Introduction:
Know the Enemy: The Dossier on Apostates (Jude 1:5-16)
- They have been Warned . (Jude 1:5-7)
- They are Irreverent . (Jude 1:8-10)
- They have Always been Around . (Jude 1:11)
- They are Dangerous . (Jude 1:12-13)
- They are Doomed . (Jude 1:14-15)
- They are Self-focused . (Jude 1:16)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Open up your Bibles with me, please, to the book of Jude.
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It is the next to last book in your Bible.
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All the way near the back.
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And while we turn there, let's bow our heads.
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I'm going to ask quickly if you would please pray for me, and I will pray for you as we approach God's Word together.
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Just pray that I would be faithful to clearly communicate a difficult passage, and I will pray that our hearts are open to receive something that may be difficult to hear.
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Alright, let's pray.
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Father in heaven, for those who are sitting here today, those who are watching this stream, those who are going to be listening to a podcast later or watching it online later, this is Your Word.
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We know how serious You are about Your Word.
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And Father, we want to be just as serious in the way that we communicate it.
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So Father, by Your design, faith comes by hearing.
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And I pray, Father, that You would bring much fruit through the proclamation and reception of Your Word.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
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Jude, are you there?
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The very first church that I pastored was in Ohio.
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And there was this little community church, Clear Creek Community Church.
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It was just outside of the town where the Bible College was located.
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And one day the pastor of that church just up and vanished.
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Just gone.
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And the elders of the church came to me and they were like, "Will you be our pastor?" And I'm like, "I don't know anything." Like, I'm going to Bible college to someday hopefully be a pastor, but I'm like, "I don't know anything." And they're kind of like, "Well, of all of us, you're kind of the most qualified." And I'm like, "I'll try." That was how I became a pastor.
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That's a true story, unfortunately.
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But I'm like, "Okay, I can get up and I guess I can preach a sermon, and then I hope to heaven none of those are recorded.
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I had no idea what I was doing.
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But another guy at the church said, "I'll lead worship time." And you know sometimes when somebody leads worship and they kind of do little sermons or words of encouragement in between the songs.
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Well, I'll never forget the one day when he got up to, he was leading worship and he said, "You know, Jesus wants His light to shine through you.
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And He said, "Are we to take that light, and are we to hide that light under a bushel?" Are we to hide that light under a bushel?
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He says, "Yes, we are." And He goes, "And let me tell you why.
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when you hide that light under a bushel, that bushel catches on fire and it just makes the light brighter. And it was about then that I realized that he thought a bushel was a little tree, not like a basket. And I'm like, "This doesn't even go with the song." Remember that song, "This Little Light of Mine"?
04:24-05:28
"I'm gonna let it shine." Remember? And then, you remember the line, "Hide it under a bushel yeah that's how the song goes no but he had this whole thing about yeah I did under a bushel man because then our light will be brighter and and you're like I know what you did Jeff I know exactly what you did Jeff you went up on stage and you grabbed that heretic by the scruff of his neck and by the seat of his pants and you threw him right through that stained-glass window because you don't tolerate that kind of thing and no that is that is not how I I handled that. Because look, even though he taught something that was incorrect, he wasn't a heretic. I knew this guy. He loved the Lord. He loved that church. And last I heard, several years later, he actually became the pastor of that church, believe it or not. And look, anybody that's been in ministry for any period of time has face palm moments. I can't believe I said that. I can't I did that and we're just gonna chalk that up as a whoopsie to him.
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But you see as we talk about Jude, like why are you telling us this story?
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This guy was maybe a little bit ignorant, but he was a lot innocent.
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But as we talk about Jude, there are people that intentionally go into churches to teach wrong things.
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Intentionally teach an anti-gospel message.
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And you're like, "Well, hang on a second, Jeff.
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How do you know the difference between, you know, your guy at this church with the bushel thing, and how do you know, like, the difference between him and somebody like the Jews talking about, that somebody that has malicious intent and is directly teaching something anti-gospel in order to cause problems in the church?" How do you know the difference?
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I'm glad you asked that because that's where we're going today.
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Jude calls us to contend for the faith, and that was our message last week, it was a call to arms.
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He's like, "Look, truth is worth fighting for.
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This matters. This matters to God. This should matter to us." He said, "You have to fight for the faith." That was last week's message.
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And he says in verse 4, "Because certain people have crept in on notice," and we call them apostates.
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That sounds like a big fancy church word, but just to define it for you, an apostate is somebody who knowingly teaches or believes something that's unbiblical.
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Knowingly. Right?
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And this takes so many forms, I could keep you here all day telling you all the different variations of this, but it can be everything from legalism to license, like we talked about last week, The prosperity gospel to the social gospel.
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There's just so many examples of this.
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But the bottom line is it's a false gospel and it ends up corrupting people.
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Because they have wrong views about who God is.
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They have wrong views about who Jesus is.
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They have wrong views about what it means to be a follower of Christ.
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What it is that He's done for us.
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Now Jude doesn't describe what the false teaching is.
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and we touched on this last week.
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Jude wasn't like, "Hey, be on the lookout for the guy that's teaching these things." He doesn't do that.
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Because truthfully, false teaching comes and goes and changes, and there are so many of them.
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Always new ones popping up.
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Jude does something under inspiration of the Holy Spirit that is infinitely wiser.
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And that's what we're going to see in this passage.
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He tells us about the character of the kind of people that would teach wrong gospel messages.
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Do you understand why that's so genius?
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It's because the gospel is the only means by which people are changed.
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So if you have somebody that doesn't believe the true gospel, then they're not saved, right?
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Unsaved equals unchanged. You see the point.
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Only Jesus Christ can change people. That's the gospel.
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When you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sin, He rose from the dead to give you eternal life.
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He's coming back to take His church to be with Him.
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But you see, a very important element of the gospel that often gets overlooked, is the truth that Jesus Christ transforms people.
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God's Holy Spirit comes and indwells you, and you are not the same person.
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So that's Jude's point here.
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He goes, "You want to find the person that's teaching a false doctrine?
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Look for the person that hasn't been changed.
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Look for the person that's still living in their sin.
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Look for the person that's still acting like the world.
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Look for the person that's self-centered.
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You look for that guy who obviously doesn't know Jesus Christ by the way that he lives, and you're going to know that you might have an apostate among you.
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Right?
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This is a dense passage, because Jude describes these apostates with a shotgun blast of terms and illustrations and Old Testament examples.
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And you're going to see through this passage so many illustrations.
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So many lists.
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Every element here could be a sermon, right?
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And I did think briefly about having like a 30 week series on this section.
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But the problem with that is, that's sound kind of cool at first, but the problem with that is, if we did that, we'd miss the overall point, right?
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If we're so busy looking at each individual tree, we're missing the point of the whole forest kind of thing.
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And that's really what I want us to do, is to see His point.
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This is what apostates look like.
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This is how they act.
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Listen church, we need to be on our guard.
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And that's why I'm sharing this.
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This isn't an exercise in homiletics.
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This isn't an academic thing up here.
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This isn't just Bible knowledge.
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The reason I want to share this, this could happen here.
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It's subtle.
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You're not likely to get somebody standing up here preaching an anti-gospel message.
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But you are very likely in a church like ours to have somebody go to a small group and try to use their influence to teach something that's unbiblical.
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You're much more likely in a church like this for somebody to go to a Bible study.
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and just try to come alongside and be an assistant with the idea of sort of hijacking the thing to teach what they want taught. That's much more likely here.
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And it happens. And honestly, attempts have been made here for these types of things to happen, right Mark? We've seen this here. That's why we have to be on our guard against this. Because it is so potentially dangerous for the church to let these things happen. Right? So if we're going to contend for the faith we need to be aware of, we need to know the enemies of the truth. We need to be on the lookout here. So that's why this whole section, like I said, there's a lot of stuff we're going to get through it together, but the heading on your outline "Know the Enemy" the dossier on apostates. All right here's everything you need to know about the enemies of the truth that are creeping into churches, could creep into this church. Number one, right this time, he starts here, "They've been warned." They have been warned.
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Now you're going to see with these illustrations that Jude uses, he doesn't go into a lot of detail and I think because his audience was probably Jewish and they were familiar with these stories, so he didn't like give a whole Sunday school lesson on every one of these.
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So picking up where we left off in verse 5, he says, "Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe." Stop there for a second.
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First of all, he talks about Israel.
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Talking about Israel specifically from Exodus to Deuteronomy.
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Remember Moses led Israel out of Egypt?
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And in Numbers chapter 13, he sent 12 spies to check out the land that God had promised.
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And 10 of the 12 came back, and I'm paraphrasing here, okay?
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But 10 of the 12 came back and they're like, "We're doomed!
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We're like grasshoppers and they're like monsters and we're all gonna die!" And like, everybody in the camp, it was so contagious.
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They got everybody freaking out.
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"Oh, we're gonna die!
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We're never gonna do it!" Like everybody was...
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They didn't trust God.
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God says, "This is yours.
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I'm taking it to you.
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I'm gonna give it to you, I'm gonna fight your battles, go.
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And the bottom line is this, they just didn't trust God.
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They just didn't believe Him.
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So God, Jesus, destroyed them, it says.
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Look at verse six.
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He says, "And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
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Okay, so now he's talking about angels, fallen angels.
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Genesis 6 calls them the sons of God.
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They committed some terrible sin.
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It's going to take a long time to explain.
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Jude doesn't do it.
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We're not going to touch on that, but here's what we are going to talk about.
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Very specifically, he points out that they were imprisoned.
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These angels who sinned were imprisoned.
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Like, in prison where?
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Well, this prison is also known as the abyss.
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It's in Luke 8, 1 Peter 3, 2 Peter 2.
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And then we saw in our study in Revelation, they are let out during the tribulation in Revelation 9.
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But apparently there is this prison for demons.
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And that's what Jude is talking about here.
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And then verse 7, he says, "Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual morality and pursued unnatural desire, Serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
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So his next example is Sodom and Gomorrah.
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You probably heard that story, Genesis chapter 19.
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It was a city so perverse, so steeped in sexual sin, specifically homosexuality, that God burned them off the map.
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And that is a preview, that is a picture of them forever being punished.
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But the key phrase here with these illustrations of Israel and angels and Sodom and Gomorrah, key phrase here, he says, "These serve as an example." These serve as an example of what?
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You see what Jude's saying?
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He goes, "Look, do you notice a common denominator here?
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God has this track record.
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When somebody refuses to believe, when somebody refuses to obey, he goes, 'What do we always see God doing?' God brings the hammer down.
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God brings punishment on those who won't obey.
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It's not going to end well for them.
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And somehow sin has a way of keeping people locked into the here and now.
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Sin has a way of having us not consider the endgame.
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Sin has a way of causing us to not even consider eternity.
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Right?
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That's how sin is.
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It's what's going to make me happy now?
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What's going to please me now?
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What's best for me now?
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And it's just like a dog.
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Just like, what's going to make me happy in this moment?
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And there's no thought for the consequences that my selfish actions might bring on others.
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What about on me, on my eternity?
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It's just...
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And that's why Jude starts here, "Hey, I'm going to tell you about apostates, but the "Well, first thing I need to tell you, because it's about to get really hairy here." He says, "But this is a warning.
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Jews in Israel, Gentiles in Sodom and Gomorrah, even the angels who disobeyed, you've got to know, judgment is certain, and it's terrible." That's where Jude starts.
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So first of all, there's a warning.
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Number two, they are irreverent.
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So they've been warned.
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you need to know about these anti-gospel teachers that creep into churches and cause so much problems.
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He goes, "Mark this, they are irreverent." Look at verse eight.
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He says, "Yet in like manner, these people also," first of all, he says, "relying on their dreams." What does that mean?
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That means they're not getting their material from God's word.
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relying on their dreams.
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There's some people that that's the authority.
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They get up and they say, "Listen, I got a message for you, church.
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"This is from the Lord.
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"He showed up in my dream last night.
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"And this is what he told me in my dream "that I need to share with you." Listen, if I ever get up here and say something like that, or anybody else gets up here and says, we should have a giant hook, like in the cartoons, right?
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Yank them right off of the stage.
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We're not here to preach our dreams, okay?
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We're here to preach the word of God.
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But that's what it says, they rely on their dreams.
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And that's how a lot of these cult leaders or these apostates, that's how they get their influence because it sounds so spiritual.
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Like God told me something directly and specific and they get up and we were at a conference at Big Harvest one time where a guy did that.
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He got up and preached the whole time about this dream he had about the devil.
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And remember this Aaron, the devil Jesus were fighting over his soul and it was in this little cage, and Jesus won, shocker.
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And he did this whole thing about this dream that he had.
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And when he was done, we were like, "What the heck was that?" We came here to hear the word of God.
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And this guy just preached for like 50 minutes about some goofy dream that he had because he probably had too much ice cream before bed or something.
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Like, "What is this dream that you had?" He says, "You gotta watch out for that person The Bible isn't their authority.
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It's let me tell you something private that God revealed to me.
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We don't care.
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Okay?
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We don't care the private thing God told you.
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We care the public thing that God wrote down for all of us.
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Because when you're the authority, it's easy to excuse your sin.
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Look at the next phrase.
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He says, "These people rely on their dreams, defile the flesh." They defile the flesh.
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It's, you excuse your sin, right?
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I have this authority.
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I have this in with God.
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It's okay for me to live how I want to live.
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And when you live that way, nobody tells you what to do, right?
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Look at the next phrase.
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It says they reject authority.
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Relying on their dreams to follow the flesh, reject authority.
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You've got to watch out for that guy.
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tells me what to do. Reject authority. Then lastly, on this list, kind of sums it all up, they're irreverent. They're irreverent. Look at this, it says, "They blaspheme the glorious ones." You're like, "Whoa, okay. I was kind of with you on the verbiage here, but what do you mean blaspheme the glorious ones? What does that mean?" Well, he explains what that means in the very next verse.
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Look at verse nine.
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He says, "But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you.'" There, does that clear that up?
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I know I have other questions, like what is going on here?
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Well, first of all, this account is actually from the Apocrypha.
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From a book called "The Assumption of Moses." Now Jude here is not saying the whole book is true, but under inspiration, Jude is telling us this part of the story absolutely is true.
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Alright?
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So it says that Michael the archangel was contending with the devil about Moses' body.
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What in the world does that mean?
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The Bible doesn't really explain that.
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But here's my best understanding.
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You see, when Israel was wandering through the wilderness about to enter the Promised Land, as we mentioned, remember Moses, because of sin on his part, he was not allowed to enter, and he died.
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before he could enter into the Promised Land.
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And do you remember what happened to his body?
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The Bible says that God buried it in an unknown location.
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That's Deuteronomy 34, verses 5-6.
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And why did God do that?
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I believe it's because, also if you look at the history of Israel, they had this really bad habit of worshipping things they shouldn't worship.
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Right? You remember the fiery serpents were biting them and God was like, "Put the bronze serpent on a pole and when you look to that, it was a picture of Christ.
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Look and believe and be saved." And you know what Israel ended up doing with that bronze serpent?
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Like, "Let's worship that." No, Israel just had this bad habit of worshiping all these things they shouldn't worship.
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So I believe that the reason God wanted Moses' body hidden was what do you think Israel would have done if they would have had Moses' body?
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They would have set up a shrine and an altar, and, "Hey, we're going to worship.
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Let's go bow before our mighty leader Moses." And I think that's what was going on here.
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And that's exactly what Satan would have wanted, right?
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"Let's put his body front and center.
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That'll get Israel off track." And Michael was contending with him about that.
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But Michael was like, "You know what? The Lord rebuked you." So what's the point?
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The point is this.
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Even Michael was more careful in dealing with supernatural powers than these arrogant fools that creep into churches.
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If Michael had such an attitude towards the devil, why don't apostates have any reverence?
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Something we've got to watch, church. I've heard people say it.
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I rebuke you, Satan! Satan, I bind you, Satan!" That is not your place. That is not your place.
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What does the Bible say we should do? Resist the devil. Right?
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We run to our Father, and we seek the spiritual power that comes from His Holy Spirit.
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We resist the devil, but we are not commanded to rebuke the devil.
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And here we have very clear teaching of Michael, who wouldn't even do that.
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He's like, "The Lord rebuked you. He handed this over to God." I think there's a lesson for all of us there.
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But you see, it's reverence. It's reverence.
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And that's an overarching theme in the lives of people who don't know Jesus.
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There's no reverence. There's no respect for God.
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There's no fear of the Lord.
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There's no regard for His sovereignty.
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There's no place for His Word in their lives.
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There's no reverence.
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And when you have such people discipling others in the church to be just like them, suddenly you have a horrible cancer in the church of more and more people with less and less regard for the holiness of God.
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No regard for spiritual things.
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Thinking that they're some kind of authority themselves.
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They're irreverent.
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You've got to watch out for those people, Jude tells us.
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Right?
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So they've been warned and they're irreverent.
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And the third thing he says is they've always been around.
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In other words, don't be alarmed.
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There's nothing new under the sun.
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These kind of people have been around literally forever.
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Look at three Old Testament examples.
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He goes into another list, verse 11.
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He says, "Woe to them!
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For they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's heir, and perished in Korah's rebellion." His point here is, look, this isn't anything new, church.
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These people have always been around.
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Three quick examples. First of all, he says, "They walked in the way of Cain." You know the story of Cain, right? He was one of Adam and Eve's sons.
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Genesis 4, he thought he could come to God his own way.
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On his own terms. He ignored God's commandment.
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And the Bible tells us that faith without works is dead.
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But works without faith is called religion.
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And this is how religion works, the way of Cain.
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It's like, "I know what God said, but I'm going to worship my own way." That's not faith.
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And Jude says, "There's nothing new. These false teachers still do that.
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I'm going to do it my way." Secondly, he talks about Balaam.
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He's from Numbers 22-25.
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I could tell you a whole lot about Balaam, but here's the bottom line with him.
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Balaam thought ministry was a way to make money.
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We're just going to shorten his whole story to just that.
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Balaam thought ministry is a great way to make money.
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And Jews are like, "Watch out for people with that attitude.
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They see you as a bunch of suckers, and I can say the right words and say it the right way, and you're going to give me everything I want, you're going to give me everything that I need." That's Balaam.
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Nothing new there, right?
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Have you ever seen an example, ladies and gentlemen, of somebody using the ministry as a way to make money?
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Have you ever seen such a thing?
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I'll take that laugh as a yes.
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Then he talks about Korah.
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He's from number 16.
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Remember God's like, "Hey, Moses is in charge.
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Moses is my man here." And Korah comes along, again I'm paraphrasing, He's like, "Why is Moses going to be in charge?" Korah's like, "I think I got some pretty good ideas. I should be in charge." "Hey everybody, I should be in charge!" And God's like, "Everybody step away from Korah." But the point is, no regard for authority, right?
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Like we already said, God established authority in Israel.
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And listen, God established authority in the church And some people come along and assume authority that isn't theirs.
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We've seen that here. We've seen attempts on that here.
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It's almost laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.
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People come in and assume authority that's not theirs.
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I remember one person visited the church, and they were like, "Yeah, I'm going to redo your kids' ministry.
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I've got some ideas. I'm going to overhaul and redo the whole thing." I'm like, "I'm sorry, who are you?
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You're going to hijack the most important ministry of our church, the discipleship of our little ones, and we provide a distraction-free environment for people to get God's Word here?
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You're here to take over?
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They didn't stick around.
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But you've got to watch out, because these people and people like that are going to come back around.
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They're going to come back around because God's people have always had to deal with Cain's, God's people have always had to deal with Balaam's, God's people have always had to deal with Korah's in their camp, we've gotta be on alert, right?
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Know the enemy.
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They've been warned, watch out for the people that are irreverent and then he reminds us they've always been around.
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Homestretch here, he says they're dangerous.
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They are dangerous.
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And you see Jude here is trying to make sure that somebody doesn't get roped into this idea of, okay, so somebody believes a little bit differently than me.
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You know what, live and let live.
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He's like, no, these people are dangerous to the church.
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Like, how dangerous are they?
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Well, verses 12 and 13, again, another shotgun blast.
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He tells us how dangerous they are.
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I'm gonna go through these quickly.
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He says, "They are hidden reefs at your love feast, as they feast with you without fear.
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The low feast was the meal the early church had.
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They had meal together and then they had communion together.
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And he says, these people come and they feast without fear.
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They're brazen.
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They're just brazen.
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He says, they're reefs.
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Those are the rocks that are just under the surface of water.
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Do you see the picture?
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The church is like this boat.
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We're cruising along, we're happy, and everything's great.
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It's smooth sailing.
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And then all of a sudden, we hit the reef and it rips the boat apart, and now we're in trouble." He says that's what these people were like.
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Just under the surface, subtle, hidden, destructive.
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He goes on, verse 12, he says, "Shepherds feeding themselves." Who is the shepherd supposed to feed?
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The sheep, right? That was what I had in my notes, but these people, we already talked about this, They use the flock for themselves. You've got to watch out for that.
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Like, "How can I use you for my advantage?" They're shepherds feeding themselves.
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He goes on, these next two pictures kind of go together.
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He says, "Waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees, and laid on them, twice dead, uprooted." Both of these have the same point.
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The clouds and the trees, these are things that promise something that they don't deliver, right?
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Waterless cloud, it looks like, "Oh, it looks like we're gonna get the rain that we need." "Not here, we've had plenty." "Oh, it looks like we're gonna get the rain that we need." "Then it doesn't rain." Like, well, that cloud was a joke, right?
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Or a tree that's not bearing fruit, you're like, "Well, that tree's no good.
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It's not doing what it's supposed to do." He says, "That's what these false teachers are like.
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They're promising you spirituality.
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They're promising you getting closer to God, but like that waterless cloud, they leave the church dry.
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And like these dead trees, they bear no fruit.
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They're hopeless.
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A couple more pictures, verse 13, he says, "Wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame." Wild waves, unmanageable, destructive, dangerous.
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The only fruitfulness that they have is the foam of their own shame.
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And then the last one in verse 13, last illustration, He says, "Wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever." It's a picture of a shooting star.
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It flashes across the sky, and then it's in the darkness gone forever, right?
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Now, before GPS, you're like, "There were garments," right?
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Now, even before that, you're like, "There were maps," right?
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Even before that, If you go back far enough, they navigated with the stars.
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Right?
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So, what's going to happen if you're navigating, following a wandering star?
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You're going to get lost into the darkness with it.
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And that's why Jude says you have to contend for the faith.
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Jude says, "Look, this has to be the hill that you die on." Yes, it's hard.
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We talked about this last week.
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It is hard.
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It's hard to confront people and say, "No, look, what you're saying is wrong.
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What you're doing is unbiblical.
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It's wrong and we don't prefer to do that." But failure to do so results in spiritual casualties.
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He says, "Hey, to a church that is striving to be faithful to God, these people are dangerous." So we've got to be on alert.
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Number five, they are doomed.
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They are doomed.
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Look at verses 14 and 15.
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He says, "It was about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way.
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And of all the harsh things, the ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." Quoting from the apocryphal book Enoch.
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Again, he's not confirming the whole book, but by the Holy Spirit he's affirming this part's true for sure.
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It's a prophecy that God wanted preserved and it's not just here.
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We've been talking about it.
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But judgment is coming.
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You can deny it.
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You can ignore it, but this is one appointment that you are not going to reschedule.
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judgment is coming. And in this prophecy that he quotes from Enoch, there's two words that stand out. And it's the word ungodly, and it's the word all. In other words, all this stuff he's saying isn't for just... this judgment isn't for some weird fringe teacher that is causing problems in the church. He's like, "Look, if the shoe fits, right? Anyone who's who has abandoned God's truth, lives a life of ungodly deeds, speaks contrary to God's Word, God is going to execute judgment.
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And I have to wonder if the reason he mentioned Enoch was Enoch is sort of like the Old Testament picture of the rapture, right?
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Enoch walked with God, then he was no more.
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I'm wondering if this is an allusion to the fact that after the church is gone, It's going to be worldwide apostasy.
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I could be hinting at that.
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The point is this, they're doomed.
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They're doomed.
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And then number six, they are self-focused.
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They are self-focused.
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Is it hot in here?
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That's a shame, because that was only an introduction, this part here is the real sermon. You laugh like I'm kidding. I think we're kind of sold on the problem here, right? But here, another list in verse 16, but write this down, they are self-focused. Because at this point in going through Jude, you're like, "Man, these people sound dangerous, man, like how do we recognize Another list, but there's one common denominator in this list, and this is what you've got to look for.
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Look for the people that shine the spotlight on themselves.
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That's what he's talking about in verse 16.
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He says, "These are grumblers, malcontents." In other words, they're outspoken fault finders.
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Church, we have to mark the people who are always complaining.
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Some people think that that is their spiritual gift.
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It's not on the list.
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Some people think that's their ministry is to criticize everything.
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That's not legitimate.
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But you've got to watch the people that are always complaining about everything.
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"I don't really like the music at this church." "I don't really like the sermons at this church." I don't really like the kids ministry at this church.
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I don't like the website of this church.
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I don't like the way this church does small groups.
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I don't like what color gray the chairs are in this church.
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And that's not how I do it.
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If I was in charge, I'd do things differently.
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And here's a better way to do it, because listen, everything should be exactly how I like it.
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And this church is, there's a lot of things here that just aren't good about this church that I could certainly fix, Because - watch out for those people.
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He says they're grumblers and malcontents.
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Just not happy about anything.
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Just constantly bellyaching and whining and complaining about everything.
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Ah!
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Secondly, look, he says, following their own sinful desires.
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He already talked about that.
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They're not pursuing Jesus, they're pursuing their sin.
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That's what he's saying.
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people's conduct, even outside of church. What do they do outside of church? How do they spend their time? What do they talk about? How do they talk about those things?
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Watch for the people that are putting all their time, effort, and energy and attention on sin, not Jesus, right? Which is all of them putting the spotlight on themselves.
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Oh, and speaking of talking, it says next, "They are loudmouth boasters." They are loudmouth They are loudmouth boasters.
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It's all about them.
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Right?
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They're boasters.
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The people that are like, "Hey, look at what I did.
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Look at what I did.
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Do you know, do you know this church would fold without me?
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Did you know that?
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This church would have to close its doors if it wasn't for me.
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Do you know how many people were at this church because of me?
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Do you know how many people I brought to this church?
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Do you realize how important I am to this church?
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Look at what I built here.
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Look at what I built here, people.
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See, here's the problem.
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Somebody's gonna edit that out of the video.
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And that's going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
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I mean, everybody here really looks up to me.
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And you really need to consider everything that I've done for this church.
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You realize I don't mean a word of any of that, but there are some people that do.
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There are some people that do.
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Loud mouth boasters, always bragging about how awesome they are.
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I couldn't help but think when I was working on this, there was a guy, this weekly appointment we used to take our kids to, where you wait with other parents.
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And I just remember this one guy every week, just like loudly name dropping every week.
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And we're sitting there and I'm trying to read.
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air and shaking her head, sitting there trying to read, just kind of mind my own business, and this guy was like, he must have been a contractor or something, but he was like, "Yeah, I was doing work at Ben Roethlisberger's house, and Big Ben came out, and Ben said this, and you know, I'm like, well, you know, I'm at Ben Roethlisberger's house, and then my friend called me on the phone, and I'm like, yeah, I can't really talk right now, I'm doing a job for Ben Roethlisberger, and I'm like, "Ah, like, just, I mean," and then he's like, "But enough about that, let me tell you about the time "I was at Brett Kiesel's house." I'm like, "Oh, stop, loudmouth boasters." It's just like, I'm so awesome and the spotlight's on me, right, and then finally, showing favoritism They don't serve people, they use people.
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And they use favoritism to gain advantage, right?
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That's easy enough to do.
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Little flattery here, little gift there, get a little following, right?
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I really feel like you're the most spiritual person in this church, and I really value you, and I think you should come alongside me in this thing that I'm doing, because I really think that God's equipping you for this.
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And we just use all these flattery and flattery, and it's to gain advantage.
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They revel in the influence that they have over people.
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And this is a clue as to why they're so influential because they're not making disciples of Jesus.
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They're making disciples of themselves.
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So make note of those in the church that are so proud of themselves.
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Make note of the people in the church and everything's about them.
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They're self-focused.
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Church, we've got to be on guard.
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Like I said, we've dealt with these things in the past and we would be so naive to think that those days are behind us.
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These people are creeping into churches.
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We've got to be on guard.
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And the first thing Jude does here is he tells us how to clearly identify these people.
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These are the kind of people we need to be looking for.
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You're like, "Okay, got it Jeff, got it." So what do we do then?
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Once we identify the person, what do we do about it?
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What does God want us to do if somebody like this comes into Harvest Bible Chapel?
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are we supposed to do? And I'll tell you next week. Right? Oh, you want me to tell you now? Like, oh heavens no. I'll tell you next week. Today, we just wanted to simply evaluate the dossier. Because if we're going to contend for the faith, we We need a clear description of those who are against the truth, right?
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Know the enemy.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father in heaven, this is admittedly a very dense passage because you've given us - you are so urgently passionate about your church being protected that you've given us such a list of things that we need to be aware of, and knowing, and watching for, and on guard against.
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And I know this is a lot of material, God, but I just pray that You would help us to look at the big picture.
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That there are people who don't love Jesus, that want to use Your church for selfish reasons.
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Yes, we've had attempts on this church in the past.
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Those people have come and gone, but there are going to be more coming.
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And who knows if somebody's watching this stream now, or somebody's sitting here right now.
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It just hasn't been identified as such yet.
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God, I pray for the wisdom and discernment and discretion of the leadership of this church.
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that Jesus Christ would be front and center in all things.
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And that we are able to identify those who would stand against that.
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So Father, just now we are about to stand and we are about to let You know what we think about You, how we feel about You, through this gift of music that You've given us.
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So Father, I pray that as we just worshiped You, According to the truth of Your Word, Father, let us worship You in truth with our very spirits.
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We thank You, Father, for the glorious Gospel.
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We ask for Your strength, Your power, that we keep it pure.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Jude 1:5-16
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Why do you think Jude used so many illustrations in this section? Which one stuck out to you?
Define “apostate”. Give specific reasons why they are so dangerous to the church. How do you think HBC should respond if we see a potential apostate?
Name some ways you can tell someone is “irreverent” (Jude 1:8-10).
What are some ways apostates are self-focused (Jude 1:16)? How have you seen this tendency to be self-focused in your life?
Breakout
Pray for one another.