Introduction:
The Call to Arms: Your Battle Brief (Jude 1:1-4)
- You will be Secure . (Jude 1:1b)
- You will be Equipped . (Jude 1:2)
- You must understand the Urgency . (Jude 1:3)
- You must understand the Enemy . (Jude 1:4)
Titus 2:11-12 - For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age...
Matthew 7:15-16 - Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:50-00:52
Open up your Bibles to the book of Jude.
00:52-00:56
It is next to last in your Bible.
00:56-01:03
Right before the book of Revelation, all the way in the very back of your Bibles.
01:03-01:12
The sun is out, and as Stacy pointed out, but there's something else, though.
01:13-01:14
Can you feel it?
01:16-01:17
Can you feel the love in the air right now?
01:20-01:25
I mean we just celebrated three weddings in our church family.
01:26-01:27
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
01:28-01:29
We'll get you a problem at once, alright?
01:32-01:39
We had Dan and Hannah got married, what like ten days or eight days ago, like last week sometime.
01:40-01:46
And then a couple of days ago we had Ava and Brayden got married and Rick and Doreen got married.
01:46-01:47
Okay, now cheer for that.
01:49-01:50
(Applause)
01:50-01:53
So, love is in the air.
01:53-01:59
And last week, I celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary.
02:01-02:01
(Applause)
02:02-02:07
And big applause for Aaron for putting up with me that long.
02:09-02:09
(Applause)
02:10-02:11
You have no idea.
02:13-02:44
Well with all this love in the air and anniversaries and weddings, you know, I do a lot of counseling premarital counseling nearly postmarital counseling I've written two books on marriage and I hear a lot of things I read a lot of things but I'm gonna share with you one of the best piece of it pieces Of advice I've ever received if you're married This is gold and I heard this at a conference out in Chicago many years ago And I can't even remember the name of the guy putting on this particular workshop.
02:44-02:49
I can't even remember what the subject of the workshop was, but I remember this piece of advice and always stuck with me.
02:50-03:11
And he said this, "Sometimes you got to take the pitch." He said, "Here's what I mean by that." He goes, "You know, baseball, there are some batters that get up to bat and they have zero intention on swinging at that first pitch. They're not going to do it." Why?
03:11-03:12
They're watching the pitcher.
03:12-03:14
They're watching his movements, his mechanics.
03:14-03:15
They're watching the movement of the ball.
03:16-03:22
All they want to do with that first pitch is just watch it go by, and they're just going to let it go, and they're not going to take a swing at it.
03:22-03:27
And he said if you're married, that's good advice for you, because sometimes you need to just take the pitch.
03:27-03:30
You don't have to swing at everything.
03:32-03:33
Do you know what I'm talking about?
03:34-03:36
Do you know what I'm talking about?
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Some of you look confused.
03:42-03:44
And your husband will explain it to you on the way home.
03:46-03:47
You get hit by a pitch, yeah.
03:49-03:52
Yeah, you might get hit by that pitch, Alex, you're right.
03:54-03:58
Some people, though, some people like to fight about everything.
03:59-04:00
Do you know anybody like that?
04:03-04:04
Do you know anybody like that?
04:04-04:05
They like to fight about everything.
04:07-04:12
You know, you pass them in the hall, you're like, "Hey, how are you doing?" Like, "What's that supposed to mean?
04:14-04:17
Are you implying that I shouldn't be doing great?
04:18-04:21
No, I just wondered. I knew you had a hard week last week.
04:21-04:25
What's that supposed to mean?" Whoa, whoa.
04:26-04:28
Let's switch to decaf, pal.
04:28-04:29
But some people want to fight about everything.
04:31-04:34
But then you have people on the other end of the spectrum and they won't fight about anything.
04:35-04:35
You know what I mean?
04:36-04:38
They won't fight about anything.
04:39-04:45
They're not passionate enough to care enough to fight about anything.
04:48-04:53
But as we approach Jude for the next four weeks, this is what we're going to be talking about.
04:53-04:58
There are some things that are absolutely worth fighting for.
04:59-05:01
And you know what we call those types of things?
05:02-05:04
It's the hill to die on, right?
05:05-05:44
Mixing metaphors here, but you know sometimes I'll take the pitch Don't get a swing at that, but there are some things I Will not compromise I will die on this hill So look at Jude you're there now right verse 1 Introduction he says Jude a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James stop there Jude was You're like, "What do you mean by half-brothers?" Well, Matthew 13, verse 55, tells us that Mary and Joseph had other kids after Jesus was born.
05:45-05:54
Okay, so these kids would have been born to Mary and Joseph, and Jesus, the oldest, would have been born to Mary, but conceived by the Holy Spirit.
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Remember that story?
05:55-05:59
So they weren't full brothers, they were half -brothers.
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James, as mentioned here, was another half-brother.
06:04-06:37
He was a leader in the early church. You can read about him in Acts chapter 15 Galatians 1 I believe also talks about him But Jesus half-brothers didn't believe in Jesus Until after he resurrected according to Acts 1 14 So this half-brother that wrote This particular little teeny tiny letter that we're going to be looking at over the next four weeks His name is Jude at least that's the name he went by because The Hebrew version of his name would be Judah.
06:39-06:45
And unfortunately, the Greek translation of his name would be Judas.
06:46-06:49
So, do I have to explain to you why he went by Jude?
06:51-06:57
Like, kind of a bummer having the same name as the guy that betrayed our Lord.
06:58-07:06
He's like, "No, you can just call me Jude." But I love this, he describes himself as a servant of Jesus.
07:07-07:08
You see some humility there.
07:08-07:10
He could have name dropped here, right?
07:10-07:12
Like, hey, do you know who my brother is?
07:13-07:14
My brother is God.
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He didn't do that though.
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He said, I'm a servant of Jesus.
07:19-07:25
And that speaks to his relationship with the exalted Christ, right?
07:25-07:46
Well, the first four verses, the verses we're looking at today, and you gotta get this down because quite honestly, if you don't understand, and for some reason you tune out or you don't track with me, over the next half hour or so, the rest of the month isn't going to make much sense to you.
07:46-07:51
Because these verses we're looking at today gives us the thesis of the letter.
07:51-08:00
He's like, this is why I'm writing to you, and he's going to tell us in verse three, we'll look at here in a second, is to contend for the faith.
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He's making an appeal to the church to fight for the truth.
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Listen, you are being called to war.
08:12-08:16
You're like, "Well, I don't feel like fighting, thank you very much." Well, that's the problem.
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It's too many people do not want to contend for the truth.
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Too many people do not want to correct unbiblical teaching.
08:27-08:31
Too many people don't want to correct unbiblical beliefs.
08:31-08:36
Too many people don't understand what's at stake to allow someone to believe error.
08:37-08:41
Because too many people don't want to risk the relationship.
08:42-08:48
So too many people refuse to hold any line when it comes to the truth of God's Word.
08:50-08:57
But you have to know in this church, this is the hill that I will die on.
08:58-09:00
you have to get that conviction yourself.
09:01-09:14
A lot of you might not realize this, but when this stage was being constructed, the plywood underneath, many people from our church that were involved in the work wrote Scripture verses all over the stage.
09:14-09:15
Some of you remember that.
09:16-09:19
And I love that because you know what that means?
09:20-09:34
That means when somebody is standing up here, whether it's me or Rich or whoever, We are literally standing on the Word of God in this position.
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You have to die on this hill.
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And this is why Jude wrote this letter.
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He says this is an appeal, verse 3.
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This is a call to arms.
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This is rallying the troops.
09:49-09:51
This is firing up the troops for the battle ahead.
09:52-09:53
That's what we're looking at today.
09:55-09:59
I had to ask Rich for the correct army terminology here.
10:00-10:05
Like, what do you call it when you're about to send your troops into battle and you give them that pep talk?
10:05-10:07
Because they probably don't call it a pep talk.
10:07-10:17
So anyways, that's why it says, "The call to arms, your battle brief." Rich says battle brief is a good way to describe this type of speech, so we're going with that.
10:17-10:19
The call to arms, this is your battle brief.
10:19-10:28
So listen, I gotta tell you some things up front as we talk about contending for the faith because some of these things that I'm going to share with you are going to be hard to hear.
10:30-10:31
And Jude certainly knew that.
10:32-10:34
And that's why we have the introduction that we have.
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All right, so please tune in.
10:38-10:39
This is your call to arms.
10:39-10:42
Number one, I gotta tell you this ahead of time, you will be secure.
10:42-10:51
Now we're gonna be dealing with people teaching wrong doctrine, we're gonna be dealing with people believing some false teaching, but look at the rest of verse one.
10:51-11:00
He says, "To those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ." He answers some questions ahead of time.
11:01-11:02
Again, we're going to be getting into some hard stuff.
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And it might be easier or tempting for us in the midst of this to be like, "Oh my goodness, with all these false teachings and all this bad doctrine, is it possible that there are some true believers in the church that are going to get kind of drawn into this and lose their salvation?" and no.
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That's why he starts by talking about security.
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Alright?
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If you're a true, born-again believer in Jesus Christ, if you are, then nothing can change that.
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And that's why he uses the words that he uses.
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I'm going to go through this quickly.
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First of all, he says "called." That means "chosen." That means if you're a born-again believer in Christ, it is because God chose you.
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And you're like, "Oh, Pastor Jeff, can you explain that?" No! I can't!
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You know why I can't explain that?
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Because He is God and I am not!
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I am not!
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Somehow, God chooses and God calls through the gospel and we respond by faith and God made the choice and we are responsible to respond and this is a mystery on how it all works and it makes sense to God, but it doesn't make sense to me because I am so not God.
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But you see, with the doctrine of election, There's one thing for sure.
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We don't want to miss the forest for the trees here.
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This teaches security, right?
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Salvation is all God's doing.
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And you should take great security in that.
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Because if it was up to me to get saved, I wouldn't.
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I couldn't.
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And if it was up to me to keep my salvation, I couldn't do that either.
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So he says, "You're called.
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Rest assured that if you are a believer in Christ, it's because God chose you.
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That's security.
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Next he says, "Beloved, beloved, salvation is an act of love.
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It's settled, it's decided, it cannot change.
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I love this." And this could be a whole other sermon series.
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But the truth is, salvation is motivated by God's love.
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But he says, last phrase there, you see, "kept for Jesus Christ." Some translations say, "kept by Jesus Christ." And that's actually a better term, "kept by Jesus Christ," because this is actually a military term.
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Kept.
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It's a military term when a soldier was commissioned to guard something.
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He was to guard it literally with his life.
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Meaning, if you lose what is entrusted to you, you will die.
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Literally.
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That's what this word means.
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So when that soldier kept that thing, how close do you think he kept it? Right?
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So, this is glorious.
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that if you belong to Jesus Christ, He's guarding you with His life.
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Jesus is literally guarding you.
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Many years ago, when Owen was much smaller, he's bigger than me now, but Owen was much smaller, and we were living up in Prospect.
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We were going for a walk, it was me and it was Owen, and it was our boxer Gordy, rest his soul, across the rainbow bridge or whatever.
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But we went for a walk, and I don't know why, Must be how I smell.
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But every single time I go for a walk, I get attacked by dogs.
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Does that happen to anybody else?
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Nobody.
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Just me.
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Awesome.
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I get attacked by dogs every time I go for-- to this day, I get attacked by dogs.
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This particular day, Owen, like I said, he's real little.
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And Gordy, who was-- he's a boxer, but I mean, just not a mean bone in his body.
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So we're walking, and I see across the yard this enormous brown dog.
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I don't even know what kind it was.
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I think it was a grizzly bear retriever or something.
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But it's like, [GROWLING] It's running at us, like growling and barking, and not like, oh, I'm friendly.
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I want pets.
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That wasn't the attitude that he was giving as he was coming.
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So he's coming, and it was like, watching him run across the yard, time kind of slowed down, and my mind was racing.
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What am I going to do?
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Because this dog is enormous.
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And this was my plan.
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I grabbed Owen under my arm, and I turned towards the dog.
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And this was my plan.
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That dog is going to eat me and be full before he gets to my son.
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That was my plan.
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I didn't say it was a good plan.
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I'm just saying that's the one that I went with.
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Well, as the dog got closer, Gordy started jumping and dancing around, not growling, not barking.
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He was just like juking and jiving.
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He had some kind of Muhammad Ali thing going on, but without the punching, even though he's a boxer, so that's weird.
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But he was all dancing around, and the dog, this big dog stopped in his tracks and just stared at Gordy like, "Dude, what are you?" Because Gordy's just all dancing and juking and jumping, and the dog just turned around and walked away.
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I've never seen anything like it.
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But my point of that is, in that moment, I was guarding my son with my life.
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I'm like, if you're going to get to him, you're gonna have to go through me.
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And that's the exact concept being used here for how Jesus keeps you.
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He says, no, no, no, no.
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You're gonna get one of my kids, pal.
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You're gonna have to go through me.
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That is awesome.
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You're secure in your salvation.
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The only way, the only way you can be lost is if someone more powerful than Jesus comes along and takes you from his hand.
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That is awesome.
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So you will be secure, all right?
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Number two, you will be equipped.
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You will be equipped.
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Look at verse two.
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It says, "May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you." This is provision for the battle ahead.
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There are no guns or bombs or anything destructive because we are not called to fight like that.
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This is a spiritual war.
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And because this is a spiritual war that we are engaging in, it requires spiritual resources.
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And he tells you what the spiritual resources are right here - mercy, peace, and love.
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Notice, because of the battle, God's not going to give you just enough And you have to understand, sometimes I think we can read through the Bible in kind of skim parts like this and not really understand the impact of why this is here.
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But mercy, peace, and love, the reason he starts with this is it sets the tone for the attitude that God's people need to carry in the context of the battle that he's about to present.
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Here's what I mean.
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when some people confront false teachers, or worse yet, when some people confront those who are affected by false teachers, who have been deceived by false teachers, some people go scorched earth on them.
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Do you know what I'm talking about?
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That you confronting the false teacher, this is the person that falls for some of the wrong teaching, it's just like, "How can you be so stupid?
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but you don't know what the Bible says?
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How can you be so dumb?
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And we're just gonna put them in their place, man.
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We're just gonna, we're gonna run them out with our Bible knowledge and we're gonna, yeah, I showed him, yeah, he came with his stupid little doctrine.
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I mean, I just like took my MacArthur study Bible and I slapped him across the head with it because you don't bring that in here.
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And we're so proud of ourselves for thumping people.
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And I think that's why Jude starts here.
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They're like, "Look, look, look, hey.
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Yeah, we're going to be dealing with some people that are messing with God's Word, but hey, hey, hey, mercy, peace, and love.
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These are the attitudes that we take into this, right?
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This has to be our approach, like Jesus, right?
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Like Jesus.
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Oh God, please, multiply and harvest Bible chapel, mercy, peace, and love.
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There's a battle and we're going to be equipped.
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God provides the resources.
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Number three, you must understand the urgency.
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This is your call to arms.
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You must understand the urgency because as soon as we introduce the subject, there's probably some people here, some people watching the stream that are like, "Throw away sermon, nothing important to see here." like you totally missed the urgency.
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Look at verse 3.
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This is how urgent it is.
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Look at this.
20:19-20:36
"Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." Do you see how urgent this is?
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This is so urgent.
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Here you have a man under inspiration of the Holy Spirit changed the course of his letter.
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He said, "I was going to talk to you about salvation, but something much more important came up that I need to address with you." Something more urgent.
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He said, "I was going to talk to you about our common salvation." Now when he says "common salvation," he doesn't mean common like it's plentiful and everywhere.
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He just means that no one has more of it than anybody else, right?
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I don't have more salvation than you.
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You don't have more salvation than me.
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He says, "We all have the same amount." But obviously Jude got news of a more urgent matter, the gospel truth is under attack.
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Changed the whole course of his letter.
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I want you to look at the wording here because it's very specific.
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First of all, it says, "Content for the faith." The faith.
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He's talking about specific contents.
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In other words, he's not saying, "Just encourage people to be spiritual, man." He says, "No, I'm talking about the specific content of the gospel message." You've got to fight for that.
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The truth of salvation in Jesus Christ.
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We can't mess with that.
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You know what the gospel teaches?
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The gospel teaches that God became a man.
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Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.
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and He dwelt among us, lived a sinless life, and He died on the cross, taking the penalty of our sins on Himself.
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He rose from the dead to give us the promise of eternal life.
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So what do we do with that?
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We respond by faith.
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We turn from our sin, say, "My way of living has been selfish, and self-destructive, and stupid, and I see what God has done for me in Christ.
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I'm turning from my sin, and I'm receiving Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior." And the Bible says when you do, God's Holy Spirit comes and indwells you and empowers you to be the person that God has called you to be.
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That's the gospel message.
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And Jude says there's a problem because there's some people messing with that.
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He says it was once for all delivered to the saints.
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The Greek there literally means done for all time.
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In other words, there's no new faith.
22:58-23:00
There's no new doctrine.
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There's no new revelation.
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There's no new spiritual insights that someday somebody's going to stand up here and say, "You know what, church? This has been good for a while, but God last week showed me some new stuff that I can't wait to share with you, and you don't need your Bibles for the next four weeks." That's not true.
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Once for all. That's so important. Once for all.
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This is the content. The gospel of Jesus Christ will not change.
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Jesus gave it to the apostles.
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who gave it to us.
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I just wonder sometimes, like in heaven, would we get a glimpse of that?
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Like to see the chain?
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Like Jesus preached the message to the apostles, He preached the message, and ultimately somebody shared the message with me, and I received it.
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But think of how the gospel message has been handed out over generations.
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The same message, transforming lives.
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The same message.
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Jesus preached it, Paul preached it, I'm standing up here preaching the same thing.
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It is not going to change.
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You're like, "Okay, Jeff, we get it. Why are you so adamant about this?" Because false teachers will come along and they're going to preach a way of salvation that sounds very close to the truth, but it's not the truth at all.
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We just did this series called Foundations and we just talked about this.
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Satan showed up, you remember the lie?
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Did God say, did he really say that you're not allowed to eat up any of these trees?
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And when you read that you're like, well that kind of maybe sounds a little bit like, sort of kind of like what God said. No, that is not what God said.
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You see that's what false teachers do. They take the truth and you put a little twist here, you add this, you take this away, and here's the danger, people that don't know the truth eat it up like Skittles.
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Because if somebody shows up and they're like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, false teaching Jesus.
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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, false teaching Bible." It's like, well, they said Jesus in the Bible, so everything else they said must be true.
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That's what false teachers do.
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And you have to know how urgent this is.
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You realize, do you realize how much of your New Testament was written for the very purpose of correcting error?
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Did you know that?
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Do you know why the book of Galatians was written?
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To fight legalism.
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Do you know why the book of Hebrews was written?
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To fight people that were teaching you had to be a Jew in order to become a Christian.
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Right?
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Do you know why Colossians was written?
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To fight heresy.
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Do you know why 2 Thessalonians was written?
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You better, we just covered this.
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Do you know why 2 Thessalonians was written?
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Because there are people who were false teaching about the day of the Lord and they were all confused and all concerned.
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I could go on, but so much of your New Testament is written to correct error.
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And this is the same until today.
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Because it's always Scripture plus some other authority.
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For example, in the Roman Catholic Church, it is Scripture plus church tradition.
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another authority.
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In the Christian science cult, it is Scripture plus science and health with key to the Scriptures.
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In the Mormon cult, it is the Bible, Scripture, plus the Book of Mormon, Doctrines and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, three other books.
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And I could go on, but this is how it works.
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We take Scripture plus.
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We're adding other authority to the Word of God.
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That's why Jude says, "Listen, church, we have to contend for the faith." The word "contend" literally means "agonize." It literally means "struggle." He's literally saying, "You have to fight for the truth because this is not going to be easy." And that's why very few contend for the faith because it is hard.
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And I think in our day more than ever, The highest virtue is tolerance, right?
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And we want to be tolerant.
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Oh, you believe spiritual things?
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Aw, me too.
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We're practically brothers.
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Now I gotta ask, doesn't truth matter?
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Does truth matter or not?
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Because I think in here we went and nodded our heads because we have a Bible on our laps, but when we're talking to that coworker tomorrow, all of a sudden truth might not matter as much to us.
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Listen, you are called to contend for the truth.
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Yes, with the right attitude, as we've discussed and as we will talk about.
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But you have to contend for the truth.
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You know, when your friend says to you, "Oh yeah, I go to this church that believes some really, "eh, they're nice people, but they believe "kind of some goofy things that you don't really see "in the Bible." Then you need to tell your friend, "Look, here's what I want you to do.
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"I want you to call up the pastor, "and I want you to have a meeting with him, I want you to sit down and say, "You need to repent, and you need to teach what the Bible says, and not all these other things.
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And if you're not willing to do that, then I'm looking for a new church." You have to contend for the faith.
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"Well, we all believe in the same God. We all believe in the same Jesus." No, we do not. That's just not true. That is not objectively true.
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Or you say, "Well, you know, okay, I go to this church, There might be a couple of unbiblical things that we believe and unbiblical things that we do, but to be honest with you, Pastor Jeff, most of their teaching is right.
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Most of it's right.
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Yeah, that may be true, but you know what else is true?
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Do you know rat poison is 99 .995 % cornmeal and wheat germ?
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Did you know that?
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In other words, 99.995% of rat poison is good food.
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Let me ask you a question.
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If you saw your kid, if you have kids, if you don't, you can pretend with me, right?
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If you saw your kid get up in the morning thinking she's pouring a bowl of cereal and she grabs the rat poison, and she's about to take a bite, what would you do?
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Would you say, "Well, you know what?
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It is 99.995% wheat germ and cornmeal." Is that what you'd do?
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Would you slap that spoon out of her hand?
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See there's urgency here.
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There's urgency because if God's Word is true, and I believe that it is, but if God's Word is true, there is one clear way to have your sins forgiven.
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One clear way for salvation.
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One clear way to get to heaven.
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And those who are messing with the message are messing with people's eternities.
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You've got to get that.
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This is serious.
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And that's why I look again at verse 3.
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See the very first word there?
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He says "beloved." Beloved.
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Do you know why he addresses them that way?
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Because people who expose error are often considered unloving.
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Over the years, I've talked a lot about the Roman Catholic Church, been asked a lot of questions about it.
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I've had a lot of people come to this church from the Roman Catholic Church.
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I've had to address some things.
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Someone would say, "What are you going to say, Pastor Jeff?
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You say all Catholics are going to hell." I am not saying that at all.
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I want you to hear what I'm saying, okay?
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Of course not.
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There are some Catholics who are saved in spite of the church's doctrine, but no one is saved because of it.
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Listen, I very much love my Catholic friends and family, and I have a lot of them.
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I am not attacking Catholic people, but I am addressing Catholic doctrine.
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Okay?
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By show of hands, how many people here have read the Catechism?
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How many people here?
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Some of you have?
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I have.
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At my old church I had a friend who had a copy of the Catechism.
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It was a giant, green, hardbound book.
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I read the Catechism.
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And when you read the Catechism, I have to tell you the Catholic doctrine teaches a gospel that is contrary to the Bible in so many ways.
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The view of Mary, the purpose of the Eucharist, the way confession works, the method and purpose of baptism, doctrine of purgatory. I've had to confront these things and address what the Bible actually teaches regarding these matters and there's always a backlash to it. And right now people are squirming in their seats and sweating and oh I hope he shuts up and tells another dog story. It's a spiritual stronghold. Listen, Catholicism is a sacred cow that's off limits to expose.
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And as much as I love my Catholic family and friends, I have to tell you, the doctrine itself, what is written on the pages of their books, it's anti-gospel.
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And you see, the Bible calls us to urgency in addressing these matters, because if you really love somebody, you're going to warn them, right?
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You're going to slap the spoon of rat poison out of their hand.
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Contempting someone means, "Look, I care too much about you to let you believe in a message that's not going to save you." Like, well, okay, contend for the faith, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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How do we do that?
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We're going to be talking about that over the next four weeks, but I believe that it has to start right here.
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Right here.
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I believe it has to start with expository preaching.
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I'm not criticizing or condemning what any other church does.
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I can only speak to what this church does and what this church does is expository preaching why I can give you a whole lot Of reasons but in today's context, I'm going to give you one The reason we do expository preaching is knowing the truth equips you to recognize error. That's why we do this for other reasons too, but I Want you to be so familiar with what God's Word says that when you hear error Immediately you're like well, that's not right. That's not we just talked about that That can't be true because that's not what the Bible says.
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You've got to get your mind trained like that.
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What does the Bible say?
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What does it say?
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What does it say?
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I'll tell you what it says.
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The gospel truth and it appeals to us to contend for.
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The call to arms, this is your mission briefing.
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You will be secure.
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You will be equipped.
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Listen, you must understand the urgency.
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And then finally, you must understand the enemy.
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Must understand the enemy.
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And this subject is the whole next section next week.
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But Jude gives us a summary intro, right?
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Look at verse four.
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For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
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Certain people, false teachers, He says they crept in unnoticed.
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The Greek is literally they sneak in with bad intentions.
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They don't broadcast it, right?
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They just kind of slide in.
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They assimilate.
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They join the fellowship, but it's not for anything good.
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We've talked about this in past time, but the greatest danger to the church is not out there.
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The greatest danger to the church is right here, right?
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Like any army.
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What's the biggest danger to an army?
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Spies, traitors, defectors, the people that you think are on your side and they actually aren't on your side.
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Those are the dangerous people.
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Like, well, what possible motive would somebody have to go into a church and promote false teaching?
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I don't know.
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money, maybe power and influence.
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Maybe they're just deceived themselves.
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And even though we don't know what this particular false teaching was here in Jude, we do know two things about the false teachers.
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He says right here in the verse, he's like, "Here's what you need to know about them.
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First of all, where they're heading, and second of all, what they're like." Where are they're heading?
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Do you see that?
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He says they're designated for this condemnation.
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God already established what ultimately happens to these kind of people who mess with his message.
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But he focuses on what they're like, and he gives us three characteristics.
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We're gonna go through these quickly, because again, this is next week's message.
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But three characteristics.
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He's like, "Here's what these false teachers are like.
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"Here's what the people that are like, "the traitors in your midst, "here's what they're like, take note of them." He goes, "First of all, they're ungodly.
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"I don't care if they're teachers, "I don't care if they're in small group, "I don't care if they're standing behind a microphone.
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"They're ungodly.
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Look at their lifestyle. Look at the way they talk.
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Look at the things they're interested in.
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He says, "That's how you know." They live ungodly character.
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Secondly is their lifestyle.
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He says, "They pervert the grace of God into sensuality." Look at that.
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They pervert the grace of God into sensuality.
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What does that mean?
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That means they use grace as their excuse to live unrestrained lives.
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You see, there's one side is legalism, right?
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Legalism says if you want God to be happy, if you want to be righteous, these are the things that you have to do.
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You have to dress this way, and you can't eat this, and you can't drink that, and you have to do this, and you have to do that, and you're not allowed to do this.
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And when you do these things, God is happy. That's legalism.
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But there's the other side of the spectrum, and that's license.
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And that's like, "There's no rules! Jesus died so I'm free, and all my sins are forgiven so I can do whatever I want.
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I can say what I want, I can smoke what I want, I can drink what I want, I can..." Whatever, it doesn't matter, because I'm under grace, man.
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I'm not under Old Testament law, I'm under grace.
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So I can do whatever I want to do.
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And these are the people that he's talking about here.
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They pervert the grace of God into sensuality.
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That is not biblical.
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Titus 2, verses 11 and 12. Look at this.
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This is just one of a dozen examples that I could give you off the top of my head.
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But look at this.
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"For the grace of God has appeared." You're like, "Woohoo, grace! Bringing salvation for all people." Yes! Oh, look at the next line.
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"Training us to what?" renounce ungodliness.
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Does that sound like license to do whatever the heck you want to do?
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To renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.
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God's grace is meant to change you.
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To conform you into the character of His Son.
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Not like, "Oh, you're saved, you got your ticket to heaven, go have fun." That is not biblical.
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The last thing he tells you about them, he talks about their authority.
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He says they deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
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They do not live under the Lordship of Jesus, which is also part of that unrestrained type living, right?
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But Jude introduces himself as a servant of Jesus Christ, and like, not these people.
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Like, no.
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Jesus isn't my Master.
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Not my Lord.
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don't say that out loud. He says that's how they live.
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Jude doesn't describe their false teaching. Instead he focuses on their lives. And you're gonna see that next week. You're like, "Why?" Like if they're teaching wrong things, why doesn't Jude just say, "Hey, they're gonna come and say XYZ and I just want you to know that that's not true, so don't believe it." Why doesn't he just tell us what their false teaching is. Here's why. Because heresies come and go. Heresies change. And I think if Jude would have said this is the false teaching, we would have limited our application and understanding to that one thing and missed the bigger point of what he's trying to say.
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While heresies come and go and change, there's one common denominator. False teachers are always ungodly at the core.
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Why?
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Because only Jesus Christ can transform someone, right?
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Only Jesus Christ can make someone born again.
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So false teachers show their true colors by the way they live.
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And that's why Jesus in his very first sermon, He didn't say, "You'll recognize them by their doctrine." What did He say?
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He said, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." Here's what He said, "You will recognize them by their fruits." Because what you really believe determines how you really live, for good or for bad.
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you believe, what you really believe, shows up in how you live.
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So this is Jude's introduction. This is the call to arms.
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We were given, we were given this truth, and it is so precious, and it is so powerful, It is so eternally important.
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We, church, are called to fight to keep it.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father in heaven, we live in a day that truth just isn't even a concept people are willing to reckon with.
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We argue about how many genders there are.
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And then we come to your word and all kinds of doubt being cast upon it.
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But God, you have called us as a church to contend for the truth, contend for the faith.
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And it's not easy.
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And we have to say some hard things, and we have to say some uncomfortable things, and we have to have some uncomfortable conversations.
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But God, I pray that you would give us a conviction that your truth matters.
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Your Word says that you have exalted Your Word even above Your name.
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So Father, I pray that we as Your church would embrace that attitude, that truth matters, and it's worth contending for.
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And Fathers, we're about to worship Your holy name.
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I just want to pray for Harvest Bible Chapel, that You would multiply mercy, peace, and love.
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that we don't become these...
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God, please don't let us become these jerks, these arrogant...
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We have a couple of Bible verses memorized and we think we're awesome, and we just want to whip people into place.
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When we have to confront error, Father, let it be done with humility.
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Father, please multiply mercy in our hearts, multiply peace in our hearts, and Father, multiply love in our hearts so that we can approach this subject in a way like Jesus Christ and in a way that glorifies Your name.
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So Father, now we're about to stand up and tell You what we think about You, so that we pray that our worship is a beautiful sound in Your ear.
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Through the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Jude 1:1-4
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Why do we have an “appeal to contend for the faith” (Jude 1:3)? What exactly does that mean?
What are specific ways we can contend for the faith? Why do you think this is difficult for some people?
What do you think motivates false teachers to “creep in unnoticed” into churches (Jude 1:4)?
Why doesn’t Jude just tell us what the wrong teaching is so we can avoid it? Why does he instead describe the characteristics of the false teachers themselves?
Breakout
Pray for one another.
