It is very fitting to sing truth
that affects our heart and our mind and our soul. And what makes the truth of what
we sing even so more powerful is that we know that it is true
because we find these things in God's Word. Church, living a life as a Christian,
living the life of a Christian, living life as a Christian, however
you want to put it, is not about routines and rituals. It's not
about gatherings and fellowships. It's not about ministries and
programs. It's not even, believe it or not, about preaching and
teaching. It's about everything we do as
individuals, whether we work in our yards or whether we read
a book or whether we hunt or fish or sow or sweep, build,
tear down, farm, nothing, sleep, put on socks, fix our hair, is
that all that we do, we do for the glory of God, understanding
that our lives are not our own, but have been purchased by Jesus
Christ. And He has purchased a people
to be His bride, not individuals to be their own. So we gather as the body in our
area of fellowship, in our means through which God has put us
together. We do it for the sake of each
other more than we do for the sake of ourselves. Because as
we grow in our love for Christ and our understanding of the
Gospel, in the relationship that we have with the Word of God,
we become more equipped to better serve our brother and our sister. You might say, well, how am I
supposed to serve my church? Well, the most important thing
you can do to serve your church is to press into the holiness
that God has established in you through Jesus Christ. That first
and foremost, you might be a praying sibling. Knowing that no matter
how much counsel is given, how much discussion is given, how
much, how many actions are given, how many programs are developed,
that the only thing that's going to transform a life is prayer. There is no other way. We cannot
come with worldly wisdom, lest we be like the people Jude are
referring to and we rely upon our dreams. We cannot come to
the table of fellowship and worship and say, well, we know what the
world does. We need to do this. We need to get creative. We need
to change things. We cannot change that which God
has made for God is immutable and that which God creates always
has a sustaining hand upon it. And it never changes in itself.
The only change that is happening in the creation of God is that
when God creates new life and a dead human being, That that
person becomes more like Christ every day. That person grows
to be a lover of God over a lover of the world. That person's affections
change, their strategies change, their vision changes, their goals
and their dreams change. And no longer is a Christian
like the world. No longer do they live for themselves,
but we live for each other, for the sake of our team. And true
love is seen no greater than this, is that a man would lay
down his life for a brother. But friends, there's no firing
line in our world today like the firing line of prayerful
holiness, prayerful submission to the Word of God, prayerful
prayer. How's that word? Well, figure
it out. Prayerful prayer. We need to
be prayerful about our praying. We need to ask God to help us
pray. We need to pray with fervor and
with passion and with meaning. We need to do it because our
goal, our purpose in life is not to say we go to church, but
our our lips should scream. We are the church. And that which
we say with our lips must also be lived with our lives for the
sake of each other. Why is it that so often so many
congregations across this great nation and even more horribly,
we've taken this model overseas? Why is it that so many congregations
live powerlessly Illeffectively. And the answer to that is, let's
get somebody to come in and organize and administrate, you know, administer,
I believe should be non minister. I believe when we begin to put
things in the way of the gospel and in the way of the church
and in the way of what we're supposed to do, we actually are
defying the master who bought us. We are doing that which is sinful
in front of the Lord. We are we are saying that, yeah,
yeah, yeah, we know, but we can't say that as spirit filled, born
again children of the Most High God. We cannot say, yeah, we
know, but. Because that's saying I'm God,
so get out of my face, God. That's a little harsh. That's
what we're saying when we say, but. To God, we are actually
placing ourselves equal to Him. We are saying that our wisdom
is as good as His. We are saying that He doesn't
understand the change of times. We are saying that He doesn't
really understand the culture in which we live. When Paul says
that all things that were made were made through Him. Not only
the things that were seen, but the things that are unseen. Paul
says to the Ephesians, and now to him through whom all humanity
is named. Kings and powers and families
and nations and cultures exist because God in His sovereign
wisdom put them there. And even in that which God has
put in place, because of the sinfulness of man, because of
the fall of our parents, Adam and Eve, All things are subject
to the futility of sin, even the grass and the trees and the
weather. So we come to a letter like Jude,
and this is the ninth sermon in Jude. And I think to myself, where
is the application for the body? Well, if it's nothing but knowing
that in comparison to what you just heard, Jude expresses a
different group among the people of God. Who don't believe that
the church is for others, is for itself in the context of
growing and giving to itself. They don't believe that the word
of God is the sovereign authority over the church. They don't believe
that God is absolutely king. over culture. They don't believe
that human freedom should be stepped upon, so therefore they
create their own way. But they claim to be in Christ,
they claim to be part of the church, even as much as Jude
said, as we saw last week, these are hidden reefs among your love
beasts. They come to the fellowships.
They come to the place where people gather to eat and to love
each other. They come to the gathering of
the body of Christ, who in its holiness strives to love and
to take care of each other and to pray for one another and to
grow deeply in the Word of God so they may have power in each
other's lives. Jude said there are different
people among us. Let's look at God's Word today
in Jude. starting in verse 5 and read
down through verse 16, and then we'll look at verse 16, 17, and
18 and 19. We'll look at those four
verses. Now, I want to remind you, although
you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out
of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of
authority, and I'm making emphasis to bring us back to where we
are, but left their proper dwelling, he is kept in eternal change
under gloomy darkness until the day of judgment. Just as Sodom
and Gomorrah and the sounding cities, which likewise indulge
in sexual immorality and pursued a natural desire, served as an
example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like
manner, these people among the church, I'm going to paraphrase
and see what these people who have snuck in unaware among the
people of God, relying on their dreams, they defile the flesh,
reject authority and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the
Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing
about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous
judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you. But these people,
these people who are among you, all they do is blaspheme all
that they do not understand. And they are destroyed by all
that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe
to them! For they walk to the way of Cain,
And they abandoned themselves for the sake of gain, to Balaam's
error, and they perished in Korah's rebellion. These people are hidden
reefs at your love feast as they feast with you without fear.
They are shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along
by winds. fruitless trees in late autumn,
twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam
of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter
darkness has been reserved forever. Verse fourteen, it was also about
these people that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied,
saying, quote, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousand of his
holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the
ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed
in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly
sinners have spoken against him. End quote. These people are grumblers. malcontents following their own
simple desires. They are loudmouth boasters showing
favoritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved,
the predictions of the apostles of your Lord Jesus. They said
to you in the last time there will be scoffers following their
own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions.
Worldly people devoid of the spirit. We stop there. And if you think about what Jude
is saying, and remember our last eight weeks, we have a picture of historical
unbelievers who were a part of the people of God. We have Israel. We have angels. We have Sodom
and Gomorrah. Those individuals who, though
they were among the people of God, they saw judgment. Eternal
judgment, not just earthly judgment, because they were not believers.
They thought they were believers. Yes, we believe they confessed
with their mouth and they believed in their heart, but it was not
true. But they thought it was. They
put their hope and their faith and their confession and in their
own faith rather than in the one who was faithful. Their hope
was not in that they had been born of God, but that in their
own way they had understood Him more. Then Jude goes to give illustration.
that these people are not listening to the Word of God. They listen
to their own reason. They listen to their dreams.
They hear the words written and read from God's Scripture, and
they think, well, I think that means this to me. Much like some books that I've
just recently seen in a Lifeway store that should be burned in
the parking lot. Circle praying garbage. Garbage! It is wicked, satanic, evil,
unbiblical, and of the devil. We don't do that. We don't get
epiphanies from man's commentary and go, wow, I never thought
about it. You know why you never thought about that? Because God
never taught it to you. We don't look at a fiction book
about Jesus and say, well, now I know more about Jesus. You
don't know anything if it does not come from God's Word alone.
We don't rely on our dreams. These people have defiled the
flesh. They've rejected the authority
of God's Word and said that we know best. As Paul told Timothy
in 2 Timothy, there will come a day when people will not endure
sound teaching. The word teaching is doctrine,
but will gather themselves teachers who will scratch their itching
ears. And Jude is talking about teachers who are gathering themselves
pupils. who will give them glory. Watch. In verse 14, this is a direct
quote from the writing of First Enoch, a non-biblical writing
that Jude, as an apostle of God, just like he took the assumption
of Moses over about the Michael, Archangel Michael contending
with the devil about the body of Moses, Jude, in his apostolic
authority, has decided that these things are necessary and are
divinely written. It doesn't mean they're scripture,
but they are written. And if you don't like that, then
tear Jude out of your Bible, tell 1st and 2nd Corinthians
out of your Bible, tear 1st John out of your Bible, tear the gospel
of John out of your Bible, because Jesus himself quotes from other
texts. Truth is truth if it's true and
if God's word supports it. And God's word supports that
whether or not Enoch is scripture or not, that what Enoch said
in the writing or what was written in that book, he says, behold. The Lord comes with ten thousand
of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and convict all the ungodly
of their deeds of ungodliness that they've committed and harsh
things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him, you see that.
Does that not sound like the judgment of God does not not
sound biblical? Well, it may sound biblical,
but is it biblical? It's biblical because Jude wrote it. And now
it's canonical. It doesn't make Enoch and his
writing such, but it makes that praise such. Now God himself
has planted that writing into his. And this now is the word
of God. God said this, not Jude. God
said, remember when Enoch wrote this? then you better hear My
word, O people of the world. For I have said through the writing
of Enoch, this is what I say." This is harsh. This is hard for
us because we gather. And what's crazy about this,
I try to think, why would you do this? Why would Paul quote
other things? Why would Paul use Stoic and
Gnostic phrases and idioms? Because they worked with the
truth. They worked with the understanding
of what the argument of the apostles are in this circumstance. Jude
is writing so that these Christians can stand up against impurity
amongst them so that they can be prepared to fight the battle
of doctrine so that they can stand for what is true and be
the church that God has called them to be rather than be sucked
in and molded into a worldly pace of infidelity. and perversion. That's why he
wrote it. To protect the church. Why Enoch? Because even in the context of
what these people were doing, they were going outside the Bible
to build their doctrine. And the primary thing that they
were focused on is we can live the way we want to live because
God has saved us by His grace. They were antinomious. That means no law. Don't believe
that God's law has been bearing on the people of God today. Where
is that? Where that comes from is taking
what we call a pretext. There's context and there's pretext. Context is you look at the whole
thing and you understand it. Pretext is I like that word.
Let me pull it out and make it mine. I like that phrase, but
that phrase by itself doesn't hold the meaning without the
words around it. And so what we do in our world
today is that we have pastors who were unbelievers, who were
unregenerate, who for 20, 30, 40, 50 years lead people into
something they call sermonizing, saying they're teaching the Word
of God, but they've never even used the context of the verse.
And they tell people that this is what God has said. And they will stand in judgment,
and everyone who they lead astray will stand with them. And people
go, well, they love him. You want to know who the most
loving people are? Judas Iscariot. Anybody that can get something
from you will love you to the end of the day. You want to know
who the loving people are? You want to meet a Joel Osteen?
I bet you he'd love you all the way to the bank. I bet you he'd
love you. Kind and sweet and favorable, but he's an apostate
because he teaches against the Word of God every word. Why did you bring names up? Because
it's true. Friends, don't go to restaurant
XYZ. They found poison in the food. Oh, I don't want to tell
you what name it is because that's ugly. That's ugly. Don't call names. So if anybody
dies, you know the restaurant I was talking about, we'll preach
your funeral. And here lies Bob. I'm glad I
was kind to him. They didn't tell him the name
of the restaurant. I don't want to be ugly, but he ate there. Where did he
eat? I'm not going to be ugly. Well, there's a big there's a
tornado spot and it's such and such somewhere close. There you
go. And it's near a community. Well, where is it? Well, I don't
want to be ugly. That tornado's got feelings. It may not bother you. Don't
treat a tornado like an enemy. Just go and if you encounter
it, wait. Isn't that silly? Friends, there are more false
teachers in this world than there will ever be true teachers. Always
have been. always will be. John tells us
in his writing that many Antichrists have come. You know what that
means? Many Messiahs have come, we see written in the New Testament.
That means that throughout the prophecies, or throughout the
history, the prophecies of Messiah, of Jesus the Christ, have been
tried to be claimed by numerous people. And that even in the
days of Jesus and the days of the apostles, even Paul said
that there are unregenerate people preaching for filthy lucre. But
they're preaching the truth, so let them preach. But those
who do not preach the truth, he calls by name. He doesn't
follow Matthew 18. Why? Because public sin is not
privately dealt with. Especially when it is a public
preaching of an erroneous lie. When you mess up God's Word,
do you think, how would it work in the days of the Philistines
and the Israelites? And here's little David, and
he goes down there, and he hears this blasphemous giant cursing
God, and there's nobody to be found, and he goes in and says,
what are y'all doing? Well, look at him. You know, what if they
did like we do in the church today? Well, we haven't had a
chance to go talk to Goliath personally. He's blaspheming
God and all, but we owe him the benefit of the doubt that maybe
he just needs somebody to guide him along the path. You know,
I lived my life like that until about three years ago. And you know who suffered for
it? The church suffered for it. When an attempt to help keep
somebody, and it's not a bad thing to want to keep somebody's
reputation, but when somebody stands up and does what is godless
in front of everybody, it has to be dealt with then. Especially
when they're teaching and living and saying that this is the way
God says to live. This is the way God said. This
is what God says about the vision of the church. This is what God
says about how we should do ministry. This is what God says about this
word. I love the idiots and I say that word very clearly, I try
to use it sparingly, but I say that in this day, I what did
I say? I love. It alone. The idiots who stand
there and love to take passages of Scripture and thwart the grace
of God and say, see, look at that. That means this. John 316
is one of those most abused texts. Well, read 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
Read the rest of it. Jesus says this is the judgment.
The light has entered into the world and people love the darkness
rather than the light, because their works were evil and they
do not come to the light, lest their works be exposed. But all
who come to the light do so that it may be clearly seen that their
works have been carried out in God. So God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever is believing
in him will not perish. It's not a possibility. It's
a guarantee will not perish, but will have everlasting life. But whoever is not believing
in Him is condemned already because they are not believing in the
Son of God. You can't take that in context
and preach it any other way, except if you're not a believer,
you're condemned. But if you are a believer, you
have eternal life. Nicodemus says, how do I become
a believer? Jesus taught him way up in the beginning. He says,
you've got to be born of God. He said, You can confess it.
You can do whatever you want to. But unless the Holy Spirit
breathes into you life and creates you new, you must be born again.
And he was confused. He says, How do I do that? Go
back into my mother and come out. And Jesus rebuked him and says,
Are you not the teacher of all Israel and you don't understand
these things? How is it that I'm going to explain to you heavenly
things when you can't even understand simple things like wind? Because you can't see Nicodemus,
because your eyes haven't been reborn. You can't understand
because your mind hasn't been reborn. You can't love me because
your heart hasn't been reborn. You have not been born again.
How will I be born again? Look, as Moses lifted the serpent
into the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And
whoever looks and believes, whoever believes on me will live. Jude is saying that Enoch even
talked about the judgment of the wicked. And Judas is saying that they
committed all sorts of ungodliness and they committed a bunch of
things in ungodly ways and they said all sorts of harsh things
and they spoken against God. Now, let's look at verse 16 through
19. These we very quickly touched
this last week, these are grumblers. These are malcontents. They follow
their own sinful desires. They're loudmouth boasters showing
favoritism to gain advantage. So let's let's look at that for
a minute. Let's look at each one. What does it mean to be
a grumbler? It means they say harsh things. They murmur. Remember in the
old days of Israel when they were in the wilderness? What
does it say? They murmured. They murmured against Moses and
against God. What did they say? Have you brought
us out here to die, God? Here's God, saved them out of
the slavery that he put them in. Don't forget that God put
them in slavery. God used the hand of Pharaoh
to be a rod of correction for Israel. And then God saved them
out of Egypt, not just by letting them walk away through power.
God saved them through power. He sent plague after plague after
plague after plague. And the plagues broke Pharaoh's
will. Be careful. But the grace of
God hardened Pharaoh's heart. When God put plagues, Pharaoh
said, I'm through. I'm sorry. Take them. And when
God gave grace and took away the pressure, he went, I hate
you, God. And God moved them out of Egypt. power. He took them into the
wilderness in power. I mean, a pillar of fire at night,
a pillar of smoke by the day. Is that not enough? I got a fiery
pet tornado that follows me around. Who's going to bother me? Hey,
let's go steal their mules. Maybe not. Hey, let's go over
there and rob those people. What is that? That looks like
a tornado standing next to them. Let's just Let's just leave them
alone. What are we going to eat? You
wake up in the morning. I will give you bread. Let's
keep some. It rots before midday. He parted an ocean so they could
escape death. And they got into the wilderness
and they said, what have you done, Moses? Have you brought
us out here to die? What have you done? Sent spies into the promised land? And out of the twelve spies that
went, what? Ten came back and said, what?
We're not going in there. I'm not going in there. It's
too much. These people are giants. We will
never defeat them. You know what that is? That's
grumbling. Do all things, Paul says, without
grumbling and complaining that you may be seen as, I'm going
to paraphrase, a holy, straight light amongst a crooked generation. And when we grumble, that means
that we have taken what God has done and we've disputed his authority. We're saying, Lord, where I am
right now in my position, like the angels, like the Israelites,
like Sodom and Gomorrah, what you've called us to do in our
creative order is not good enough for us. We want our own way.
What you've called us to do. Here we go. And as the church,
what you've called us to sing, what you've called us to teach
and to learn, how you've called us to live is not what we want.
We want to do it our way. We want to get somebody who's
really smart with really cool ideas to write a book. And we're
going to study that book. We're going to study that plan,
we're going to study that strategy and we're going to implement
it so we can get what they got, which is death. And we call it
life. For as the days of being quiet
while people sweetly go to hell should be over for us. And call
it what you may. If you don't have a heart for
the lost, you might be one of them. If you're okay with people just
doing the cool culture church thing without speaking into their
life, life and hope and peace and glory and power through the
gospel, then you are not loving them. We can't step by while people
malign the name of God and then malign those who walk with Him.
It's not about our personal reputations. They're going to defame them
anyway. It's not about the fact that, oh, they like to call different
groups of people the cult. Well, I'm of the opinion a lot
of churches are cults now. The cults of Satan being disguised
as churches of Jesus Christ. Stacks of money, deep as the
world can imagine. And yet, if they don't pick up
some cash today, nobody in need is getting a dollar. No, that's
the building fund, the 1.3 million. But this family lost their home
and their insurance won't pay off their mortgage and it's $180,000. I'm sorry, we're not doing that.
You wicked, depraved, unregenerate, lost, sinful, crooked, stubborn,
diseased, dead people. Why would you say that? That's
what Stephen said to the religious leaders of his day. And you know
what they did? The Scripture says in Acts 6
on 7, yeah, 7, that they closed up their ears, that they did
this, and they screamed and yelled and made noises like this. We should do that every week.
It says they covered their ears and screamed and ran at Stephen
and threw him out of the city and stoned him. When he preached
their very Old Testament, the whole thing, he preached the
whole, he exposited the whole Old Testament in ten minutes.
And then he says, in you, you stiff-necked, crooked, uncircumcised
heart and ears and mind, you people and the one whom the prophets,
you killed them and the one whom they spoke of, you killed him. Well, you still, you're not making
your point. You said that if they don't give,
And they hoard and all this kind of... See, the point is we've
made a mockery of what the church is about. And I'm not saying
you don't need to have a building fund or whatever you need to
keep your operations going, but that's not more important than
people. Burn the dag-blasted thing down for the sake of souls. You think people are saved by
coming to a program? Never have been. Oh, well, we've got to
make the spiritual. Let's do a little tag at the
end. Bow your head, close your eyes. Did you believe it? Raise
your hand. Hallelujah, they're saved. Let's dunk them and get
them all back to living the life they lived before they came here. You still haven't answered that
question, you know. You said that they're unbelievers because John
says in his first epistle, if you see your brother in need
and you have the world's goods and you close your heart to him,
that the love of God is not in you. And do you know what happens
if the love of God is not in us? We're not His. Because in
that same book, in that same letter, He says that God loved
us first. And if God loves us first, then
we love each other. They're grumblers. They said
harsh things against the Lord. They complained. They resisted. They wanted freedom. They wanted
freedom, and so they disputed the authority of God. This isn't
the way the church ought to be functioning. There shouldn't
be elders that tell us that we're wrong. There shouldn't be church
members that have that same authority. There shouldn't be people living
for a holy, holy, holy lives together for the sake of each
other and evangelizing the world. We should be living for the sake
of our ministry. Not our church, not our people. And some people would think that
I'm just speaking off the top of my head here, but I'm speaking
from experience. I have been the pastor who spent 90 hours
a week to the detriment of the truth, to the detriment of my
home, to the detriment of the lost, doing the things which
made no difference in eternity in the name of ministry. And
by God's grace, the Word of God showed me differently. And so who's right? Us and the way we do things are
God and the way he commands. God's right. People who don't
think God is right, they grumble. They also are malcontent. They're
not content. We're not content. We're malcontent.
That means we want freedom from the law. We are free from the
law, but we're not free to break it. We're free to obey it. We're
free from the judgment of the law for the letter kills, but
the spirit gives life and the spirit gives life so that we
have a free will now to be empowered to obey Christ. Not perfectly,
but purposely. We are able and those who are
not satisfied with that, they're malcontent. God is a killjoy.
God wants to take away our freedoms. What do you mean I can't get
drunk? What do you mean I can't do drugs? What do you mean I can't
watch this movie? What do you mean I can't listen to this music?
What do you mean? Well, friends, when we go to the Bible to try
to find how close to sin we can get, we should probably just
throw it away. Just burn it. Because if our heart is to do
sinful things and see if God will permit it, then we don't
have a heart that loves God. We're malcontent with the place
he's given us in life. It's why so many people would
visit a church like ours and after a couple of weeks, like
this isn't for me. Because I want this and this and this. Well,
if everybody stuck around and went committed, that may come.
But is that that important? When somebody dies, it doesn't
matter what's on the calendar, does it? Man, I had a I bought tickets
to China last week for tomorrow and now I die. I want a refund. You're not going to get it. And
the people that were going with you aren't going to go either
because they're going to have to take the time to bury you. And if it was a good
fun trip, they're not going to be in the mood. But yet we'll
set it all to bury the dead. when there's nothing more we
can do for them? Can we set all the worldly things aside so that
we can save the dead and minister to the live ones? Malcontent. It says they're following
their own sinful desires. You know what that is? Their
will be done, not God's. Their sinful desires. Now, I
know that there's an illusion here or a picture, if you will,
an aroma of some sexual sin that was part of these people's lives.
But there's also just doctrinal error that it's not just sexual,
but it's anything. Let's not sit in here with a
bunch of rules and regulations. Friends, the holiness of God
is not a rule and a regulation. The holiness of God is a boundary
of joy. For us as Christians, we don't
walk around wishing we could do things that displease God,
we walk around finding joy in the safety of God's promises,
joy in the safety of God's provision, joy in the safety of God's perimeter. We find joy in that. We find
joy knowing that everything that God prohibits is for our joy
and everything that God permits is for our joy. And that nothing
is wasted. No matter how hard it is, no
matter how costly it might be, no matter how frustrating, when
we do not submit to the flesh and give in to try to find a
temporary joy, have you ever done that? Have you ever just
gone and just ate yourself to death because you were just in
a bad mood or drank yourself to sleep? Or spent a whole bunch
of money just to feel a little bit better? And what happens? You can't button your pants?
And then you're miserable. You get diabetes and then you're
miserable. Run out of money and then you're
miserable. You get the credit card bill, then you're miserable. And that
new thing that smelled so good, you can't even find it. That
new car that was so sweet is dinged up and scratched. And
then it gave you just about a five seconds worth of joy in the context
of eternity, not even that much. And it's just awful. And then
you go, what am I going to do now? If I just found my joy in
Christ to begin with, I wouldn't have this misery on top of my
head today. Friends, let me tell you what
happens when we leave this world. People fight over our junk. And
if they're nostalgic and sweet, they'll pack it all up for somebody
else to throw out when they die. And I'm surreal. I save everything. It's a disease. Our whole family's
like that. Not my wife. Here's this nice card. She's
like, great, I'll read it. I cherish it. I love you. And
then I'll throw it away. It's in here. You know? Me? I mean, I still got teeth
that fell out when I was two. Isn't that cute? That's nasty. That's gross. Throw them away. My son? To follow that person
you ever lost, you threw it in the toilet, flushed it. Look,
my tooth fell out. Where'd it go? I flushed it.
My, no, not your first tooth. No affection for those dead things.
We need to find our joy. We don't need to follow the desires
of our own will, but we find our joy following the will of
God. We do. We really do, church. But we're
tempted by the enemy. We're tempted by our own flesh
when we think that these things are going to bring us. You ever
done that? You ever played the if I could just game? You know
what that looks like? Well, if I could just get through
this month, if I could just get to next year, if I could just
get on a diet, if I could just get there, if I could just, if
I could just, if I could just, if this would just take place,
when this happens, then I'll be... Friends, don't die young
playing that game. God has put us right this moment
where we are. This is where we live. We don't
live yesterday and we don't live in a minute. We live right now.
Stop it. My 30s went by in six weeks because
I couldn't wait to get there. I thought I'd be taken more seriously. It doesn't matter. If I could
just get to be 30, and I was like, oh, I don't want to see
50 quite yet. Don't let the next six months
go by. You know what I'm saying? Friends of mine who live in other
cities and I haven't seen in about a decade, and I look at
them, what the heck? You got old! Turning 70 this year. My goodness, I thought you were
at least 30. Last time you saw me, I mean,
you know, that's what happens. You just don't live outside of
where God has placed you right now. Are you able to submit to
the will of God now? God's not hidden anything from
you. You don't have to figure out what's going to happen tomorrow.
Well, as God called me to this. What are you supposed to do right
now? Do it. There's never a man that's ever
been called to ministry to preach the Word of God who's not preaching
at the moment he feels called. You don't just say, well, I think
I'm called. Let me go out there and see if
I can find a job in ministry. There's no such thing as a job
in ministry. If God's called us to teach God's Word, then
we teach it. If we can't find anybody to teach it to, then
my gosh, you've got an international audience to start you a blog
and write it. And if you can't write, record it. If God's called
you to teach, teach the Bible. But you know what He has called
you to do? Teach Scripture to each other. As the church, we're
supposed to be teaching truth to each other. The only thing
that's going to help you when you lose a loved one is that
if the body of Christ around you is empowered with His Word
to give you the hope that you need. When you get bad news that you're
sick, Or dying? The only thing that's going to
help you find and maintain your joy is that there's people in
this church and in this church body that love you and know you
and seal up around you God's Word and promises. Nothing else is going to make
a difference. Follow the will of the Lord. These people follow
their own sinful desires. I've already referred to what
Paul told Timothy. There's going to come a day when
people will not endure sound teaching, but they're going to
gather up teachers for their own benefit. But look at the
fourth thing that Jude says about these people. They're loudmouth
boasters. You know what? The translation there is a little
bit stressful. But basically, in a nutshell, it says they use
big words and it's an idiom. It's not meaning that they use
big words or that they're just walking around loudmouth. But
it means that they're boasting against God. This is what is
good. This is what is true. This is what is right. This is
what is good. This is true. It's like a very
prominent pastor in Atlanta who wrote in one of his books on
preaching a few years ago that said exposition, which is what
I'm doing right now, he said is lazy preaching. And the pastors
that exposit the text of Scripture just don't want to work at it. You throw a verse out right now
in a word or theme and I will create you a seven point outline
on the spot and you'll think I had it written down. But if
you tell me to go exposit a specific technique, it'll take me 30 hours. It's not lengthy, but that's
what the world wants you to think. You know what it used to be like
when you come up with a sermon? A sermon on the love of God, you think,
oh, 1 Corinthians 13, that's good. 1 John, that's got it.
John 3, that's good. So we got these little contexts,
these little pretexts. We know where the love of God
is found. And we go in and we find a passage about the love
of God and we just say the love of God is big and the love of
God is bold. The love of God is beautiful
and the love of God builds bridges and it's all alliteration. And
everybody leaves going, oh, the love of God is so good, but they've
never heard the truth of it. And they get home and they feel
pretty good because they got the high, the euphoria of some
kind of self-help, wannabe sermon. And they go home and after a
couple of days when life just sucks it back out of them, they
say, what in the world? How do I find that love? And
the truth is the Bible teaches that you can't because it has
found you. God sent his son to you. God sent His grace to your life. God sent His love to your heart.
God sent His sight to your eyes. God sent His heart to yours.
God put His Spirit in you. That's how you find it. These loudmouth boasters, they
use big words against God. And the purpose of that is what
it says there. They show favoritism to gain advantage. You know what
that's talking about? That they say all the right things
And they talk a big game against the orthodoxy, what we call traditional
things. Now, listen to understand, too,
that exposition and the truth of teaching God's word is not
in presentation. Anybody can rip and snort, be
a good communicator, is the truth of God's word in it. These people show favoritism.
And what they do is they go around and they find people who like
what they're saying. That's how they're showing favoritism.
And they gather them up and they say, OK, here's what we're doing.
You believe what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. And they appoint these
people as their sheep, their shepherds without fear, feeding
themselves. We already saw that, remember?
That's how they feed themselves. They take from the church. They
lure people away from truth and they get a following. They get
a following. And they do it to find the ears
so that people will love them. Oh, you know, I love pastor,
but you know, old brother so-and-so, he taught something in Sunday
school last week. And I'm going to tell you what, he's got something
going on. You know what that does in the
church? It creates faction. That's why
the elders have to have their eyes and ears on everything taught
in the church. Hey, I want to do a book study.
Well, let me read it. Why? Because I want to read it,
and I'll give it to a few other guys in the church to read it,
and then we'll make sure there's nothing in it that's just really
screwy. Curriculum. Books. Sermons. Sermon audio. Not sermon
audio. They'll kick you off of there
if you teach anything incorrectly. If it's not orthodox and pretty
much not Doctrines of Grace or confessional, they just delete
your account. YouTube, you can find anything
you want to hear on YouTube. You can find sects of Christianity
who are homosexual churches. You can find sects of Christianity
and pastors who believe that you can sin as much as you want
after becoming a Christian because God's grace just covers it all.
You don't have to worry about it anymore. Enjoy life. You can find sects
of Christianity on YouTube who believe Jesus was born of a natural
father, and it doesn't make a difference. By the way, one of the main proponents
of that is a guy named Rob Bell. It doesn't matter, he says, if
Jesus had a daddy named Steve. It doesn't matter. Yes, it does,
because if Jesus was born of an earthly father, his death
was just stupid. There are people who believe
that, you know, it doesn't really matter about learning theology
or learning true. Well, you know what theology
is? The study of God. You know what salvation is? Knowing God. Jesus
says that in John 17. This is eternal life. You want
it? This is eternal life, that they
know you, the one true God in the Son, whom you have sent. If you don't know God, you don't
have Him. People like to teach things that
give them pleasure. And I'll tell you what, never
so much more as when I've never so much as since I've been here
in the Bible Belt, which statistically I read an article yesterday that's
saying that the southeast of the United States, Georgia almost
as a whole, has the most rapid decline of spiritually mature
people among all the nation. You get the word order? Rapid
decline of spiritually mature people, people who cannot even
tell you the general idea of redemption. People cannot even
tell you when you say, what are the gospels? What? They're trying to please men
over pleasing God. This is proof they have an unregenerate
heart. They have no fear. They have no judgment. But the
judgment that's coming to them is the judgment that's coming
to all sinners. And that's what Jude is arguing for here. The
sinners of antiquity, sinners of present day, the sinners among
this church right now who are causing strife, who are living
a false life and who are teaching a false truth. They are going
to stand in the judgment of God. And it's not that he leaves them
there. We'll see in the next few weeks that Jude pleads for
the church. Go snatch them out of the fire.
Go try to correct them. Go do whatever it takes to bring
them to repentance. But most importantly, as we see
Paul teaching, we must pray that God will grant it. In verse 17, we see this. But you must remember, beloved,
the predictions, the apostles of our Lord Jesus, they said
to you in the last time that we scoffers following their own
ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions,
worldly people devoid of the spirit. So now what we see here
is Jude was talking about these people who were not born again,
but who were among the leadership of the church and who were placing
themselves in a place where they were getting clout among some
of the people of the church. And I think as we get over into
the end, that Jude may very well be talking more about those people
who have fallen prey to them rather than them themselves,
because of the voice of judgment that we see is coming to these.
Jude understands in a way doctrinally that those who forsake the gospel
and reject the gospel, God seals for destruction. There is no
longer any opportunity for repentance. Hebrews six teaches us that.
And so as we see it, Romans 1 also, as we see this, he says, but
you, there's a contrast there, but you, this isn't you, but
you, remember, remember that which I've told you. Remember,
remember we talked about over there? I want to remind you in
verse 5 about Jesus who saved people out of Egypt and then
destroyed some of those same people because of unbelief. He
says, I want you to remember, and then he uses the term beloved.
He wants them to remember they are, first and foremost, their
beloved. Remember, beloved, that the predictions
of the apostles remember the predictions of the apostles.
But you are the beloved. You're not the apostate. You're
not like these people. You are the beloved of God. You
are the Christians. You are those who have gospel
unity. You are those who have focus
on truth. You are those that worship with a pure heart. You
are those that have glorious power and holiness that presses
in you and presses out of you for the sake of the betterment
of each other. You are the beloved of God. bought
and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. And I want you,
beloved, to remember you're not like them first. But I want you to remember the
predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why I
say all that? Because He wants to remember first that there's
this prediction, there's this prophecy, there's these things
that the apostles taught, like Paul in 2 Timothy 4, that said
there will come a day when people will not endure sound teaching.
John says that many Antichrist, you knew that Antichrist was
coming into the world and many have come and it is here now.
Antichrist are here. That's what these people are. And so we see this stuff. He
says the apostles taught it. The apostles of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He puts more than there to reestablish
in their minds the reality of what the true church has and
what the true church does and how the true church lives. That
Jesus is the master. See, we don't make Jesus our
Lord. He is our Lord at the time of salvation. That's why we're
saved. This idea that we put Jesus on
the throne of our life is garbage. I learned it first when I was
about 11 years old. This four spiritual laws and
this, you can have Jesus and he's outside your life and then
you can be inside Jesus, but you're still the king of your
own life. What you want to do is find a place where you're
just sitting in a chair and Jesus is the king of it all. Friends,
if Jesus isn't the king, he's not your savior. He's not your savior. So we are
who are the beloved. Jesus Christ is our Lord and
those who are his messengers, the apostles, those are the ones
who come in the authority of God through Jesus Christ, who
is God. So remember what the apostles
remember, what God has said about these people, four things quickly,
and then we're through one. They are scoffers. Peter says
that, 2 Peter 3, says there will come scoffers who will scoff
and follow their natural, their own desires, their own natural
instincts. That's what a scoffer does. I'll
do what I want to do. Just sort of sees the truth,
hears the truth, and just whatever. I'm not going there. It doesn't
matter. It's not important. I'm doing what I want to do.
These scoffers are here. These are the ones who are living
among you in your church, eating at your fellowships, and dragging
your people away from the truth. They're scoffers. And scoffers,
by design, secondly, cause division. Do you know what that looks like?
First of all, it causes division in the culture, in the society.
You don't believe that? Look at the history of our church
just in the last two years. We, to some people, are a pariah
because they don't know how to handle it. They don't believe
it. They don't know for sure, but they've heard. O. James Tiffins
and the elders over there at Grace Truth, those people are
believing this. X, Y, Z, A, B, C, whatever. Believing
these things. And they go, oh wow, I don't
know. I've known him my whole life. I've heard him preach.
I'll just stay away. So there's a division. A division in society. And then
it creates divisions in the church. We had a woman one time at a
church that I was on staff with Had a Sunday school class of
about 60 people, 40 to 60 people. And there was some problems in
the church and we had to bring a pastor under discipline to help correct
some things. And we were correcting them and
he got prideful and decided he'd walk out. And then he went around
and started talking to people in the church instead of submitting
to the Word of God and caused division. Well, this woman went
into her Sunday school class and said, The Lord showed me
in a dream last night that the Antichrist, that somebody with
the spirit of the devil, is going to come into our Sunday school
class today to check on us. And the next week, as I was walking
to the pulpit, I decided, let me stick my head in there and
say, hey. And then I was demonic. You know, a third of the class
believed her. The other two thirds were like, this is spooky. So
they're like, you know what they did? Even if they didn't believe
it, they said, you know, so-and-so said that somebody was going
to come in and then Pastor Tiffins came in. What do you think? That was before Facebook and
all that stuff was going on. They'd call up, buddy. Bell South
was on fire. They had put ice on the lines. Hardly any of those people had
ever called to check on anybody or pray with anybody or disciple
anybody or get a Bible study going in their home. But they
caused division in the church. They caused division in this
way. These people that Judah's referring
to caused division because they became elite. Oh, wow. These men, they've got the inside
scoop on some spiritual things. That's how it starts. And if
I just put on some sandals and get me a coffee and get me a
lounge chair and sit up here and start talking some really
cool mojo, we'd have to bust the walls out of this place.
You know, God really wants you to be happy. God's tired of you
trying to fight the fight of faith that's about resting in
the grace. See, those are true statements
to degrees, but they're half-truths. God's interest in your happiness
is bound up in your holiness. If you're not holy, you'll never
be happy. So to be against obedience and look for happiness is just
stupid. These are people who are elitists
and they look at you, look at them all over the world, they
get their own show, they get their own XM radio, they get their own
channel. They got books all over the place.
Big, big churches, elitists. They're also malcontent. They're
not content. That's how they cause division.
They're not content. Hey, guys, aren't y'all sick of this? I
mean, that's how wars are starting. Aren't you tired of being pressed?
Aren't you tired of being pushed? Aren't you tired of all this
religious stuff? Let's break religion and get
into relationship. Oh, yeah. Sounds great. But what does it mean? It's just
it's just rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric. Any freshman in
high school can argue those things. It doesn't take a genius to get
it. It just takes somebody with the idealism to start talking
about what they're thinking, processing it like a blender
and a toilet plunger at the same time. And then they come up with
these cool little ways of expressing themselves and they become elite
and become malcontent. And what this does is it causes
them to be, look at the third thing, worldly. They're worldly. The word we use is secular. Secular of the world, John is
clear that he commands that we as Christians cannot love the
world, he says, do not love the world. First John 2 15. Do not
love the world. Do not love the things of the
world for the things of the world. He lists them are not from God. Whoever loves these does not
love God and is not of God and does not have the love of God
in them. On Tuesday nights, we're going through a little course
on the weight of sin, and we're looking at the relationship with
sin in the life of the Christian, not the world, not the lost,
but the Christian. And this past week, we looked
at some writings of John Owens. He wrote three little Well, not
little, but three books on the issue of sin and putting to death
sin in the life of a Christian. And he came up with a couple
of things for us to think about. And we shared those this past
Tuesday. And one of them is very frustrating because I think all
of us need to be careful to gauge our lives. And it was that we
may not practice or engage in a particular sin. But we'd love
to. And Owen. argues that if that's
the case for us, we are in a very dangerous place and that there
is no peace for us in the end of this life. You see, we're
not worldly. We don't love the things we may
be tempted by, but we hate them. We hate the fact that we're tempted
by the world. We hate it. God, I hate that
that tempts my flesh. I hate that that tempts my heart.
My heart loves you, not this. That means to be worldly means
that we're not from God. Go back to John 3. For that which
is flesh is flesh, that which is of the Spirit is of the Spirit.
You cannot understand spiritual things if you have not been born
by the Spirit. You can't understand heavenly
things if you haven't been born from heaven. These people not only are worldly,
meaning that they're not from God, but they're worldly in their
wisdom. That means they don't respect the wisdom of the scripture.
They don't respect the wisdom of counsel. They don't respect
the wisdom of accountable people amongst the body of Christ. They
don't respect the wisdom of holiness. They respect the world's wisdom.
They find themselves being more philosophers than theologians. They find themselves being more
man centered than Christ centered. They've taken Christ off the
throne of heaven and made him more man and watered down his
divinity. And the outcome of that is the
fourth thing we see in final for today is that they're devoid
of the spirit now. If we're devoid of the Spirit,
church, we have no life in us. Devoid of the Spirit means that
we're not born again. That means we're these people. We are not beloved, but these
people are immoral, unholy, unloving, natural, unregenerate, lost,
evil, wicked. That's what it means. And the church needs to see that
they're among us. The church needs to see, and
they may not be in our fellowship, but they are among the body locally. And I shudder to say that many
of them are standing in pulpits right now. Jesus says you'll know a tree
by its fruit. And though we may see the fruit
of kindness and the fruit of the Spirit of God and gentleness
and long-suffering and patience, that's good. But if someone is
a man of God called to teach and shepherd his flock, the flock
of God, should he not have the fruit of the Spirit in accordance
to the pastorate? Should he not care for his flock?
Not do it under compulsion. Not do it for greed. Not do it
for power. but do it because God's called
him to. And knowing that everything that he feeds the sheep is for
their good, so he would not malnourish them by giving them tidbits of
garbage. Spraying a smell of baked goods
into the air and going, get your fill. For some it may seem self-serving.
Oh, you must have it all right. I don't. I don't. But I'll tell you this,
the call of God is clear. Whether we like it or not, whether
we judge each other or not, we better work on that. But I'll
tell you what, the gall of God is clear. And God loves His church. And God protects His church.
And when God's church, even amongst the remnants, Even if there's
a large, even if there's a small God will hold that remnant, even
if they die, they will not lose their eternal life. But friends,
we see in the writing of the Apocalypse of John. That when
the church stops being a light. God takes the land away. And it is my greatest fear as
a shepherd. is that I would fail to give
the fuel for the lamp of the light of God. How is it given? Plaque on my study wall. For
God who said, Let there be light, has shown in our hearts to give
us the light of the knowledge of the face of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Can you see Christ? through the
Scripture that's taught to you. Can you see that the only hope
for even those people who are malcontent and ungodly is that
God saves them through the work of Jesus? Do you find yourself
in that grace? Do you find yourself in that
hope? Do you find yourself in that body that will grow with
you and love you and give you opportunity that you might sharpen
each other? Let's pray. God, often through Scripture,
we see the doxologies of the apostles, of David, of the psalmists,
of the prophets, where they just cry out in praise to You As we've
sung throughout history in Christendom, praise God from whom all blessings
flow. So, Lord, help us above all things
to praise You for Your holy name. To cry from a new heart and a
new mind as we struggle in this life, holding fast to You, our
Savior. But we thank You. We praise Your
holy name. Lord, as we begin a new year,
help us to be mindful that it's just that day. Today is our day. Today is the day of salvation. Help us to rest in the sovereign
grace of Your kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. that we may
know that our hope alone is in Your hands and that by faith
we believe it is ours in Christ. And we believe and we believe
and we believe. And when we don't believe, You
strengthen us by Your faithfulness that we continue to believe. Lord, help us to learn from these
illustrations in Scripture. Help us to learn from the writing
of Jude that you love your church and that you do not take lightly
those who interfere with the truth of your Word. Let us shudder
in contemplating what it could have been for us. And let us
worship knowing that you've given us hope. as You snatched us out
of darkness and transferred us into the light of Christ. We
love You, Father, because You first loved us. And we pray these
things in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.