When You Don’t Believe the Truth 2 Thes 2:11-12 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO
In a Bible believing church you are going to hear a lot about reading, studying and believing the word of God. You hear this so much that you might become callous to believing the words of God if you are not careful. You can become complacent in your faith because you are around the preaching and teaching of God’s words so much. You can take for granted that you believe them because you know about them.
It is essential that we always believe and live by what God said. You may not realize the bad things follow unbelief. There are things that God and the devil do when people don’t believe the truth. These things will confound you. When you don’t believe the truth:
The devil can blind your mind – 2 Cor 4:3-4 – “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not…”. This is what he has done to lost people who don’t believe God’s words.
God can conceal his truth from you – he just shut the eyes and ears of Israel Matt 13:13-15; Acts 28:23-28. They could see but they couldn’t perceive. They were looking at God manifest in the flesh [Jn 1:1, 14; Jn 12:45; Jn 14:9] and yet couldn’t perceive him. They could see, yet they were blind [Jn 9:39-41]. He made them blind.
God can lie to you through a preacher – Ezek 14:7-11 – he deceives the prophet to whom they come when they have raised up idols in their hearts. In 1 Ki 22:20-23, God sent a lying spirit in the mouth of all of Ahab’s prophets to convince him to go to battle in Ramothgilead.
God can send you strong delusion – 2 Thes 2:11-12 – during the Tribulation, particularly, the Lord sends “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” The trouble starts with them not believing the truth. The Lord will give them something false to believe that will be propagated as true.
When you don’t believe the truth:
You cannot understand what God is doing – Lk 24:25-27 – the disciples, who had spent three and a half years following and ministering with Jesus, didn’t have a clue what had happened to him after his resurrection. They were totally baffled because they didn’t believe the scriptures. If you don’t believe the scriptures, you are clueless to the workings of God.
The reason that many Christians today are so uncertain about the things of God is that they don’t believe and live by what he said.
You will remain lost unless you believe – Heb 3:15-19 – God kept the Jews out of Canaan because of unbelief. He condemns the lost because they won’t believe [Jn 3:18, 36]. That’s why the Holy Spirit reproves the world of unbelief [Jn 16:8-9]. He wants them to believe on Jesus Christ.
Conclusion: to keep from being blind and deluded, you must believe what God said in the Bible. And to keep from being lost, you must believe in Jesus Christ, the word of God.