in Scripture,
we see everything we need to know about
who God is,
about what he has for us,
about what it means
to have a relationship
with him,
and about what our eventual destiny is.
And that's so important for us,
for us to understand
that this book is not primarily
an informational document.
It is primarily a relational document
that reveals Jesus to us
and points us to him.
In order for us to see God
and to see what he wants from us.
One of the primary claims
of Christianity
is that you can know God
and that that comes through Jesus.
That's why
Jesus says,
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
He doesn't say, I show you the way.
He doesn't say,
I tell you about the way
he says I am the way.
Which, by the way,
is one of the primary differences
between Christianity
and any other faith system.
It's that God doesn't
hold out a path
or a set of principles
for us to follow, or a set of rules
that if we do it
well enough,
we might earn enough credits
to gain entry to the kingdom of heaven.
That's not how it works.
Instead, Jesus is the way to God.
He does all the obeying
and the crediting and everything
we need to do for us,
and then credits it to us.
The life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus
are what gets us into heaven,
or what gets us into relationship
with God.
And everything
we need to know about God
has been revealed to us through Jesus.
And so it's true that God
has given us clarity where we need it
and where we don't have clarity.
A passage like this one,
we can trust that we don't need it
because he's revealed to us
with clarity
through Jesus in the areas that we do.
And because of that,
because of what Jesus says about us,
we can move forward with confidence.
And that leads me to my third point,
which is that
clarity breeds confidence.
God has spoken
clearly through the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus.
We can move through this life
with confidence,
knowing how things end
because of the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus.
There are two specific things
that I want to tell you about today.
The first is found in the passage
in Second Thessalonians.
Let me read verse eight. It says this.
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.
So the first thing we can know, amidst
all the things
that are going on in this passage,
all the terminology
in the man of lawlessness
and everything
that is not clear,
one thing is absolutely abundantly
crystal clear,
and that is that Jesus wins in the end.
That no matter
what happens in life,
that this there is a day coming
where Jesus will reduce evil to nothing
simply by his appearance
that he will destroy evil
by the word of his mouth.
And that
should give us great confidence
to know
that if we trust in Jesus,
there is a day coming where he wins.
In the end,
where everything
that's evil will be undone,
where everything that is
broken will be restored,
where every injustice will be undone,
where everything will be made right
and restored to the way it ought to be
because of him.
There's a day coming
where Jesus wins in the end.
But the second thing that we can know
is if we trust in Jesus when he wins,
we win his when can be our win.
And we know that
because of who Jesus is
and what he did,
because Jesus came
and he lived perfectly,
he did everything
we were supposed to do.
He won every time on our behalf.
And then when he went to the cross,
he lost so that we could win.
He took our sin.
He took our shame.
He took our brokenness.
He took it on himself.
And in exchange for that,
we get credit for his perfect
righteousness in the eyes of God.
If we trust in him,
his win becomes our win.
And then three days later,
he rose from the dead
to show
that he can make good
on these promises.
And not only can he,
he will make good on these promises
so we can know those two things.
Number one, Jesus wins in the end.
And number two, when he wins,
we win his when can be our win.
And that should allow us
to move forward with great confidence,
knowing that whatever life
throws at us,
whatever sadness we may experience,
whatever difficulty we may encounter,
whatever comes our way,
we can have joyful confidence
as a church and as individuals
because of Jesus.
Just makes me think of
something that happened
early on in my relationship
with my wife, Emily.
Emily and I will have been married
14 years this upcoming December,
but way back when we started
dating was right around
the time
that LeBron James
was playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers
for the first time.
And I'm a huge basketball fan.
I'm a huge Cavaliers fan.
As you know, LeBron was here
and then he left us.
And then he was here another time.
And then he left us again.
And I'm promising you
I have no abandonment issues
in connection with that.
But at this point in time
Emily and I had been dating
for about 4 or 5 weeks.
So this was all new.
Everything was fresh, it was new,
and there was one night
where the Cavaliers were scheduled
to play the Los Angeles
Lakers, who at the time
their star was Kobe Bryant,
who was widely regarded
as the best player in the league.
And LeBron was supposed to be
the second best player in the league.
And so any time
these two teams matched up,
it was must see TV
because it was a huge game,
a lot of fun, two
great players and two great teams
going at it.
So there was a night
where the Cavaliers were scheduled
to play the Lakers.
On that night, Emily's
parents and her family invited me
to come up to her house
and to have dinner with them
and keep in mind,
we had only been dating
for 4 or 5 weeks.
So at this point I even I knew even
I was smart enough to know
that my fledgling relationship
could not survive
being thrown out of the nest
in the form of me telling Emily,
I'm not coming to
your parents house tonight
because I'm going to stay home
and going to watch the Cavaliers game.
So I went, I went to Emily's house.
Things went well.
It was a good night.
You know, we we had dinner.
We were talking, we were chatting.
But over time,
as the evening went along,
I began to get more and more agitated.
And the reason why
there were two things.
The first thing was I realized
Emily's parents don't have cable,
and so
there's nowhere at
this house where I'm
going to be able to watch this game.
And then the second thing is
I began to calculate in my head,
okay, what time do I need to leave
to get to my house in time
for the game to start working backward
from there?
What do I need to say
in this conversation
so that it wraps up in a timely fashion
so that I can get home
so I can see the game.
By the way, guys,
you know,
women really love it
when we are only partially engaged
in a family function
because we are
more concerned
with the outcome of a sporting event.
It works every time.
So we're sitting at dinner, and dinner
kind of wraps up and Emily says,
hey, I need to talk to you.
And she pulls me into the other room
and I kind of shuffle over slowly,
thinking that,
you know, a lot of bad
things could be happening to me
very soon.
So I'm not in a hurry to get there.
And when I get over there,
she doesn't say anything.
She sends me a card.
And I actually still have
the card today,
and I'm going to read it for you.
Here's what it says.
It's dated from December 19th, 2007,
which,
makes me realize
my life is slowly
slipping away from me.
But that's maybe a different message.
It says, Dear Jimmy,
I know this is not Christmas yet,
but I was hoping
you'd be able to take a present early.
I've so enjoyed spending time with you
and getting to know you
these past few weeks.
I wanted to do something
special for you.
Are you free to go to the Cavs
game with me tonight?
Cavs versus Lakers LeBron versus Kobe.
You and me.
Club seats.
What do you say from Emily.
And the Cavs won that game.
And I didn't even take her home.
We went straight to the jewelry store.
Here's the reason I tell you that
if you had told me
at the beginning of that night
that not only would
the Cavaliers win that game,
but I would get to be there.
And and that way
their win would be my win.
It would have completely changed
my perspective
on how that evening played out.
No matter what happened,
I would have had
a totally different mindset.
And what I need you to know
is that because of because of what God
has revealed to us
about Jesus in His Word,
that can be true
for all of us in our life.
That because of the person
and work of Jesus Christ,
we as individuals
and as a church
can move forward with joyful confidence
because we know that
whatever happens in this life,
Jesus wins in the end.
And when he wins, we win.
Let's pray together.
Father in Heaven, thank
you for this morning
and thank you for your word.
And thank you for what
you reveal to us through it,
that it's possible
to have relationship with you
because of what you've accomplished
on our behalf through your son, Jesus.
I pray that that we would trust in him.
I pray that as a church
and as individuals,
we would move forward in confidence,
knowing that your love for us
is secure in Jesus.
Knowing that our hope is secure
in Jesus.
Knowing that there is a day coming
when Jesus wins in the end.
And on that day we can win too.
It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.