If you were to do some research
in the Bible and just pick out the passages
of scripture that are what we might call an expose of false
preachers and false gospels and false doctrine, you'd be amazed
at how much of the Bible is devoted to that subject. Now here in
the book of Jude, this whole book, even though it's a short
book, is devoted to that subject. This is the reason Jude wrote,
by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this little letter. He had said
in verse 3 that he was encouraging, exhorting, as the scripture might
say, for believers to contend for the faith which was once
delivered unto the saints. And that contending for the faith
means to stand firm and immovable, as the Bible says, stand fast
against all opposition, whether it be in action or in word or
whatever. You remember the Apostle Paul
said something of the same thing in Galatians chapter 5 when he
was exposing false preachers false Christians who had crept
into the church and brought in false doctrine and legalism. And he told them, stand fast
or firm in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and don't
be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. The church is always
under attack. And it's under attack from two
fronts. First, from without. You mainly
see that, a lot of that in the Old Testament. The church being
attacked outside from, you know, Satan with his forces in the
world. We see that today. The philosophy
of today. The religion of today, I mentioned
last time, the pluralism, the relativism, the humanism. You've probably heard of all
those isms. I'm not going to go in to define all of them.
But humanism is the big thing today. Everything revolves around
man. Man is inherently good and he
can save himself by just picking himself up by his bootstraps
and making the right decisions. That's humanism. That's crept
into the visible church, and that's another thing we need
to understand. When we talk about the church in the Bible, the
word church means called out ones. It's the Greek word ekklesia,
ekk meaning out, called out ones. Those who have been called out
of the world into the kingdom of Christ. And of course we know
that's by the Holy Spirit. Who is that? That's the elect
of God. That's the redeemed, those who are justified in His
righteousness alone and who are born again by the Spirit under
the preaching of the gospel. And sometimes in the church,
the word church is talking generally about all the true believers,
all the elect of God. Paul mentioned that in Acts chapter
20 when he was talking to the elders at Ephesus and he talked
about the church, the church of God which Christ redeemed
with his blood. That's the true church. But also
there are false churches. The Bible speaks in the last
days there's a great falling away to the point that that which
is commonly in the world known as Christian is not Christian
at all, but it's just Christian in name only. You see that in
Revelation, the seven churches. One of the churches, Sardis.
The church at Sardis, remember he said, you have a name that
you live, but you're dead. In other words, you say you're
alive in Christ, but you're a dead church. You don't preach the
truth. You preach a false gospel. So
whenever you talk about the church as we view it here, you've got
to talk about true churches, false churches. Some people,
the old writers used to talk about the visible church and
the invisible church. The visible church would be you're
riding down the road and you see a building over there and
it says Church of Christ or something like that, but it's a false church.
You can see it with your eyes. But there's no truth there. The
invisible church would be made up of all true believers, where
the gospel is preached and believed. Well, the church here on earth,
up to the second coming of Christ, will continually be plagued from
the outside. But here's the key, and this
is what Jude is talking about. This is what Paul talked about
in Galatians and 2 Corinthians. The church will be attacked from
within. And listen to what he says here,
verse four. There are certain men crept in
unawares. Now the issue, you've heard the
word stealth, flying under the radar? That's what this is. They crept in unnoticed in the
church. And he says, and what it is,
they don't walk in wearing signs on their chest saying, beware
of me, I'm a false preacher. They come in the name of Christ.
Now look over at 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Now, this was an
amazing thing to the early church. You mean to tell me that a person
can claim to believe in Christ and not believe in Him? Turn to 2 Corinthians 11. Claim
to believe the true gospel, but really preach a false... You
mean that could happen? That was amazing to the early church. But it ought not be amazing to
us today. And the reason is, is because
we have the testimony of God that not only did it happen then,
it's happening now. And the Bible teaches that as
we come closer and nearer to the second coming of Christ,
it's going to get worse. That's the main sign. You know,
when we talk about signs, look for the signs of His coming.
Do you know the main sign of His coming spoken of in the Scripture? Is this very thing, the falling away, the apostasy
of the true church, not believers losing their salvation now, but
we're talking about the visible church going away from the truth,
getting away from the gospel, people being deceived under the
name and the guise of Christianity. Now that's the main sign of Christ's
second coming. He said it in Matthew 24, he
said it in 2 Corinthians 11, and look here in verse 13 of
2 Corinthians 11. For such are false apostles,
this is what false apostles are like, deceitful, you see, deceptive
workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
Now, what that means is this, that verb form, transforming
themselves, means a temporary change. And you know what he
means by that? There are times that they can
say the right things, but they won't stay there. They won't
be consistent with it. They'll say other things that
contradict the right things that they say. It's like a preacher
getting up and saying, now salvation is by grace and not by works. That's a right thing, isn't it?
You gotta be baptized. That's transformers. We're not
talking about the kid's toys now. They're transformers. And look at what he says in verse
13. Transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And verse
14, and no marvel. Don't be amazed by this. That's
what he's saying. For Satan himself is transformed
into an angel of light. Do you remember, just think about
it this way. Think about Satan standing before
the Lord of Glory, tempting him on the Mount of Temptation, and
you remember one of the things that Satan did? He quoted scripture. Now think about that. There's
a fellow up in Michigan, a false preacher, who they call him the
walking Bible. He must have a memory like a
steel trap. He can quote scripture, but he
preaches a false gospel. Now does that amaze you? It shouldn't. For such are false apostles.
Satan himself, look at verse 15, therefore it is no great
thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers
of righteousness. I heard a man say on this verse
here, he said that the only way they can be ministers of righteousness
is they preach man's righteousness. That's not true. They can, at
times, preach Christ's righteousness. Now how do you know that's talking?
Because they have to transform to do it. Man doesn't have to
transform to preach man's righteousness. That's just natural to him. But he says, whose end shall
be according to their works. And then he says, basically,
let no man deceive you. We'll look back at our text.
Now in Jude, this is what Jude's talking about. False preachers. Christ, in the Sermon on the
Mount, remember the famous passage in Matthew 7, beware of false
prophets that come to you, how? In sheep's clothing. Disguised
as wolves in sheep's clothing. That's what they're talking about.
So look back at Jude 4, for there are certain men crept in unawares. They came in stealthily. They
came in quietly, claiming to believe what you believe and
love what you love. And he says, who were before
of old ordained to this condemnation. Now I know that's tough for some
people to swallow here. But you know what that says?
It says exactly what it says. They didn't take God by surprise.
This is ordained of God. God is not the author of their
error and their sin and their compromise. And yet He overrules
it to the purpose of the glory of His grace. The Bible says
there must needs be heresies in the church. Why? Because God
uses them to expose the false and reveal the truth. You say,
well that sounds mighty mean of God. Well, you can look at
it any way you want to. But our God is wise and good
and He does things according to His wisdom and His goodness
and His glory and His justice. These were vessels of wrath fitted
to destruction according to Romans chapter 9. There's no other way
to put it. And he says here, look, he says,
ungodly men. What is an ungodly person? Now,
there's only two types of people on earth, right? Sinners lost
in their sins and sinners saved by grace. A sinner saved by grace
is a godly person. A sinner lost in their sins is
an ungodly person. What's an ungodly person in the
Bible? It's an unbeliever. An unregenerate
person. Whether they're religious or
else. The most religious, the most
sincere, the most dedicated, the most moral, the most charitable,
the most likable unbeliever in God's sight now is ungodly. And then, as you all heard last
week, what kind of person does God justify? He justifies the
ungodly. And that means he declares them
not guilty. He declares them righteous through
Christ. The imputed righteousness of
Christ, as it's said there. So these are ungodly men. Now
they may appear righteous unto men. They may appear religious
and moral and dedicated. They may be the kindest people
that you've ever met, what the world calls good, but in God's
sight, they're ungodly men, and what is their ungodliness consist
of? Look at verse four. Turning the
grace of our God into lasciviousness. You see that word lasciviousness?
The word lascivious means sensual. Sensuality. and denying the only
Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. They claim to love God. They
claim to worship God. They claim to believe God. They
claim to love Christ. But in reality, because of their
turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, they deny God. And it's not easily exposed sometimes. Sometimes it is. You can look at some false prophets
that have appeared in our day, like Jim Jones. Everybody knows
about Jim Jones. And David Koresh, who claimed
to be the Messiah. Now they fool some people, don't
get me wrong, but they don't fool a lot of people. You know,
we've even got a phrase in our day that caught on with Jim Jones,
you know, say, you know, if you go in and you get hoodwinked
by some false politician or some false religionist, they'll say
you drunk the Kool-Aid. So they don't fool a lot of people. But there are degrees of false
prophets. Christ said in Matthew 24 that
some of them would be so close to the truth that if it were
possible, they could deceive the very elect. Thank God it's
not possible. Because the elect of God are
going to... At some time in your life, if you're chosen of God
before the foundation of the world and justified in Christ,
you're going to be born again by the Spirit. You're going to
be brought to the truth. you're gonna be submitted to Christ's
righteousness, Christ and his righteousness. But now this word
lasciviousness is an interesting word. When you think of lascivious,
lasciviousness, when you think of sensuality, what do you think
of? Most people think of immorality,
don't they? And so they would look at the
passage like this. Now here's something about scriptural
interpretation. that goes back to probably the
most important rule of interpreting scripture. Well, the most important
rule, obviously, is the scripture is about Christ and the gospel. But the rule of context means
everything. All right? Now he mentions lasciviousness. Over in verse seven, he even
talks about Sodom and Gomorrah. says these false preachers are
no better off than Sodom and Gomorrah. When you think of Sodom
and Gomorrah, what do you think of? You think of homosexuality,
you think of fornication, you think of all kinds of immoral
behavior that's common in the world. Is that what Judah said? Now, here's what you've got to
understand about scriptural interpretation. First of all, no, that's not
what Jude is talking about. That's not what he's aiming at.
First of all, consider this in the context. These false preachers
who claim to be Christian crept in unawares. Now you think about a false preacher
walking into a congregation and saying to people, now, you know,
we're covered by the grace of God and it doesn't matter how
we live, let's all go get drunk, let's all go out and take drugs,
let's all go out and rob banks. Would that fool anybody? Is that
stealth? No. Most people who claim to
be Christian, if not all, would readily say, get out of our church,
we don't want you here. You're not preaching the truth,
you're denying grace. Any preacher who excuses sin
under the umbrella of God's grace is a false preacher. Obviously,
that's not stealth, that's not deceptive. Now, granted, you
know, we talk about, you can look today's church, you know,
where they're condoning homosexuality, you can see that, and that kind
of crept into the worldly church, to the false church, but that's
not what Jude's talking about here. The kind of sensuality
and lasciviousness that Jude is talking about is the false
gospels of the world, as indicated by three men that he mentions
later on. We won't get to them today. He
mentions Cain. What did Cain do? Did he try
to have an orgy in front of God and say, no? He brought his works,
religious works, as forming some part of the ground of salvation,
as making him righteous before God. Do you know that's lasciviousness? Do you know that's sensuality?
It's judging according to the flesh. Do you know that those
who claim to believe in Christ, but at some point in their plan
of salvation, make salvation conditioned on sinners, to some
degree, in some way, at some stage, they're denying the grace
of God and the Lord Jesus Christ? Works righteousness. That's what
Jude's talking about. How do I know that? Because he
says they've gone the way of Cain. And then he mentions a
false prophet named Balaam. What did Balaam do? You can read
about him in the book of Numbers. We're going to go into this when
I get to that over there. We'll go in and I'll have some
scripture references. Incidentally, there is a typo on your lesson
there in the last sentence of the First paragraph, it says
that we're to examine ourselves not to be exposed as false professors
and S, and I don't know what the S stands for. Walter pointed
it out to me. I have to go look at my original
lesson to do this. So just put a mark there and
I'll clear that up, all right? But anyway, getting back to it,
the way of Balaam. What did Balaam do? He was a
compromiser. A compromiser. He sought to get
the people of Israel to compromise. in order to gain favor with the
king. So it's a spirit of compromise, that's lasciviousness, that's
denying the grace of God. And then he mentions Korah. Who
was Korah? He was the one who rebelled against
the leadership of Moses, who wanted a faction for himself,
and denied the word of God. So there's the spirit of division,
the spirit of rebellion against the word of God. Now that's what
Jude is talking about here. Now go back to verse five now.
He says, I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you
once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people
out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed
not. What's his point there? Well, now here's a church that
Jude is writing to, and this is a general epistle, it says,
because it's written to the true churches all through the ages. Right now, you're sitting under
the preaching of the true gospel, the Word of God. That is an awesome
privilege. Now, don't get me wrong. It's
not because I'm the one doing it. It's the truth. When Mark
preached it last week, that was an awesome privilege today. Listen,
I'm telling you, the true gospel is scarce today. There's a lot
of religion and a lot of it that comes in the name of Christ.
There's a lot of denominations. But there's not much truth. It's like the guy who said back
in the 50s, he said religion in America, for example, is 3,000
miles wide and one inch deep. And he wasn't talking about just
people being insincere. He's talking about there's no
truth, no gospel. You know, somebody will come
in sometimes as a visitor, and if they want to talk about it,
they'll tell me a lot of times I hear this. He said, you use
terms I've never even heard of. And they're biblical terms. It's because the Bible's not
being preached. It's being talked about. Read a verse, as the old
preacher from Texas said. Longhorn sermons, a point here
and a point there, and a lot of bull in between. That's what
you're hearing. You know, they talked about the
preacher who read a text of scripture and then launched out from it
and never read it again. You know, that's what you have.
There's no gospel. And there's a lot of moral pep
talks. There's a lot of psychology. There's a lot of human love at
the expense of truth. Let's love one another no matter
what we believe. Well, that's anti-gospel. But
you're sitting under the preaching of the truth, that's an awesome
privilege. But what if you sit under the preaching of the truth
and it doesn't end up to your salvation? You know that's possible? That's why the scripture exhorts
us to do three things. And this is part of this contending
for the faith. Number one is to become skillful
in the word of righteousness, that we can know the difference
between good and evil. And secondly, to beware of false
prophets. Test the preachers. Don't swallow,
hook, line, and sinker everything you hear. Check it out with the
scripture, and if it's a preacher of the gospel, he won't mind
that. I know preachers get upset when you test them. But if he's a preacher of the
gospel, I want you to test what I say with the scripture. You
need to know that what I'm telling you is in this book and not just
my opinion. You need to know that. That's
what he said in 1 John 4, test the spirits. Because not everyone
who comes claiming to preach Christ is preaching Christ. And
thirdly, examine yourselves whether you be in the faith through the
word. That's what I implore on our
television program. I implore people all the time
to do that. I would say 98%, if not 100%
of everyone who even watches that program claims to be a Christian. Well, test that claim with the
Bible. And that's why I wrote those
books. They're to guide you through the scriptures to test that. And that's what we do. You know
the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins? In fact, Christ
taught that in Matthew just right after the Matthew 24 passage
where he's talking about his second coming. What was it the
foolish virgins didn't do? They didn't search the scriptures
to see whether they were in the faith according to the power
of the Holy Spirit. That's what it means they had
no light in their lamp, had no oil in their lamps. You know
how you know if you have oil in your lamp and the fire's burning?
Have you been brought to faith in Christ and repentance of dead
works and idolatry? In other words, do you come to
Christ and leave it all else behind? Count it but done that
you may win him and be found in him. You see what I'm saying?
We'll go into that later on too, but. The point he's making in
verse five is that's what happened to the Hebrew children who were
brought out of Egypt. They were so privileged to see
so much power of God in the 10 plagues and in the pillar of
fire at night and the cloud during the day, and the crossing of
the Red Sea, the giving of the law, the manifest. They were
so privileged, but as Hebrews 3 and 4 says, it wasn't mixed
with faith. They heard the gospel, but they
didn't believe it. And Jude is saying, don't you
be like them. Don't you just slip on by. You remember he said in Hebrews
3, he said, don't just drift on by, you know. Oh, I've heard
that a thousand times. I believe that. Let's go on,
you know, that kind of thing. Man, the gospel. I went to 13th
Street Wednesday night and Brother Jim Burr preached one of the
most blessed gospel messages I've ever heard. It was great
and it thrilled my soul. And you know, everything he said
in that message I'd heard before. But it just thrilled my soul.
Tell me the old, old story. Tell it again and again and again.
How many times have you heard people say, well, all he does
is just preach the gospel. Well, put that on my tombstone. All he does is preach Christ's
righteousness. Add that to it. Well, look at verse six. He says,
in the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left
their own habitation, he hath reserved an everlasting change
under darkness unto the judgment of that great day. The non-elect
angels, that's who he's talking about. It's what it's called
in scripture, the non-elect angels. Think about the privilege they
had, and they fell with Lucifer. And so his point is this, when
you're sitting under the preaching of the gospel, apply yourself. Now we know it
takes the Spirit of God to cause us to do that, don't we? It takes
the power of God even to keep us. Not only to save us, but
to keep us. But apply yourselves to understanding. Pray, you know, read the Bible
and study it and listen to these messages prayerfully. God, open
my heart. God, apply it to me. Don't let me be deceived. You
say, this is my life. This is what I love. This is
what I believe. Don't just drift on by. Don't
just be a drifter and let it go. Forget about it. We'll pick up next week. This
is our life. Our life is in Christ. And so,
don't be like the angels that fell. Or don't be like the Hebrew
children that came out of Egypt. In verse 7 he says, Even as Sodom
and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves
over to fornication, and going after strange or foreign flesh,
In Sodom and Gomorrah that does speak of homosexuality, the sinfulness
of it. They're set for an example, suffering
the vengeance of eternal fire. Now his point here is this, don't
think that just because you're trying to be moral or trying
to be good or that you're trying to be religious that that you're
going to get off the hook of God's vengeance, God's wrath,
God's justice. The only way, now listen, the
only way that we're going to avoid the wrath of God is to
be found washed in the blood of Christ and dressed in His
righteousness. That's the only way. And if we're
not found in Christ, we're no better off in God's court of
justice and under God's vengeance than Sodom and Gomorrah. You
hear that? That's an eye-opener, isn't it?
Surely they deserve God's wrath. Well, my friend, without Christ,
I'm telling you, without standing before God in the righteousness
of Christ, freely imputed and received by faith, we're no better
off than Sodom and Gomorrah. You say, well, they were fornicators.
Well, if you don't have Christ, you're a spiritual fornicator.
They went after strange flesh. Well, if you're not in Christ,
that's exactly what you're doing because it's foreign to God.
He will not accept it. That's the whole point here,
isn't it? Okay.