My name is Kimberly. Today's scripture reading is from Jude 1 verses 1 through 11.
It is page 1055 in the Bibles in the back of the pews.
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who are the called,
loved by God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ.
May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share,
I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the
saints once for all. For some people who were designated for this judgment long ago have come
in by stealth. They are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus
Christ, our only master and Lord. Now, I want to remind you, although you came to know all these
things once and for all, that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not
believe. And the angels who did not keep their own position but abandoned their proper dwelling,
he has kept an eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day.
Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions
and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. In the same way,
these people relying on their dreams, defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones.
Yet when Michael the Archangel was disputing with the devil in an argument about Moses's body,
he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him, but said, the Lord rebuke you,
but these people blaspheme anything they do not understand. And what they do understand by
instinct, like irrational animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them, for they have
gone the way of Cain, have plunged into Balaam's error for profit, and have perished in Korah's
rebellion. This is God's word. Amen. If you have your Bibles, feel free to turn on over to the
book of Jude, if you're not already there. We'll be spending our time there. We won't get
all the way through. We won't. We're only going to get probably through verse seven today,
but we'll come back to verse eight, nine, and 10 in a future week.
So I want to start by with this saying from brother Bible scholar, Tim Mackey. How you live
is the most reliable indicator of what you believe. How you live is the most reliable
is the most reliable indicator of what you believe. We know that we're saved by grace alone
through faith alone, but that faith in which we are saved is always accompanied by good works
or works of righteousness. And good works aren't just jobs to do, things to keep us busy while we
wait for Jesus to come back, but good works are a way of life. Another word for that is holiness.
Holiness is a part of our good works. It's the holiness that is lived out through a million
different actions, decisions, and works in the believer's life on a day-to-day basis.
These make up the good works that God has prepared for us. Another quote from an author,
Jeff or Jerry Bridges, not Jeff Bridges, he's an actor. Jerry Bridges, holiness is not a condition
for salvation, but is always part of salvation. Holiness always accompanies salvation saved by
grace alone, saved through faith alone, in Christ alone, to good works, to do good works, to have
holiness throughout in every micro decision of our day and life, the millions upon millions
of thoughts and actions we take. So yes, how you live matters, but more importantly,
how you live tells you and the rest of us what you actually believe at the deepest level.
We love to talk. We love to say all kinds of things and make lofty claims about our lives
and what we believe. The proof is in how we live. We can see this already in everyday life.
If you believe that it will be a cool 55 degrees outside, what I call ideal weather,
perfect weather. In fact, if I get the bedroom 55 degrees every night, I'm happy.
And she's completely under the covers, barricaded.
55 degrees outside and you check the forecast and it's going to be raining all day long.
If you believe the forecast, if you believe the temperature gauge on your phone that says it's
55 degrees outside, it will affect how you dress, whether you check the traffic if you're on your
way to work, whether you grab an umbrella, it will modify your life to the extent that you
want it to be. It will modify your life to accommodate your beliefs. Your life will change.
Whatever it is you intended beforehand, before you knew that and believed it will be different.
It'll change. But what if something even deepers that work in us? What if us who are in Christ,
what if you've experienced a new birth altogether, not just a change in behavior?
We sometimes call it a conversion. Someone has been converted. What conversion means,
a change from one form to another, completely different, reborn, a new creation. These are the
words that the Bible loves to use about what we as believers have undergone. It says that we will
have new desires and a new heart and our new heart will be inclined to obey, inclined to love God,
inclined to follow him and inclined to turn away from sin. This is that new life in Christ.
Well, how might that change someone? How might that modify someone's life and actions?
How might their life and choices reflect this new reality?
A.W. Tozer says, if your Christian conversion did not reverse the direction of your life,
if it did not transform it, then you are not converted at all. You are simply a victim of the
accept Jesus heresy. What does he mean by the accept Jesus? There is a big difference between
I accept him and I believe everything he said. Belief results in action. Accept can be easily
be added to my life. I'll take Jesus along for the ride, sure. And if he supplies me good therapy
to make me feel better throughout the day, if he supplies me all the things that I want,
in addition to the things that I need, and he can give me a happy and healthy life,
and he's a star. But if he's not, well, I can put him back in my pocket and I can live the way that
I want. And Tozer says, no, what happens at a fundamental level within us at conversion,
at the new birth is we change. We become something different.
The book of Jude, which we're studying right now in the month of June,
is a call for believers to hold the line, to hold the line of truth, to contend for the faith
that was delivered to the saints once and for all. But to contend is not simply to know the truth
or even academically be able to defend the truth. To hold the line or contend for it
begins first with self-examination, to look here and to see the truth. And then to look
here and to see, am I committed to see the faith at work within my life in each of those millions
of decisions and each of those millions of thoughts? Is that truth at work within me?
Am I holding the line even here before I ever get out here?
We talked last week that Jude is the younger brother of Jesus, a half brother, and
he didn't believe that Jesus was who Jesus claimed he was in the beginning,
but something happened in him and he underwent a transition, a transformation. We see that the
narrative says that his brothers didn't believe him before, his brothers didn't believe him,
his brothers didn't believe him, and then we see his brothers believing him after his death and
resurrection. Now it's no easy thing to convince your brother that you're God. If you've ever tried
it, I tried to convince my brother many times that I was in charge and he never believed it ever.
Imagine trying to convince your brother that you are God. It's not an easy feat. It might
actually take a death and resurrection to make it possible, and we see that both James and Jude,
or Judah, as it's listed in the gospels, James and Jude, they both came to believe in Jesus
and his work, and they both committed their entire lives unto death to see this work advance
in the world. We see that their life underwent a big change. Jude, even in this letter, calls Jesus,
says that he is a servant of Jesus, that he is kept for Jesus. These aren't words a brother says
to a brother, naturally. Servant of Jesus, kept for Jesus, and in verse four, he calls Jesus
master and Lord. Something happened in his life. Jude is writing to a people, it's likely a messianic
Jewish community who are in the region of Judea, and begins the book by saying that while he wanted
to write about the shared salvation that they had, he had to snatch up his pen out of urgency
because there was something else he needed to write about. He needed to write to them to urge
them to contend for the faith. That was verse one through three, and we're going to pick it up in
verse four. Verse four says, for some people who were designated for this judgment long ago
have come in by stealth, they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality
and denying Jesus Christ our only master and Lord. So now we're going to talk about these some people,
who are these some people? Well, they've come in by stealth, he says. What did they come into?
What did they enter into? Well, they came into the church, the called out, gathered up ones,
the called out, gathered up ones, the people of God. The church is ground zero always for contending
for the gospel. The church is always the place that Satan, the evil one, has consistently brought the
fight to. It's in here. A lot of times we think it's out there. A lot of times we think it's with
that political party or those people or that group. The contending for the faith begins right here
among us. Some people have come in by stealth. The church is to be the visible presence of Jesus
on the earth and if Satan can make her indistinguishable from the world by corrupting her
and causing her to fall out of holiness, he accomplishes his purpose to destroy the work of
God. It will be in here among us that we have the fiercest battle contending for the faith.
It says come in by stealth. Well, this is actually a Greek phrase that means to worm your way in
or slither in. And I don't know about you, but the moment I hear slither, I immediately think of snake.
And when I think of snake, I think of that one snake at the beginning, Satan the deceiver. And
now his people, like snakes, are slithering in among us in our churches. And when they're ungodly,
he says, well, what does it mean to be ungodly? Well, this is a word that means irreverence.
And what that means is they live their lives without any acknowledgement of God. They live
their lives without acknowledging him in every single step and decision, acknowledging that
there is a creator from which we are all derived, we all come from. And that that creator has also
established a divine order of things, that things are to be the way the creator intended them to be.
And this includes what we use and what we believe and how we operate. It gets down to the very
fabric of who we are, our identity as men and women, who God designed us to be.
And to be ungodly is to live without acknowledgement of God and his design.
Instead, it says that they please themselves or that they live to please themselves. They are like
those people who do what is right in their own eyes, even when God has made clear that they
are ungodly. And God has made clear what he wants.
Well, what of these people that are have slithered in like a snake and they're ungodly,
they don't acknowledge their creator? Well, it says that they were designated for this judgment
long ago. These kind of people have been written about.
These people of God have been warned that they will come since the very beginning of the Old Testament.
And since the very beginning of the Old Testament as well, their condemnation
was also outlined time and time again. They were designated for this judgment because
they were life. They're the kind of people that judgment has been pronounced on.
We as the church were warned about them and their judgment by Moses, by Jeremiah, by Ezekiel,
by Micah. We were warned about them by Jesus himself in Matthew chapter seven, beginning in
verse 15. Jesus said, be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing,
but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You'll recognize them by their fruit,
our grapes gathered from thorn bushes or fakes from thistles. In the same way, every good tree
produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit.
Neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire. There's the judgment part. So you'll recognize them
by their fruit. Who are the ungodly who were designated for this judgment long ago?
It's the ones that were written about throughout the Old Testament. Jesus himself included,
and then the apostles too in their writing said, yes, these people will arise and their judgment is
secure. These people arise and they'll cause all kinds of trouble and they'll do all kinds of
things to the church and the people of God, but their judgment is already prescribed for them.
They are like the tree that produces bad fruit. It will be cut down and it will be thrown into the
fire. This type of person is the type of person we are to be on the lookout for.
And that's what it means, a part of what it means to contend for the faith within the body.
You might call them false teachers or false prophets and a false prophet is simply someone
who claims to speak for God. And you may go, well, we don't hear too many people bust through the
door and say, thus sayeth the Lord, do we? No, but we do hear a lot of folks around us,
even friends who say, you know, I think God's okay with this.
Or they say, I think God's okay with this. And you might say, well,
I think God's okay with this. Or they might say something like, I claim Christ as my Lord
and savior and I live this way. And from their life, they preach and they teach one another
to go down a certain way. They have influence on others. God's okay with this. God's okay with us
doing that. What's interesting in the book of Jude is Jude is not interested in laying out their
teaching. He's more interested in laying out their way of life. Their way of life tells us
everything we need to know about what they believe and who they are. You can know them by their
actions. Your life preaches, your life preaches loudly. It is the loudest messenger you have and
how you live preaches what you actually believe. Is Jesus master and Lord of your life?
Well, let me look at how you live. I can tell you if he's master and Lord by how you live your life.
Let me look at how you spend your time and energy. Let me listen to how you talk. Let me see how you
respond to Christ's words. Let me see how you treat your husband or your wife. Let me see how you
treat your sexual life. Let me see these things and they'll tell me whether your profession
of Christ is credible. In a true believer, this grace that we have received,
it produces something in us because Jude says these people that we're looking out for these,
some people among us that have slithered in like snakes into the church, these people turn the
grace of God into sensuality. They turn the grace of God into sensuality and they deny Jesus Christ
our only master and Lord. God gives grace to undeserved sinners. Yes. In Christ, we get from
God what we do not deserve. It is our sin that causes us to fall short of God's great glory and
it is our sin that God has graciously dealt with in Christ Jesus. Now in a true believer,
this produces unending gratitude. It doesn't lessen the weight of our sin. No, the more we
see God's goodness on display through his grace, the more we feel broken and grieved over our sin,
the more we glory in God for his forgiveness, the more we feel broken and grieved over our sin,
the more we feel broken and desperate in our sin to only look to him again and receive his
glory and goodness in waves and waves and waves throughout our life. It doesn't lessen our sin.
It doesn't say God's got it. It says, Oh my goodness, in light of such grace,
how could I keep on going in my sin? But some people turn God's grace into a license
to sin. They say things like, Oh, well, no one's perfect. We all sin or worse because God is so
gracious. What if we keep on sinning so that we can experience more of God's grace?
Verse four says that in living this way, they deny Jesus Christ, our only Lord and master.
In living this way, in turning God's grace, the fact that he forgives and pardons sinners by
turning that into a license to sin, they deny Jesus Christ as Lord and master.
You can't serve Jesus in yourself. There is only one master and Lord and you are not him.
We think that the only way to deny Jesus is to say we no longer believe in him and renounce
our faith. That's one way, but there are others.
List three, one is to leave, to renounce your faith, to say, I'm done with you, Jesus. I don't
believe in you anymore. You're not real. You're not real. You're not real. You're not real.
I'll leave the faith behind to leave. The second one is license. Well, I'm going to take this faith
and this grace that I've received and I'm going to use it as a license to sin.
I'm going to say Jesus loves imperfect people. Jesus makes broken people beautiful. How about
I be more broken? I'll be more beautiful. Then I'll be more broken and I can make me more beautiful
on in the name of Jesus Christ. I'm going to leave the faith behind.
I can make me more beautiful on in on and on as sin corrupts and drags him down. You got license.
You got leave. And then the final one is legalism. We can take the faith and make it into a legalistic
rule where we say the faith, all the work that God does by grace alone through faith alone,
right? All the work that God does in our life by bringing the gospel to us, the saving grace.
Well, we need that plus grace plus something else. Faith plus something else.
God's work in us plus something else. The Judy Eyers just tried to do this in the book of Galatians.
Paul pushed back against them and said, no, the gospel that you preach is no gospel at all.
It's no good news because you're binding people up under a law that they've been set free from
in Christ. It's not Jesus plus anything. It's Jesus alone. And if you drift into legalism,
you very well could deny Christ as master and Lord. God's grace must be received with gratitude.
But to presume upon the kindness of God is a great sin. To presume upon the kindness of God is a great
sin. It reflects an ungodly heart that believes God's judgment will never come.
Jude, being a great Bible teacher that he is, he reminds us of three events that serve as a warning
to those who believe God's judgment will never come. Or to those who believe that they are beyond
the reach of God's judgment. The first warning that he gives in verse five is the people of Israel.
Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus
saved the people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe. It's interesting for
those Bible nerds that Jude uses the word Jesus there, right? He says Jesus brings the people out
of Egypt. It's like, was Jesus there? Jesus was there bringing the people out of Egypt? I only
remember saying God in the Bible or the Lord. Jesus was there. And it's way too much to go into
right now, but it'd be a fun thing for us to dive into at some point in time and hopefully it perks
your curiosity and you want to chase that down a little bit. But it says that Jesus saved the
people out of Egypt. He just assumes that Jesus being God saved the people for himself. He saved
the people for himself out of the slavery to the Egyptians, if you remember the story. He brought
them out by miracles. The first being this set of plagues, right? Plagues against the Egyptians.
And the deliverance through the waters of the Red Sea, the
deliverance through the waters of the Red Sea. He sustained them in the wilderness with manna from
heaven and water from a rock. And he was like a cloud over them by day to shield them. And he was
a fire at night to protect them. He did all of these things for this people that he saved out
of slavery, out of Egypt. And he did all this so that he could lead his people whom he rescued for
himself to a land that he prepared for him, a paradise, a place of blessing, so that he can
have a people in a place with him as God over them. This was God's plan for the people of Israel.
Now, how did the people respond to God's provision in the wilderness?
Did they respond positively? Did they gush with everlasting thanksgiving and praise to their God?
No, they complained. They complained like some of you complain when God has given you such good
things in this life. They complain when God has given you himself the greatest thing. They
complained. They said, why this? We're tired of that. We're sick of this. They even said,
why don't you send us back to slavery? Why don't you send the slaves freed saying, send us back?
We don't like you. We don't like our new master. Send us back into slavery.
At one point they said, just let us die in this wilderness. Death would be better than you.
That's how the people responded. Well, how did God respond?
So what did he do? He brought judgment on them. He offered them an opportunity to be his people
and to be let out and to take a land and to be his people in a place under their God's rulership.
And they rejected him through unbelief. And not a single adult 20 years or older,
other than two men who went in as spies and came back in faith, not a single adult over 20 entered
into the land. Not a single one saw the fulfillment of the promise because of their unbelief.
They fell under judgment. God didn't spare his own people who refused to believe in him.
That's the first example Jude gives of Israel. The second one is of angels. Verse six.
Now in the backstory behind this Genesis chapter six, there's a story of angelic beings called
the sons of God who desired sexually the human women. And so instead of keeping in line with
their proper place in God's divine order of things, they abandoned the spiritual dwelling
that they were assigned to. And instead they came to the earth and had sexual relations with the
women. And from this union, you get the stories of this race of giants called the Nephilim.
Who ultimately have to be killed and rid from the land because they're an abomination,
a result of this sin of angelic beings. Well Jude draws their punishment, their judgment from
a religious text that was well known among his times. A book called the Book of Enoch.
In which it says that these angels are kept in chains of judgment until they meet their final
and absolute judge. We're told that lust and pride lead these angels to abandon their proper role
and their position within God's order. How often has lust and pride done the same in us?
Lust and pride causing us to abandon the place or station that God has given us. Be it in our
marriage, be it in our relationships with others, be it in the church, wherever it's at. How long,
how many times has lust and pride crept in and caused us to forsake God's divine place?
The final example is Sodom and Gomorrah, verse seven. Likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the
The final example is Sodom and Gomorrah, verse seven. Likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversion
and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
These places were known for their wickedness and Lot who was Abraham's nephew
lived there in Sodom among these people and he was there with his wife and two daughters.
You can read about it in Genesis chapter 19.
Two angels in bodily form were sent by God to go to the city of Sodom to witness first hand
the wickedness that was there and they met up with Abraham's nephew Lot when they came to the city of
Sodom at the gate. They were going to stay in the town square but Lot said no no no come stay with me at my house.
Come come be my guest at my house and that evening men from the town came to Lot's house
pounded on the door and yelled and demanded that they turn the two men over
to them so that they may have sexual relations with them. Lot refused and and insisted that
they not engage in such wickedness but instead they broke through the door and says the two angels
struck them with blindness so they couldn't tell where the entrance was and what to do and as they
went their way blind the angels turned to Lot and said you have to get your family and you have to
get out of here. We've witnessed the wickedness. God's judgment is coming.
And so Lot begins to get his family but he goes to his two sons-in-law the ones that were betrothed
to marry his daughters and he says God's judgment is coming. The wickedness has reached its fullness
and God's judgment is coming and it says that they thought he was joking.
And so Lot takes his wife and his two girls and they head out of town.
Sodom, Gomorrah and all the surrounding towns on the plains.
Are struck with a great fire. Eternal fire awaits them but they are struck with a great fire there
on the plain to serve as an example it says. That struck me when I was reading that it's like
Sodom and Gomorrah and the people of the plain. God gave them a ministry. He gave them a ministry.
God gave them a ministry. He gave them a ministry. You will serve
as an example of my eternal judgment. You will serve. We still talk about it today.
We talk about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's still on our hearts. It's still on our tongues.
We talk about it as society. We talked about it in the church throughout all the decades. They
served as a reminder. Their ministry is to remind us. It's not a good ministry. It's not something
you want. You don't want that assignment. Their ministry is to remind us that God's judgment does
ultimately come. How often have we lived as if God's judgment will never come?
Like the angels who fell before in the example before the men of Sodom rejected God's divine
order of things and instead of reserving sex for a covenant relationship between a man and a woman
as God designed it they attempted to engage in sexual behavior that is out of bounds.
Homosexual desires and behaviors are not honoring to God's design.
Sex outside of marriage is not honoring to God's design.
And because of their perversion, God gives them this ministry to serve as an example of God's
eternal judgment. How often do we live as if God's judgment will never come?
How often do we exchange our proper position as created ones and try to assume the position of
creator? I'll remind you that to hold the line as we're being taught here through the book of Jude
to contend for the faith begins right here with what we believe leading to how we act or how we
conduct ourselves, how we live. How you live is the most reliable indicator of what you believe.
And I believe this this text challenges us today even. Ask the question, how do we live?
Ask the question, am I the snake? Am I the snake that slithered into God's church?
Am I the one living the double life?
Is my life preaching a message other than Jesus is master and Lord?
It always challenges us to be able to see and discern and others to look at their life and
and their fruit and their choices, but to look at ourselves and say, where do I stand to test my
faith and see if I'm in? We also are challenged though to put a guard at the door of the church,
not physically, but among all of us to look and see and examine fruit in the lives of those who
come in and claim Christ as Lord and to see if their life plays it out. Why? Because this is for
the glory of God and the glory of his visible presence here on this earth, the church.
Will you hold the line by examining yourself?