When God Calls

When God Calls

1 SAMUEL 3

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Good morning. We finished our Tough Questions series. And so if you've missed any of that, I really encourage you to go back, listen to the podcast, or watch it on YouTube. Next week, Pastor Chris is going to start a new four-week series that he is going to teach. So right now, we just kind of have an in-between, and I get to do whatever I want. No, just kidding. We are... Can't believe that's on the record now. No, we're just going to be dropping into an Old Testament moment, a scene, and I'm excited for that. This sermon actually came from a conversation with a youth volunteer who said, "Andre, you should preach." He picked this out, and he said, "You should preach on this." So I'm doing that today.

Let me tell you guys a story. When I was, I want to say seven, seven... couldn't have been older than like eight or nine. Going home in our routine after coming home from school, my mom was driving. We'd stop by the mailbox. I'd get out with the key, get the mail, and come back into the car. And one time, I just heard something. I heard... I don't know if it was the rumbling of my stomach or just like a loud thing, but I could tell by the way that no one else had heard it. My mom didn't have a reaction. And I just... I got back in the car and I said, "Mom, I think God just told me to be kind to my sister." And it was the only time that I've had this like, "I'm pretty sure God said something," but I was a seven-year-old kid. And my mom wisely just said, "Well, I think you should obey God. I think you should be kind to your sister."

The truth is, God's audible voice is not something that is common in my life. It may not be common for you. Even though we hear God in different ways, maybe through Scripture and through friends, we'll get into some of that, but hearing God's audible voice is not common. And even in Scripture, there are moments where God speaks, but those are standout, unforgettable, unbelievable at times moments in history. So you can think of moments like Moses in the burning bush, where there's something and he hears God's voice. And it's in a scene that he's like, "What is happening right now?" This is not common. This does not happen every day. Or later on in the Old Testament, when Israel is in the desert and God is giving them instruction, it says in Scripture that God's voice was like thunder. And it was too much for Israel. They were like, "God, can you please stop talking? I can't handle this. It's scary. It's loud. It's booming." Or even something in the New Testament like Jesus, when Paul on the road to Damascus, when he was Saul, hears God's voice, or Jesus speak to him. And it's a scene. And that is not... it happens, but it's not common, right? But it's a theme in Scripture that we see, that God speaks to his people. And though we may not experience those super memorable, out-of-the-world moments, we still need to recognize God's voice. We should be ready. And our desire should be to be able to recognize God's voice when he does speak to us.

John 10:4 says, "When he was brought out all on his own, he goes on ahead of them. And his sheep, this is Jesus, his sheep follow him because they know his voice." So if we are followers of Jesus, then we should recognize his voice when he speaks to us. And we should know how we'll respond if and when God speaks. And I think we can learn how to do that together this morning as we look at the story in the Old Testament of Samuel. So if you have your Bibles, if you want to turn in them to 1 Samuel 3, it'll be on the screen as well. But 1 Samuel 3 is the story of a boy named Samuel.

Now, in our passage today, we're in a time of Israel's history where Israel has been struggling as a nation to follow God. Theologians comment that Israel is in a state of profound spiritual and institutional collapse. There's a pattern that has developed in Israel's history, and this pattern is a generation arises that neither knows the Lord nor understands him, and they fall away worshiping other gods and abandoning Yahweh, the God who delivered them out of Egypt. And so this pattern that we see is Israel sins. God punishes them through oppression, says, "We're going to give you over to your sin. I'm going to punish you." The people repent and cry and say, "God, save us." God sends someone, a redeemer of some sort. And then the cycle starts all over again. They're with God for a time, but then they sin, and over and over and over again. And I got to say, as difficult as it can be to read Israel's story and sometimes hear of their incompetency to follow God, it can also hit me just how similar we are at times, right? We have a sin in our lives that just seems to be reoccurring over and over again. We face the natural consequences of our sin. And we call out to God to rescue us, saying, "God, please help me." He does. He gives us deliverance for a moment, maybe rescue. And then at some point in the future, we fall into that sin again. And the cycle in our lives is very similar to that of Israel's.

Now, in this moment for Israel, it's not just the people that are falling into sin. It's also the leaders, unfortunately. There is a head priest named Eli. And he and his sons have not been the best, especially his sons, who were also priests. And they were worthless men who did not know God. And this phrase in the Bible says, "do not know God," really is to emphasize nothing about their lives would let you know that they knew him, followed him, had a relationship with him. And even Eli himself, their dad, the high priest, he was weak and blind and unable to hear God's voice. So in a way, he himself embodied Israel as a nation: weak, blind to God, and unable to hear God's voice. And if you're reading through the Old Testament in the book and you come to 1 Samuel, you would really sense this decline in Israel. Things are getting bad. The relationship with God is strained, distant. Things are not going as they are supposed to, which usually means the time is ripe for God to intervene and to enter into the story.

So if you guys want to read along with me, it says, I'm going to read, kind of split this up into two. So the first few verses say, the boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. One night, Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not gone out yet, and Samuel was lying. So he went and lay down. Again, the Lord called Samuel. Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. A third time, the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me. Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down. And if he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. We're just going to read through all of it, by the way. The Lord came and stood there calling at the other time, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. And the Lord said to Samuel, See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family, from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about. His sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them. Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, the guilt of Eli's house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering. Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, but Eli called him and said, Samuel, my son. Samuel answered, Here I am. What was it he said to you? Eli asked, Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you. So Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, He is the Lord. Let him do what is good in his eyes. The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. All right.

So this first part of this passage, I think the emphasis here is recognizing God's voice. I just want to go verse by verse and kind of break this down for us. We get this context in the first three verses. Minister, Samuel was just a boy under Eli. And this part in verse 1, the word of the Lord was rare. Not many visions. The people of God, in their decline, were not hearing from God. It's important to remember. And again, we come to Eli, who is so weak, barely see, was lying down in his usual place. And again, this is just more context for us to understand that the setting that Samuel's in is not a good one. And then Samuel, when we get to Samuel, there's a little bit of hope. And it highlights the proximity of Samuel to God. It says he was lying down in the house of the Lord where the ark of God was. So at this time, they're in the tabernacle. And the author is trying to tell us that Samuel is literally, by physical location, the closest one to God. Just where he's sleeping, he's closest to God. And this is important because this is the one that God has chosen to be the voice of the truth. So this is our context.

And then verses 4 through 9 is God calling to Samuel over and over again. We get this first call. And Samuel says, "Here I am," but goes to Eli. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know God. He doesn't understand that God is speaking to him. But this response that he gives, "Here I am," echoes some responses from previous people in the Bible that we would recognize as good people, like Abraham and Jacob and Moses, have all been called by God, and they all responded with, "Here I am." And so the author, again, is cluing us into, Samuel is someone who is going to be important and good. We get the second call in verses 6 through 7. Again, the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up, went to Eli. Eli tells him to go back. And then a third time in verse 8, Samuel goes, responds, says, "Here I am" to Eli. And Eli realizes now that it's God speaking to Samuel. Now, Eli's probably a little bit perturbed. He's like, "This is the third time you're waking me up. I'm not calling you. What is going on?" But I think he finally clicks that. He's like, "Oh, this is God." And we have to remember that Eli is not in good favor with God. And so I think this shows that it took three times. This just shows how dull he is. His senses are dulled to what God is doing. It took him a while for him to point Samuel to the Lord.

Now, have you ever been in maybe Eli's position? Not that your senses are dull, but have you ever been on the receiving end of someone saying, "Hey, something's going on in life, this keeps happening," and you can maybe clearly see like, "I think God's trying to get a hold of you, I think God is doing something," but they haven't put the pieces together yet? Or maybe they don't know God yet? Or maybe it's happened to you that God's been trying to get a hold of you and in that moment you didn't recognize God's voice. And something's happening, and then it happens again, or God's getting your attention. You're like, "Huh, something's up right now. I think, why is this happening?" And it just takes a little while for us to understand and connect that God is trying to get a hold of us, trying to get our attention. In this moment, this is where Samuel is learning God's voice. And I think this is a beautiful moment of someone yielding themselves to serve God, but coming into a beautiful relationship with him. Not just serving him, but a relationship. And I think that is the truth that we need to hear today too. That yes, we are called to obey and to serve God, but we also get a beautiful relationship with him. What an amazing thing to be called by God by name. It shows that God knows Samuel. Even though Samuel doesn't know him, it shows that God has a purpose for Samuel far beyond what Samuel could have imagined. And it shows us today that God's calling is not by accident. It's meant for each of us individually. And it shows that God wants us and desires us to be a part of his kingdom and his work. So that is the section where we hear and read about God's recognizing God's voice.

Now, in the second half of our passage, Samuel shows us how to respond to God's voice. In verses 10 through 14, we get Samuel's response to God. In verse 10, the Lord came and stood there. This is different now. God came and stood there. His presence was there in the tabernacle in a different way. Now, I don't know if that means that he's physically standing there. The Old Testament uses that language just to show and emphasize that God's presence was as closely as possible was there. And he calls out to Samuel, and Samuel responds, "Speak, for your servant is listening." And I love this verse in verse 11. "I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle." Now, if you read that and you thought, "Oh, that's exciting," that's what I also thought at first, because we say tingle today, like ears tingling. No, this is dread. This is doom. This is like really bad. God is saying, "I'm about to do something that is going to wake people up." So the Old Testament uses tingle in a way that we probably don't use tingle today. But just so you know. Okay. God is saying he's about to shake up things, get everyone's attention. And God gives Samuel his first word, this first prophecy, this first assignment. And it's a heavy one. It's punishment from God to Eli. And it's this message that also shows the shift that God is going to make from the priestly authority of the house of Eli to a different sort of authority to be embodied by the prophet Samuel. There's a lot happening here and Samuel's just a boy, but God is laying out his plan saying, "Look, this is what's going to happen to Eli," and while he's doing that he's taking care of Samuel saying, "I have plans for you."

In verses 15 through 18, Samuel holds this troubling news of judgment until morning. He's heard this punishment that's going to be given to the house of Eli. And I don't know if you've ever had that where you've had to be the bearer of bad news to someone. It's not a fun place to be. There's such a mix of emotions going on inside of us. We can want to be relieved of having to hold that bad news. So sometimes we're like, "Hey, if I just get this over with quickly, I'm just going to tell that person as quick as possible," mostly because we don't want to be holding this information. So I'm going to tell them. Other times it can be, it's someone who's important to us where we care about. And so we don't want to make them feel uncomfortable or we don't want to see them in pain. And so we contemplate, "Should I share this with them? I don't know. I think they're going to be upset." And so I think we can imagine what Samuel is feeling as he is holding this and he just heard from God. He hasn't talked to Eli yet and he's just laying in bed. "What am I going to do? What am I going to do with this terrible news for Eli's family?" We can sense the relational dynamics here. How close Samuel already is to God, and he's just a boy, and how distant Eli is, and he's the high priest of Israel. And it's this boy who's telling the high priest what it is that God said. That's very backwards. That's not how it should be, but that's the reality that Israel is in. That's where Eli is in, and that's how God is going to use Samuel. Samuel doesn't want to say it, but Eli knows he needs to hear it. And Eli puts the pressure on holding Samuel to his oath. And again, this is Samuel learning, right? When God has told you something, you can't withhold that. You need to share that. That is something, if I've given you a task, you have to obey God. And so Samuel learns just how serious this is and how important God's words are. And Samuel tells Eli everything. And the redeeming moment for Eli is how he takes it. With some honor and dignity, he says, "If that's what God has, then let it be so. Let him do what is good in his eyes."

And so from this moment, Samuel is established as a true prophet, just a boy, but he's established as a true prophet. And I love what it says that God did not allow any of Samuel's words to fall to the ground. I love that imagery, that picture that the author is trying to tell us that all of his words came to life or had meaning, they were purposeful, they were true. God did not allow any of Samuel's words to go awry, but fulfilled all of his prophet's predictions. And I didn't read it at first, but chapter 4, verse 1 says, "And Samuel's words came to all Israel." And so if we just juxtapose that, verse 1 of chapter 3 says, "The word of the Lord was so rare." And now, just one chapter later, the word of God is being heard all over Israel through Samuel. God is at work again. God's about to do work in Israel that hasn't been seen in quite some time. And God has found his guy. This Samuel that will speak for him, speak the truth to the people.

I'll talk about a tough first assignment for Samuel. He's got to tell his boss, this father-like figure in his life, that God is going to punish him severely. I already feel like that's hard. That's so difficult. And yet through it all, we see Samuel learning. We see Samuel learn God's voice, learn how to respond. And he learns that as a prophet of God, he needs to share the word that is given to him. Even if it means it's a tough pill to swallow for the listener. Through all of it, God will work and reach his people. Samuel responds in a way to make himself available to God. And we are to do the same. Like Samuel, like Paul in the New Testament, like Isaiah. Isaiah 6:8 says, "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am. Send me." This is the response. When God speaks, we answer and we say, "Here I am, Lord." And we take on a posture of willingness, of being ready, of yielding our will to his. We open our hands and we bow our heads and say, "What is it, Lord? I am ready." We accept the call. We give ourselves into his service with an eagerness that speaks to our love and faith for God. And how we respond matters to God. Samuel does a great job and is a model of how we should respond. But the Bible also gives us examples of how not to respond, things that we should not do. If you think of Adam and Eve after they have sinned, God calls out, says, "Where are you guys?" And they hide. They don't answer. They hide. That's what not to do. God doesn't like that. We should not hide when God calls. Maybe the most famous one is the story of Jonah. God calls, and what does he do? He literally runs the other way. He's running away from God and says, "Nope, I don't think so, God. Sorry, a little busy. I'm in a city across the Mediterranean." Don't do any of that. Don't hide from God. Don't run away from God. It sounds silly, but in our own way, we can do that at times. When maybe we know that God is trying to get a hold of us, and we just be like, "Huh, is that God? No, I don't think so. I'm going to ignore that one. I'm not going to pick up the phone right now. Don't want to hear from God." Maybe we know what he's going to call us to. We don't want to do it. Whatever the reason is, but don't be like Adam and Eve. Don't be like Jonah. We want to be like Samuel. We want to learn to recognize God's voice and learn to respond and say, "Here I am."

Now, you may be wondering, what if you've said, "I am here." I've said that to God. And now you're in the place of trying to discern what it is God is calling you to do. What is God's will for your life? You've said, "Pastor Andre, I have a posture. I'm eager. I'm ready. I said, 'Here I am.' And now I'm waiting for what God is telling me to do." Well, I want to ask some questions today. And if you're in a place of wondering what God is calling you to do, or if you're wondering why God is trying to get your attention, I have eight discerning questions to learn God's will. These are in no particular order, but I think these are just reflection questions that help us possibly understand what God is trying to tell us. So if you're a note taker, jot these down.

First one is to know God. Am I more concerned with knowing God's will for my life than I am knowing God? Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and we just want to know what to do. And we skip over the person who's telling us what to do. We skip over that relational part with God and we just say, "God, I just need to know the next step." Maybe we're task-oriented and we just want to get moving. And God is saying, "Hold up now, don't move too fast. We have a relationship. I want to talk with you. I want to speak with you." But maybe we're too caught up with what to do instead of knowing who is calling us. Secondly, is to know his word. Have I searched Scripture to find God's revealed will? For me, this is the most common way that God speaks. Because when I open up Scripture, and through his Spirit, he brings me to a place in Scripture or in reading. He uses Scripture to give me wisdom, to give me guidance. And so have you turned to Scripture and said, "Let me read, let me read his word, and better try to figure out what he's trying to tell me." Third one is prayer. Maybe the most obvious. Do I frequently ask God for guidance and to open my eyes to his will? Instead of us trying to figure it out, why don't we just ask him right? "God, what is it you're trying to tell me? What is it you want me to do?" So far, I think those three make a lot of sense.

Now we start to get into ones that maybe you're familiar with but you haven't done it in a while, and so just want to remind you of some other ways in which to discern God's will. The fourth one is counsel. Who are the wise and godly men and women from who you should be seeking counsel? People that you trust, people that know you, people that you've seen walk with God, you've seen walk the way of righteousness, live in God's will, and go to them and say, "Here's what I'm going through. What would you do? How would you follow God's will? How would you walk this situation?" That's why I love being a part of a church family is that that's what we are here for. And it's not that anyone is better than anyone else. We just like to get some perspective and say, "Hey, I've seen you do this. I've seen you." We encourage a mentorship in this church. Someone who's maybe in the next phase of life that can give you some perspective. And say, "Go grab coffee with them and just lay it out and say, this is what I'm facing right now. And I don't know. I'm not sure. What have you done? What's your experience told you?" The fifth one is life experiences. Why has God given me this particular set of life experiences? What could they reveal about what I should do with my life? Maybe you're in a situation to learn something. Maybe you're in something that is challenging, that is difficult. But maybe God is saying he's trying to reveal something to you. Oh wait, I'm so sorry, that's hold on. Life experiences now, maybe not your current life experiences. Look back at your past life experiences and look back at what you've gone through to see if it gives you instruction for what you're going through in the moment.

I got ahead of myself because the next one is circumstances. What do my circumstances reveal about God's prompting? Are any obvious needs or opportunities pointing me in a particular direction? Sometimes we just need to take a little bit of time and to gain some perspective of what we're going through and see that God is actually clearly leading us in this direction. But if we just have our heads down and just keep going day by day, we wouldn't take time to see that perspective and see the overall direction that God is leading us and see how our circumstances, as trying as they may be, may be God's way of leading us in a new way, new direction. So circumstances can play into it. Seventh is timing. Is the timing right for me to respond to a felt calling? Is God calling me to wait where I am or take a decisive step forward? This one is one of the hardest things for me. I am a slow mover, which sometimes is good to not move on impulse. And then sometimes I feel like God's been like, "I've been trying to tell you this for months. I've been giving you signs. I have been telling you that you are still not moving." And so timing is hard for me to understand what God is doing. But maybe God is saying, maybe it is a wait. Not yet. Wait here. I've given you some wisdom about what you're going to do next, but it's not yet. Or maybe you're praying and it's like, "God, is now the time? I've been sensing this call. I think that you're leading here." And we can just ask, "God, is the timing now? Is now the time where you want me to go do whatever it is?"

And the last one, and I do think that this one is important to be last. At least it shouldn't be first because it's too easy for it to be a slippery slope of selfishness. The last one is desire. What do I want? If I delight in the Lord, what would be the desire of my heart? How do I most want to serve God? Psalm 37:4 says, "Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." There is a time to tell God and to share with God, "God, I really want this. This in life brings me joy. Is there a way that I can experience more of this, that I could have whatever that is?" God gave us that emotion of joy. God gave us certain skills, interests, passions. That is God-given, some of those things that we have. And maybe there's a way that we want to serve. I think of those who are able to sing and they want to serve by singing and saying, "God, can you bring that opportunity around? I want to use this gift that I have for you." At Youth Group, tomorrow night, we're having a painting night. We're having a worship through paint. And there's people, by the way, we have a very skilled youth group. There's like an amazing painter. She's going to be the future Thomas Kincaid. She's amazing. And she just gets to use her skill that night and just paint and worship through painting. So there might be a desire that you have. "God, can I do this? I really want to do this for you." This ties in with how I'm going to use my skills for your kingdom, but there's a place where you can just lay that before God and ask him, "God, can you give that opportunity to me?" And so all in all, we have knowing God, knowing his word, prayer, counsel, life experiences, circumstances, timing, and desire. And through all of that, maybe we can better understand God's will for us, what he's calling us to do.

We've heard him call us. We've had the right response of saying, "Here I am, God." And then we can work through these questions to understand what he's calling us towards. So as we close today, I want you to bring out your programs. We've gotten to this new rhythm of exercising this muscle in our church together where we have an action step every Sunday that pertains to the sermon. Because we want what's happening here and what you're hearing on a Sunday morning to go home with you and to affect your lives. So we're trying to make that more applicable and easier to remember by suggesting something that might help your walk with God in your daily life. This week's action step is to do one or more of these eight things to discern God's will. And if you felt God calling, if you felt him nudging you in a direction, but you're just unsure, if you want to mark that, put your name on it, mark that, and drop that in the bucket in the back on your way out, we're going to join you in praying for you that God would make his will clear, make it known to you this week. And if he calls, our encouragement is to say, "Here I am, Lord, I'm ready. What is it you have for me, your servant?" We want to be like Samuel. We don't want to be like Jonah. We don't want to be like Adam and Eve. We don't want to hide and run away from God. We want to be there with hands open, hearts ready, to say, "Here I am, God." Would you guys pray with me?

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the story of Samuel that gives us this idea of learning your voice and learning how to respond. And I pray that for those in this room, maybe we've been walking with God for decades and we know your voice and we've responded to you. And maybe we're in the midst of discerning what your will is. I pray that you would help us this week in discerning your will. Maybe we're new to having faith with you, God, faith in you. And so I pray for those in the room that they would come to know your voice, learn your voice. And they would also have hearts that say, "God, here I am. I'm ready. What is it that you're calling me to do?" God, make us a people of quick and tender response to you, God. That understanding we may obey your every word and discerning may follow every suggestion of your instilling spirit. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. Grant us, O God, to know which ought to be known, to love that which ought to be loved, to praise that which pleases you, to esteem that which is precious to you, and to blame that which is evil in your eyes. Give us wisdom and discernment to differentiate what is good and what only appears to be good. And above all, to be always seeking after your will and your good pleasure. Be with us today and this week, God. We praise you and we love you. We pray this in your son's name. Amen.

The Book of Jude: Part 3

The Book of Jude

Part 3: Building for Eternity

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

All right, like I said, today we're going to be wrapping up our series in Jude. And so far in our series we've talked about this overall theme of contending for our faith and this plea that Jude has to guard against false teachers. We've learned about recognizing the counterfeits, which highlighted the corrupted character of the false teachers and told us of examples of God's judgment, which Jude mentions as a warning for the church and for the church today. It's been a series that has called us to be proactive in our faith, warned us of the dangers of those who are intentional in their corruption of God's truth, the gospel. And we're reminded throughout this book, this short letter, of how seriously God takes His gospel and therefore how seriously we should take protecting that gospel. We need to value keeping the integrity of the gospel whole and intact. So far we've covered the why. Why is it important to contend for the faithful? Because of those corrupted teachers and the immorality that spoils the gospel that they preach, the false gospel. And now we're going to learn today, the very end, about Jude's instruction of how to contend. And so this instruction, written to the early church, is also meant for us today, the modern church. And it's going to help us here at Spring Valley be a strong, growing, and healthy body of believers. Again, at the end now, in the last few verses here, Jude is wanting the believers to be equipped to strengthen their faith, to rely on God's power, and to live with this assurance of the ultimate victory provided through Christ. Before we jump into our text, I just want to remind us this morning that the tone of these letters in the New Testament, the epistles, is one of, it's got a communal tone to it. So maybe unlike us in the modern day West, where we often think of ourselves, we hear something, we think individual first, how does that pertain to me, and then we think, how does that pertain to the community around us, in that time they would have done the opposite. They would have thought, how does this pertain to our community, how does this pertain to our church? And then secondly, they would have thought of how does this pertain to me. And I don't think there's a right or wrong in that. I just don't want us to miss the second part for us. We often think individually, right, how does this text apply to me? But sometimes then we just stop there, and we don't think, well then how does this fit into my church? How does this fit into the community that I belong to? And so as we hear the words of Jude, we want to hear this instruction and understand that we are meant to carry this out and do this together as a church. The early church and the apostles writing these letters knew that their faith was not just an individual faith, but the strength of their faith correlated to the strength of their faith community. So I think we need to remember that. And if we're thinking, hey, I'm in a good place with God, are we thinking how do I help others and share my faith with others and bring them along with me? And if we're in a place where we're struggling in our faith, are we correlating that with our community? Am I close to my community? Am I going to my church community as a way to strengthen my faith, to build up my faith?

So let's keep that in mind as we finish out our text in Jude today. If you guys want to open up your Bibles or you can follow along on the screen, we're going to be starting in verse 17, and we just want to go verse by verse as Jude ends this quick powerful memo with some very important truths. Verse 17, I'll read the first couple. It says, "But dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, in the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires. These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the spirit." In this section right here, Jude is telling the church to remember the warnings. He reminds them to stay vigilant in the face of division. His instruction is to be on the lookout, be on guard, be ready. It's this little image of a guard, and those guards, they cannot be lax in their job. They can't be sleepy, they can't be nonchalant, they can't be relaxed. They have to be on guard. And if that guard were to be tuned out, just zoned out, not there, would it be any surprise that on their watch something bad would happen? He's like, "No, that makes sense." He wasn't even doing his job. He wasn't ready for what could happen. In the same way, are we surprised if someone who is not intentional, not on the lookout, not guarding their faith, is led astray from the gospel? Or communally, as a church, if we are all asleep in our faith, not proactive, not vigilant, not intentional to pursue God with everything that we have, will not our church suffer? Remember the warnings given by Jesus, by the apostles, and by Jude. Watch out for those who bring division. Notice that so far Jude hasn't criticized the bad theology of these leaders, which is often what we do today when we're trying to figure out who is preaching truth and not, and that is fine, but he hasn't even talked about their theology. Rather, he's talked about their immoral way of life, most notably in their character and how their character causes division in the church. And he states that these people who bring division are the ones who are following mere natural instincts. He's referencing our natural sin nature that we all have, our sin nature that makes us prone to serve our selfish hearts, makes us prone to serve our pride, to desire control, to feed our egos. The church is to be known as a place of unity in Christ, but these false teachers are prone to divide people. These false teachers are the cause and they encourage this us-versus-them culture and mentality, which is unhealthy in the church. Jude makes it very clear that these people do not have the Spirit. And how informative for us in today's church, right, to know this is what we should be looking for. The opposite of that, those who are uniting people in Christ. We need to look for those leaders who are bringing people together under the love of God. Jude is saying, in other words, look for those who show evidence of the work of the Spirit within them.

And in a way, he's referencing Jesus' own words, which we find in John 14:15, which read, "If you love me, keep my commandments." These false teachers are not doing this and he's saying it's very clear. Those false teachers, you can tell, by the way, that they're not keeping God's commandments and this is what's happening from them. This is the fruit that they produce. But if you love me, keep my commandments. For Christians of every age, how we live is the most reliable indicator of what we actually believe. In some ways, it doesn't matter what the words that we say. If the fruit, the character that we produce doesn't match that, then our words are pointless, right? We have to be living a life that shows the fruit of the Spirit at work in our hearts. So while we internalize that and hold ourselves to this standard, making sure that we are loving God by obeying Him, we can also be putting other people through that same filter, specifically the leaders that are claiming to follow God. We can see, are they living a life of obedience to God's laws? Are they keeping His commandments? And therefore, do they truly love God? This whole section, remembering the warnings and being vigilant in our faith, is about being on guard. I don't know if you've...this example in this week kind of came to my mind. I don't know if you've been paying attention to the news, but there's been a lot of airline mishaps recently. And if you've flown, God protect you. And maybe we're just seeing more of them. But there's one in particular, that one plane that flipped over. Thank God everyone was safe. Everyone made it alive. But I thought of...I heard the reports that the people, the stewardesses, the airline attendants did their job wonderfully. They got everyone out. And it was because of them that that situation went so well after the tragedy of the plane flipping over. But if you've flown before, you know that they go over those safety protocols every time. And they're up there with their little flaps, and they do the little examples. And usually, either we're tuning out, we're like, "I got a text message before I got to turn my phone off." Or you're one of those people that like, "I am giving them my full attention. I want them to see that I am like a type A student, and I am giving them everything." But they go over everything. And whether we understand it all perfectly or not is...who knows? But they know what to do. They are ready for whatever situation happens. And so when the worst of the worst happens, and these situations where that plane flips over, they knew exactly what to do. And they got everyone out. And they got the exits, and leave everything behind, and leave. And everyone got out. And the people in the news reports afterwards were thanking them that those people took care of us. Because they were on guard. In the same way, we have to be ready. We have to know what to do when we hear something that isn't true, that doesn't align with God's Word. We have to be ready for these situations. We must be vigilant.

Let's keep reading. Verse 20, it says, "But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt. Save others by snatching them from the fire. To others, show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh." This is where we're getting into the how-to. This is Jude's step-by-step explanation of this is how to contend for the faith. He's waited to the very end to show us. And he's doing it through a series of metaphors. So we're going to unpack this together and put together this visual that he's laying out here. So the first thing is that the community of believers is God's new temple, the church. It's no longer a temple like they have in Israel where you had to go to the physical temple. Now it is a gathering of people, unified in Him. We as a church are the temple of God. And then he says the community, this temple, is to build their lives on the foundation of the most holy faith, which is the gospel, the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. I can't think of a better foundation to have. So we have a foundation, the gospel. You builders know, that's where you start. You start on your foundation, let's build up from there. On that foundation, the church is to build itself up. Well, how? Through dedication to prayer and by devoting itself to the love of God through obedience. So as a community of believers, as God's church, as his temple, we build up, we strengthen the church by building yourselves up in the faith. We do that by knowing God, by reading his word, by following the ways of Jesus. It says by praying. Praying is this act of submission. Praying is the key way in which we commune with God. Praying is how we make our desires known to him and how we align our hearts with his. Praying is where we express gratitude and where we ask for guidance. So build yourselves up in the faith by knowing him, by praying, and by keeping ourselves in God's love.

That goes back to that John 15 passage of abiding in him, abiding in him daily, talking with him, meditating on his word. In the Old Testament, we would say this phrase, "walking with God." And you can see if you read the Old Testament, you see these stories of this person walked with God. That doesn't necessarily mean that God's right next to them walking, but it gives us that visual of every day in their life, step by step, they are following him. They are walking in the way of the Lord. And that's what we are called to do. In every situation that you find yourself in, whether at work, at home, with family, with friends, you are walking with him in that moment. We keep ourselves in God's love by obeying him, following the way in which he told us to live. Then it continues, "to be merciful to the doubters, to save others from snatching them from the fire." We'll get to that in a second. But by doing these things, we ensure that the temple of God, this church, right, we have our foundation of the gospel, then our church, our hearts are interlocked with God and his gospel. And this is important. The integrity of that building, of our church, will be maintained by staying alert for the truth of Jesus, as well as by helping each other stay faithful. In this analogy of our building, the building's integrity is weakened if there are people within our church, within this structure, who are acting out of selfish ambition, who are trying to corrupt the gospel. Are we tracking still? Are we putting this together? I'm understanding Jude's metaphor here. Another way of looking at these instructions is how these instructions relate to us, and how there are certain things that we focus on inwardly and other things that we focus outwardly. So inwardly, we build ourselves up in the faith, right? That's pursuing our relationship with God, praying in the Spirit, keeping ourselves in God's love. These are things that we do within ourselves, in our own lives. This with others, but maybe first and foremost with ourselves. We are putting effort and being intentional to ensure that we are participating in this way.

And then there's this outward focus of what to do with other people. Be merciful to those who doubt. Rather than just accepting that some people are lost, we should feel the responsibility and the burden to try and convince them of the truth. It then says, "Save others by snatching them from the fire." These false teachers that can be in churches are on the path to experience God's judgment and wrath. And as they gain followers, they are bringing other people into God's eternal fire, into his eternal wrath and judgment. And so we are to help, again, convince those people, "Don't follow that way. Come back to the truth of the gospel." And then it says, "To others, show mercy mixed with fear." Jude just said, "Be merciful to others." So what does he mean, "mixed with fear"? Well, sometimes we need to exercise caution towards those who have succumbed to false teachers. It's a good desire for us to want to play a role in bringing people to the gospel, bringing people to their Savior, but we have to remember that we are not their Savior. That role is for Christ and Christ alone. So we want to exercise caution. And then this metaphor at the very end of the clothing stained by the corrupted flesh, this just conveys how Christians are to hate how sinfulness brought on by false teachings has ruined the lives of those who do not resist. There should stir up in us a certain anger of someone whose life has succumbed to a false gospel. Because we know what really happened, that someone purposefully twisted God's truth to hurt someone, to rob someone of the true eternity spent with Jesus. And so there should be an anger, there should be a sadness within us when that happens. So all this, in this short, just three verses, this is how to contend for the faith. This is how to fight against false teachers. This is how to strengthen the church to build ourselves up in the truth of the gospel. As Pastor Chris mentioned last week, this is a short letter, but there is so much here, so much instruction for us.

And he ends with one final encouragement, verses 24 through 25, says, "To him who is able to keep you from stumbling, to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God our Savior, be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages, now and forevermore. Amen." This is my favorite part. I love these two verses. He so eloquently yet simply states that a relationship with God is the ultimate safeguard against false teachings. God is the only one who can keep us from falling victim to the lies and the heresy in this world. And again, it serves as a reminder that you cannot simply on your own strength and ability keep yourself from stumbling. Can't do it. If you want to try, as vigilant as you may be in your relationship with God, you can't do it on your own. We are all sinners. We all fall short. We cannot on our own strength keep ourselves from stumbling. We can't keep others from stumbling. But God can, and He does. It is God who keeps us. As I mentioned in the beginning, it speaks to this necessity of a community of believers. God works through the church, works through each of us together as we pursue Him together to keep us and protect us from falling too far from His grace. So trust that God is the one who keeps us from stumbling.

And then the next part, the next picture is a beautiful picture, an eternal perspective as Jude brings us to the moment that we will be with God in heaven. It says, "He will present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy." This is temple sacrifice language from the Old Testament, where a person would have to bring forth a perfect animal, which was a spotless animal, and you present it before the priests, which meant before God. And there was a joy in doing this because it meant that they would be made right before God. And so it was a moment of worship. It was a moment of joy going to the temple, bringing your sacrifice. Now we no longer have to make animal sacrifices, thank you, Lord, but we are still able to appear blameless before God, not on our own doing, because even as believers, right, we still have sin within us, but because of Christ, because of the sacrificial death that He died on the cross. He functions as our sacrifice to make it able that God sees us blameless before Him. So instead of seeing our sin, God sees the perfection of Jesus. What love God has for us to send His Son, Jesus, who died for us, and that will bring us with Him into heaven, where there is no sin, where we can commune with God for eternity. And then Jude ends with this beautiful affirmation of Jesus and God being one, to the only God, our Savior. Be the glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord. Jude testifies to both God's character as one worthy to be praised, and to God's right to rule all things, both now and forever. What a way to end this letter. A letter full of warnings, full of encouragement, full of truth, and then he ends with this protective blessing and prayer over the church. And to me, it's moving, it's inspiring, it's powerful. So as we close, I want to take a moment to reflect on our own lives, and as a community of believers, right?

So I have a couple questions for us. I want you just to think and answer these to yourselves. Be honest in your own heart. First one is this, are you living vigilantly? Are you attentive and astute to the truth of the gospel? We should take that warning to the false teachers seriously. And as Pastor Chris said last week, we should also be taking an internal inventory of our own lives, of our words, our actions, and hold them up to the truth that Jude says here and has instructed us. Are we contending for the faith? Are we on guard? Or as John 14, 15, do we love God? Are we following His commandments? So are you living vigilantly? Secondly, are you living with the hope and assurance of victory? Are we living in a way of anxiously awaiting the new mercies that we will experience with God in heaven? Are we expectantly anticipating and living in the light of God's future deliverance? Do we have that hope? Do we have that divine peace with us? Do we live with, yes, being present here in the now, but also with a part of our minds on the future and the glory of being with God? And then lastly, are you living with your trust in God? This is easy to say yes to and a lot harder to actually implement and live out every day trusting God fully. Do we have that peace in our heart that He is keeping us, that He is protecting us, that He has us, He's taking care of us? Are you letting selfish ambition or anxiety control and drive you? Are you living out of fear? Is any of your trust, are you trusting yourself in any part of your life more than you are trusting God with that part of your life? Some areas are easy. We're like, "Yeah, in this area, God, all you. Trust you. You got this." And in other areas of our life, we're like, "God, I think I know what I'm doing." So you can just hold on a second and we don't have these conversations with God, right? But this is how our actions play out. So I just want to ask, are you living with your trust in God? And this week, how can you take a step toward trusting God more? And I pray that as you answer these questions to yourself between you and God, that the Spirit will convict where conviction is necessary, that He'd encourage you where encouragement is necessary, maybe you're doing a great job and you would feel encouraged in your faith, and that in other areas, He would guide you and that you would listen and follow Him.

The Book of Jude: Part 2

The Book of Jude

Part 2: Recognizing the Counterfeits

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, I am excited to be bringing part two of Jude to you this morning, and if you haven't heard of the book of Jude, I don't blame you. It's only, what, 25 verses long. There isn't even a second chapter. It is so quick and short, but we felt that God had something for us to learn even in this book, and so we're taking three weeks to go through the book of Jude, and then we're gonna start on a journey to Easter together called the Ministry of Jesus, and we're gonna follow Jesus' journey to the cross, to Easter together, and we're really looking forward to that series starting in a few weeks. But this morning, we're gonna be jumping into Jude, but we're gonna start, I believe, around verse five. Pastor Andre did a great job last week kinda giving us an intro to the book and really talking through the first four verses of this letter, and what's really cool is Jude here is encouraging people to continue to contend for the faith, to remember who you are at your core. He talked about how we are called, we're loved, and we're kept, and that because of that we're called, we're loved, and we're kept, we have a new identity. When we ask Jesus to come into our lives, to change us, to transform us, to make us new, to put the sin away and to put on the new identity in Christ, God transforms us. He changes who we are, and this is foundational that in this, when we know as not ourselves, not as Roy or Matt or Carolina or Eric or anybody else, but that we are now in Christ.

We are in Christ Jesus, and this is foundational to know how we stand to contend for the faith. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is that in standing up for the faith in Jesus Christ, we have to be able to decide what is true and what is not true, and the greatest thing in the world, we have two amazing things in our lives that help us with us, and we don't have to figure this out. We have the Holy Spirit, we sang about this morning together, and we have the Bible, we have God's word for our lives to then help us know how we stand for the faith. When other things come at us that aren't of God and try to throw us off, we're able to stand for the faith for God. But first, I wanna pray real quick before we jump in. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we continue to invite you into this space. Jesus, I pray for myself that you would give me the words this morning to share, Jesus, that you have, through your servant Jude, written a letter to remind the church how to stand for truth. And so, Jesus, I pray that we would be open to what you have for us. God, I don't believe it's an accident that anybody is here in this space this morning, but Jesus, you have something for every single one of us. And so, God, I pray we have open ears, open hearts, open minds to truly understand what you want us to hear today, not what we brought in or what we're looking or any agenda we have in our lives, but you, Jesus, would speak truth into our lives this day. Amen.

Jude here is telling us that as we stand for the faith, that we have to be able to recognize counterfeits. We have to recognize things that aren't true, things that are false. This summer, every summer, if you guys have been around the rhythm of Spring Valley, we have a fireworks booth that we host in our parking lot, and all week, we out there and we sit in the hot and we sweat and we sell black powder is essentially what we're doing. Just be honest. We're selling miniature explosions as much as the state of California will allow us to sell. You have to go to the other states for the really good stuff, sorry. But as we're out there selling, we're making lots of transactions. And I remember at the end of the week, we gathered up all the cash that we had and we took it to the bank to deposit all of our sales. And as they're counting all the money up and going through everything, this $100 bill pops out of the machine. And I think, oh no. And so she pulls it aside and she starts to investigate why the currency machine kicked this $100 bill out. And all week, if you know, Shelly, she is the champion. She is the queen of fireworks. She runs that booth like a well oiled machine. She takes care of us so well, she's sick today. We miss you, we love you, we're praying for you, Shelly. And we had been so careful all week. We had the pens, you know where you can draw, you make sure, we even had the UV light out there to be able to look at everything. And this $100 bill passed the pen test and it passed the UV light test. But as we're sitting there at the bank, I'm talking to tell her, there's just something about this $100 bill that isn't sitting right. She takes the pen, she tests it, it passed. She puts it under their UV light, it passed. But the more that she began to investigate this $100 bill, we quickly began to understand that it was counterfeit. It was a fake. And that somewhere along the way, in the busyness that can be out there in that booth, we did what we were supposed to do. We took the checks, we looked for truth. We hit the pen, we hit the light. But she began to show me on the backside of the $100 bill, right near the bottom of it, the printing was blurry. It wasn't crisp. And the more that she touched that and rubbed it, the ink actually started to smudge. And I said, "How often do you get this?" And she goes, "Hardly ever." She goes, "Honestly, it rarely happens." She goes, "Most people who work in businesses and jobs have touched money so much through transactions that they just know when they touch it." And that's true for the Secret Service who deals with counterfeits, the FBI, local law agencies. How they train for counterfeits is they do nothing but trust and touch real paper money. They look at all the details. They look at the nuances. They look at the UV lighting that's on it. They look at the printing. They look at the smallest details and they just touch it time and time again. And so the moment they begin to touch something that doesn't feel right, a red flag goes up and says, "Hold up, time out. Something isn't right."

You must know the real thing to be able to spot counterfeits and part of contending for the faith means that we have to discern false versus what God said is true. It's spotting the counterfeits that are disguised so well as truth around us that actually begin to hurt our faith. That $100 bill passed the pen test. It passed the UV light test. It did everything that we thought we had done to set up to prevent this. And yet, because we do not touch money regularly and handle it, know the details, know the nuances and all the little details, we weren't able to catch this counterfeit. And Jude here is basically saying in this section that there are false teachers out there. That isn't something we're debating today. There are false teachers out there. There are ungodly people who are trying to do what they want to do, making their own selfish decisions. And Jude here wants to make a point.

So he says, starting in verse five, he says, "Though you already know all of this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling, these he has kept in darkness, bound everlasting chains for judgment on the great day. And in a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer "he punishment of eternal fire." Whoa. Jude just comes in with like the one-two punch here, right? He's like, I got a short letter, guys. I said, I made a joke that Jude is like the text message of communication in the early church, it's so short. Like Paul's writing like theses over here and mailing off these giant letters. And then you got other ones that are shorter, like 1st and 2nd Timothy is kind of like an email. And then Jude is like a text message. So I mean, you only got so many characters to use up, right? We want to get to the point here. And Jude jumps in and he says, "You have to watch out for false teachers." Because what happened? He goes, "The Israelites didn't obey God. "God redeemed them out of Egypt, rescued them, saved them. "And yet they didn't obey God. "And because of that, they had to wander "in the desert for 40 years." He said, "Then the angels." This is kind of interesting. If you guys know any story about this, the angels is the story of Genesis 6. That there were these angels that rejected their dwelling with God and actually said, I want to go to earth. And so God said, okay, you can go, but that is your life. There is no coming back from this. So the angels left and came down and they glorified themselves among humans, having relations with them and dwelling with them. And because of that, the angels chose to glorify themselves. And then Sodom and Gomorrah, if you guys know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were two powerhouse cities. I mean, I'm talking about powerhouse, the top of the top, the most GDP, the greatest. They had the armies, they had the wealth, they had everything, but what happened? They rejected the way of God's living. And because they rejected and they tried, they tried. God sent angels, God sent leaders, God sent so many people to Sodom and Gomorrah said, turn away, there's a better way to live your life. You're living for yourself, but yet they rejected it. And so in the end, their own selfish decisions led to their demise. So Jude is giving these three pretty powerful stories. So people that are reading in this context, they come from a Jewish background, they would immediately understand what he is talking about comparing to false teachers. And we can see what their choices actually ended up costing them. God's judgment. We don't like to talk about this side of God, right? We want the loving, the caring, the gracious, the blessing, the merciful, we want that side, we like that God, but you can't have that side of God without the other side that says, there's a line in the sand, enough is enough.

And so I see two warnings for our church today. Today's modern church, number one is this is an encouragement, okay? You're like, what, how, what? No. These examples, they confirm that these false teachers, no matter how much they get away with what they do, no matter how much they hurt people, no matter how far they lead people astray, there will be consequences. God is the king. God is Lord. God is on the throne. And they will be judged and condemned for their actions. Maybe this side of eternity or after, it's up to God. The Israelites, they were punished here on earth. The angels were bound in chains as darkness, as the scripture says. And Sodom and Gomorrah suffered destruction under fire. I mean, fireballs from heaven, talking about a fireworks show, holy buckets, crazy. These, all these people preached a false gospel.

Second thing I see is that we must take this message to heart and to be on our guard, always aware, always looking around, always paying attention to guard our hearts against these false teachers. Time and time again, it breaks my heart when I hear and read about stories of pastors who have just fallen from the faith. And it breaks my heart because it's not just them, personally, it's not just their families. It's communities of faith, churches that just lie in ruins in the wake of these false teachers as they led their people astray. And it makes me so sad and my heart goes out to them because I know people personally who have been hurt by the church. Some God had been able to redeem and bring back to the church and say, that was not my way. This is my way, come back. Some are like, I want nothing to do with this God ever again for the rest of my life because of false teachers. God isn't messing around when he talks about these. Being a good Christian doesn't mean we aren't susceptible to falling for these false teachings. The enemy is the master deceiver. He twists things, he puts just little drops of truth along the way so we think, oh, okay, this is gonna be okay. It's gonna be all right. But we must continue to walk faithfully daily with Jesus and to know his word, to have this. So I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you, God. To his word deep down inside of us that'll never go away, that we have the truth inside of who we are, to understand, to stand against these false teachings and to contend for the faith.

Jude continues in verse eight, he says this. “In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams, these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority, heap abuse on celestial beings. But even the Archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses did not himself dare to condemn him for slander, but said, the Lord rebuke you. Yet these people slander whatever they do, do not understand. And the very things they do not understand by instinct as irrational animals do, will destroy them. Woe to them. They have taken the way of Cain. They have rushed for profit into Balaam's air and they have destroyed in Korah's rebellion.” What's going on here? He talks about Cain, he talks about Balaam and Korah. What's the story here? Again, some background history here. Cain ended up bringing an offering to God, however, it was without faith. And in turn, out of his jealousy, which God rejected his offering and took his brothers, he went and killed his own blood in anger. His own brother, he killed him. And Jude here is saying, this is dead religion. How do you say that? Well, the Bible tells us that faith without works is dead. Cain brought his offering without faith. So he had the works of the offering, but didn't have any faith, it was backwards. And because of that, it was a dead religion that Cain was actually practicing. False religion, incorrect religion, untrue religion and worship. Well, what about Balaam? Well, Balaam, he was intentionally, intentionally led others into sin. He was in control in leadership and he intentionally led people into sin. Why? For his own profit. He was making money off of leading people into sin. And then Korah, Korah rebelled against God's authority and even against the mediator who is Jesus. There's so much here in these three stories. I don't have time this morning. But Korah rebelled against authority and rejected God's given authority at that time in Israel.

Now Jude is really honest here. If you thought he was hitting hard, he's about to continue to hit a little bit harder here. Says this in the next section. It's really poetic. It's kind of beautiful the way he says this. But he said, "These people are blemishes at your love feast, eating with you without the slightest qualm, shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind, autumn trees without fruit and uprooted, twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea foaming up their shame, wandering stars from the blackest darkness has there been reserved forever." Jude isn't holding back here. You know, guys, you caught some of that stuff. But he talks about some key things here. He talks about these love feasts. What is he talking about this? Well, in the early church, they would have called these agape feasts, which would have been what we know today as potlucks, right? Next Sunday, soup and salad Sunday, sign up in the back, be here for our love feast. No, I'm kidding. But our church meal is next week. But they would gather together. And what this actually was, was it was a moment for the church to all come collectively to bring food, to invite the community in, to then provide a meal for those who didn't have any food. And for some, that was their only meal of the week, was Sunday. And they would go a whole week without food, looking forward to that next Sunday, to go to church, to be fed spiritually by the word of God, but physically by a meal shared together. And what does Jude say? Jude says, "They're hanging out at these gatherings. They're among you. You may not see them. You may not understand them. They may be putting the face on and saying all the right Christian words, right? We have a language that we speak in the church. They're saying all the right things, but they're there to manipulate. They're there to connive. They're there to leverage people for their own personal gain." He continues on, "Clouds without rain." What are clouds made to do? They're made to bring rain. They're made to bring what came this morning, water, nourishment, life to earth. But a rain with, or a cloud without rain is kind of useless, right? It's just blown away by the wind. He continues on, "Autumn trees without fruit and are uprooted. They're twice dead." Well, if you guys know, autumn time is harvest. I love going up to Apple Hill. Autumn time, oh, just such a best. All the apples are out there for harvest. The trees are bearing fruit. But what happens when a tree doesn't bear fruit? Gets cut down. Why? The purpose of the tree is to bear fruit. And so in these orchards, when a tree ceases to produce fruit, it's chopped down, it's uprooted, it's burned, it's tossed away, and a new tree is planted in hopes that it will produce fruit.

Jude here is also saying a little bit of a test here. If you find people and you're not too sure about where they are or where their faith is, test them for fruit. Look for results of God's transformation in their lives. To see the fruit, to see the transformation, to know, because false teachers don't have fruit. Continues on, "Wild waves of the sea just bashing up against the coast." Bash, that does nothing good, right? All it does is break down the coast. It breaks down, creates cliffs and rocks and treacherous waters. Wandering stars. You guys know about anything about the North Star? We've had some field trips with our kids lately, and I started to learn more about the stars, and it's pretty amazing about the North Star and how the reason they use it for navigation and how they do it, because basically the way the earth rotates, that star doesn't move in the sky. Every other star, as the earth spins, we move around those stars, and the stars are moving around us. But the North Star stands still. It is what they call, by definition, true north. And that's how sailors would navigate waters before GPS or coordinates or maps or anything. They would know where they're plotting based on the trajectory and the movement of them compared to the North Star, because the North Star is true. It doesn't change, it doesn't move, it doesn't do anything but stick right there. What a blessing from God, right? What a blessing from God to have that truth.

Jude here is making it clear that these false teachers are pointless at best and wreak havoc at worst. Yeah, they may make waves. They may draw attention. They may make noise, but it's short-lived. It leaves behind them a wake of shame, uncertainty, and chaos. But when we are on guard, contending for the faith, looking out for the false, looking out for the counterfeits, paying attention, we're able to see truth. We're able to see the truth of God moving in people among us. It's sad, the latest study of, I think it was a bar in a group or something, they do a bunch of church studies, that the reputation of pastors and Christians is the lowest it's been in basically the history of the church today. Because of the false teachers, because of the hypocrisy, because of the manipulation, because of the greed, because of the sexual immorality, because of the sin. Now, you have to remember that pastors are people too. You can't be putting people on pedestals. But it also means that we have a higher calling to teach the truth. I love what Pastor Andre said last week. If you find one of us preaching something that is not true to scripture, that is hypocrisy, call us out. 100%. Because if we don't lead in the way of the truth, we're no greater than any of these people that Paul or that Jude is calling out here in this letter. We have to use discernment. We live in this world of manipulation and deception, right? Social media, nothing we see on social media is true, right? Nothing we read. The 24 hour news cycle that just does not stop. Other religions around us trying to say, this is truth, this is what this means. Half truths, manipulated truths, where they're packaged up and they look beautiful, right? And we go, there it is. But when we begin to open it up and discover that's not truth, we have to use discernment to see what is true. The theologian, Erdman writes this, he said, "There is no other gospel. There will be none. Its content will be more fully understood. Its implications will be developed. Its predictions will be fulfilled, but it will never be supplemented, succeeded, or supplanted." Did you guys catch that? This is truth. The gospel is truth.

Says in 2 Timothy 3:1-5, "But mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power, having nothing to do, have nothing to do with such people." This could have been written this week. But this was written in the early church 2,000 years ago. World doesn't change much, does it? Just new generations, and new generations, and new generations. Paul makes it clear, have nothing to do with these people. So Jude wraps everything up in this section. He ends it with a quote from Enoch, which is kinda interesting. If you guys know the story of Enoch in Genesis, he was only a handful of generations separated from Adam, the original human being created in the garden. And even though Enoch's writings are highly regarded with their truth of being grounded in scripture, this is actually not scripture itself, but it says this. “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, so the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied about them. He said, See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness. And all, and all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These people are grumblers, faultfinders. They follow their own evil desires. They boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.” Jude really, really, really wants to make it clear to the point that false teachers or anybody preaching any other gospel other than the gospel of Jesus Christ will be judged and punished. God ain't messing around when it comes to the gospel. That is a black and white issue. There ain't no gray in there whatsoever. And ultimately, our responsibility as followers of Christ in that gospel is to be on the lookout and on guard against all of these false teachers. False teachers are everywhere. They're in churches, they're in communities, they're all over social media. They're online, everywhere to be found. And we have to be on guard knowing what truth is so we can hold it up against the counterfeit to go, does this feel right? Does this look right? Is this printed correctly? Is this exactly how the Bible says is truth? Or is it off course? False teachers come all spectrums from just a little bit to wonky. There's some wonky ones out there. But we have to be on the lookout. Not allowing even just regular sinfulness to come into our hearts. We just finished a series, Habits of a Healthy Heart. And we talked about what the word repent means. Re, to turn away, to pent, penthouse, higher. To turn away from the lower being of false teachers and false truth and false religions, turning away from that to the higher, greater calling that God has for each of our lives. To repent, to turn to God's life, to see the truth, to follow his teachers that he's blessed us with that lead us in the truth of the gospel. We have to be on guard against choosing rote obedience rather than living by faith that leads to dead religion. We have to be on guard choosing to follow not our own selfish desires that lead us astray in our own sin. We have to be on guard, as Jude said, choosing not to grumble or constantly find fault in anything, in any act of rebellion against a good and righteous God. So we contend for the faith by being on the lookout for false teachers, fighting to find the truth in the pulpit and in public places. And we fight for that truth to be preached in our own hearts, in our own homes, and in our own churches, right? The first step in turning from rebellion is to confess anything that we got going in our heart that isn't up to truth of God's scripture.

So question this morning as we wrap up. What rebellion in your life or in your heart do you need to confess? Jude's not pulling punches. Jude's coming straight at us. Sometimes we need that, right? Sometimes we need somebody just to come at us and tell us how it is, right? There's enough fluff in this world. Jude ain't no fluff. (laughs) So I want us to take just a moment right here. I want you just to bow your head, go before God, and just ask God to do an inventory on your heart and your life. And to go, God, where am I believing a false religion? Where have I unbeknownst, succeeded, succumbed to false teaching? Or maybe where do I have just a little bit of rebellion in my heart? Where I'm flirting with that line of sin, or maybe you've stepped into it, and maybe you're walking alongside it. We talked about have we befriended sin in our last series? But let God search your heart. Let him take inventory and begin to reveal to you right now in this moment.

We're just gonna take a moment pray together, quiet in our hearts. Search our hearts, Father. Show us if there is any wicked or wrong way in us, Jesus. Not in a sense to control us or to put us down or to bring shame onto our hearts, 'cause that's not from you, God. But that part of this salvation piece of transforming our lives is changing things in our hearts, changing the way maybe we see those around us, changing the way that we might act when nobody's looking, change the way that we have for our priorities in our life that are not God-honoring. God, maybe it's a specific sin that you've placed on our heart this morning, Jesus. I pray that we would repent from that, that we would turn away from the lower, the false, the less, and turn to receive your greater love, your greater hope, your greater mercy. Jesus, I pray this week that this introspection would not stop here, but that it would continue on, God, throughout this week and throughout this series as we finish up Jude next week, God, that you would truly take an inventory inside of us. It's easy to look around at those in our lives and to go like, oh, they're messing up. They're not doing it right. They don't have their stuff together, that they're a false teacher, and I'm doing okay, God. I'm not as bad as them. But this isn't a comparison game, God. This is holding up truth, scripture, your word against our lives, not comparing us to anybody else. And we need to take a moment to pause our lives, to look at what we have going, and to ask ourselves, are we living the way that God commands us to? The higher, the greater, the better, the victorious, the gracious, the merciful, the loving life that you've called us to live, how does our life match up? I pray maybe even in the midst of this, God, we would be encouraged in areas that we're doing really good or areas we used to struggle with that we're still fighting through, God. Help us to continue to fight. We haven't given up yet. Fighting is good. Fighting means we're still trying to push forward through all this mess, God. But God, I pray you begin to drill deep down, deep, deep down inside of us, and to change us, mold us, God, into who you created us to be. God, I'm grateful for today. I'm grateful for this day. God, we pray for those who weren't able to be with us that aren't feeling well. God, I pray that you would heal their hearts, you would bring health and full restoration back to their lives, restore their bodies. God, give them sleep and rest. And God, I pray that you would bring all of us back together next week for a church lunch, you know, to hang out, to eat, to eat, to hang out, to wrap up Jude and just have a great afternoon of friendship and laughter and encouragement, God. We praise you for this day. We love you. Pray all this in Jesus' name. Everybody said, Amen, Amen.

The Book of Jude: Part 1

The Book of Jude

Part 1: The Call To Contend

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Finished a series called the habits of a healthy heart. We did that for five weeks. And now we're starting a new series and something that we do here at Spring Valley Church is that we'll kind of go back and forth between a topical series and something more expositional, just going through verse by verse a book of the Bible. And that's what we're going to do now for the next three weeks. We're going into the book of Jude. If you've not heard of Jude, that's okay. It's like one of the shortest books in the Bible. It's tiny. It's the second to last book in the Bible. It's right before Revelations. And we are going to be diving in just three weeks and kind of the theme around Jude is contending for the faith. We'll get into what that means today. But I want you to, let me start with this question here. Can you think of a time in the church history where the truth of the gospel was under attack? Where the truth was taught by people whose lives actually promoted sin? A time in church history where the truth of the gospel was being polluted, where the truth had been hijacked for corrupt purposes and selfish gain. The reality is we may be thinking of multiple times in church history because this is a common problem and it was a problem all the way back in the early church. It existed even in the time of Jesus' ministry. As Jesus was going around, this problem started rising. And multiple authors in the New Testament had to address this issue. And Jude is one of those authors. He sees what's going on in the early church and says, "This is not okay. I got to say something about it.”

And so again, in our three-part series in Jude, we're going to look at how Jude calls believers to stand firm in their faith, to discern truth from falsehood, and to persevere and walk with God. And through this series, our hope is that we as a church will be inspired to live boldly for Jesus, living a life that is founded in truth and filled with hope. So before we again get into it, I just want to give a little bit more about the background is that Jude was originally going to write a long letter. We see these short letters and we're like, "What happened there? Everyone else's New Testament book is a little bit longer." So he was going to write something longer, but he saw the issue of this false teachers and he said, "I got to address it right away." So I'm going to write this short little memo, but it's still very thoughtful and very powerful. And what Jude does, pardon my voice, by the way, sickness is going through our family. Wife and baby aren't here because they're sick and I'm getting over it. So I'm here, don't worry. I'm okay. But this is new. I haven't sounded like this yet. So yeah, Jude in his message, he doesn't just get into how to address false teachers, but why we should address false teachers. Psychologists today have a preference for people understanding the why over understanding the how, because it reaches humans, it reaches us on a deeper level. By knowing the reasons behind events or behaviors, people feel more equipped to navigate situations more accurately. So Jude is saying, "Hey, you believers, you church, if you understand why these false teachers are doing what they're doing, you're going to be more motivated and better equipped to navigate those situations. Rather than me just telling you how to navigate it and how to do everything, let me tell you why." We see this in parenting often, right? At a certain age, there's a need to simply say, "Don't do this. This is how you do it." But when they get a little bit older, you start to tell them why we do it so that they can understand, so they can make that decision in the future on their own. "Wow, thank you so much. All the service. Lead pastor right there. That's a lead pastor just serving. Is there honey in it too? Just a little bit? Oh, there's not. Okay. That's just me. It's just our water. It's great water. Okay." It's like I said, when we parent, you tell your kids at a certain age why we do something because you want them to understand so that in other situations they can do it on their own. The why is important. We'll see in the next couple of weeks, Jude explains what is happening, why it is so important to address this and how to take action.

So if you guys want to open your Bibles or follow along on the screen, you're going to flip all the way to the end of your Bible. Well, not quite, Jude. I'm going to read the first four verses of Jude. Also, there's no chapters. I put one in there just so we don't confuse us if you're looking in your bulletin, but it's just one chapter. All right. One through four. It says, "Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who have been called who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance. Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign Lord." Let's pray together. God, thank you again for our time. And God, I pray that you would be with us this morning and help us to understand your word and that we would understand why it is so important to have a true grasp of your gospel and why it is so important to constantly be growing in our faith and our understanding of who you are and what you do. And God, I pray that through your word this morning, we'd be drawn closer to you. We'd be encouraged to live boldly for you and that we would be filled with hope. We give this morning to you. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right, let me just drink a little bit more. This is good. Yes, thank you. This morning, just short verses right here.

There's a few truths that I want us to focus on and meditate on together. All right. So here's this, in the first two verses, we see Jude address our identity in Christ, our identity. As I mentioned before, we can learn something important about knowing the identity of Jude himself. So Jude says, "Is a brother of Jesus Christ." Well, he's a brother of James, but we know that James, we do some research. I did the research for you. James is a brother of Jesus. And so you're wondering, why didn't you just claim to be a brother of Jesus himself? I think it's showing humility, right? It'd be easy for us if we were the brother of Jesus. Wouldn't we want to put that on every book we wrote? To be like, "Hey, by the way, we all love him. You guys love him. You'll love me too. I'm the brother." But he shows humility by saying, "I'm a servant of Jesus." And there's really even a deeper story behind that. If we go to John 7-3, we understand that Jesus' family was not always so supportive of Jesus. It says in John 7-3, "Jesus' brother said to him, 'Leave Galilee.'" This is the brothers telling Jesus, "Leave Galilee and go to Judea so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world, for even his own brothers did not believe him." So they are mocking Jesus right here. Jude is one of the brothers that is mocking Jesus, saying, "I don't believe." If you want to go do this thing, go show the world who you think you are. They're not encouraging. We can read them and be like, "Oh, they just want him to go." No, they're mocking him. They're saying, "Go do your thing if you want to." They're doubting who he claims to be and saying, "Yeah, go show the world. Maybe they'll accept you." And so there's unbelief and there's a failure to understand who Jesus is and what his kingdom is about. And we don't know the story, but we now know that Jude wrote a book. So somewhere in between, there's a transformation that happened in him, going from doubt and disbelief to belief and the utmost belief to say, "I'm a servant of Jesus. I believe so much about who he is that I am wanting to be a part of his kingdom now." So what a beautiful picture of transformation and redemption. And he writes this knowing that other people will have felt the same way. They'll relate. They'll say, "I once had doubts. I didn't believe, but now I do." And he wants to strengthen their faith.

So then he turns his attention to the audiences, which is us, to our identity, to those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Called, loved and kept. This is about the church then and it's about us today. Called shows that our salvation begins with God. Loved shows that his love, God's love for us is the foundation for everything that we do and how we live our life. And then we are kept. I love that. We will see how our eternal security can empower us to be bold in our faith. We don't have to fear anything in this world because we know that we have a future in heaven with God. You see, our identity changes as believers to be united with the person of Christ. This is our identity today. And other New Testament authors talk about this. Galatians 2 says, "I've been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." 2 Corinthians 5 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, the new is here. All this from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ." So all throughout the New Testament, we see, and Jude puts it right here, so compactly as believers we are called, we are loved, and we are kept. Your entire spiritual life is initiated by God, is sustained by God, and your eternal future is promised and kept for by God. Our identity is found solely in him. We live in a world today that is vying to say, "Hey, put your identity in this. Put your identity in work, in your family, in your success, in sport," whatever it is, all these things that are vying for like, "Hey, plant your flag of identity, put it here." And Jesus is saying, "No, your whole identity is in me. Once you believe in me, your whole life has changed, all of it." So I just want this to wash over us today and to give us comfort, to be a good reminder, to give us security in our faith and hope for our future. So church, God has called you. God loves you, and God is keeping you. Your identity is aligned with Christ, who was the suffering servant, the one who loved the orphans and the widows, who ate meals with the outcasts and the rejects, who defeated sin, who conquered death, who ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God. This is who our identity lies in. We are first reminded in just those first couple verses of our identity in Christ.

Then Jude moves on to something else. In verse 3, he gives us the need to contend. Says "Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith." He's being a good shepherd here, looking out for the flock of the church, and he knows that wolves are on the attack, threatening the flock, threatening the church, something that many of the disciples and the apostles addressed, giving the early church a playbook. Believers need to know their faith. They need to mature and grow in their faith, to truly understand what Jesus says is truth and what's not true. Other authors put it this way. Hebrews 6 says, "Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from accidentally to death and faith in God." Ephesians 4 says, "Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming." This one speaks to me. I'm a visual person. I don't know if you've ever been to the ocean and just been on an inner tube or floating out there, and you let the waves take you. They will take you. You will go farther and farther out, and you don't really have control. You're just letting the ocean take you where it is. That's what it can be like if we don't know our faith. The minute we hear something, we're like, "Oh, that sounds good," and we go in that direction. Someone else teaches this, "Oh, you know what? That sounds good too," and we're just being tossed back and forth. In this analogy, Jesus is saying, "I want you to be anchored. I don't want the waves to take wherever they're taking you. I want you to know what is true. I want you to stay right there." What does it mean to contend? To contend for the faith. Well, the word in Greek here really means to convey a struggle, a wrestling match. And we're not so much wrestling with someone else as much as we're wrestling with our faith to understand it more. We have to know that the faith we have in God is something that is living. It's not static. It's a relationship with God, and as we grow and we know more about God, there'll be things in the faith that are new, and we need to wrestle with those things. We have to wrestle with situations that arise where we know the truth of God, hey, to love other people. And we find ourselves in one situation, and we figure out, "All right, in this situation, this is how I love other people." But then, maybe 10 years down the road, you find yourself in a new situation. You say, "I need to love. I don't know how to love these people. I knew how to do it in that situation, but I need to wrestle again with the faith to figure out what it means to love others in this situation." Here's a couple of tools to keep in your back pocket when we talk about contending for the faith. As you wrestle with Scripture, remember these things. One, always use Scripture to understand Scripture. Does that make sense? Use Scripture to understand Scripture. If you read one passage and you say, "I think this is what this is saying," go find other passages that talk about the same thing and see if that is true. The Bible is consistent. It will not say, "Do this thing," and then do the complete opposite. So use Scripture to understand Scripture. Next, ask the Spirit to help you discern. Pray about it. "God, is this what you're telling me to do? Is this what your word is saying? I think in this situation, I understand your truth from the Bible, and I want to apply it in this way. Is this what you want me to do?" He'll tell you. And then use the body of Christ. Use the church. We all have different experiences that the Bible tells us the body of believers is made up of different parts to help each other. You may have lived through a certain situation that I haven't been through yet, and I'm going to go to you and say, "Hey, what did you do? How did you walk through that in such a Christ-like manner? Tell me how to do that. We're here for each other. How did you apply God's truth in that conversation? That was a hard conversation you had. How did you do that?" So he's urging the early church to wrestle with their beliefs, to understand how some things are true and some things are clearly not true. The call here is for believers to be proactive in their faith, not passive and nonchalant, but proactive in their faith. This faith we have, this gift of salvation, this relationship with God that we have is precious, it's powerful, and it needs to be prioritized in our lives.

So why do we do this? When we aren't proactive in doing these things, Jude addresses what may happen if this doesn't occur, and that is the threat of false teachers in our faith communities. Verse 4 says, "For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign Lord." There's a reality that within church, people don't know the truth and don't understand the truth. That's a given. The scarier truth is that there are people who will rise up in leadership and start to preach and teach not truth, falsehoods. And we as a church are to hold each other accountable. If Pastor Chris or I ever got up here and said something that was a heresy, I would hope that you guys would see that, hear that, and do something about it. That you guys would not be just tossed to and from and be like, "I guess what he said is true even though the Bible clearly says otherwise." No, you guys, yeah, come on, call us out if that ever happens. And that's what wasn't happening in the early church. These churches didn't know the truth, didn't wrestle with their faith to understand, so that when false teachers got up, they were just going along with it like, "Oh, okay, sure." It's a scary truth when this happens because those people, Jude makes it clear, they're doing this knowingly. These false teachers do it knowingly. They know that what they're saying is a lie, that they are perverting the truth of the gospel and that they are giving license to sin. Their false gospel doesn't just allow it but might even encourage people to sin and also deny Christ. Here's a couple of thoughts. Next week, Pastor Lauren's going to really get into a lot of false teaching, so I'm only going to give like a tease right here because her section of Jude is all about it. But here's a couple of things to remember about false teachers from this one verse. False teachers can be subtle. It says they slipped in, right? This wasn't a came in with a big like, "Oh, we should have known because it was..." No, they slip in. It's subtle. While sometimes their teaching is outright wrong, oftentimes it twists the truth. So there's a nugget of truth in there, but they twisted in some way. And so you recognize like, "Oh, that part of it, yeah, that sounded good." And then some other part is obviously wrong. But it's small and it can be subtle. Something like, "Hey, a closer relationship to God should mean me experiencing more blessing in my life." You hear that and you're like, "Okay, not necessarily wrong, but I have some follow-up questions. What does that mean?" Are we just talking health and wealth prosperity gospel here? Are we just talking about God's going to be good to me despite whatever I go through? It can be small. We have to be careful. We need to be proactive in listening to what is being taught. We need to know the truth in order to recognize the falsehoods. This is why Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4, it says, "Preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction for the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine." He's already saying this is going to happen. "Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them with great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations. Endure hardship. Do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry." You cannot just show up to church and just listen and like half listen and be like, "All right, got my fill of Jesus. I'm good." No, you need to listen, do the work, compare what we say to scripture, make sure that this is exactly, this is lining up with what God has said in his word. All right, so first false teachers can be subtle. False teachers look at the fruit they produce in their life.

John 15 talks about abiding in Christ and we'll know, the Bible tells us that we don't know the heart of every person. We're not meant to know exactly their heart status and if they're saved or not saved, but we can look at the fruit of their lives to say, "Hey, are they showing the fruit of the spirit? Are they loving? Are they kind? Are they patient? Are they compassionate?" If we see those things, we can be like, "Hey, I think that maybe they're a believer. Maybe they're following Jesus because their life looks like it." For those false teachers, look at the fruit of their life. If they're saying one thing, but they treat people terribly, or look at how they treat the poor. Look at how they treat those who are struggling. There's signs there that could be like, "Hmm, they say one thing and they sound kind of good, but their whole life just seems like a wreck. Their life doesn't have it together. They're not loving other people like Jesus would love people." Paul says in Romans, "I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way. They're contrary to the teaching that you have learned. Keep away from them, for such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the minds of naive people." Again, Bible tells us there are going to be false teachers and they're going to deceive people. So the warning is, look out for false teachers. Also, don't be the one with naive minds, right? We want to mature in faith. We want to grow in our faith. Peter says, "But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves." I once was at a pastors conference, and this is a room full of pastors, and someone was speaking to us. And I remember being a little bit shocked, because his message was, even in this room right now, and there was probably 3,000 of us pastors in this room, he's like, "Even among us, there are Judases in this room. People who are preaching, who think that they may be okay, or who know that they are preaching falsehoods. It is a reality that we deal with. We have to be vigilant, knowing we have to know the truth. And we have to know, that way, when we know the truth, this is a tease, this is going to get into next week, when we know the truth, we'll better recognize what's false. So, so important to know the gospel. And again, we're talking about inside the church, right? This is not, of course, there are false beliefs out in the world, that's to be expected. But inside the church, there are still going to be challenges that we face when it comes to false teaching, and heresies that lead people away from Jesus. And I think I've used this analogy before, but even if it's just a degree off, you think of being out at sea, and just a degree off, well over many, many miles, you're going to end up this far apart. Even though, it was just a degree off from the truth. And that's true of the gospel too. You hear someone's teaching, you're like, "That's just, it's a little bit off." That plays out in life, and they are miles away from Jesus.

So, in the opening verses here, just the four verses, we see that Jude has reinforced believers to understand their identity in Christ. He's encouraged them to be proactive and wrestle with their faith. And he warns them of false teachers. I want to end today with a question for us to think about this week. How can you, today, live as one called, loved, and kept by God in a culture of compromise? Are you secure in God's call in your life? Do you see that your identity is found in him first and foremost? Or is your identity compromised because you're wrapped up in, fill in the blank, or you're wrapped up in your job, your role as a parent, found in your success? It can be good things, but they can't be the first thing. Our identity has to be in Christ. Do you live every day firm in your understanding of his love for you? Are you loving others because God first loved you? Are you living as someone who is deeply loved? There's a saying out there, you know, hurt people hurt other people. Well, the opposite is true, too. People who are loved are better at loving others. Guys, we're loved by God. And we have a responsibility to love those around us. Keep the question up there. Keep it up there for the rest of the time. Do you have hope that emboldens you to live for Christ in every situation? Uncertainty in the future can bring up fear and anxiety. But because we know that God has us, that he's sustaining us, that he has the most perfect future for us, we can live confidently knowing that no matter what happens around us, God's got us. How can you live as one called, loved, and kept? And then in a culture of compromise, you guys know this, we live in a world today of, hey, live your truth, you do you. What, well, all the other sayings that include compromise. You know, when no one's looking, we think we can live a certain life, but maybe we just feel the pressure to do that when we're in front of other people. But when no one's looking, we live a different way. Or we think, hey, it's just this one time. Or it's not that often. We all have our things that we get into. Hey, I go to church on Sunday, so that's good. That gives me some freedom for the way I live my life the other six days of the week. Or we say things like, hey, no one's perfect, so we all have a past in a way. I don't have to do the entire Christian life, just overall I have to lean that way. I gotta make sure I kind of head in that direction. But I don't have to be pursuing Jesus with my everything. We say it out loud, and you're like, oh, that doesn't sound great. But we say these in our head, and we're like, oh, I mean, yeah, kind of. And it can even creep into our churches and how we live life as a church, as a body of believers. And we don't want that. We want this to be a place of intentionality, of purpose. That we are together, and individually, but together as a church, giving our everything, striving for, sprinting towards Jesus with everything that we have. We want to live as people who are called, loved, and kept, despite the culture of compromise. We don't want compromise to come into this church at all. As believers who know the truth, the truth of the gospel, this is capital T, truth, we can't compromise on that. We cannot compromise on the belief that we have in Jesus and how we are supposed to live. The words that we say, the actions that we carry out, the faith that is inside of us should all align with scripture. And if we don't understand it, we should seek to understand and figure it out.

So this week, again, just want to leave you with this. How can you live as one who is called, loved, and kept by God in a culture of compromise? Before we pray, I want to fast forward to the end and read this doxology that Jude writes at the very end that we're going to cover in the third week. But I think it's such a perfect wrap up to, now that we have learned a bit about the situation, his words mean so much more. So it says this, "To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God, our savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages, now and forevermore." Amen? Let's pray. God, thank you again for your word, for your truth that is uncompromising. God, I pray that you would help us to better understand how to live a life that is for you in all situations. And God, I pray that you would help us to know your truth, that we would grow in knowing your truth. And so when those false teachings come in front of us, whether we're scrolling social media and we hear something or someone says something and says, "Hey, doesn't Jesus say this?" And if it is at all false, we can know, say, "Actually, no, he doesn't." No, that's not what the Bible says. No, what it means to live like Jesus or to love like Jesus actually means this. God, we want to be witnesses for your kingdom, witnesses for your truth, a light in the darkness. And I pray that you would help us to grow in our faith and our understanding of who you are and what you do, that you would embolden us, God. Give us hope. Give us comfort. Give us peace. God, use us and give you all the praise and glory. Amen.