Be seated. Good to see you, Westover. My name is Kevin. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to be in the house of the Lord today.
As part of our worship service, we want to pray. We want to pray in a distinct way. We want to pray in a way that is towards something this day. We are a people of prayer. It's an important part of our worship service, but it's also an important part of the Christian life.
I pray that as you are on your discipleship journey, that prayer is a part of that too, as we go to the Lord for everything because He knows that we need it.
Today, I'm going to be praying out of the Valley of Vision. This is a great resource. If you're just looking for a great resource, there are a collection of Puritan prayers from the 1600s. But I will tell you, these men walked with God in an incredible way. I'll be using that as we pray.
But also, we're going to be praying a little... Most of the time, this is called the pastoral prayer. We're one of our pastors. I'm one of six. I will usually pray over your needs in the flock or maybe even another church. That's the way we'll do it.
But today, we really want to direct our prayers towards two of our pastors today because I want to give you an important and exciting announcement along with that. So we're going to pray into that.
Many of you all know two of our pastors, Pastor Elliot and Pastor Michael Troutman. I've been journeying with those men over the past probably four months or so about where are their gifts and their talents in regard to the body of Christ as they have been wonderful pastors here.
Now, Pastor Elliot, if you do not know, he lost his dad last week, and he'll be going to Puerto Rico this next week to pay respects, but also during the passing of his father during this time. I would just ask for prayer. I would ask for prayer for Elliot's family as they go along. You know, Elliot's been with us for a while.
Now, here, he's been the international pastor. He's been heading up our global team in a transitional time, and we actually have offered him that position of global care pastor, and he has accepted that, and we're really excited about Elliot and that transition. Thank you.
Yeah. Also, another one of our pastors, Michael Troutman, who spent several years on the mission field. Actually, he and his wife, Katie, with Crew. Katie for seven years, he for five years in an international setting as a missionary. He's been our connections pastor. He is going to be moving to our missional life pastor.
And what does that mean? He'll be leading up some of our local ministries, but also collaborating with our global team as we seek to see our church move locally to globally in a manner that is so important to us.
Yeah. Acts 1:8 way, where the Holy Spirit came with power, and they were witnesses. Where? In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the inmost parts of the earth.
So, those transitions are going to take place. You're going to get an email about that with some more details to that, but I just wanted to let you all know that. And what's our response to that? We want to pray for these men.
So, we're going to reverse this. I want you all to pray for them, and I'm going to lead us, okay? So, every Sunday, it's such a privilege. It's such a privilege to preach the word. And before I preach, I actually pray a prayer entitled, A Minister's Preaching. And this is entitled, A Minister's Strength, and I want to pray into that.
So, will you all pray for these men and their transition, and then we'll look at the scripture together.
Father, we thank you, God, for what you're doing in our midst. Father, thank you for the gift of my brother, Elliot. Elliot, Lord, Father, as he is prepping, Lord, and walking with his family during this time. Father, would you walk with him?
Lord, we'll all lose a father or a mother or a loved one at some time or another. And will you comfort him, Lord, as he has helped comfort others?
Lord, I thank you for Pastor Michael, Lord, and Father, as you're preparing both him and Elliot, Lord, to just lead the charge as we are gathered together to where we're scattered abroad. Would you do that in amazing ways?
Thank you, Father, that these men, God, are called by you. And, Father, I pray that they would not wilt at the appointed season in their life, but you would lead them out of a natural to a gracious state of your effectual calling.
Thank you that the ground of their salvation is Jesus Christ himself. Father, I pray for my brothers and also as a church, Lord, that grace will be our experience and our cry.
That, Lord, as poor people, we pray for you. That, Lord, as evil creatures, when we often do not exercise the faith that we have, Lord, that you would grant both my brothers, our pastoral team, our staff, our church body, Lord, to know your power and your faithfulness in the land of the living.
And to know, Lord, deep within our heart that there are two things that are worth living for: to further the cause in the world and to do good in the souls of the bodies of men.
Father, may we pray for you. May we do that, Lord, as we gather together to look at this passage today. And as we are scattered abroad this week, thank you for the time of worship we've experienced, the time of giving, the time of prayer, reflection in Bible reading.
I pray now, Lord, that your spirit would illuminate this word so we may walk in it well. We praise things in Christ's name. Amen.
Thank you, church. Father, thank you for that. And thank you for praying with us, for singing with us today. Thank you.
Worship team, as they have assembled. I really love being a pastor. And as some of you are gathered together with us online or if you're here today, my name is Kevin. I get to serve as one of the pastors. And it is my privilege to come and to preach the word for you.
I can remember really the first time the word and preaching the word. And sometimes people say, how did you get into this, right? I don't know. Look at your vocation and your calling. I was a young man when God called me to preach the word.
And then I wanted to be equipped. I wanted to be equipped to preach the word. And so not all pastors have to. It's not a prerequisite. But I went to seminary. And seminary is just a school for pastors, all right?
And I joined the ranks of those who were being trained in gospel ministry in 2000 at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary that is in Wake Forest, North Carolina, not too far from here.
And I remember I felt so unworthy of what God was calling me to. I had gone to church my entire life and I had heard the gospel presented over and over and people preach about different things.
But it was really there to where the reality and the weightiness of the gospel, I embraced it in incredible ways. This is where I started reading Richard Foster, John Piper, Dallas Willard, Paul Tripp, Ed Welch, and a like of other people from David Wells to Oz Guinness to so many people that I started reading during that time.
And I remember I was in a church. And we would gather for chapel Tuesdays, Thursdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays as ministry students. And the who's who of people would come to that chapel.
And so I sat under some of the best teachers ever. But it is amazing how they lifted up the gospel in such a way to where I said, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. It's something that has grabbed me so well.
One of the most disappointing things about that is some of those men who stood before us in the pulpit with such power. It wasn't long until their ministry started to crumble.
It wasn't long until even people who I had sat under, all of a sudden you would hear about maybe something in their life that had fallen apart. Maybe it was a ministry that people on the outside, it looked great, but inside it was corroded.
And all of a sudden blogs came out or maybe a breaking news. And all of a sudden we're always like, I can't believe that happened to so-and-so. And yet we shouldn't be surprised because if we look at Jude's writing here as well, as you see the history of the church, Israel, and the church that you'll see through the Old Testament and New Testament, from the beginning, Jesus talked about it like this.
The wheat and the tares would come up. There would be those in the church that would come up and that would be faithful as can be. But then there would be those that were not of us.
Paul would actually remind the church that we need to be faithful as can be. We need to look at ourselves to see if we are in the faith. It's a very sobering remark to think about that as we could probably list off people who were once at the pinnacle of a ministry in some way, but now have seen a dramatic falling.
And sometimes when you look at Jude, it shouldn't really astound us that that happens because ministry is hard. I will tell you, I've been a pastor for, called in the ministry almost 30 years, but on staff at some church for 24 years, and I have seen the ups and downs of it.
I understand why there would be a temptation in one way to either go the way of the world, feed your flesh, not feed the spirit. Even in my pastoring, it's been a joy, but I have really had hard seasons, just like you've had hard seasons.
Seminary never prepares you for that. It just doesn't. Seminary doesn't prepare you for what it's like to walk with someone when they've lost a loved one. It doesn't really prepare you to really see ministry right up and close.
It doesn't prepare you for the days and the day-to-day ups and downs of ministry. And when you see like a worldwide pandemic or your church has to close or there's racial tensions or there's natural disasters or political polarizations, battles in the Supreme Court, there's inflation, struggling economy.
Not to mention, even this week, in the culture of things, when we see things like eclipses and earthquakes and people are going, Jesus is coming back. It never prepares you for that. It doesn't prepare you for all those things.
And it's really easy to sit in the church and to wag a finger at all the things that's going on in the world and point a finger when often it is the declining world around us that we see evil, but we have to be careful.
The warnings in scripture are more often for the believer and for the church. And often there are parts of us and parts in our church that might be rotten and not of the spirit. And that's hard to hear, right? It's really hard to hear.
But this is what Jude does. Okay? This is what Jude does. Jude, as we are contending for the faith of what we look at and we're kept for Christ, what Jude's going to do here in this letter is Jude's going to say, you were kept for Christ.
Pastor Elliot did that. Talked about the sovereignty of God. God has you. Wonderful. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
And what he's going to say is, Beloved, I wanted to write to you about your faith. And Jude could have become this incredible theological treaty like Romans to where we'd really understood.
But what does he do? He stops. Look what the scripture says. He says, Now I want to remind, or excuse me, Beloved, I thought was very eager to write to you about our common salvation. But I found it necessary to write to you about something else.
And here's what he writes. He says, I want to appeal to you to contend for the faith. He's going to use a military term here. It's actually an agonizing term.
It means like this. When we think about contending for the faith, what does that look like? It's really like when you see somebody in the gym and they are grueling. They have had this workout and they have just exercised so much to where they have just put everything out on the line.
And they are exhausted. And they walk out of the gym. And why do they do that? Because those muscles are going to grow stronger over time. That's contending for the faith.
Now when we think about contending for the faith, maybe it means that we know the truth and then we shake a fist at people who don't believe the truth. We may believe that's contending for the faith.
But really contending for the faith is exercising unto godliness in such a way that we are becoming more and more like Jesus. Like Jesus. That's what it looks like.
It's really easy to throw rocks at a world and then live in a glass house, isn't it? So easy. Jude, we see this. We often convince that everything is okay when it's not.
And there are some things here that help us not to believe the lie that maybe everything is okay. Jude is going to point us to this.
I like what John Mark Comer says about the world that we live in. I think it's helped set. What we're going to look at when we look at some truths out of here. He says this.
Our new information is one in which a battle is raging between truth and lies. And truth is losing. Disinformation, or in the language of scripture, deception, is at the root of almost every single problem we face in society and ourselves.
That's a big statement. But deception, a lot of times we've deceived. And it's not that often we've deceived ourselves. This is what this passage reads.
It really helps us with, because it has several warnings in it. So Jesus said it like this in John 3:19. And this is the judgment. Light is coming to the world. And what? People love the darkness rather than the light. Because their works were evil.
So as Michael, Pastor Michael, read this passage to you all ago. Why? Because it's a strange passage. Now listen, if it's your first time here, maybe you don't even have a Bible today. Maybe you don't even know where Jude is.
You are welcome in this place. Welcome to this place and to the word of God and to the people of God as we struggle with this passage.
So we're going to look at three things that help us understand this passage as we go along here. And here's the first one. Verses 3 and 4, we're going to look at beware of those who deceive the people of God. You've got to be aware of that.
And here it is. Because the tares and the wheat will grow up together. And at the end, they will be sorted out. As we see throughout the scriptures.
But wherever we are, that is going to happen. That there's going to be this. That yes, in a church, in a local church, not everybody is who they say they are. Not everybody lives the way that they say they do.
Not everybody in the world is easygoing or nice or kind or gentle. And Jude is going to warn us of this. Look what he says. I've already talked about it a little bit.
Beloved, I wanted to write for you. But look, he says, Now watch. Have crept in unnoticed. Right? Right under our nose. Like right there. They may look like a sheep, smell like a sheep, which is utterly disgusting.
And they may act. But as the apostles would say, they were not of us. They were not of us. And what does that mean? Jude is going to say, listen, not everybody who says that they are is what they say.
And it's a warning to us. But it's also something that we can understand. That often there are people who deceive the people of God. We've seen it from all over the place.
Now here's what it is. For your life as a disciple of Christ, you're going to get a push from the outside of the world. And also from the inside of the world. To actually fold up and give up.
And we have to watch out for some things. We have to contend for the faith. Because the faith is both theological, what you believe. But it's also moral, how you live.
And so yes, uncertain men creep in. Godly men enter. Matthew 7:15-20. Our Lord says, hey, there's wolves in sheep's clothing. You've heard that.
And here's the question I have when I was studying this passage. Why would somebody do that? Why would someone really deceive the people? The people of God.
Well, often the reason is that they're deceiving themselves. The first deception is the deception that we've received ourselves. So let's walk through this passage and see what it is.
Because here it is. What would happen in our lives is in your Christian life as you follow Jesus, you can't put it in neutral. Because there is no neutral.
Let me say that again. You can't put it in neutral. You can't coast. Here's how C.S. Lewis put it. He puts it like this. He says, there is no neutral ground in the universe.
There's literally no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God as the sovereign one who keeps us, verses 1 and 2, counterclaimed by the devil.
There's the rule. There's the war, right? We're in the middle of this. So literally, there are people who deceive the church in one way or another. It comes from the inside.
And often, as Revelations 13 and 11 would point out, they look like a lamb and speak like a dragon. That's the picture and the imagery that you'll see in Revelations.
So what happens? These people actually distort the grace of God. That's why we talk about the gospel so much. And what they do is they twist it into lewdness, sins of the flesh, where there's no rules, there's no restraint, no one tells me what to do.
And when you get in that place, what happens, as you see in this passage, is you are out of touch with God's divine reality. And what often happens is you just slip into neutral in the church.
You just slip into neutral. You can't be in neutral. Neutral just means kind of life just happens, you know? And I don't know where you are in your life. I don't know what this week looked like for you.
I don't know if you're exhausted today and you just barely got here. And you're just like, I just got to sit down for a little bit. I don't know if literally your life is so exhausted.
I don't know if you're exhausted right now because you're hiding all that sin in your life right now. You're just hiding it. Because you would rather have a face in front of people than really come to the reality of a holy God who will judge us one day.
I don't know where you are, but I pray that you see the gospel out of this passage. So here it is. Beware of those who deceive the people of God. And don't, listen church, don't be surprised when you hear of that.
Don't be surprised when you hear of a false teacher. They've been around forever. Forever. There's been people in the church, people outside the church that are, what he will say here, ungodly.
We've got to be able to understand that, see that, and know that. Okay? So here's the second thing. How do we do that? How do you see it? Well, we have to beware of those who are out of touch with God's divine reality.
And that's what you're going to see through verses 5 through 16. A large section of scripture. Pastor Michael read it earlier. If you didn't listen or see it, if you hadn't looked in the Bible, you can read it.
If you didn't read it right now, it's rather strange. It's got a lot of things that if you don't study the Bible, even if you study the Bible, I scratch my head at. I go, what in the world are we talking about?
We're talking about angels having a fight over a body. We're talking about wicked cities. We're seeing all this. How do we make sense of this as we follow after Jesus?
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at this. Beware of those who are out of touch with God's divine reality. In verses 5 through 6, the first part of it.
But there's three Old Testament examples that he's going to use, that Jude is going to use. And here they are: fallen angels and wicked cities. If you look at this passage, that's what they are.
So if you look at it, it says this. It says, excuse me, Now, I want to remind you, though you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people, what? Out of the land of Egypt afterward, destroyed those who had not believed.
Okay? So it's Jesus actually that's leading. And these people, the Shekinah glory of God that leads the people out of Egypt in the Old Testament, that we'll see that.
We're going to see Israel there. What do we see in the reality of what Israel saw? We see the reality of God's divine plan. There was a God's divine, God had a divine plan for Israel.
They were not saved for themselves. It actually says that they're a holy priesthood. They were saved for the missions. They were saved for the mission. They were a royal priesthood to the nations.
They were to carry the oracles of God, delivered to them, to the nations. And what tripped them up? What tripped them up? Well, what they thought is that they were actually saved for themselves.
And that can trip us up. They actually became very nationalistic. They would say things, the leaders of Israel would say things like to Jesus, to the very Son of God, and would say, well, I'm Abraham's child.
He would go, I can make rocks. I can make these rocks and make them into Abraham's child. And they become incredibly nationalistic, even so much that Jonah, when God said, go to Nineveh, he says, I'll never go to Nineveh because I'm an Israelite.
They missed God's plan altogether. And we can as well. The reality of who we're called to be. You are a sent people. A royal priesthood. Brought from the dominion of darkness into his everlasting life.
And you were saved for a reason. For the mission of God is on you. And we have to be aware that we don't slip into that.
So there are some that we forget about the reality of God's divine plan. But secondly, he goes right from Israel to these fallen angels. I don't know when the last time you heard a sermon on fallen angels in the church was.
But here in this passage, he's going to see, he's going to talk about these fallen angels. And here it is. We see the reality of God's moral boundaries. Here it is. God has moral boundaries.
There is a created order. All things. And there are created beings that are created for a good work from a good God. Angels, they're simply messengers. They are created to do a certain thing.
To deliver the message of God. They are not human. You do not turn into an angel when you die. They are created messengers to do God's will and to do his bidding.
But you're going to see in Genesis 6 that there were angels that left that. They didn't want to do what God told them to or how God had created them. You're going to see this.
They actually had sexual relations with the daughters of men because they saw them as attracted. And they were not created for this activity. And they actually produced an evil race of men because choices have consequences.
They just do. Even for created beings, they have consequences. There was a distortion of sexual desires that angels were never created for.
Which leads us to wicked cities. What about when a bunch of men get together and they make a city? You're going to see Jude reference the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
He's going to talk about these wicked cities. And wicked cities are only wicked because they're made up of what? Wicked men. And these wicked men, what do they do?
They distorted God's plan. They pushed the moral boundaries. And I don't know why we push moral boundaries. Unbelief. Maybe you acknowledge what's false in your life.
Or maybe you just don't think God knows what's best for my life. You think that you're smarter in one way or another. But more than anything, you see a sexual distortion here with these fallen angels in these wicked cities.
And we've seen it, especially in the past 50 years, in just culture. We see it in the sexual revolution of the 60s. The destruction of the family. The pushing of the meaning of gender and sexuality.
Here it is. The huge, billion-dollar porn industry to where we've seen research that says 82% of the church is actually tangled in that. This is where we put our rocks down.
82% of the church. 82. I was in Nepal. And between Nepal and India. India is one of the most trafficked areas for sexual trafficking.
Meaning young girls. That their parents will actually sell them into that for a buck. And I was actually able to be at a place to where these girls were being rescued. A gospel rescue.
12, 13, 14-year-old girls. That were being subjected to a sexual distortion. That fueling. A porn industry that 82% of the church is involved in. Golly. Little girls.
Man. Where have we gone wrong? This is not just, this is not out there. This is hard, isn't it? It's in here. That's hard. I know that it's hard.
That's what we're talking about. Atlanta in the United States is one of the most major places where that happens. We have ministries here that actually teach North Carolina students how to watch out for those things.
It's not just in those wicked cities. It's here. So listen to what Mary Eberstadt says. She says, Contrary to conventional depiction, the sexual revolution has proved a disaster for many men and women.
Its weight has fallen heaviest on the smallest and weakest shoulders in society. Even if it had given extra strength to those already strongest and most predatory.
So what do we do? When I was at seminary. Whenever you saw sin in that way, what do we do? What is our condition? What is our training?
We seldom rise to the occasion. We always fall back to the way that we're trained. Here's what I've seen the church and how they react to that. We blast everybody. Just blast them.
Blast the wicked world. Like prophets. And then we hole up in our sanctuaries to where the holiest of the holies are. But what happens when that gets in the church?
What is the gospel that reaches out to those folks? I love what our great biblical teacher Jim Shattuck says. Listen to what he says.
He says, Let me make sure of that. If you're here, this is what the scripture says. Jesus himself said a man and woman in marriage become one flesh.
Jesus is clear on the sex question. But those, listen to this church, in slavery the sexual sin need to be loved. Including those who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender.
And many others. We do not hatefully bash them. We gracefully speak the truth in love and reach out to them with grace, mercy, and kindness.
Why? Because that's how our king dealt with us. That's how he dealt with us. And that's how he dealt with me.
So you're going to see this. This is the point. Jude is pointing out all these things that happen.
Which leads us to the third thing that we're going to see in verses 8 through 11. As we look at this passage, we look and we understand. We understand that maybe we have jumped over.
We're out of touch with God's divine reality. And the reality of God's moral boundaries have been pushed. And maybe you sit here and go, what a world we live in.
Let me point you to the reality of the gospel of Christ this morning. So here it is. If this is the first time you've ever been here.
If the church in your life has been known for more about what it's against than what it's for. If you have heard a lot of things preached other than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Set up. Take attention. Watch this passage. Open up the beauty of Jesus Christ. Watch this. So cool. Isn't the word of God cool? Isn't it awesome?
Yeah. It's food. Let's eat. Here we go. So here we go. Here's the reality of the gospel of Christ.
Here's the first story you're going to hear. This is crazy. When I think, when you think of Moses. I don't know what you think of. Some of you who are above 60 years old. You think of Charleston Heston. Big beard. Big voice.
You know, Yul Brynner's the bad guy. Most of us bald guys are good guys. Yul Brynner and that is a little rough. But you think of that. Let my people go. Right? Moses. Prophet among prophets.
The giver of the law. You know what Moses was? He was a murderer. Look at it. Look at the text. He's a murderer. Actually, he's so much. He's not only a murderer where he kills some Egyptians.
He hides them in the sand. He was a sneaky murderer. And then he ran into the wilderness. And God buried a murderer on top of Nebo.
So when you look at this passage and it says that the devil contended for the body of Moses. He did. You know why? There's no neutral ground.
You're either claimed. You're either claimed by the devil or you're claimed by Jesus. And when that dead murderer was dead and buried on Nebo, who do you think came to claim him? Absolutely.
The evil one. Who said, he's mine. Don't you know God? He is a murderer. And what did that messenger of the Lord do? He says, I rebuke you.
And what is the only thing that rebukes sinners who have died? Who has created a mess out of their life? Who is the only? The only one who can speak into that situation when we're dead and gone.
I will tell you the one who can speak. He's the king of kings and the glorious one. He is Jesus Christ who lived perfectly and died for us.
And he died for Moses. And that is where Moses had his strength. In the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not in what he did. Not in delivering those commandments.
No. At the end it says in Hebrews that he looked forward to his reward. His reward is in Christ. And my reward is in Christ.
I can be forgiven of my sins is in Christ. Not by being more religious. Christ. So here you see Christ.
And what happens here is Jude is going to show you all these examples. And what it does is it allows the believer to know what the gospel is and what the gospel is not.
What the gospel is and what the gospel is not. So walk through this. Here it is. When you look at this and you see this passage, it says this.
In verse 10 it says, We're not unreasoning animals. We can hear the Bible. We can hear it and then respond accordingly. Woe to them for they walked in the way of Cain.
The gospel is not the way of Cain. What was the way of Cain? He gave something to God. God didn't accept it. He got mad and he killed himself.
He killed his own brother. You know what that looks like in our contemporary situation? This is what it looks like when we don't get our own way. We get mad. We pout. We grumble.
We may not take a life, but we will not give God the glory for it. The gospel, my friends, is not the way of Cain. Don't treat brothers and sisters like Cain would. Treat them like Jesus would.
It's not the way of Cain. It's also not the way of Balaam. Balaam was this weird prophet. Bet them that one of the enemies of God was coming and saying, prophesy something.
Give them a message. And often we're looking for a different message than what God has given. Don't be like Balaam. Don't give a different message.
Stand in the faith of what Jesus Christ once delivered forth. Don't be like Balaam saying, tell me another message. No. The message is the same as the gospel.
And the gospel, the gospel is not like the sin of Korah. I want a God of my own choosing. Did not want to follow after Moses, their leader, but wanted to appoint another leader.
Wanted to do it their own way. And God swallowed him up in the Old Testament that we see that. And these are warnings for us to point us to the gospel of reconciliation and a way from our own self.
It's amazing that the gospel, listen to this, the gospel is not like any of these other things that you'll see. The gospel is not like those shepherds who feed themselves.
They're not waterless clouds. It's not something that says that it has something and then the integrity doesn't allow that to uphold what it says.
It's not a fruitless tree that doesn't bear fruit its own time. It's not a wandering star that is supposed to give light but doesn't have a fixed point.
It says that even what Jude's going to say is at your love feast, the gathering of the church together, there are hidden reefs that will actually wreck your faith and they're among us.
It's not the gospel. The gospel is what is paid for our life. It's the gospel. And it's amazing at this point when you get to verses 14 and 16 that Jude is going to do something in the scriptures.
He doesn't quote, he's already quoted Zechariah 3 earlier, when it says the Lord rebuke you. He's not going to quote a book from the canon of scripture.
When I say the canon of scripture, that means what was once delivered up by the Holy Spirit for us to understand it's the word of God. It's the scriptures you have before us.
There were other books in that time. You could look for them. Books like the Shepherd of Hermes, books like the, that would come later, the Gospel of Thomas, but there was a book.
There was a book here. There was a book here that is extra-canonical. It's not in the scripture, but actually Jude will quote from it.
And it's from Enoch, who would be the seventh son of Adam. Now watch what he does. He's going to quote from this. And this is what he quotes.
He quotes from a non-canonical source, meaning that you will not find Enoch in the Bible. And this is what it says. It says this, out of Enoch 1:9, 1 Enoch 1:9, Behold, he will arrive.
With 10,000 of his holy ones, in order to execute a judgment upon all. He will destroy the wicked ones. And since they're all flesh on account of everything they have done, that which the sinners and wicked ones committed against him.
Here's the picture of army, this righteous army coming, and they're going to eradicate evil. And I have a question for you. Which side are you? Where do you see yourself in the picture?
In that righteous army? Or the wicked ones will be eradicated? And here's the picture. And here's the most important question. Why?
You say, listen, I don't dwell in wicked cities. I'm not a part of that porn industry. I'm not all these other things. Watch what Jude does here.
Jude says this. He says, And all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Verse 18. Listen. These are grumblers. Malcontents.
Faults. Following their own sinful desires. They are loud-mouthed boasters. Showing favoritism to gain advantage. And I will tell you in my life, I have found myself on that list.
I have been malcontent. I have shown favoritism. I have been selfish in so many ways. If you say my morality has got me on that judgment day, I can tell you that you are lost today.
Because no one is lost. No one is good enough for that. Here's the gospel. This is so good, church. When he quotes Enoch, in the scripture he actually puts another word.
He adds the Greek word kurios. He says the Lord will come. You know what that means? The one who is leading that righteous army is the loving shepherd who loves us, cares for us, gave his life on Calvary for us, is perfect in every way, has imputed his righteousness to the church.
It is the Lord. That's the one who comes. And so all that have broken covenant with the Lord, all who are malcontent, all who have gone their own way sexually, all, there is an invitation to a very narrow road.
And that is the Jesus we serve, the one who calls us into his own. He is our hope today. He's the hope for the malcontent. He's the hope for the sexually wrong.
He's the hope for the brokenhearted. He's the hope for the unmarried. He's my hope and he's your hope. So you do not give up hope today.
Because when I see the church, I see people who cling on to Jesus for their very soul. I think of people like Larry Lindsey, who spent his whole summers teaching the gospel in basketball camps.
I think of Miss Pauline who prepped a Sunday school room just in case a child came when the church I pastored had not seen a child in their age group in years.
I think of Miss Betty who rocked both my children in the nursery when they were children and they were safe. And I think of my brothers and my sisters here who oversee safety, who greet or serve, or serve as tutors in Treehouse, or host internationals, or work the parking lot.
We all look to this great Lord and we don't grow weary. We hold the gospel in the face of a changing world. We look to Christ, our great salvation.
Church, do not grow cynical. Do not grow weary. You look to Jesus. So today, today, are you? Don't let your actions betray what you say.
The greatest weapon the enemy uses in our life is the darkness. And we'll stay in the darkness and we'll pretend to be in the light.
We'll come to church with our hands stained of the world. And if that's you, you're welcome here because we all come to Jesus, right? There is no one righteous, no, not one.
We serve the righteous one. We serve Jesus. So we come to him today. And if you're out there and you're playing a game, it's a real game with real warnings.
Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. We have folks that will pray with you on both sides. Pray with you and walk with you through this life.
My only hope today is Jesus. That's it. In him I trust in everything.
So, Father, as we open up our hearts to what you're doing right now, as we sing before the throne of God above, we have a great and mighty Savior who intercedes for us.
So, Lord, help that to be the angle of the church today that we come to Christ in all things. We pray these things in Christ's name.
We're going to sing. I'm going to invite you to Christ, to Jesus, to him. Sit there in the darkness of your sins in light of such a great salvation.
There will be people on both sides to pray for you. Stand with us as we sing. There's no better message than the gospel.
You'll never find it. You'll never find anything else like it, in heaven and on earth. The world will throw all kinds of messages to you.
All kinds of messages to you. Don't believe them. View people in the light of the gospel. Right? Because we were all once there in one way.
Jude points us to live a life that is worthy of who He is. And the only way that you'll live that life worthy of who He is, is not stepping into our own flesh in this earth suit.
But abiding every day by the Spirit because we need His power, right? We need His power. We need His love. We need His care.
Because we're the church. The called out of God. The sent ones into the earth. And may the gospel go forward.
I want to pray this and say this scripture over you, beloved church. 2 Corinthians 5:18-20. And this is from God.
Who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself.
Not counting their trespasses against them. And entrusting to us, to us, the ministry of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors of God, making His appeal through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Go out into the world with that on your heart and your lips. And your life.
And come back next Sunday and we'll praise Him once more. Okay? We love you, church. Have a great day. Go out as light into the community in the name of Jesus Christ. God bless.
on Apr 14, 2024
