I find it rather odd that we
have that as we do church, we. We have a pattern that we follow.
You know, we come in, we pray, we sing, we pray, we preach,
we pray, we sing, we leave, and that's just what we do or somewhere
in there. Sometimes churches that I've
pastored, we've had plays or sketches or videos or special
music or Either way, it's about songs and preaching and hearing
and pray. It's pretty much it. And when
you think about. The coming together of the saints,
you just think about the motions of of being together as the body
of Christ, it's very easy to do what we do and everything
else in life, isn't it? I mean, we get up in the mornings, we
get dressed, we get prepared, we eat, we go do what we have
to do, whether we work or home or And then we come, we take
time out for food. We make rest stops and pit stops
and everything else throughout the day, and then we come home
and do the same old thing, we go get ready for bed, we go to sleep,
we get up and do it all over again. And when we think about
those things, it just... You ever laid in bed and looked
at the ceiling and went, what am I doing? What's this life
all about? Why are we always doing the same
old thing day in and day out? Is this really what life is about? And for many people, they look
to other things and they try to find other pleasures. And
I believe it's one of the reasons that we in this country, we live
for leisure. When, to be honest, we're just
leisurely going about our day anyway. I mean, even the most
strenuous work, we we're looking for that break, we're looking
for that time where we can just pause so that we can find some,
as we say, deserved opportunity to entertain our minds and our
bodies. No, I'm not talking about residiousness. I'm not talking
about this lavish, sinful lifestyle. I'm just talking about the average.
I want to put my feet up and watch something. I want to take
a break. I need a break. I mean, if we
did a poll this morning, wouldn't every one of us say that, yeah,
I've had that thought today? I mean, you know? Yeah, I've had
that thought today. When am I going to have a time
out? You ever vacationed? It's more like vacating. for
us. Just the work of preparation to leave town is harder than
staying home. And then you come back, you've
got 16,000 pounds of laundry, and bills to pay, and everything's
still there. And you look, and you go, wow,
I left for a week. It took me four out of the five
days just to get where I could relax. Day five, I relaxed. And
day six, I got back in the car, and now I'm back to where I was.
I need a vacation for my vacation. You think, well, what's the point
of all this? The point of all this is that,
friends, This day, the Lord's Day, ought to be a pause for
us. Coming together as God's people
ought to be a pause. It ought to be a time when we
can really rest. It ought to be a time when we
can rest and be fulfilled in our mind and in our bodies and
for us as God's children, the real remedy for that type of
need is to be enveloped and diving into the Word of God. Because
it is the Scripture that gives us life. It is the Scripture
that gives us the hope for tomorrow. It is God's Word alone. It's not the counsel of God's
Word. It's not the fellowship of God's Word. Though these things
add to the joy and the benefit of that, it is God's Word alone. Sola Scriptura. The foundation
of the pillar of the Protestant Reformation. We are losing sight
of that in our culture today. When we think we need something
else more than just to come and to pray and to sing praises and
to hear the preach word. We don't need anything else.
We really we really don't and people think, well, that's that's
too simplistic. Is it simplistic? Is it? Is it really simplistic
to dive into the realities of what Jude says? May mercy, peace
and love be multiplied to you. You can just go. Yeah, I got
that. And just move on. I can't move past that. You can't move past that in the
sense that those who are called The beloved in God the Father
and kept for Jesus Christ. Are you in a place where you
have embraced so fully that you strangled all the juice out of
that reality? Have you come to a place in your
Christian walk that when you think of being kept by the power
of God through Jesus Christ, that you've got it and you're
ready to move on to something else? In no way are my words to be
convicting. but rather refreshing. That at
this moment in time, pretend in some sense, that's why I really
don't like closing a service. And for those of you who especially
come on Tuesday night and we get Q&A or whether we're dealing
with a topic and we get, and then at the end, I just want
to go, I just want to vanish. I just want to poof, disappear. We've
got all this divine, sublime, amazing stuff we've talked about
and we've wept together and we've laughed together and we've just
dealt with God's word. And now it's just bye. It's like seeing the man behind
the curtain, the Wizard of Oz. All this majesty, and you go,
oh, that's the guy. And sometimes I think that's
what we do with our church, we get we hear all this majesty, we see
all this greatness, and then we we look at me, you look at
me, who is that guy? I'm a peon. I'm a plaque on the
scale of humanity that God has chosen to use a mouth from. But from the mouths of men, from
the pen of men, God has given the complete revelation of himself. And when we come to his word,
we are seeing God's face. We are seeing the word that is
written, that is, as John says, the face of God through Jesus
Christ, as Paul says, that we've seen him in Christ. And so when we come to the letter
of Jude, though small, it is Extremely entangling, and I can't
wait till next week, actually, when we look at verse eight.
But this week, we're going to go through verses five to seven
one more time and look at the reality of that. Last week, we
focused on remembering the word, remembering that which was important
to remember, that which God has said through Jude was the faith
that was once for all delivered to the saints. that he longed
to talk about, but because of false teaching, because of error,
because of failure to do that which the church was supposed
to do, he had to deal with problems. It's the same reason Paul wrote
Galatians. It's the same reason Peter penned both of his letters.
It's the same reason Paul wrote two letters to Timothy and three
letters to Corinth. It's the same reason that we
see all the writing of John. There were problems. I stumped
you on that then. Three letters to Corinth. We
don't have the first one. He wrote to see how they were doing.
They wrote back and said, we're great. Chloe wrote another letter
to Paul, said they're liars. He wrote a second letter, which
we call First Corinthians. Just a historical narrative. I saw
it in your face a lot. John's Revelation, John's Gospel,
John's Epistles, they're all written because there were errors
seeking into the church, whether in practice or doctrine. Either
way, that which we say we believe as taught, that's what doctrine
is. The teaching of Scripture, it affects our application. As
Brother Jesse prayed, that we change our lives and that God,
moreover, changes our lives to the right teaching of the word
we saw in Titus as we went through it just months ago. That right
teaching produces right living. The right thing. If we believe
A, then B will be the result. And Jude is no different. And
the Scripture is God breathed, as Paul says to Timothy. All
Scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for training
and rebuke and instruction and righteousness, so that the man
of God may be fully equipped and competent in all of his works.
And we understand that the Word of God, as Paul writes to the
Ephesians church, He says, what the word of God, the gifts to
the church that God gave those who administer the word, through
the teachings of the preaching, through the evangel, the good
news to proclaim the gospel of Jesus. It's only through the
word. It's not the commentary of the word. It's the word itself.
The words of Christ bring life. Romans 10, 17, not the commentary
of men on the words of Christ. It's not the knowledge of these
things in our mind, but it's the new birth that God gives
us through, as we see in John 3, through the Holy Spirit that
comes only through the words of Christ. When Jesus says, behold,
I am the Lamb of God. When Jesus says, I am the living
water. When Jesus says, I am the bread that comes down from
heaven, that all men who eat of me may live and never hunger
again, may never thirst again. This is the power of God to the
soul of dead men who hear it by the grace of God's Holy Spirit.
And then that Holy Spirit brings life. The words come to dead
ears and God brings life to dead ears and they hear with life
and life is the result of that hearing. And the purpose of Jude's
writing is that we may grow up into every way, into him who
is the head, who is Christ, that we may no longer be children
tossed to and fro by the waves of the sea, but that we may stand
firm in the understanding of doctrine, that that doctrine
may have root in us, that we may express ourselves not just
in our mouths, but in our living, in our affections, that the holiness
of God exudes out of us, that we make a war against the sinfulness
of our flesh, and that we die in this life preparing to meet
God face to face. And Jesus Christ does that. And
Jude is no different. All the writing of Scripture
is for the same purpose, that we collectively become a people
who walk supernaturally as God has created us to walk. Look at this. In verse four, let's just pick
up there and then we go down to verse eight or verse seven,
and then I'll talk for a minute. For certain people, he says,
I was eager to write you about a common salvation, but I found
it necessary, verse three, to write appealing to you to contend
for the faith, standing up, fighting, combating for the faith that
was once for all delivered of the saints. For certain people
have crept in unnoticed. who long ago were designated
for this condemnation. They were ungodly people. They
were perverted. They perverted the grace of God
into sensuality and they denied their only master and Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, he says, I want to remind you, although you once
fully knew it and comma, here is what he wants to remind us.
That Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, he
afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And I want to
remind you, Jude says, that Jesus, with the angels in heaven who
did not stay within their own position of authority but left
their proper dwelling, Jesus has kept them in eternal change
under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Now
I'm adding Jesus where the subject goes. You see that? Because sometimes
we forget. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and
the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality
and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing
a punishment of eternal fire. Now, see, these three examples
that Jude is giving. And there's some things that
you need to understand. that are very difficult about some
of these passages, if you're if you're a scholar at all, and
I mean by a scholar, if you like to dig and find out if you like
to look at cross references in your footnotes, if you can read
those tiny things. Or whatever, and you start digging,
you realize there's no real references to some of the stuff that we
see here, especially in verse six. And you understand, especially
in the first week of June, we talked about some of the nuances
of this writing that makes it difficult. It's been one of the
most contested apostolic writings of the New Testament, one of
the most. And yet it's one of the smallest letters and yet
it's one of the richest letters. His doxology started at verse
24 is probably some of the most some of the greatest thing in
my life as far as seeing God's hand of sovereignty and saving
me. But you look at this letter and
you start asking questions about verse eight, you know, and verse
nine, when the archangel Michael contended with the devil about
the body of Moses, you hear that. Where is that? I don't see that
in my concordance or the maps. It's not in there. What's going
on? Where are these things? Well, the same thing is true
with some of the stuff that we see here. And when I start talking
about it, I'll bring it up briefly. But what I don't want you to
do and I want to protect you from that. I want to protect you the
way that I want to protect myself. I don't want to get hung up on
these little things that are interesting, but are just trivial. I want you to get hung up on
the fullness of the gospel. I want you to get hung up on
the Word of God that has a power in your life to transform you
from one state of grace to another, from one state of glory to the
next. And so let's look at this. There
are three pictures. The first picture is this. Israel,
God's chosen people, as we see there in verse 5, that Jesus
who saved the people out of the land of Egypt. We know that.
We see the exodus. We know what the Old Testament
teaches about God who placed his people in captivity. Remember? We saw the Assyrian, the Egyptian,
the Babylonian captivity. We saw that when we did our little
stint through the Old Testament, real quickly, just looking at
some of the Old Testament and how the gospel relates there.
And we saw that God in several ways, like Isaiah and Amos and
others, he what? He said that he would use these
people to be a hand of correction or a rod of correction. God sent
the enemies of himself to the people of his own so that he
might chastise them and grow them. There is no enemy in this
world that comes without the purview and the absolute providence
of God's command. Understand that. See, that's
a hard thing. In our culture, we don't have
a cultural theology that way. We have a theology that God is
just butterflies and puppy dogs and that he is upset about anything
that happens in this world that's not kind. Well, the second part
of that is he's not upset about it. He's furious with it. But
Just because he's furious with evil and wickedness does not
mean he's not the God over it. Not the cause of it, but he's
the God over it. He is powerful and sovereign
over all wickedness. We see that in the book of Job.
We see that all through the New Testament and the Gospels, where
God, Jesus Christ himself, told Judas Iscariot to go do what
he was supposed to do. And Judas didn't even know what
he was talking about. He even asked, is it me? They all asked, is it me? But
there's peace in that because God has a purpose and he put
Israel into captivity so that he could bring them out of captivity
so that he could grow them to see. Now, you know what happened
there. You don't have to go through
the story, even if you don't have never read it in the Bible. You've
seen the depictions in Hollywood. You've seen you've seen Moses
part the Red Sea. You've seen the plagues of Egypt,
a plagues of God come upon Egypt in some kind of way. You know
the story. You know that God sent Moses,
a murderer who fled Egypt, who actually sovereignly had been
put under the care of the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh's family. Because
the Pharaoh had decided that because of prophecy, he would
kill what? All the firstborn of Egypt. And Moses' mother hid
him in a basket and sent him up one of the aquedors, and he
ended up going into the presence of one of the, you know, somebody
says the queen herself, but one of the queen's women anyway,
who then in turn calls his mother to be the nurse, the wet nurse
for her own son. And he's raised up as an Egyptian.
And then he murders an Egyptian. And then he flees for his life.
And we know the story. And then after many decades,
God sends him back to Egypt and said, you go to Pharaoh and take
your brother Aaron and this stick. And I want you to go and I want
you to take this stick and I want you to stutter it out. And when
you can't speak, Aaron will speak for you. And I want you to tell
the king of all the world of Egypt to let my people go, you
know. What do you do with that? And he goes with signs and wonders,
and he says, God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Jehovah, however you want to
say it, God has said to let his people go. And the Pharaoh's
like, not going to happen. Plague comes, and under the plague,
under the power of God's judgment, what happens to Pharaoh? His
heart is stalled. Listen. And Pharaoh's heart is
softened on the judgment. And he says, fine, I relent.
I repent. Let him go. I'm done. I don't
want any more of this horror and this terror. God is almighty. I don't want it anymore. Go,
go, go. And so then he repented. And
God what? Gives grace. And when God gave
grace, when God said, I'm going to take away these plagues and
you will have peace. Pharaoh's heart was hardened. And we see in Paul's writing
that the scripture actually teaches that God hardened Pharaoh's heart,
but he didn't do it by oppression. He did it by grace. Why would
grace harden anybody's heart? Because when you hate somebody
and they push you, you back up. And when they back off, you hate
them even more. See? And you know the story. Nine
others. And finally, in the end, The Pharaoh loses his own son.
And we know the Passover. We know the blood of the Lamb
on the post and the lentils of the doors. And we see the death
angel coming through and the depiction. Have you ever thought
about what this sounded like? As in the middle of the night
as the angel of the Lord came and killed every first born male. That would have been me. And
some of you. And fathers and grandfathers
and sons and brothers and uncles, they died in their beds. And
the wailing that went through Egypt as millions of people woke
to their sons dead. The wailing. Imagine Israel as
they laid there in fear. Hoping only in the sovereignty
of God's promise. And they cuddled up with their
children, or with their husband who may have been praying. It
wasn't a certain age. If you were first born, you died. As they heard the wailing of
all the Egyptians. How hopeful and real and heavy
that their children lived was in their hearts at that moment. And then Pharaoh says go. But
what happens? They get out just a little ways. And Pharaoh's anger against God
riles up again. And he hates them. And he and
his army go to them. And God has delivered them through
all of this display of power. And now he's delivered them and
they're at the Red Sea crossing on dry land. And Pharaoh's army
is coming and he swallows up the army of Pharaoh. And then
every day for 40 years, he provides them fresh bread to eat on the
ground. He provides them water in the
desert from rocks. And they utter grumblings against
God. And he finally says, I will send
spies in to the land of Canaan, and I will show you that which
is yours by my hand. And what do the spies do? All
but two come back and say they're too large and we are fearful
for our lives. Let us go someplace else. And
God says that everyone in numbers 14, you can see this. God declares
that every single Israelite from the age of 20 and older will
not see the promised land. Did you hear that? Because they
failed to believe 1.2 million Jews died in the desert. We're not talking about 100 people,
folks. 1.2 million died in the desert. That's a lot of folks. And it
took 40 years to do it. Now, what are we to learn from
this first example? I'll go through every one of
them. What are we to learn from this first example? Let's think about it for a minute.
God chose Israel out of no one. He called Abram out of Ur, a
Chaldean, a pagan, and said, Go. And Abraham went. And then God rescued them out
of Egypt, divinely, powerfully, supernaturally. And then God
destroyed most of them. See, God chose them. He placed
them into slavery and divinely saved them with a power, with
a display of power, and He directed them with that same power. Go
here. I will provide here. I will do this for you. And they
grumbled because they did not believe. What they could see,
with their eyes was not enough for them to trust in the hand
of God. But they would rather remember
the words they would rather be slaves in Egypt than free in
the desert, because at least in Egypt, the food was better. Not we're starving, but our food
was better as slaves, let us go back and be slaves. What is that? That's trusting
in the lust of our flesh more than the sovereignty of our God. God decreed that all would perish
age 20 and older before he would allow them into Canaan. And God
did two things here. He did a divine act of deliverance. And let's go ahead and use the
word a divine act of salvation, because that's what Judah's doing
here. He's comparing the difference between God's salvation and God's
justice. God's divine deliverance, salvation
was given to the same people that he divinely destroyed. Not
all of them. There was a remnant. So what do we do with that? Well,
here's what I see a lot of times in our culture today. Here's
a brother who was down and out and addicted and everything was
gone bad. And God saved him from all that.
Cleaned him from all that. Gave him joy from all that. Or
away from that. And he presumes that just because
God has delivered him from physical habits or calamities, that he's
saved eternally. How do we tell? Well, usually
that's the testimony of their gospel. The good news is not
that God has saved me from his just wrath through the body and
life of Jesus Christ, but God saved me from my alcohol. You
better give God credit for that if you have been delivered from
it. He did it. But that's not eternal salvation. God saved these Israelites out
of slavery and took care of them until they died in the desert.
And if you think that that death in the desert was judgment, it
wasn't. They still await the final judgment. The second example
that you gives us here are angels, and this is where we get extremely
controversial thoughts about this text that I won't just pile
in upon you right now, but it says there and then the angels. Who did not stay within their
own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he
has kept an eternal change and a gloomy darkness into the judgment
of the great day. And then he goes just as Sodom. And so we
think in the context of this verse that we see this continuation
of a parallel, a comparison, a kinship, if you will, between
the angels or discussion here in verse six and Sodom and Gomorrah
and their acts in verse seven. So here's where some people like
to go. Well, these are the angels who
left heaven because they had lust for the women of earth.
And a lot of great scholars believe that, but I don't see that anywhere
in scripture. So therefore, I cannot make that
assumption. But what I can do is understand
what is given to us in scripture. And it'll blow your mind to understand
right now, Jude, as he wrote this letter, he actually is referring
to an apocryphal writing known as First Enoch. It was around
the end of the first century, he was reading it and not only
there, but he directly quotes it in verses 14 and 15, as we'll
see in a few weeks. Just as Paul quotes four and
five other types of scripture, he quotes Egyptian text, he quotes
Syriac text, he quotes Hebrew text, he quotes all sorts of
things. You think, where is that? That's not a direct reference
because Paul knew it all. Jude was familiar with these
things. And even if he wasn't, God gave him reference because
someone in his leadership knew it. But we don't know it, so
what we do is we take for truth that which God has revealed through
Jude. And we understand that what synergizes with the rest
of Scripture we can hold to. So here's what I believe that's
happening here with the angels. Who are the angels? Angels are
those heavenly beings who are made for the purpose of being
messengers and warriors and worshipers of God in heaven. We see all
throughout the Old Testament where angels do the bidding of
God, they give message. We see in Luke where the angels
came and proclaimed. The coming of Messiah. We see
the angel going into Zechariah and telling him that his wife
would have a child that would be John, the baptizer. We see
the angel going to Mary, telling her that she was with child.
The angel angels all throughout scripture doing the work of God,
the scripture teaches us that angels are beautiful beings,
that Lucifer himself was one of the most amazing angels. And here's what I think we need
to understand about this. These angels left their what
their position, their place. Well, we don't really know about
all these other places, but what we do know about what's been
taught to us in Scripture about the place of angels is the place
of angels is the abode of God to do the bidding of God's will,
that they worship him, that they serve him, that they send messages
for him. And there might be all sorts
of other things that angels do that are not revealed to us through
Scripture. But we do know that they are to do that which God
has created them to do. And in not doing that, they fall
short of the glory of God, which is missing the mark, which is
the word sin. And so God created these angels
to display a heavenly reflection of what I think is his own beauty
and majesty. And they were gloriously beautiful.
And these same angels begin to look at themselves. Think about
what Lucifer, what we see in Scripture about Lucifer, who
says, I will ascend the throne of heaven. I will sit next to
you. I will be like you. I will. I will. I will. I will. He began to see the reflection
of his own beauty. He began to look at himself and
go, wow, look how awesome I am. And the other angels, he'd turn
around and go, look at me. And they'd say, you're great,
man. You're beautiful. Look how glorious you are. Man,
when you enter the presence of heaven, everybody goes, And he was that beautiful. Was
that glorious? We see that the angels that God
sent in the form of humans to Sodom and Gomorrah were so, the
scripture says, they were so beautiful that the men of that
city required to know them physically. So these angels begin to look
at themselves. And so what they did in their own hearts, they
rebelled against their created order. They rebelled against
the place where God had created them for the purpose of their
fullest of their fullest joy and the purpose of his fullest
glory. You see, that's the thing that
we think incorrectly when we think that God has set boundaries
to take away our joy. We think God has set this order
of creation so that we can learn our place. That's not what God
has done. God has said in his infinite
wisdom, every corner of everything and all of creation and put it
exactly where it is supposed to be so that the fulfillment
of the role in which he's created all things would give the greatest
joy to that creation. You know why a cat hates to be
thrown in a pond? Because it's not a fish. For
example, which you get the point. You ever tried to bathe one?
You look like you got stabbed to death if you're not careful. Why? Because they don't want
to go there. That's not what they were created to do. And
then the jungle cats, they're an anomaly. They swim. You know
why? Because I think they're going to eat something in there. Why birds don't run around in
herds? They get the greatest joy in
fulfilling that which God had created them to be. Do you see
that even the unbelievers of this world know that? And so
what they do is they say, well, God created me to be a drunk.
God created me to be gay. God wants me to do this. God
wants me, because that's how I am. But they misunderstand
that the fall of man is that God said you have complete control
of the earth. Take it and subdue it, Adam.
And you and your wife that without each other are incomplete. You're
no good by yourself, Adam. Eve, you're no good by yourself.
Adam, you're nothing without your wife. Eve, you're nothing
without your husband. For you are one flesh. He created all things, said it
is good. He created man, he said, it is not good that he be alone. And he says, you have everything.
You are to rule and govern. You are to do that which I have
created you to do. And I give you the cosmos to
rule over. And you get to name the animals.
You get to run them. You get to use them. You can
eat of anything that has ever grown on this earth. But do not
touch the two trees in the center of the garden. And Adam told Eve, if we touch
that, we will die. And Satan came up to them both
and said, God did not say you would die, did He? Did He? He
knows that you will be like Him. Seeing that it was good for food,
And desiring it, she took it and ate it and gave some to her
husband who was with her and he ate it. And immediately their
eyes were open and they knew they were naked. And they were ashamed. Because the unity of their own
body. Then created a division in their
sin. But they no longer felt comfortable
around each other. but they no longer felt unashamed,
but felt exposed and modest. And the angels did the same thing.
They saw the beauty that they had and forgot that it was created
by the One they served and took it upon themselves to be their
own gods and to be like God. That's what Adam and Eve did.
That's what you and I do. And God responded by sending
them out of His presence into the earth, no longer to serve
Him, but to do that which is unnatural to angels, which is
to roam the earth. And I believe the chains that
they are still in and the darkness that they are contained in is
just that. Just that. It's like the criminal
who they don't have all the evidence yet, but the FBI knocks on the
door and says, hey, buddy, we're on to you. Would you come talk
to us? And he goes to bed that night
and he can't sleep. And next day comes and a year
goes by, but every day he's waiting. When will the hammer drop? They
got me. And they're just working to find
out how they're going to get me. I'm guilty. When it's going
to happen? Or the person sitting on death
row waiting for the executioner? Or the person sitting in the
holding cell waiting for the judge to call their name, to
stand before the jury, to be found guilty? That's a chain
if there ever was one. These angels forgot that their
being and their beauty was a reflection of God alone. It had nothing
to do with them. And they forgot that they were
created for the joy of their own glory as it reflected the
one who created them. Just like us. Oh, the Bible is so full of so
many rules. That's why antinomianism is so
exciting for these people today. What does that mean? Anti-law.
We don't have to obey anything. People actually believe that.
That there is no call to obey anything that God will get you
obeying when time is right. You want to sell drugs? Sell
drugs. You can go to heaven anyway. See, not selling drugs won't
get you to heaven. And selling drugs won't get you
to hell. What gets us into hell is that we were born into this
world, actually, that we're conceived into this world as a human being
with the disease of fallenness from our father Adam and our
mother Eve. And what gets us into heaven
is that as Jesus teaches that we're born again by the Holy
Spirit of God and by faith, we receive justification, redemption,
purification, sanctification, glorification, and that we are
being prepared. What does it say in Ephesians?
It says that God predestined us to be in the image of his
son. What is the image of Christ?
Perfection. So we're supposed to walk perfectly.
Go ahead and try. You're not going to happen, but
you don't stop trying because it won't. So we don't live in
obedience to the commands of Christ because we have to. We
live in obedience to the commands of Christ because we want to.
And when we don't obey Christ, it grieves our spirit because
that which we've been recreated is no longer at peace with that
that is opposing to God. And then the third example that
is given there is Sodom and Gomorrah. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah,
while there has been great, great exposition and theorizing and
all this philosophy. Friends, I am sorry to say that
these people who are bringing revelation apart from God's Word
are wrong. And if ever held to account,
they'd be proven wrong. Sodom and Gomorrah desired things
contrary to their created being. Sexual lucidity, sexual immorality,
homosexuality. All of these things were the
problem of Sodom and Gomorrah. And Lot and his family had fallen
prey to all of it. And what happens? God said, if
you can find ten. And then what does he say? Does
he come back and say, if you can find one? If you can find one righteous
person among them, I will spare the whole city. God created these people so that
they would obey him. Remember the command of the first
command with a promise. What does Paul say in Colossians
and Ephesians? He refers, he alludes back to the Ten Commandments,
and he says this, that fathers do not exasperate your children.
And prior to that, children, obey your parents in the Lord,
for this is right. And this is the first commandment, the promise
that you may live long in the land. So I would just like to
borrow that and the reality of Sodom and Gomorrah has created
people who were placed there by God. that they would obey
their fathers and mothers and thus their fathers and mothers
would obey the father and teach them to obey the father. And
in doing so, they would live well and long in the land. God
created these people to live in a righteous place that they
would obey for civil order, for health, for all sorts of things. But most importantly, that the
God of heaven would be seen in the glorification of the living
of the people of earth. Yet we don't it's not the government's
job to legislate morality, but it is the church's job to stand
against immorality. And so God said that they should
live long in the land in obedience by fulfilling out by fulfilling
that which they were created to do, but instead of that, they
lusted in their flesh in an unnatural way and thus God condemned them. And it's not just them, but it's
all throughout history. We see Paul writing to the letter
to the Romans in the very first chapter. He writes the words.
He says, but the wrath of God is going to be poured out on
all the unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness,
suppress the truth. You know why? Because they know
it's true. But they suppress the truth by unrighteousness.
How do they do that? They couple up with people who agree with
them. They do exactly what Paul said to Timothy, that they'll
come a day when people will not endure sound teaching, but will
gather for themselves preachers and teachers who will tickle
their itching ears. They will be disobedient to parents. They
will be debauched. They will be insubordinate. They
will be lovers of self and lovers of money and greedy and murderers
and gossipers. They will not listen to sound
teaching. And the wrath of God now back
to Romans will be poured out on them. And they are without
excuse, for no one can say they do not know that God is who he
is because he has made himself clear to the creation. His divine
power is clearly seen in that that he has made. But they Because
of their unbelief, suppress the truth. So therefore, God then
gave them over to a reprobate mind so that they would continue
to do that, which is unnatural with the body that men would
lay with women and women would lay with men would lay with men
and women with women. They would serve and love the
creation rather than the creator. And it's just birds and fishes
and creeping things. Friends, humans are creation,
too. And one of the things that drives
unbelievers is when we want, unbelievers rather, when they
want their way, their rights, their entitlements, their joy,
their happiness, their wealth, their health, their thoughts,
their truth, their freedoms. Because they love themselves
more than the one who made them. They look in the mirror of their
own soul and they see something gloriously wise. 1 Corinthians
1 ought to tell you what that looks like. Where is the soothsayer?
How many of you were wise? Not many of you were wise at
birth. But God has chosen what is foolish
in this world to profound the wise. He has chosen what is small
in this world to bring to nothing the things that are large. He
has chosen the nothings of this world to bring to nothing the
things that are. Paul says, I come to you in fear and trembling,
barely able to speak, not in wisdom, not in eloquence, but
preaching and deciding to know only Christ and Him crucified.
So let's what does he say? Let's remove the power from the
cross or deny power from the cross of Christ. That's what happens. When we
go our own way, when we think our own things, well, that's
not the God I know, but that's not the Christ I know, but that's
not the Bible I know. Then open your eyes and read
the word of God that you may be saved from the ignorance of
your own wisdom and the culture of your own Christianity that
will not save you. You cannot do your best and stand
before God and say, well, I did my best. I thought I knew what
it was right. I wish that somebody had told
me they're telling you God is telling you here, beloved. Hear
the Word of the Lord. When we step out, when we live
apart from God, we are apart from God. Because Sodom and Gomorrah did
this, God destroyed them by fire. And let me tell you something,
this was not justice. It was not justice. It was just a pit stop on the
way to justice. And Jude is using this illustration
here with the other two because he wants to remind, just like
you said, and this is where I think there's a this is where I think
there is a just as Sodom and Gomorrah. And then which likewise
indulge in sexual immorality, they some people say, well, see,
the angels must have indulged in sexual immorality. That's
a stretch to me. But what we do know is that sexual immorality
is apart from the natural order of God's creation for humanity.
And so is stepping out of the bounds of the order of heaven.
And whether the other is true or not, it's not for us to know.
We cannot say we know. So let's not posit that we do.
But what we do know is that they stepped out. What we do know
about Sodom and Gomorrah and many places around the world,
including Evans County and Bullock County and Tattnall County and
Bryan County. Is that people are stepping out
of the created order of their God. And they're refusing to believe
in Him. And many of them sitting in churches right now. Or sitting
among churches. And all they have to look forward
to is a darkness of destruction. This was not justice, but justice
awaits all those who die by the fire of God in those cities.
Just like God awaits all those who die peacefully in their beds
if they died without Christ. The good people. The sweet people,
the beloved people, the old people, the young people, the teenagers,
whoever they are, if they die without Christ, they die into
the judgment of God. For it is appointed unto man
once to die, then the judgment. So the point of all this is that
I believe Jude is preparing his readers to see several things. One is that these who are among
the church, who are of the church, who have crept in unnoticed because
they're just loving and kind and all this kind of stuff that
they're teaching false things and now living false lives, that
they will not escape the justice of God. Number one. Number two, I think Jude is writing
this so that we can see as God's people and Jude's audience as
well, that we can see that there are many who are always among
the people of God who seem like they are saved, but they will
be destroyed. Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot was there,
the people of God were there. And not even living appropriately.
Lot's wife, what? Longed to stay and God turned
her to salt because of it. So, was she an unbeliever? At
that moment, she was living in unbelief, but whether or not
she was saved is not for us to determine. But we do know she
died in the flesh. And she wasn't expecting it.
Even though God told her not to look back. I think we see that many who
are in the proximity may receive some temporal grace in this life,
but it does not mean they have escaped eternal judgment. That's
the second thing. And I want you to understand. That finally,
the fullness of what Jude is trying to argue for is that many
who are in the presence of God. On this earth. Will be removed
from the presence of God's grace because of unbelief, that's really
the core of it. These people who teach wrong
things who live wrong lives, who divide among God's people,
who live sexually immoral lives, who are drunkards, who are all
these things, these things that counter them, these things that
actually identify them. I'm not talking about the sins
of commissions that occasionally creep into our lives due to unbelief.
I'm talking about a continual unbelief. A lackadaisical, apathetic,
it's OK, I'm saved. That's the perversion of the
grace of God into sensuality. That's the point. These people
were most likely saying, I can live this way, but God saved
me by grace. So he understands. You know what's crazy? Most of us, as we hear that would
say today, there is nowhere in my mind I would ever say God
understands any of my sin, but we do. We don't say it because
we never come to that understanding in our own lives that that's
what we think. But you think about how many
times you've spoken to someone or maybe in your own life, you
say, well, there's this little there's this aggravation that I have
towards someone. Or there's this addiction that I have. Or there's
this sin that I continue to commit, or this fault that I continue
to have. But God understands because I experience this, and
I've had all these problems, and I've had this problem, I've
had this problem. You don't know my wife, you don't know my neighbor, you
don't know my spouse, you don't know my husband, you don't know my
children. And God does. So He recognizes that these are
things that are going to take place in my life because of these
environments that I'm a part of. He does not recognize that
as an excuse for your sin. excuse me, for our sin. I'm not
preaching to you. I'm talking with you. He doesn't recognize that, but
we do it. And it's easy to see that. And all of a sudden we
go, but I know I'm saved by grace. God will work me through this. But
is he working you through it? Are you battling? And battling is part of believing. Many who are in the presence
of God, as Hebrews 6 tells us, that is impossible to bring to
repentance those who have tasted the heavenly gift, seen the power
of the age to come, the word of God, of the spirit, tasted
in the spirit, and fall away. It is impossible to bring them
again to repentance, for they are what? They are exposing Christ
again to public shame. And then the writer of Hebrews
gives a little metaphor. He says, like the crops, who
receive the rain, day after day, season after season, the same
rain, the same soil, but some crops produce great fruit. Some crops don't produce a thing,
but yet they've drunk the same water. And the one that produces
nothing, in the end it will be burned. That's what it's like. What does it look like for those
who are many? I believe. Broad is the path to destruction.
Narrow is the gate to righteousness. Few will find it, Jesus says.
You know why? Because we light the narrow gate
with the wide access panel. We like to go through. We see
the turnstile, if you will. You know what a turnstile is
when you're going into a subway? Not the restaurant, but the train.
And you go in and it's like, click, click, click. And it takes
like, this is one of you. You ever try to go two in there?
It doesn't work. And it's really too intimate.
That's really uncomfortable. Even with a child, you know? You cannot spend a whole bunch
of time in that space, and there's no sideways, there's no bags
to go with you. You've got to go through that
turnstile by yourself, one at a time, and there's no room for
wiggling. And once you step one step forward, it locks, doesn't
it? You can't go back. You've got to keep going through.
That is the illustration that Jesus gives me. He says, narrows
the gate that leads to righteousness. But what do we like? We like
it when the line's real packed out and all the turnstiles and
the guy over there with the hat and the badge on goes, guys,
let's come on. And he opens up the gate. He opens up that big
wide gate on the right side over there and says, just come on.
We got to get everybody on the train here. Just don't worry
about paying today. Just come on. You don't need a ticket.
Just come on. It's taking too much time. We're
all scheduled to come on. Now, we feel better, right? That's
the path that leads to destruction. It's seemingly going into the
same place. It's around the same turn. Jesus
says the same thing in John 10 when he says that there's only
one door and I'm the door. And if you come to God through
any other means but me, you have come to a false God, to a false
hope, to a false gospel, to a false word, to a false religion, to
a false eternity. And you're going to stand before the Father
and you're going to be judged. And if anybody tells you to come
in any other way, they're a thief. They're stealing for their own
power and glory. They're stealing your salvation.
And they're climbing over the wall. They're coming through
the window. They're coming through another door. Not only are they thieves,
he's telling this to the Pharisees, he says, but you're also liars. It's John 10. Jesus called somebody
a thief and a liar. Yeah, he also called them dogs
and snakes and everything else. Wicked, whitewashed tombs. Who
would he talk to that way? He never talked to the lost like
that. He never talked to the downtrodden. He never talked
to the people who were bound in sin or demonically possessed.
He talked to those who were righteous and living the holy life. That's who he spoke to that night.
Because they had put their trust in their own righteousness instead
of the fullness of him who was the answer to all their prophecies.
So what does it look like? What are the many who are in
the presence of God's people who are going to be removed due
to unbelief? There's hundreds of things to think about, but
here's just a few. Many who rest in unbelief prove this due to
the lack of faith in God's provision. That's what happened in Israel.
God's providing, God's providing, God's providing, and they just
don't trust that God's going to provide. This is terrible
food. This is aggravating. I want to drink water all the
time. I don't want water because I'm thirsty. I don't want manna
that I can't... I want to get bread that I can
put in a bag and carry it. You see, manna would spoil by
noon. They'd pick it up every morning
and it would be spoiled. They'd have to eat it. You get
what you need right then. Give us this day our daily bread.
Jesus said, Pray. How many of us have ever gone
to our kitchen and there is nothing to eat? And we got 15 cabinets
in there. And they are not empty. Fifteen cabinets. How many refrigerators
do you have in your house? I've got two and a freezer that
stands up. And they're pretty full. But we'll go in there and
go, there's nothing to eat. There's nothing to eat. And I
see people all the time who would love to have free reign to come
into my house and take everything in my house, in my kitchen. And
they'd eat for months. You know why? Because when I'm
hungry, I don't want just rice and some old canned beans. I
want some meat and fresh vegetables and something else. And I had
that yesterday. I think I want something different today. That's
what Israel did. I don't believe, God, that you're
going to keep providing. And even though I know that you may provide for
us, I don't like it. It's not pleasurable to me. And
I know you're going to give us the promised land, but look at
those people. They're going to hurt us. It's going to be costly
to go in there. We don't think you can take us
in that. And 10 out of 12 spies come back.
Joshua and Caleb go, let's go! God is before us. Let's just
go in there. And the other goes, we're grasshoppers
in comparison to these people. They will crush us under their
feet. And God's like, I'm done. You're through. We have a lack of faith in God's
provision. And friends, I think that can
meld itself out into money and everything else. Many who rest in unbelief prove
this due to the lack of remembrance that they exist as a product
of God's divine word. You are born again believer because
God has breathed his life into you through his word. You need
to trust in that. Remember these things. Remember
the faith that was once for all given to the saints. It's not
about us being I don't know having PhDs in Bible. It's about us
remembering the simplistic reality that God is a father who will
not forsake us, even when the world around us looks like he's
lost us. And let's move it away from food.
Let's just take it personally in the sense of I know that there's
no way I can please God, praise him. That Christ has pleased
him for you. And that you've been purchased
by the blood of Jesus Christ. And that there's nothing that
could snatch you out of his hand. Nothing. Many who rest in unbelief
prove this due to the lack of living in the boundaries of God's
creative, protective, and holy order. And this is, I know that
I shouldn't do. I know I shouldn't be. I know
I'm not supposed to. But God will have to understand
this is what I need for my joy. Not if you're in Christ. As a
matter of fact, the greatest thing that you could ever consider
as your greatest joy, if you take it and it is not for God's,
it is not God's for you. You are going to take the worst
thing you could ever touch. And the worst thing that could
ever become you in your own mind, if it is God's design for you,
will be the greatest joy that you've ever seen. Many who rest in unbelief propose
new things, new ideas, new doctrines, because they think themselves
wiser than God. And, you know, some of the names
and I don't like to call a bunch of names, but there are people
who believe there's no hell. There are people who believe that Jesus
is not divine. There are people who believe that you can speak
something into being if you have faith. There are people who believe
all sorts of things that God wants you rich. There's people
who believe all sorts of stuff. And they teach it and they say,
look what God has given me, you got to plant a seed, give me
a thousand dollars and watch God bring it back, see what he's
given me. God gave them nothing. You did. People that say that the gospel
is just a process of following a couple of rules and you're
saved. People say that, well, there's a thing that you can
say and there's a thing that you can pray. If you get the
words right, if you really, really, really, really, really, really,
really, really mean it, then you are born again. Well, what
about all those people who really, really, really, really, really,
really mean it at the altar at their wedding? Did you mean it
just as much then as you said it with God? Sometimes we can't see the own
fallacy in our own commitments. January is coming. I am going
to work out. All of us have said that. Twelve
years ago, I made a resolution that I was going to gain 50 pounds,
and I gained 60. I'm tired of saying I'm going
to get healthy. I'm going to eat donuts every day for a year.
I mean, you know, let's do something I know I'm going to accomplish.
I've already succeeded. And it got a laugh, but in reality,
all of us are going to make a firm commitment come January. Why
January? Why not now? Why not lunch? I'll let us do
it when? We'll do it tomorrow. That's
my, that's, you know, my mother and I have always had this little
joke. We're going to put everything off and procrastinate. We'll
get to it, we'll get to it, but we're going to have a good attitude about it
and be happy and we're, you know, we're optimistic pessimists.
I mean, we're optimistic procrastinators. We look forward to not doing
anything until later. And it's just, Is our commitment to Christ and
all these little things that we see? Oh, I promise you someone
do this. I promise I believe. I guess
I do. I said the right words. Is it as sincere as our New Year's
resolution? Is it as sincere as saying we're
going to clean out those cabinets in the kitchen? The Tupperware
drawer? You don't open that thing. It
comes after you. Sock drawers? How many baskets
of unpaired socks do we have? We've just decided in our house
we're not going to match socks anymore. Green, blue, purple, green, yellow.
It doesn't matter. Just put on two socks and go. And it's fun to think about,
and it's really, it relates to all of us, but friends, don't
put your hope in salvation in the same sense the hope you make
in your covenant and your commitment to life. Your hope in salvation
is not about your commitment. It's about God's commitment.
It's about God's covenant with you. It's about God's power in
you. Not our willpower. God help me
in my will. My will is intrinsically wicked. I think about one thing more
than everything. Me. My feet hurt. My back hurts.
My gas is too high. My lot feels too expensive. My podium's cracked. My Bible's too small. You see? Even when you're preaching. My, my, my. Many who rest in
unbelief are the false teachers and the
false brethren in the day of Jude. Let's not say many. All of those
who rest in unbelief have a certain judgment awaiting. Jude says
it this way, and we're done. Verse 5, for certain people have
crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation. And we just saw what that condemnation
looked like. Because they live under a false
grace. Though they experienced it through
history. So I look at history as to what we're living now.
We're living history. Just a minute ago was history. Now it's the
present. That's why Scripture says today
is a day of salvation. And you know what that means? Not just that don't let this
day pass. without trusting and believing
in Jesus Christ fully as your only hope. But it also means
when you look back on that hope, don't look back years ago. Look
today. Belief is not a one-time thing
and repentance is not a place that you started. But faith is
an ongoing, unreserved commitment to Jesus Christ because of His
commitment to you. And it is a gift of God. Ephesians
2, 8 and 9 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this is not of your own doing, but it's a gift of God so that
no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship
created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared
beforehand that we should walk in. Are you living in a false hope?
Are you living in a false grace, a temporal grace as God saved
you from some uncertainties in life and you mistake that for
his hand salvation? Only believing on Christ alone
forever saves you. And be very careful, church,
not to look at your life and go, see how good things are?
God must be with me. Yes, He might be with you, but
you may not be His. And when things are horrible
and don't seem like they'll ever change, you should say, God is
with me. Have you confused the salvation
of your soul with the liberation of a habit? or a change of an
attitude or a change of life holistically. Jesus does transform
our lives, but transforming our lives is not what saves us. It's
saving us that transforms our lives. And I know that seems
like just a little cliche, semantical twist on words, but it's not. Friends, the battle against the
flesh is an everyday thing. And part of that, and I would
say the foundation of that, is to continually exercise the faith
that God has given us, and we get the grace to do it only through
the Word of God. Now we're back to the very beginning
of my introduction. I don't know who said it, and
it's not quite like this. I think it was Spurgeon in regard to
This type of people, he said, there are many who appear to
have faith, a real faith and make a long stretch toward eternity. Only to find themselves missing
it completely. What's that mean? That means
there are many people who appear to have faith. By the morality,
by their presence, by their exuberance and their zeal. But they may
not have a real faith. Thus, in this life on this earth,
they run a good race. And then when they leave this
life, they stand straight into judgment. Because their hope
is in their life that they've lived and in the things that
they've done, rather than the finished work of Jesus. It's your faith in the finished
work of Jesus. Let's pray. Father, solidify our hope in
Christ. rises to a place where we stand
bold before Your throne of grace with no boast in our mouth except
that You are our Savior through Christ alone. Lord, give us the fruit of Your
Son, His heart, His mind, His passion, His affection, Fuel
us with the fullness of all your being and the fullness of all
your glory. And let us look at our lives
and not stand and say, oh, thank you, God, I'm not like the sinner.
But Lord, that even in the fullness of our holiness before you, we
stand amazed that you would save a sinner like us. You call us beloved. You call
us saints. You call us children. Christ
as our brother, as our savior, as our husband. It baffles us,
Father. Let us continue to work that
together in our hearts and in our lives as we work out our
salvation, trusting fully in the work of your hand. God, let
the enemy not whisper into our heads doubts, but let your word
boldly yell into our souls truth. Plant this word among all of
our hearts that we may see the beauty of your redemption. And
that we may know that we have eternal life in Christ. And it's
in his name we pray. Amen. Amen.