Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] So you guys can go to Jude.
[00:00:05] If you don't know where Jude is, you can go pretty much to the back.
[00:00:08] It's probably just on one or two pages in your Bible right before the final book of the Bible revelation.
[00:00:16] And we'll cover most of the book tonight, but not all of it. We're going to cover a lot of Jude.
[00:00:24] Now, as we think about Jude and its topic, it made me think of a game, probably one of the first games I remember playing with Katie, which probably revealed to us that we were both really competitive, if anything. But we played this game called the Chameleon. Who knows what that game is?
[00:00:44] So a lot of you guys know what it is. If you don't, there's some way, I vaguely remember, of how you determine what a secret word is.
[00:00:53] And everybody in the group except for one person, is able to identify what that word is. You all have to say a word rapidly in a circle. And whoever doesn't know is trying to blend in like a chameleon. Get it? They're trying to hide. Now, you don't want to say things too obvious because they can have a chance to guess what the word was after the fact if you find them out. And so the whole game is you're either trying to find who's hiding out or you are trying to hide out.
[00:01:23] They need, the chameleon needs to blend in.
[00:01:29] And when we think about what we're talking about tonight, we are thinking of people that are like chameleons. They blend in, they hide in plain sight. They might look like a lot of us. They might come from the church, they might come from our families, but in reality, they are imposters. They are, they're dangerous. This is a very similar idea to what we've discussed with Second Peter. So it's not a brand new thing, but that's what these people, the people that Jude is speaking about, they're doing. They're trying to blend in. And it's often those that blend in most that are the most dangerous to the church.
[00:02:06] The people that are most dangerous are the best chameleons, the best hiders.
[00:02:11] Now, just a little bit about Jude before we get into it. Jude, the author, is the brother of James. That's how he identifies himself.
[00:02:19] And James, we believe, was Jesus brother and the author of the Book of James.
[00:02:24] Now, some wonder why this is the case. You know, because Jude and James are fairly common names.
[00:02:30] If this is the specific Jude we're thinking of, why wouldn't he say the brother of Jesus? I would Say the brother of James. Right. If you're the brother of Jesus, why wouldn't you just come out and say that?
[00:02:40] Well, there might be a couple reasons. I don't think it's illegitimate to say that this is Jesus's brother. He might be trying to indicate that Jesus was another sort of brother. After all, they had different fathers. Jesus had no earthly father, and James had become a pillar of the church. He was a major leader. So if you're thinking of church leadership, appealing to being James brother would be important. It would give them a lot of credibility.
[00:03:08] Now, if you read through Jude, which some of you may have done, especially right after reading through Second Peter, you will probably notice quite a bit of overlap, some very similar illustrations and examples and even subject matter between the two.
[00:03:24] Sometimes people say that this means that one of them is not authentic. The other one just copied the other, so it can't be authentic.
[00:03:32] But I don't think that's the case.
[00:03:34] What probably happened, I think, was that Peter had seen Jude's letter. Now, this is a little bit of a guess, but I think based on how Jude is shorter and Peter kind of takes some of that and elaborates and kind of fills in the gaps more, I think Peter probably saw Jude's letter. That's not unheard of. These letters would be copied and passed around.
[00:03:53] So he would have seen it and maybe wanted to apply Jude's argument to a different context and send it to a different set of churches. I think that's very likely what. What happened and why we see so much overlap between these two letters.
[00:04:07] So the argumentation is similar in Jude, but it's shorter, it's more punchy, and it's set for a slightly different audience.
[00:04:15] Jude also argues against scoffers and false teachers, but there's no indication that these are the same scoffers or the same false teachers.
[00:04:23] And, you know, we certainly don't have any evidence to think that they're teaching the same thing. Jude doesn't mention anything about the day of the Lord and the denying the judgment, like Peter does in Second Peter.
[00:04:35] So what we find with Jude is a short book that quickly states its purpose. To contend for the faith, gives several biblical examples of God's judgment against the ungodly, and then presses the reader to persevere by God's grace.
[00:04:52] And so if we're thinking of the main idea of Jude, the entire letter of Jude, I would probably say it's this. Contend for the faith against scoffers, and by God's grace, persevere so that would be the main idea of the whole letter. But if I'm kind of narrowing in on these verses, Jude 1:16, it would be similar.
[00:05:10] And I think the main idea of this passage is because God calls, loves and protects Christians, they must contend for the true faith against the ungodly. So say that again. Because God calls, loves and protects Christians, they must contend for the true faith against the ungodly.
[00:05:36] So we're going to read Jude 1:16.
[00:05:39] Now, you know, maybe you're not super familiar with the Bible. A lot of you are, but maybe you're not. And think in Jude 1:16. What is that? Well, the way the Bible works, just as a refresher, is there are lots of books in the Bible. There's an Old Testament and New Testament, and these little books all have different names. And when we're trying to find our place, well, you might hear, you know, second Peter 1:4. The first number is a chapter, so you'd look for a big number. The second number is a verse. You'd look for the little number after that big number. Well, Jude's different.
[00:06:10] Jude doesn't have any chapters because it is so short. So when you hear Jude 1 through 16, you can just skip the chapter altogether. We're just talking verses. Does that make sense?
[00:06:21] You know, you see this in 2nd John, 3rd John and Obadiah as well.
[00:06:26] So that's what we do. So we're going to read Jude 1:16 now, and then we'll talk about it.
[00:06:31] Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:35] Excuse me, and brother of James.
[00:06:37] To those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.
[00:06:43] May mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you, beloved. Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you, to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
[00:06:57] For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation.
[00:07:04] Ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:07:13] Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling. He is kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
[00:07:33] Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
[00:07:46] Yet in like manner, these people, also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
[00:07:56] But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, the he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said the Lord, rebuke you.
[00:08:07] But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
[00:08:18] Woe to them.
[00:08:19] For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion.
[00:08:30] These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear.
[00:08:35] Excuse me, I need to take a drink.
[00:08:42] I'll start at verse 12 again.
[00:08:44] These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear. Shepherds feeding themselves. Waterless clouds swept along by the winds. Fruit.
[00:08:54] Man, I'm really struggling, aren't I guys?
[00:08:57] Oh man.
[00:09:03] Fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead uprooted Wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame. Wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
[00:09:14] It was also about these that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied, saying, behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way. And of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him, these are grumblers, malcontents following their own sinful desires. They are loud mouthed boasters showing favoritism to gain advantage.
[00:09:43] So that's Jude 1:16.
[00:09:48] And as a reminder, the main idea of this is that because God calls, loves and protects Christians, they must contend for the true faith against the ungodly.
[00:09:57] So in these verses, Jude states his reasoning for writing. To urge them to contend, which means to defend the faith.
[00:10:06] And in order to demonstrate surety and the nature of God's judgment against the ungodly. He draws from six Old Testament examples, kind of in two groups of three, as we'll see, and from two examples that are outside the Bible.
[00:10:20] You probably didn't recognize what he was talking about in those parts.
[00:10:24] In order to grasp what Jude is saying, we will think about the God who calls, loves and keeps his beloved children. We'll discuss what it means and looks like to contend for the faith and finally, we will think about what the ungodly look like and what their judgment will look like.
[00:10:45] So point number one, God calls, loves and keeps.
[00:10:51] Jude, the servant of Christ and brother of James, wrote to those who are called loved by God and kept for Jesus Christ.
[00:10:58] Now, as I read, and many of your Bibles probably say, we see beloved in God the Father, the Christian standard Bible, which some of you might have says loved by God the Father. And I think that CSB catches that phrase loved by God the Father a little bit more accurately. It's a little difficult to determine, but I think the idea of being loved by God the Father specifically is in view.
[00:11:22] So he is addressing the Christian recipients as those who are called uses the word called.
[00:11:29] Now, I asked some students recently in a class what they thought the word in this verse called meant.
[00:11:36] And you know, understandably, we thought it indicated, you know, a job or a thing to do with your life or even specifically a calling into Christian ministry.
[00:11:48] And it's true that we use it that way.
[00:11:50] You know, again, most of the time we hear called, we think of those who are, you know, pastors or missionaries or something of the sort.
[00:11:57] But the Bible actually usually uses this word to refer to a person or a group of people that have been called by God into faith.
[00:12:06] So it's a call towards salvation by God. That's what's in view here. And those who have been called by God into the faith are also one, loved by God the Father and two, kept for Jesus Christ.
[00:12:19] The Father's deepest love for humanity is expressed in his calling of unworthy sinners into the faith that saves us from eternal death.
[00:12:30] That is a supreme picture of his love.
[00:12:35] Now, I know that many of you, you know your Father's love, and that's such a blessing.
[00:12:41] But this sort of love from the Heavenly Father is even richer and stronger and more consistent, more selfless. It is a better love.
[00:12:51] Now, maybe others of you struggle to think of a father's love.
[00:12:55] Maybe you don't really feel loved by your Father at all.
[00:12:59] Well, rather than letting that cloud your understanding of God's love, I hope you can experience this same rich, strong, consistent and selfless love that the Father offers to sinners, because that is how the Father loves.
[00:13:16] And it is those who have been called by this loving Father who are then kept, in other words, preserved, sealed and assured for Christ himself.
[00:13:26] So if you sense that you have or are currently maybe being called to repentance and faith by God, then you are the recipient of his great love and your gift Your prize is that you get Jesus and you are kept for him.
[00:13:45] And when you're kept for Jesus, then here's what you get along with Jesus. You get mercy to satisfy God's wrath against you for your sin. You get peace to end the conflict between you and God. And you get love to bring you in to unite you to Christ and to keep you forever. That is what is true of the readers of the letter and is what is true of all others who are in Christ.
[00:14:11] That's how Jude starts.
[00:14:13] But then in verse three, we now get to point number two, which is contend for the faith.
[00:14:20] So calling these people rightfully because they've been called and loved and kept, he calls them beloved. Jude says in verse one that he was eager to write. I was eager to write to you about your common, our common salvation. But I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
[00:14:40] Now, that verse is just one of those verses that you could spend hours and hours discussing.
[00:14:46] What was in Jude's mind is much like what we want to discuss and what some people even say is the only thing to discuss our salvation, the common salvation that we share, the salvation we all have experienced in the church.
[00:15:02] And if you're in Christ, then discussing how he's accomplished salvation for you is the most encouraging and uplifting topic we could discuss.
[00:15:11] But I think it's also the safest.
[00:15:17] There's no real risk of offending anyone. There's no chance that a secret sin that you have is uncovered. There's no chance that they'll be challenged to do something that is hard. And in this context, there's no way that false teachers can get called out. But sometimes God wants us to do what is hard and to discuss what challenges us and calls people out.
[00:15:40] This is not how we should live our lives, always calling people out. This is a thing to be done in love and in conjunction with gospel proclamation. But Jude wants to focus in on something he sees as important.
[00:15:54] So he decides to contend for the faith himself, but more so to call on the church to contend for the faith. Right? He's not saying, I am going to contend for the faith. He doesn't give a big. He doesn't even explain what the false teaching is. He's not giving a big explanation of how they're wrong. He is telling the church, it is your job to contend for the faith.
[00:16:16] So did you know that it is the job of average Christians to protect the church from error? Did you know that we Usually think of that as the job of pastors or professors or scholars or theologians or YouTube apologists or maybe anyone but you, right?
[00:16:34] It's somebody's job.
[00:16:36] Now, again, to be clear, you know, pastors and professors and so on, they may have a special prominence and special skills to do this, but Jude is talking to regular people, regular Christians.
[00:16:47] So how can someone who isn't an expert contend for the faith?
[00:16:52] Now, this doesn't mean that you just disagree with everybody for no reason. And be contrarian. He's not calling us to talk about things that we're completely unaware of either.
[00:17:02] What this means for you is that you need to be prepared to contend for the faith and prepare yourself gradually over time.
[00:17:10] If you believe in Christ, then studying His Word should become one of your favorite activities.
[00:17:18] So then you will devote time to studying. You will constantly try to learn new things. You will seek answers to questions that you have heard or thought yourself.
[00:17:29] You can't do this all in a night. This is something that you do lifelong. It's not supposed to overwhelm you, but just to be something that you are doing.
[00:17:36] But it does take work to do this, to be ready to contend for the faith.
[00:17:42] But what better use do you have for your time?
[00:17:45] What activity do you do that brings you greater joy than studying the Word of your Lord and Savior who laid his life down for you should bring us utmost joy. If you've been loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, this should be your life, and it can be your life.
[00:18:03] And we should want to be like Christ.
[00:18:05] Jesus Christ, he contended for the church like this. He died for her.
[00:18:11] He contended for it, and he knows perfectly the Word. So we too should strive to contend for the faith, not just any faith or whatever faith we might decide faith is. He says it is the faith, a specific faith, the Christian faith, the faith that was delivered from Christ through His Spirit to the apostles and then from them to the first Christians. And it has been passed down from generation to generation since then.
[00:18:40] So, students, this is something very large.
[00:18:42] We can be really nearsighted. But let's have a long perspective. We should do all that we can to not let the faith die or be twisted after the Gospel and doctrines of God have been passed down to us for 2000 years.
[00:19:00] That is a burden. It is a stewardship that we have. And we must do what we can to contend for that faith.
[00:19:08] But in order to do this, we need to know, according to Jude, who these false teachers are.
[00:19:16] So point number three, then, is know the marks of the ungodly.
[00:19:29] So verse 4 says these false teachers have crept into the church unnoticed.
[00:19:36] Like when I recently, I saw something on my countertop that had been maybe chewed through.
[00:19:44] It was opened. There's a little hole in there. I thought, oh, we discovered that some mice had crept in unnoticed, which was shocking. We keep our place pretty clean. We had mice up on the counter. They had infiltrated.
[00:20:03] Now, update. The mice have been eliminated.
[00:20:06] But while these false teachers might surprise us, they might creep in unnoticed, they do not surprise God.
[00:20:15] He knew they were coming. And therefore Jude tells us he predestined them for condemnation. Says long ago they were designated for this condemnation.
[00:20:24] So what do these sneaky chameleons, these hellbound people do? What are they like? Well, verse four tells us they're ungodly.
[00:20:33] They pervert God's grace, and they deny the Lord Jesus.
[00:20:38] Verse 8 tells us they follow their dreams, they do as they wish, they defile their own flesh, they reject authority, and they blaspheme the angels.
[00:20:50] Verses 12 and 13 say, they pretend to be your friends, that they'll be swept away, that they're useless and fruitless, they're unstable. They'll be cast into hell.
[00:21:01] Verse 16 tells us they grumble, they find faults, they follow their sinful desires. They're arrogant and they play favorites.
[00:21:09] So to summarize, the people in question, just put it in still other words, first, they justify sexual immorality.
[00:21:16] Second, they want to justify that sexual immorality. And it's possible that they do it by saying they've had a prophetic dream in which God told them their lifestyle is good. Or maybe they do it by just denying what Jesus said and rejecting his authority and saying it doesn't matter what he says.
[00:21:33] And also, third, they sin in other ways, which reveals their heart. So, for example, they're also complainers. They're arrogant. Prejudice. We see that towards the end of our passage, they sin in all sorts of ways. So, students, as we read these sins, you know, there could probably be others. We could mourn them differently. But I want you to think about this.
[00:21:57] If these things are actually true of you, we need to take seriously what Jude says about the condemnation of the ungodly.
[00:22:06] It is shocking. So if you at any point think that you might actually deserve this condemnation, this punishment that's described in the passage, I want you to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ, he extends and and multiplies mercy, peace and love to any who turn to him in faith.
[00:22:26] So it might be true. I'm not Telling you it's not true. If you feel the Lord moving in your heart that way, I would trust it.
[00:22:33] But don't curl up, don't hide. Turn from your sin and trust in him.
[00:22:37] And be loved by the Father and be kept for Jesus Christ.
[00:22:41] There is no one who deserves judgment that is so bad that the Father won't happily cast his love onto them and keep them for his Son, Jesus Christ.
[00:22:50] Nobody's that bad.
[00:22:52] So we can trust God and we can trust his way.
[00:22:56] Then what Jude does in this passage is he kind of unfolds God's way, how he works throughout time. That's why he's looking in the Old Testament. He's showing this is how God acts then. And therefore we can expect God to act the same now.
[00:23:11] So point number four is trust God's way.
[00:23:15] Trust God's way.
[00:23:22] So as we look now to verse five, Jesus the Lord is credited with what follows. He says, I want to remind you that Jesus, so for example, he saved Israel from Egypt, right? So he's this Jesus who saved the people out of the land of Egypt. He's talking about Israel in the Exodus. And I don't want us to pass this up. This might be a little bit of a side point, but it's important. Jesus is credited with something that God did because he is God.
[00:23:49] It is Christ who saved his people from Egypt.
[00:23:53] There's no distinction. Then here's what we can apply to this. There's no distinction between an Old Testament God who's wrathful and mean and a New Testament Jesus who's kind and compassionate. He is one God.
[00:24:06] He is one God who both sat, saves his people and judges the ungodly. He's a righteous God who does both.
[00:24:15] So this first set of verses, then verses five through seven, specifically have three examples of God's judgment.
[00:24:22] So first, in Exodus, God saves his people from slavery in Egypt.
[00:24:26] Yet even this God who saves was happy to judge them for their unbelief numerous times, but notably in numbers. When Israel sins, they're left to wander the wilderness until the entire generation dies.
[00:24:39] God saves his people, yet he still judges the wicked. God does both.
[00:24:45] In the Bible, we learn in several places also that the angels rebelled against God and were cast out of heaven along with their leader, Satan. So even angels made in glorious splendor and beauty by God were judged when they sinned.
[00:25:00] We think of angels as mighty creatures, yet even they receive judgment.
[00:25:04] And in Genesis 19, his third example in those verses, Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities filled with Humans made in God's image were burned by fire from heaven because of their wicked sins, especially their sexual sins.
[00:25:20] Verse 8 then connects the ungodly and the false teachers of Jude's day with those people who were judged in the Old Testament. With those examples. He's saying these people also, they rely on their dreams and therefore they reject authority like Israel rejected God's authority. And how the fallen angels rejected God's authority. They defiled the flesh with sexual immorality like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. And they even blasphemed the glorious angels and things of heaven, which is again what the fallen angels did.
[00:25:54] The next set of verses then really is just verse nine. It references a story that comes from a book that's not in the Bible. So this is one of those two examples of an extra biblical. We say that means it's not in the Bible extra biblical example.
[00:26:09] And we can think of it like this. Sometimes people think, what? Maybe this is why people think Jude isn't real. He's referencing a non biblical book. I think we can think of this like when a preacher says in his sermon, you maybe can imagine this when Aslan went and defeated the white witch, yada, yada, yada. Well, he's quoting from outside the Bible, right? He's doing it to make a point not to say that the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, though a great book, should be included in the Bible. He's not saying that. So I think Jude referencing Michael the Archangel, not blaspheming the devil and judging him, but instead leaving it to the Lord to judge the devil, does that.
[00:26:47] Not necessarily saying that Jude did or didn't believe this event happened. I'm not saying whether it did or did not happen.
[00:26:54] But he's using a form of literature that the people would have known as an example, an illustration of his idea.
[00:27:02] And this then Michael the Archangel choosing to not blaspheme the devil, but to let the Lord judge him. This contrasts with the ungodly who blaspheme all the time.
[00:27:13] They don't care, they have loose lips, they blaspheme all the time. They blaspheme against the God they claim to know, but of course they do not.
[00:27:21] Then Jude goes back to the Bible. So in verse 11 for three more examples. So we got three, then one, now there's another three.
[00:27:28] I think he's maybe putting this in this kind of structure on purpose just to kind of drive his point home. So these examples in verse 11, then they lived like Cain.
[00:27:39] We Know who Cain is? Cain killed his brother in Genesis 4 and was the first murderer.
[00:27:45] They sought selfish gain for themselves, like the selfishness of Balaam, who was so dumb that he was rebuked by his own donkey. That's in numbers 22, if you want to read.
[00:27:56] Therefore they will die, like the insurrectionists led by Korah. That's Korah's rebellion. This happened in numbers 16, when Korah led people to overthrow Moses and Aaron.
[00:28:08] These are the examples of what these people did. And then Jude describes them and the people, these ungodly chameleons. He describes them as hidden reefs, which are like blemishes.
[00:28:20] These blemishes even come to the feasts of the church for selfish reasons and not for the love of Jesus. They eat with them. They're among them like waterless clouds that are nothing.
[00:28:33] They're empty and blown around by the wind. They're like fruitless trees.
[00:28:38] They produce nothing good and are obviously not abiding in Christ, the true vine.
[00:28:44] They're like waves of the sea that stir up chaos. And they're controlled by their own passions rather than being controlled by the Spirit.
[00:28:52] And they're like stars that are lost in light years of darkness.
[00:28:58] This is, I think, very vivid imagery of these people.
[00:29:02] We should avoid being like these.
[00:29:05] Finally, then, Jude returns to yet another extra biblical outside the Bible example in verses 14 and 15.
[00:29:15] Enoch is what he's talking about. Now, Enoch is in the Bible. You guys probably recognize that name, but this prophecy is recorded in a separate book.
[00:29:25] Enoch was the man, just to remind you, who walked with God. And then he was not. God took him to heaven. He did not see death. That's in Genesis 5.
[00:29:36] And in this prophecy that Enoch is recorded to have said, Enoch is said to have spoken about the Lord God coming with his holy angels to judge the ungodly of the world.
[00:29:48] Jude says, the ungodly of his day will receive this judgment. Because they grumble, they're malcontents, which means they complain, they're controlled by their sinful desire. They boast, they show favoritism, their prejudice against others for their own benefit. They do all sorts of wicked things.
[00:30:05] They whine, they sin, they brag, among other things.
[00:30:10] So here's what I want us to take away. So that's kind of the structure of the argument. So here are some takeaways from that section of explanations of the condemnation of the ungodly. I have three lessons.
[00:30:24] First, the whole Bible is relevant for interpreting the Bible.
[00:30:28] The whole Bible, Scripture interprets itself and even Reading the Scripture sets a pattern for things that happen.
[00:30:36] The Old Testament provides not a different God, but the same God. He is the one true God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
[00:30:47] So we should not expect him to react differently, to act differently. Through time we get to see his pattern and he is progressively revealed through the Scriptures.
[00:30:57] And he is a holy and righteous God. And this means that he is just and he judges evil and he is merciful and extends grace to lowly sinners who deserve that judgment.
[00:31:10] This is the God from beginning to end of the Scripture as what Jude is showing us here.
[00:31:16] Second lesson. Judgment is sure.
[00:31:19] Judgment is sure.
[00:31:22] There's no question of whether God will judge the wicked or not. He will.
[00:31:27] And this judgment is portrayed by fire and destruction, darkness and mourning, swift and eternal.
[00:31:36] And it is not just the Hitlers and the Mao's and the terrorists and the school shooters of the world that will receive such a judgment.
[00:31:45] It will include anyone who does not turn from their sins and put their whole trust in Christ.
[00:31:51] Everyone who has sinned against the mighty God is reserved for judgment.
[00:31:57] Even people we know, likely and love might be judged along with Sodom because our sin against God is that serious.
[00:32:06] So I hope this warning stirs us to repent if we have not.
[00:32:11] Or maybe it'll stir us to share the gospel with those who have yet to believe it. Because this is an urgent warning.
[00:32:19] This is important to know that our sin really is that serious and judgment is sure.
[00:32:27] The third lesson then is that Jesus offers grace.
[00:32:30] Jesus offers grace.
[00:32:33] Now we must not pervert the grace of God into sexual sin and sensuality like the ungodly and Jude were doing.
[00:32:41] God's grace is not a voucher to sin with a safety net.
[00:32:45] The purpose of his grace is to save you from sin, not to save you for sin so that you can sin without consequence. That's not what grace is.
[00:32:57] When we treasure sin and hide it in our in our hearts or we hide it from others, that's what we're doing.
[00:33:04] We're trying to accept grace, but have a little bit of a safety net to be saved so that we can sin with a, with a guilt free conscience.
[00:33:16] Well, Jesus offers grace that transforms your heart and desires so that your desire to sin can actually be killed over time and fully destroyed in eternity.
[00:33:29] Jesus offers grace that carries with it the Father's unconditional love.
[00:33:35] Jesus offers grace that will keep you safe and secure from ever falling into judgment. And Jesus offers grace that will free you from sin and deliver you into the new earth, into heaven to worship God and to see Christ face to face. That is the grace that is offered.
[00:33:57] And that grace is free to you if you repent of your sins and trust in him. And then you are taken from that condemnation and you are loved by God the Father, and you are kept for Jesus Christ.
[00:34:10] This grace is worth contending for against any and all who seek to pervert it for their own gain, whether they want to pervert it to justify an LGBT lifestyle, or whether they want to tell themselves that their drunkenness or pornography addiction is no big deal because they prayed the sinner's prayer and were baptized so they can't lose their salvation anymore.
[00:34:33] Jude paints a very different picture, one consistent with Peter's in his letters. Because Jesus is coming again. Praise God. So it matters how we live, and we can be transformed now. It matters how we live, not for the purpose of gaining enough spiritual trophies before he comes, but for the purpose of loving him and declaring the good news to the world.
[00:34:59] So because God calls, loves, and protects Christians, they must contend for the true faith against the ungodly. Let's pray.
[00:35:10] Father, thank you for your word and the faith that was delivered to the saints. Lord, help us to protect it.
[00:35:17] And, Lord, for those of us in here that are in Christ, pray that your spirit would keep them safe and secure, preserve them, and persevere them in the faith that they can continue and receive salvation. Lord, we pray for those who have not turned to you. Lord, help them to understand the true seriousness of their sin and what they deserve because of it. Lord, draw them to yourself that they would repent and believe. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen.
