The Book of Jude: Part 2

The Book of Jude

Part 2: Recognizing the Counterfeits

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Book of Jude: Part 1

The Book of Jude

Part 1: The Call To Contend

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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