Amen. Thank you, Church. We take for granted the simple
things like being able to sing when we can't. And it's like, oh, I want to
sing. And then I'll cough if I sing. I have a pastor friend of mine
who, during an illness, lost his voice for a year. And it
was a real test of his fate. I think to myself, wow, that'd
be awful. Some people would think, what
a blessing. He lost his voice for a year. Had to learn sign
language. We're in Jude and it's interesting
talking with a couple of brothers this morning who are preparing
to preach at this very moment and just wishing them well and
praying and asking for prayer. This is the first time in many
years I have not done a four week series on something dealing
with the advent or the incarnation. And but I feel like Jude is just
a pressing thing. I don't know why. But I don't
I don't want to take a break out of a letter like Jude is
just I don't know. It's like having a commercial.
In the middle of a commercial, I guess, because Jude is so small,
I felt Well, if I take time out, we just got started good. We'd
have to just start over. And you might think to yourself,
well, what what good is is not taking time out? Well, let me
say some things and I'm not anti Christmas. But I'm pro Christ. And to be honest, other than
just in our culture, the holiday of Christmas has nothing to do
with Christ. We say that it does because it bears his name, but
In all reality, what what what hurts my soul is to hear my children
come to me and say, Daddy, what I want for Christmas is. I mean, it's OK to say, Daddy,
I want this. It's OK to say, Daddy, for a particular holiday,
I'd like to have something or we practice this tradition of
giving gifts to one another. And this is something that I'd
like for you to consider getting me. I don't think there's anything
inherently wrong and selfish, but I don't think it's inherently
evil or wicked. But what what what troubles me
is that we dare to say that it's about Christ. And I like how
I like how people do it. We spend more time trying to
make the traditions of Christmas fit the gospel than preaching
the gospel. I've seen books written about
it, and I've seen sermons preached about it. And well, you know,
Jesus gave God gave Jesus, so we give gifts. The wise men gave
gifts, so we give gifts. And I'm not down. I think you
should get together with your family if you like exchanging
gifts, if you like having meals, if you like celebrating. And
it's OK to say, and during this season, we're going to celebrate
the birth of Jesus Christ, the advent of God, come to work,
Emmanuel, God with us. That's great, but that's not
that's not the that's not where the it's not where the celebration
started. It was transformed into that.
And so I think that as we look at Jude, what a better time to
look at the judgment of God. I think, wow, this is just really
not holiday. It's just a lot festive. You know, where's your
Christmas trees and where's your little where's your little snowflakes?
Where are the things that are going to make us feel festive?
Well, friends, when I read through this letter and I think about
these words. In verse eight, let's listen
here, verses eight to 16, we're not going to even deal with anything
but verse eight today and then next week we're going to deal
with all the rest of those verses. Yet in like manner, these people
also relying on their dreams to 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 he
said, The Lord rebuke you. But these people 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 walked in the way of
Cain, and have abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's
error, and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs
at your love as they feast with you without fear, 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, wondering scars for
whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It
was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied,
saying, 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. These are grumblers, malcontents
following their own sinful desires. They are loudmouth boasters showing
favoritism to gain it. Look at verse 17, but you must
remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And I believe that there's no
better thing to think of at Christmas than the judgment of God. Because
God created the day of Christmas, if we want to say that's the
day that Jesus was born into the world in order to pour his
eternal judgment on the Christ. Jesus was born not to bring the
temporal earthly, worldly peace and good feelings and good tidings,
but he was he came to bring peace and goodwill toward men and the
grace of God that he would have God's wrath heaped upon him and
fullness. And it changes our perspective.
It really does. And I don't want to play too
the context of our culture. But in verse eight, what we've
learned thus far is we've we've seen. Jude is having to deal
with this rather than really move and share and live life
with these saints, if you will. In the positive, he's having
to deal with the false teachers who have crept in unnoticed the
false teachers who by their lives produce false living. Who are
just like those historically throughout the scripture, though
they may be in the proximity of the presence of God's divine
grace, it is not salvific like we looked at last week, just
as most of the population of Israel, though God saved them
by power out of Egypt, he destroyed them later in the desert. Just
as the angels who were magnificently reflective of God's nature, perfectly
allowed to be in his presence at all times, doing his will,
sending his word and worshiping his glory. They felt it necessary
to look at the reflective nature of their own essence instead
of the perfect source of that essence, who is God and God threw
them out of heaven. And then Sodom and Gomorrah,
who were created in a natural way to live unto the praise of
his glorious grace, to reflect the very goodness of his name.
And yet they sought after their own fleshly desires, even engaging
in homosexuality and sinful, insidiousness and blasphemy.
And God destroyed them. And so as you give these examples
of old, he then in verse eight says yet in like manner, These
people also. And so when we're looking at
this text, we need to make sure that we continue to put the pieces
together. We need to make sure we know what these people are.
He's talking about these who have crept in unnoticed. These
who have blasphemed the truth, who have perverted the grace
of God. These who have rejected authority, denied our master
and Lord Jesus Christ. And Jude wants to remind us and
to remind his readers that these people likewise are doing exactly
what Satan and the angels who rebelled out of heaven, exactly
what Sodom and Gomorrah as a people and exactly what the unbelieving
Jews in the desert did. They're rejecting Christ. They're rejecting the gospel.
As a matter of fact, it goes further to even tell us that
we need to understand that what was done to those in history
will also be done to those presently. That there is no escape from
the judgment of God. And what we'll see here today
in the next few weeks is that those very people who are subject
to this judgment actually deny that it exists and it gives them
a good conscience. I don't care, they say. I don't care. You know,
Romans 1 says that they say, I don't care because they choose
not to. But deep in the heart of their soul, in the core of
their heart, they know they will face judgment. But the more we
say in our own hearts and minds, this is true for me. This is
true for me. This is true for me. It pacifies
our soul. It hardens our conscience in
such a way that that truth will become prevalent in our minds
so that the conviction of God is no longer there. That the
dichotomy of wondering this way or this way, shall I live my
life is no longer present, that we just easy peasy live down
the slopes of life into a normal. Easy. Self-centered life. Maybe even with benevolence on
the side. We fall right into the hand of judgment. Friends,
it is never, ever wrong or bad or evil to look and evaluate
our lives against the law of God. It is never bad that when
we see the law teaching. We recognize the expectation
of our Savior. Who, by his own desire, took
the punishment for breaking that law, and he did not. But at the
same time, we know that following that law, which we cannot do
will not save us, even if we could. But that we must rely
on that one who was predicted to come, Jesus, the holy anointed
one of God. Let's look at verse eight. I
want to really focus on this because it sets the tone for
the next three examples that you give and time permitting. I may dabble into that, but I
want to specifically talk about some of these examples in context
because it really should challenge our view of how Scripture is
used and also should challenge our view on understanding interpretation
of Scripture and the allocation of culture and other things. But for today, I want us to look
at verse eight. Yet, in like manner, these people
also rely on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority,
and blaspheme the glorious ones. Now, look right here. So, Jude
has just given three examples, and then he says, in like manner,
these people also In relying on their dreams, do just as these
that I've shown you have done, which are defiling the flesh,
which is referring to something that he just reminded us of rejecting
authority, which is reminding us of something and blaspheming
the glorious ones. And so let's take that and let's
look at it for a moment. So when we're reading into plain English,
it points to that these people likewise have done this and what's
caused them to do this stuff. Let's first look at what they've
done. I don't want to give away the punchline here, even though you can see
it very clearly in the text. Let's look at it. These people
also defile the flesh. Well, to defile the flesh, most
of us think in terms of harming ourself. Some of us would think
about tattoos or piercings or body paints or makeup. I know some brothers and sisters
who should wear some makeup, but they don't want to. You know,
but oh, I'm defiling my flesh. Well, that's fine. That's that's
good for you. It's like I heard back in the 80s from a Christian
speaker. I'm not necessarily saying that
he was even Christian, but he was God focused in his talk.
He said, well, sometimes people come to me and say, how much
lipstick should a should a sister wear if she really loves God?
He goes, I don't know. It depends on her face. You know,
sometimes there are things that are a little bit more important
to deal with than how much lipstick we should put on, and I'm not
crying out against those who have a conscience against that.
I'm just saying that's not what he's talking about here. He's
not. He's talking about eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts, that
it would be what he's talking about. He's referring in light
manner. These people also defile the flesh in light manner of
what? Like Sodom and Gomorrah. And so what he does in his examples,
he does in reverse order. He also says, here's what these
people have done. They've defiled the flesh. So
he goes back in reverse order of what we just heard. So it's
Sodom and Gomorrah, the angels and then the people of Israel.
And so he's reminding us that these people who have crept in
unnoticed with their false teachings, with their perversion of the
grace of God, they pervert it. You know what a pervert is? A
pervert is someone who's always, always dealing with some sexual
mockery or sexual innuendo or sexual perversion. That's a pervert.
And he's using that word to say that these people are doing that
to the grace of God. They're perverting the grace
of God. Why? Because they're saying that
they now can Ignore the law of God and live the way they want
to live, because grace upon grace upon grace. Now, friends, there
are some people who really do put an emphasis on grace and
there's nothing wrong with that, so don't throw everybody into
the same bucket when you hear it. But when you do hear extra
strong language about the law and extra strong application
about grace, then we need to make sure that people are preaching
the full counsel of the word of God. We don't throw the law
away because we receive grace and grace alone saves, because
Jesus himself, out of his own mouth, said that the world knows
you are mine because you obey me. No, he said love one another,
but didn't he command us to love one another? If you love me,
you'll obey my commands. John says of the burden that
the law of God is not a burden to the church. It's not a burden.
It's a blessing. It builds within me the boundaries
of the beauty of my Savior. And it allows me to see that
which is being perfected in me. It gives me the hope of knowing
how I stand before God, that even when I fail in these things,
that my striving is given to me by the Father through the
power of the Spirit, that that is good news for me, that one
day my life will assume a place that there will be no more need
for repentance when I'm glorified before Him. Hallelujah. Praise God. Have you ever contemplated
what it must be like to have a day, a day, much less an eternity
when you'll never have to worry about sin? You'll never have
to check yourself against the holiness of our Savior. You'll
never have to pray for forgiveness. You'll never have to turn away
in your mind or your heart or with your eyes or hands or feet
or your body. You'll never have to put down
the drink. You'll never have to put down the cigarette. You'll
never have to put down the food. You'll never have to worry about
all of these things that plague our lives. We will be immutably
glorious, divine forever in the presence of our holy God. Hallelujah. But these people defile the flesh
just as Sodom and Gomorrah defiled their flesh. So this teaches
us that there is indeed a sexual aspect of their sin. Let me say
this. This is not saying that everyone
who has sexual sin is defiling their flesh and is an unbeliever.
But I'm saying that these people went a step further to justify
their sexual sin. Does that make sense? Oh, God's
grace abounds. He understands. He'll work. He's still working on me. It
took him just a week, you know, to make the moon and the stars,
the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving the patient
he must be, because he's still working on it. I was saying that
as a child. Yeah, I could sing it, but I'd cough all over you.
I mean, that's true, he's still working on it, for he is faithful
to finish the work that he's completed, Paul says. That there
is a hope in that God is working out salvation in us and working
in grace continually, and he's working in sanctification as
a process, though we are fully sanctified before him as a place,
as a position. But defiling the flesh, sexual
immorality, and it's one of those things where I want to just express
myself a little bit in this regard. that the audience of Jude understood
what he meant by that. They had the context. Oh, yeah,
we know these people and you just tell the truth. But see,
we don't know these people, so we don't really know. And you
didn't feel necessary for us to list out all these things
because Paul has done a very good job of that elsewhere. We
see it in Galatians. We see Peter dealing with some
of this stuff. We see these sins. We know what it looks like. But
let me put it to you this way. Sexual sin is a mockery against
the gospel because the gospel in its core, the picture of man
and wife becoming one flesh, Paul said in Galatians 5, is
the picture of Christ in the church. And so sexuality at its
base is about Jesus. And so to defile that is to defile
the gospel. To defile that is to defile God.
To defile that is to defile Jesus Christ on the cross. And these
people knew it. And what was their sin? It could
have been lust. It could have been lucidiousness.
It could have just been premarital sex or unmarried sex, adultery.
It could have been fornication. Whatever the words we want to
apply to it, we don't know. It could have been what Paul
says, talks about in the Ephesians, crude speech. Could be talking
about it. I would say it's probably all-encompassing
that sex became the pulse of their life. The sexuality, even
if they weren't personally engaged in it, became the pulse of their
life. Everything was referred to it. You couldn't talk about
anything without referring to it sexually. Sound familiar? If you don't know what I'm talking
about, just go to a I'm not going to mention any names of any national
change, but just go to a greasy spoon restaurant. At either early
in the morning on Saturday or late at night on Friday. And
we have all sorts of people from all sorts of the place, driving
around, traveling, doing all sorts of things. And they'll
sit around and they'll talk and you hear what they say. Is that
the engagement that we need to see among the church, is that
the language? The Bible says that the abundance
of the heart speaks out of the mouth. So that which we love,
that which is truly in us, it comes out. We're all apologists
because we make a defense for everything we love the most.
We're evangelists because we share that which is most precious
to us. And so this defiling of the flesh
is a rejection of the normal picture of the gospel. It's a
direct rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These people
defile the flesh just as Sodom and Gomorrah did. They pursued
unnatural desires, served And then they serve as an example
by going undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. So just as Sodom
and Gomorrah served as an example and went to destruction, so like
these people also will defile their flesh, they also will experience
destruction. The second thing we see here,
rejecting of authority. Rejecting of authority when we
when we look at this, we think, OK, they're not obeying the parents
like Paul tells Timothy, they'll come a day. Remember that there's
a time when people will not endure sound teaching, but will gather
for themselves teachers to scratch their itching ears. And these
people will be what disruptive, disobedient, the parents, all
these things, disrespectful, self-centered. Yeah, that's the
rejection of authority, but that's not the authority that was given
in the example, is it? So it's much more than that.
But then it's also so we look at the equivocal issue here,
which is in like manner. What is he talking to? What is
this? The rejection of authority? We'll look back on verse six
and the angels who did not stay within their own position of
authority, but left their proper dwelling. He has kept an eternal
change, eternal change under gloomy darkness into the judgment
of the great day. So we see that there are those angels. Who what? rejected the authority of God,
who rejected the authority that they had been given by God. They
went out of their normal place. They came out of the place in
which they were created to be. They went against that which
God had ordered them. and placed him. And as I said
last week, I think I said this last week for their good and
for their joy and for the fullness of the completeness of all their
satisfaction, all the desires, the satisfaction of all their
desires. When we find ourselves in that place where God has fully
established us to be, we are fully satisfied. We don't we don't talk about
that that much. We just boil it down. I boil
it down to say that our joy is complete. That's the verbiage
of of the apostles, that our joy is full, especially in John.
And, you know, he's I like him. But our joy is complete when
we are where God wants us to be. And it's not some ambiguous
expression of where am I going to go, God? Where am I supposed
to be, God? How am I supposed to obey you, God? It's plain
and simple. Be that which I've created you
to be. Worship me. Love me. Have no other gods before
me. Love your enemies as yourself.
Lay your life down for your wife. And all these things will be
added unto you. Boy, I just did a... That's called a verse jam. Just a whole bunch of verses
together, but they work. This is the reality of what the
gospel does for the church. That it puts us in the place
where we are created to be. To the praise of his glorious
grace, Paul says, in the beloved, we as a people, not individuals. And doing some research this
week and looking at church discipline and reestablishing and not necessarily,
but refreshing my mind on the on the issue of church discipline,
on the issue of church membership and just keeping it in my own
heart. Top of mind. One thing that I've
realized as I read writings, especially in the last 25 years
in journals from maybe even in the 80s, When I read these journals
and I read this stuff and I read the things that come on my desk
today that just got put on my desk Wednesday. of leaders across
the country and they write and they put this stuff and they
ship this stuff out and people read it and it talks about Christianity
and the church and the gospel and there's no doctrine in it
and there's no scripture in it and there's no application in
it and it's just a bunch of frou-frou, mealy-mouthed garbage that I
just can't stand the stomach. Where are the powerful people
of God today? But church membership has been
boiled down to individualism. What am I going to get out of
being a member of the church? What am I going to be able to do when
I become a member of the church? How is it going to affect me?
How am I going to be happy? What can this place give to me? And even with the preaching,
we individualize the preaching as though it was written to a
person. It's not as written to a people.
Don't ever forget that church. Even Timothy and Titus who received
these letters directly. It was for the what? It was for
the betterment of the body. We are not individuals apart
from the whole. And you want to know what real
church life looks like? It looks like when you're up
till 2 in the morning with somebody who wants to die. And you know you've got things
to do, but you don't. When you've got families in crisis
and you have everything laid out the way it needs to be because
it's got to be done and you have to put that on hold so that God's
people can interfere and interject and interact with God's people
for their good. If I'm on the way to do landscaping
in my front yard for a cookout, blow leaves and my head gets
cut off. Do you think my body's going to blow leaves? No. Do you think it cares? Not a
chance. I mean, hey, for most of us, if our pets get hurt,
all signs are off. All plans are gone. Fish belly
up in the bowl. We're canceling Christmas dinner.
I mean, it's over. We're having a fish funeral,
cat funeral, dog funeral, bird burning, whatever it is we do. And I know, I used to laugh at
people who went crazy when they lost their pets. And then the
first time we lost a dog when we moved back here, I cried like
it was, I don't know, my child or something. I'm like, this
is stupid. I hate that dog. Why am I crying? It's aggravating. It's cost me
like $50 million already. He's chewed everything in the
house twice. But we're attached to things.
And it hurts. And the point I'm making is this,
not that we shouldn't cry over dogs and fish, but With that,
when even the smallest things in our life disrupts us, we go
to them, we deal with it and we don't care about the consequences
thereof of what? Why isn't it that way for us
with the body? And you know what's a bigger sin than not having
that or just as big a sin, simple attitude is not having that desire
for the body is actually is actually being in need of that and refusing
it. It's being able to come to church
and somebody goes, how's it going? Oh, it's just terrific. And you
just hear, you know, and hell is on fire behind you. Everything's great. It looks
like you're on fire and I'm just barbecuing. My neighbor's dog
died. We're going to make a celebration
out of it. I mean, you know, just. It's wrong. We need to we need
to be openly honest with people. There's no such thing as extra
grace required sect of a body of Christ. That's all of us.
That's all of us real. The real church collectively
hurts when one piece is hurting. And at the same time, we can
rejoice and weep at the same time. We can rejoice when we're
when we're celebrating one part of the body, while that same
part of the body is weeping over the pain of another. How does
that work? That's just the way the gospel
works. But we're not individuals apart from each other. But that's what's happening in
our culture today. Now, what's that got to do with anything?
Because we've rejected the authority of God. Just as these people
have. They rejected the authority of
God, just like the angels did. They rejected the authority of
God. They wanted nothing to do with
the boundaries that God had placed in their life. When these people
in Jude's day rejected the authority of God, they went to the church
and said, and the church went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, guys,
please. This is going to ruin your life. It's going to ruin
your joy. This is going to grieve the whole body. It's going to
cause cancer in us and among us. Please stop. You know what
they did? They said, that's none of your business. They rejected
the authority of God. They rejected the word of God.
They rejected the authority of God's establishment of his body,
of his word, of his shepherds. How do we reject? How do we reject the authority
of God? Well, I'll tell you how we do it. In just a minute. Let's look at the third thing.
Blaspheme, the glorious ones. Friends, there's a lot of it.
Start in verse nine. It really gets aggravating for
the expositor. It's frustrating because when
I read this stuff, there's nothing she's like blank. Typically,
for someone who who reads the Bible often and teaches the Bible
verse by verse, when you read a reference, even though you've
never might have ever even seen it before or don't remember seeing
it, you really go on and some other things come to mind. You
might even know where they are, but you go, I can find them.
We go to the back. We look at it. There's nothing. When you when you when you look
at verse nine and it says the Archangel Michael contending
with the devil, I'm like, what did that happen? I don't know
where that is. I don't understand. It doesn't it doesn't click with
me or when or when do we see when do we see all this other
stuff? What about Enoch? When did Enoch say this? Verse
14. So next week, we'll look at that.
So it is frustrating. But here here's what we see here,
the glorious ones, just like just like Many people like to
just say, in part, they blaspheme the Lord. But who are the glorious
ones? The glorious ones are referring
to those who are in the presence of God, the divine ones. The
angels. They blaspheme them. Well, I
don't get that. How does that relate to Israel
in the desert? Well, think about it for a minute. They blaspheme, which means that
they reject or make fun of or ill speak or give credit someplace
else. And if we were just to put this
out as the way that's written here and we say the glorious
ones are the angels of heaven, not the ones who are falling. Because they're not glorious
ones, they're falling ones. All throughout scripture, we
don't see anybody referencing the devil and his minions as
glorious. They're falling. So in this. What does this have to do with
blasphemy? What do the angels do? And he's
going to give some examples that we'll look at next week. The
Archangel Michael must have, according to tradition, at least
buried Moses. Because what does the scripture
teach that God buried Moses in the desert? Well, we know God
didn't just Dig a hole. Something had to happen. What
do we see throughout the Old Testament narrative? That angels
do the bidding of God. Angels. I mean, God could just
and Solomon or be gone. But what did he do? He chose
to send two angels to be the destructors, the destroyers. In Egypt, he could have easily
just waved his hand over Egypt and killed everybody, the firstborn. But what did he do? He sent angel
of death to go and do so. The messenger of God are the
glorious ones. And those and those who God whom
God sends are indeed sending that message, which is from God.
So to blaspheme the message of God or the messenger of God is
to blaspheme God directly. You see how that works. Just as this Advent season we
see in Luke 2, where the birth of Jesus Christ and the angels
proclaim to the shepherds, the lowest of lows. I don't even
know how to express it. I used to say something there
and I started hurting people's feelings because I was dogging
their profession. But in that day, it was it was
a very lowly job, very menial, unclean job. Shepherds. And the angels proclaim the goodness
of the gospel to shepherds. So God, therefore, proclaimed
the coming of his son was here. Through angels to blaspheme,
that is to say, we don't we don't believe you anymore. We see the
blessing of the Holy Spirit when Jesus is talking to the multitudes
and the Pharisees, and they say to him, what? He has the spirit
of Beelzebub. He has the spirit of the enemy.
He has the spirit of the devil. And Jesus gives this interesting
little parable, if you will, of how does a strong man come
in and tie himself up? Why would a house divide itself? Why would the devil undo his
own work? It doesn't happen. You can't
come into a man's house and take control over it unless you tie
him up and take him out. You blaspheme the Holy Spirit
when you know full well that the Holy Spirit of God is responsible
for me, and my words, and my actions, and my power, and my
life before you, and He is the one sending the message to you.
It is. How does John say all the time? Jesus says, I come
to proclaim the message of my Father, the words of my Father.
I do the work of my Father. I do the work that He has sent
me to do. I speak the words He speaks.
I see the things He sees. I and the Father are one. John
5, you should go read that. He gets started on that, John
10, he gets ugly with it, and John 12, he lays it right out
there and refers back to Isaiah 6. The reason they can't see
is that God has closed their eyes and sealed their hearts
and hardened their minds. And so you blaspheme the Holy
Spirit when you see what is clearly the spirit of God and you say
that it is the spirit of the enemy. And so the blaspheme,
the glorious ones has actually is actually gives the indication
that they have made the word of God wicked. They have taken the word of God
and they have done away with it in their own minds, or they
have changed it to fit their own fancy, though they say and
not specifically just the word, but the law of God. The law of
God is evil, they say. That's what that means. Man,
I'm glad that I don't know anybody like this. You do. You know,
you know who they are because they're continually asking things
and talking about things. And then what do we do as God's
children? We always go back to our father, our father, because
we don't have the answers. I don't have you. We have to
find it in the Bible. We have to find it in scripture.
We have to find in the context. We have to let our father show
us the truth. So you don't have to be brilliant
to know the truth. You just have to be able to read. And even
then, I think you can get by. And so we go to the Bible and
we say, OK, here's so and so that I don't know, but the Bible
says. The scriptures teach, God says,
well, I just don't know what else what else you think it could
be. But the scripture says that if
you love me, you'll obey my commands. Yeah, but you know, we're saved
by grace. But what else? I like this little tiny word
over here in this verse, in this phrase, in this sentence. And, you know,
and if I put all those together, it gets a creative good argument.
That's not an argument. That's I don't know what that's called.
That's a casserole of leftovers. Just because it cooks up and
can be eaten with a fork doesn't mean that it's true. You know
what I'm saying? What is a casserole when you
got a whole bunch of leftovers? You just throw it all in a bowl,
put some cheese on top of it, bake it, and then you've got,
I don't know, look at there. And then what happens when you let
go of the casserole and you throw it to the dogs? We don't do that with God's Word. And it's not wrong. You say,
well, these people, they're just speaking. They're not speaking.
People are not seeking after God. Do not fall prey to the
idea that that's because people have theological, biblical Christianity
questions that they're seeking after God. They're not. The Bible
is clear. They're not seeking after God.
You know what they're seeking after? Someone to tickle their
itching ears to scratch it. They've got an itch and nobody
else has been able to find the cure for and they want to keep
asking until they find it. Nine out of ten dentists approve
Christ. You know how they do that? I've
said this a million times. They interview 1,000 until they get
nine and throw one of the guys for dissent in there, because
10 out of 10 certainly wouldn't. It's a play on numbers. It's
a play on statistics. Statistics are made up on the
spot about 96% of the time. And 30% of the sources for all
statistical information can't even be found. Go look that one
up. That was one of my demise in
debate when I was younger. Where do you get these statistics
from? They sounded good. I mean, you've got to get an
F in this class if you do that one more time. Okay. Is that
F a 50 or a 60? People aren't seeking after God,
they're seeking after a way to, you know, what do you think,
what do you think the Bible means here? I mean, that's a genuine
question, isn't it? And there are people who are
genuinely not necessarily wanting to grow and wanting to learn,
but that's not what I'm talking about. Friends, you know what
I'm talking about. You know, you've got these conversations
that have been going on for years and years and years and years.
These constant things. Well, I know, but you ever hear
that? Well, I know. And I know what the Bible says,
but Oh, do you know what so-and-so says? I don't care what so-and-so
says. What does God say? Don't quote what I say. Quote
what God says. If what I say can't be backed
up with Scripture in its context, it's wrong. And there's a high
probability of that when I talk too much. The more we talk about what we
think Scripture might be saying instead of pointing to what Scripture's
saying and pointing to in the same passage, The more probability
that we're going to have error. So we know these people, we know
what they look like, they come in unnoticed, they don't hold
to sound doctrine, they don't look and live the same way that
they profess to have looked and lived. They come into the proximity
of the of the believers and then they begin to want to get following. And all of a sudden in their
blaspheming of God, they rejection of God's authority. They reject
God's authority. Through the preaching of the
word, and that's what's happened with Jews, people here, they've
rejected the apostles teaching. They found YouTube videos or
books or pamphlets that they found on top of a urinal at a
truck stop or whatever, and they read it. Wow, this is blowing
my mind. This changed my worldview. The Bible is probably not true,
so we need to we need to think through this a little more. That's
probably not accurate. We need to deal. You know what?
Those people are not filled with the spirit of God, so they will
be thrown and tossed and to and fro like the wave of the sea,
like a leaf in the breeze. No matter how passionate they
were, no matter how solid they might have been when they can
be uprooted by their teeth and thrown against the wall of apostasy,
they most likely are not born again. And I would say for our sakes
and the sake of their souls, we need to not try to give the
benefit of the doubt, but to expressly make judgment and discernment
on that which we see before us, not which we've seen before us. Well, I know you used to believe,
but do you believe now is the question. You say, well, how
is it that these things happen? How is it that people get to
the place you know where they go? They go away from God's Word. They go away from God's Word.
They go to Satanism. Oh, now we're talking about cults.
No, I'm not. I'm just using a cool word that makes people think.
Oh, Satanism. I'm about to watch a crazy movie. You know what Satanism really
is? Self-worship. It's just put that
way. Now, all the philosophers and
world comparative religion majors in the world are going to hear
that. Oh, he's so ignorant. I am and I don't care to even feed
that ignorance. To remove it, I'm just saying
for the sake of doctrine. Those who focus on themselves
are really just Satan worshipers. Let's back up. Verse 8, Yet in
like manner these people also Defile the flesh, reject authority,
blaspheme the glorious ones. See, that's what they do. But
there's a little phrase there that puts them in this position.
What is it? Relying on their dreams. You ever think about that? And
this, what I've just done, could easily serve as an introduction
to a sermon. But these people have defiled
the flesh, rejected authority and blasphemy. They've rejected
the authority of God. They've placed themselves as
the God of their own lives and flesh, engaged in sin and sexual
sin and all sorts of things. They have blasphemed the message
of God and made the law of God evil as seen in perverting the
grace of God. Because they've relied on their
dreams, not the word. Now, we could open a big can
of worms and I intend to do so. There's several things that we
need to think of when we think about relying on dreams. First,
we need to think about the idea of dreams to begin with, we think
about people relying on dreams, we think of mystics, I think
of people who are sort of caught up in visions, revelation, and
that would be true of that. So possibly that that Jude is
referring to those people who have come with this new revelation
that they've slept over. This new revelation that they've
come to understand because of the feeling they had or the vision
they saw or the word that they heard. You hear what I'm saying? And I know you think I'm crazy
when I say this, but just again this week, another person came
up to me whom I had never met and prophesied over me and my
family. And it bothers me and I'm praying about the right kind
way to approach it. But they come up in public in
front of God and everybody. I just want you to know the Lord told
me to tell you. And it's specific things. This one's going to sing
for Jesus by the time she's 12. This one's going to have purple
shoes on Wednesday. I mean, I was thinking going.
I said, our God is a good God. Anything he gives me. That's
what I said to him this week. Anything that I get above his wrath is
a blessing. I mean, you know, I don't know
what to do. But these are people who rely on their dreams. I've
got acquaintances in that now know some people who have a lot
of insight because of their visions and dreams and their understanding
of things, and they go to them now when they're in trouble.
Oh, James. I just talked to so-and-so and
she told me that God is doing this. I said, well, where's that
in Scripture? Have you been reading that which
I gave you? Well, I just don't have time to read. These people
are relying on new revelation. And you might say, well, that's
sort of weird. I never do that. But dreams are not always visions
and dreams and trances. Dreams are sometimes just thoughts.
And as someone who thinks way too much about everything, Let
me explain to you how you keep from falling into relying on
those dreams. You understand that everything
that comes out of that mind of ours. Is subject to the depravity
of our flesh. And 99.837265% of everything
coming out of that is probably wrong. Except when we think on
those things which are in the word. There's no mistaking that
the Scripture tells us that the man of God is successful when
he meditates on the Word of God day and night. There's no mistaking
Paul's instruction to young Timothy, the chief elder over the entire
city of Ephesus, to rightly divide the Word of Truth, being prepared
to preach the Gospel in season and out of season. For the Word
of God is, what does he say, breathed out by God. So when we rely on our dreams,
we rely on our conclusions. on our inferences, on our research,
on our debates, on our own thoughts and things and feelings and all
these things. When we rely on that, we're relying
on our dreams. Where does all this false teaching
come from? From some creative mind. Charismatic people without the
check and the boundaries of the foundation of God's Word holistically
will become cult leaders. And many of them have the name
church at the end of. We give you a contemporary example
of a sound man. Who broke the church of Jesus
Christ? Mark Driscoll. He broke it. Is mixed up in garbage, came
to understand the doctrine of truth. Started a bunch of churches. Baptizing thousands of people.
And then in his own thinking, he set things in motion to govern
his church and his leaders and everything the way he saw fit.
And then the application thereof was extra-biblical. And he failed. And all, all, all of those churches
have been disseminated. All of them. 40,000 people. The minute I step away from God's
Word in truth or application, somebody better say something.
At least, hey brother, where you get that from? Because even
God's people can fail by relying on their feelings, their dreams.
How much do we rely on our dreams? other than our thoughts and our
visions and things by listening to people who do so. By listening
to our traditions. By following the practice over
the principle taught in Scripture, give an example that the principle
of giving. The principle of giving the doctrine
of giving in the New Testament church is this second Corinthians
chapter 9 specifically, no explicitly. Give as God has called you to
give, not a penny more, not a penny less, no compulsion. You can't
be forced. You can't be made. You can't
be covenanted into giving. You can't do anything. As God
has blessed you and given you in abundance, you give as God
has called you. Who do you give to? To your local
church, to the people in your congregation as they have a need.
He says, you see that in Acts, as they had needs, we provide
for them. That's why I don't believe in
a benevolence fund. We'll never have one, because if there's
$300 in a benevolence fund and you need $5,000, you're only
getting $300. It's wrong. But the point is
I'm making on that is that Malachi 3 has nothing to do with the
church. Nothing. Never has, never will, never
going to. It does not have anything to
do with the church. As you have been called of God
to give and to support, Whatever God's called you to support in
your local church, that's what you do. And if you can't give
today or tomorrow, but you can give a year from now, that's
when you give. When God compels you. That's why we don't pass
a plate. And I'm not beating them up. This is conviction I
have based on the expression of Scripture. But why do so many
people do it? You know what under compulsion
means? Is that compelling? Come up here. Come on. Stand up. I'm up. Is
that compelling? Yes, that's the definition of
compelling, encouraging, establishing a motive, a friction to cause
a decision to be made. That's compelling. That's a compulsive
issue. We feel like we've got to do
something. So I'm going to sit here in disobedience or I'm going
to get up and do something. That's just how easy it is to
get off the faithfulness of scripture. We look at our traditions, well,
the Baptist always passed sovereign plates. Well, the Baptists always
preach about money. Jesus spoke about money more
than anything in the Bible. Yeah, but he never talked about giving
it. He talked about the love of it, the greed of it, the corruption
of it. Specifically because the Jews,
the Pharisees and the Sadducees loved it. Just like we'll see
next week. These people loved money. They
loved it. They loved it. Blessing comes
through giving to each other. through the joy that it gives
us and the blessing for those who receive it. We don't give ten to get twenty. And there's a slew, a slew, pretty
much anybody you can turn on the TV and listen to believe
that. You plant a seed, God will give you a harvest. What have
we been told to plant a seed of? The Gospel. No, no apostle in the entire
New Testament said anything like that. Nowhere. Nowhere. Didn't mean to get off on that,
but it's just, it's a prime example. It is one of the prime examples
where tradition is relying on our dreams rather than the truth.
And you know what happens when that happens? You know what happens
to the church when we listen to that kind of stuff? We become,
we become entrapped. We become entrapped. We get,
we get trapped into Having to decide who we're going to follow,
we get trapped into voting as a people of God rather than just
having consensus based on the commands of Scripture. You know, there's an and Pastor Luke
can definitely attest to this as well, is that there are churches
that we've been part party to or in part of whose Constitution
and bylaws trumped the Bible. And whose traditions of two or
three trumped even the Constitution bylaws. Well, I know the Bible
says that, but we're not going to follow that. This is the way
we've always done it, and this is what we're going to do. No,
I'm talking about serious issues. How to deal with sin in the church.
How do you bring a charge against an elder? How do you deal with
a brother who's lost in sin? We don't get to pick that. And
I disagree with these people who think that pastors ought
to succumb to to old time established constitution and bylaws in churches
when they take them or they're called to them. I think the first
thing they need to do is get up and preach out of it. And
like I did at one time in a church in 2001, I took it on stage,
set it on fire and threw it in the trash can. I wasn't there
long. Those people live forever. but they rely on their dreams
instead of the Spirit of God. How do we look at that? How do we look at that? When we hear people Give testimony
of their faith. Give testimony of what God is
doing. Give testimony of what's happening in their church. And
we hear that. We hear that. We see it written
on Facebook or in a letter or a newspaper or on a video. We hear it. Are we able to discern
whether that's truth or error? And when we know that it's true,
but we just don't like it and we just push it back, do we not
realize that that is rejecting the authority of God? But that's
blaspheming God. I have a lot of people tell me
a lot of times I need to just relax. I'm more relaxed now than
I've ever been in my entire life. The season that I'm in, in the
last year or two, has been the most easy in my spirit, when
I say at peace, in my spirit than I've been in a long time.
I can rip it. I can get so uptight that I just And everybody's like, you just
need to relax. You need to have more fun. Probably, but is it really
that important? What's most important? I want
to have joy. And what gives me the most joy is knowing that
there is protection of the church through the Word of God. My children have asked me, what
do you want for Christmas, Dad? And I'll look at them and I'll
say, what do you think I want? And every one of them, except
of course, Abigail, she doesn't, but every one of them has expressed an area of obedience
that I expect that they really fail me. I said, what do you
think I want for Christmas from you? And one of them said, to
clean my room. You got it. The other one is
to go to bed when I'm told another one like. To not yell at my siblings,
I mean, yeah, that's what I want. I want to see I want to see you
love me. By obeying God. See, that's a good gift. I think
that's the gift that all pastors want. That just as Paul said,
as much as you obeyed while I was there, I want to see you obey
when I'm not there. I want to see you thrive as a people when
God kills me. Acts 20. If you haven't read
Acts 20 in a while, just go read Acts 20. Paul stood before those
people for the last time. He said, I do. And when he was
in the latter days of his ministry, he writes to Timothy. And he
tells Timothy, he says, I'm being poured out like a drink offering. And my time has come. I've run
the good race and I've finished it. And there's nothing yet for
me except to receive the crown of glory that I've fought so
desperately for. But I need you, Timothy. And
I need John Mark, whom I didn't want to be with me on my missionary
journeys back through, so he went with Barnabas. I need him
because he's vital to me. And I need you to bring me my
jacket because I'm cold. Dr. Luke is here with me and
he's attending to my illnesses and I am dying. I am done. But the most important thing
is you need to bring the writing that we started and the paper
that we've yet to write on. You ever read that? Go read 2
Timothy. Because I am done, and the only
thing that's going to last when I leave is what I write down.
Because I'm through. The only thing that matters in
this fellowship is that Paul's writing, and John's writing,
and Peter's writing, and James' writing lives in you. That's
all that matters. I don't care about anything.
I do care, but you see what I'm saying? In comparison, nothing
else matters. Because when you're stricken
with cancer and you watch your loved one slip away from you,
the only thing that's going to matter is not how much casserole
you eat. You can think about the next
time you get one, aren't you? Though that's needed and beneficial.
Oh, meals when we're down and it's beautiful ministry, beautiful
ministry. But what's going to hold you
up is the Word of God. Not just as it's been taught,
but as it's treasured together as a people. How do you deal with a friend
who texts you and says, I'm about to tell my wife to leave my home
after 19 years of marriage? And you can't do anything because
you're a thousand miles away. I've repented. I've prayed. You
just need to leave it with God and you need to get in the Word.
And your church needs to come in and step all over you with
the Gospel. and refuse to allow you to forsake
and rely on your dreams and defile your flesh and to reject the
authority and to blaspheme God's law. He commands you to stay,
so stay. You don't love God more than
your wife. You see the things I'm saying.
As a people, that's what we're called to. And Jude is saying
that the judgment of God against those who bring division of error
in his church will be just as the judgment of Satan, the judgment
of unbelieving Israel, and the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. And there's no escape. There's
no escape. can bring you out of the judgment
of God. Except believing on the Son of God. Which brings you
all back to the truth. Let's pray. Lord, it's hard to contemplate
these things and not stumble, if we will, but as you've powerfully
written to us through Jude, Now to You who is able to keep
us from stumbling and to present us blameless before Your presence
with glory and great joy. To You, our only God, and through
Jesus Christ, our only Savior, be glory and dominion and power
and majesty and authority for now and before now and for all
time and forever. It's only you, God, who can keep
us from relying on our dreams. It's only you, God, who can give
us the wisdom to see the error around us. It's only you, God,
who can give us the patience to endure with those who are
stricken in these matters. It's only you, God, who will
turn those dead, twice dead, to life. Lord, let us really celebrate
the birth of our Savior and capitalize on a time when
our world is turned to a Christless Christmas. that the church of
Jesus Christ, that His body would shine magnificently. That we understand that that
precious child was born into this world to suffer the eternal
wrath of your holy justice. And because of that, we are free. Free from the law of God. O happy
condition, that we call you Daddy, that we can sing it as well with
our soul, that we know all that we are and all that we ever hope
to be is bound to the perfection of your promises. We have them
in Jesus. We rest in them in Jesus. And we pray these things in Jesus.
Amen. Amen.