Love The Truth

Love the Truth II Thessalonians 2:8-17 What is truth? That was the question Pilate asked Jesus at His trial. How would you define truth? I once heard a definition I really like. Truth is, “Reality from God’s point of view. The title of our study today is, “Love the Truth,” and our text is Second Thessalonians 2:8 to 17. I read about a pastor who starts each confirmation class with a jar full of beans. He asks his students to guess how many beans are in the jar and writes down their estimates. Then, alongside those estimates, he helps them make another list: their favorite songs. When the lists are complete, he tells them the actual number of beans in the jar. The whole class looks over their guesses, to see who was closest to being right. The pastor then turns to the list of favorite songs. He asks, “And which one of these is closest to being right?” Immediately, the students protest that there is no “right answer”; a person’s favorite song is purely a matter of taste. This pastor, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame then asks his students, “When you decide what to believe in terms of your faith, is that more like guessing the number of beans, or more like choosing your favorite song?” Always, from old as well as young, he gets the same answer: Choosing one’s faith is more like choosing a favorite song. So, this pastor was asked, “After they say that do you confirm them?” He smiled and said, “First I try to argue them out of it.” I don’t support the pastor’s actions, but that illustration helps us understand where most people are today with respect to truth. Winston Churchill once said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.” That’s our culture with regard to truth. Sadly, it has also infected many of those professing Christianity. According to George Barna’s surveys, only about 20% of those who identify as “born-again” agree that there is such a thing as absolute truth, less than a quarter! So, it’s not surprising that 60% of that same group agree that “Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others all pray to the same God, even though they use different names for that God.” Have you ever been in a setting where the Bible is being studied and this question is asked, “What does this passage mean to you?” Is that a good question? Really, what the passage means to ME may be irrelevant, erroneous, or something worse. The real question is, “What does the passage mean?” You and I won’t be judged on the basis of what we think the text means, but on what it actually means! This is a critical distinction if we want to develop a love for the truth. Second Thessalonians 2:8-17 gives us details of certain end-time events – but that’s not where our focus will be. Our focus will be on learning how to love the truth and how to avoid those things that hinder us from doing that. Because verse 8 speaks of a character who is introduced earlier in the text, I’m taking the liberty to read the entire chapter. So, listen as I read Second Thessalonians 2:1-17. This text reveals RESPONSES to the truth that affect the degree to which we love the truth. The First RESPONSE is, Reject the Truth I won’t spend much time here because I assume most of you are listening because you want to better understand the truth, not reject it. But it’s important for