And hey, it’s good to see you, good to be with you, good to be in our new space together. A lot of work getting here, but we did it. And so thank you again just for all your hard work in getting us here. So just an exciting thing for us as a church to be able to expand where we do ministry. So it’s important if we’re going to do ministry to do it well and in a functional space. And so thankful for where we’ve been, but thankful for where the Lord has brought us. So, so glad to be here with you this morning. If you have your Bible, and I hope you do, turn with me to the letter of Jude. It’ll be all the way in the very back of the New Testament, right before the book of Revelation. We’re going to be in Jude’s letter this morning.

And Jude is sometimes referred to as the forgotten letter. And the reason it’s referred to as the forgotten letter, I think, is because we usually, we read the bigger books, we read Paul, we read the Gospels, Jude’s got this one little bitty letter right before, you know, the very apocalyptic, you know, book of Revelation. But it’s a very important letter, and it’s a good word for the people in Jude’s time. And it’s a good word for us this morning. Jude is talking to his audience about the need to fight for the purity of the Gospel, the integrity of the Gospel. So that’s the thrust of the letter. So we’re going to be in it this week. And next week as well. So I’m going to start reading for us in verse 1.

It says, It’s Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.

To those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ, 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. I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality, and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

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 has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, served as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

So I was watching this movie last night with Jessica and the kids, a true story entitled Sergeant Stubby, and it’s this true story of this dog that when a group of soldiers were being shipped off to World War I to go and fight the Germans, this dog got its way into the camp and became kind of like the mascot, but it went to war with them, and this dog, this dog would go and find wounded soldiers and bark, and the medics would come, so this dog saved a lot of lives, this dog, he found a German spy sneaking up on him, saved them from a mustard gas attack. And so I thought, this can’t be true, and I looked it up afterward, and it was all true. It’s a really incredible story, but mustard gas, that scene was sad, because everyone had their gas masks on, but Sergeant Stubby didn’t, because he was out running around saving people, and so you see this gas coming towards them, and a soldier sticks a wet rag in a bucket and throws that wet rag over his face until that noxious fume passes. And that’s very much so, I think, the feeling that Jude is kind of presenting here to his readers. The gospel, its purity and all that it is has been presented to you. It is like fresh air in that it has given you life.

But it is not so, so that you can always trust that the gospel preached to you is the gospel that you’ve always believed. There are people, Jude contends, who come along and they change it. They manipulate it. They make it such that it is actually poisonous. Like mustard gas, it causes your throat to swell up and blister and disease. It causes you to get diseased and to die. So Jude is writing to say, you’ve got to fight for the purity of the gospel. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t make the foolish assumption you can always just trust that those around you are who they need to be to help in your Christian life. So there’s responsibility here to fight for the integrity, to fight for the purity of the church. So Jude says, and he identifies himself as a servant, or we could translate that, slave of Jesus. Now here’s why that’s interesting. Jude was a half-brother of Jesus, as was James.

So if I’m writing a letter, I’m going to be like, hey, this is Jude, half-brother, of the Son of God. Do whatever I tell you to do. That’s a title you could really hold up and expect people to respect you. You’ve got some clout. You’re Jude. I came from the same mother that Jesus came from. But Jude doesn’t do that at all. In fact, Jude leaves it out altogether. He doesn’t even mention it. What Jude wants us to know about his relationship to Jesus is this. He is Jesus’ servant. He is Jesus’ slave.

And I know when we think about slaves, slavery in our 21st century context, we immediately think about white people enslaving black people, wrongly treating them, abusing them, and that is wrong. But if we look at the world context, historical context of slavery, slavery is multifaceted. So in Jude’s time, in Jesus’ time, in the Roman Greco world they lived, slavery was such that you could, if you were a poorer man, sell yourself into slavery and perhaps have a higher social standing and a better life depending on what master you got. So slavery wasn’t always this thing where the person that is your master is going to do the worst thing for you. It could be such you had a good master who did the best thing for you and helped you take stepping stones to better yourself and buy yourself back out of slavery. So it’s not always the case.

But I want to kind of give this idea to you and let this idea kind of hang out in the background as we consider these verses. What would be so wrong with being a slave? I know this sounds weird. What would be so wrong with being a slave? What would be so wrong with being a slave

if your master always knew what was best for you, only ever commanded you to do what was best for you, and gave you a love for what was best for you? So your master knows what’s the best thing for you, only commands you to ever do that which is best, and teaches you to love what is best for you. Why would that be such a bad life as a slave? I kind of want to sit that in the background as Jude calls himself a slave of Jesus. And he says, I, a servant, or a slave of Jesus, I’m writing to you who have been called. You’ve been called out by God to be a distinct otherworldly people. You’ve been kept by Jesus and for Jesus. So Jesus is the one who’s kept you for Himself. And it’s by Jesus. You are fellow servants and slaves with me. And Jude says, Hey, I was writing you because I wanted to write you about our common salvation. Maybe Jude was going to give him encouragement. Maybe he was going to go into a deeper point on some doctrine just to teach him some more. But he said, Things have come up. Things have changed. I’ve heard about it. Here’s what I have to do now. I’m going to have to encourage you to fight for the faith. Contend for the faith. You’re going to have to now struggle zealously for this Gospel message, for this entire Christian faith. It’s what you’re going to have to do. And he says that this faith that you’re going to have to contend for, he says it was once for all delivered. Once for all means perpetually valid. You ever take a drink of milk and you realize, Oh, that was expired. Not perpetually valid, right?

Jude is saying the faith we have was once for all delivered. It’s done. It transcends time. It transcends culture. It transcends the preferences of culture, the preferences of people. This is a once for all delivered faith that you must fight for. And he says, Here’s why you’ve got to fight for it. There are people who in stealth came into the church. They looked like they were part of the church. They loved the same Gospel as you. But they figured out ways to manipulate the truth to serve themselves. They figured out ways to manipulate the truth to let it be what they want it to be for monetary gain, for prestige, for their own sinful desires. Jude says that’s not like a possibility that has happened. And I would say the same thing to us. I think we hear that and think, Well, that’s in Jude’s time. Maybe that’s some church somewhere else. We’re all happy and kosher here. And I hope we are. But this is a mindset that we should generally live with as Christians. I know my faith well enough and I’m always protecting it. I’m always in a place to contend for it when necessary. That’s just a general disposition we should have if we love the faith that’s been delivered to us. So he says these people pervert the grace of God and deny Jesus Christ

as their only Lord and Master. Now the and’s causal. They pervert the grace and deny. How do they deny Jesus as Lord and Master? Because they perverted the Gospel. Because they perverted the Gospel, causal, reason. What did they do? They denied Jesus by their actions. That’s what he’s protecting them from. That’s what he’s telling them. You’ve got to fight for this. So it’s a big deal to God. So it’s a big deal to Jude. And if it’s a big deal to Jude, friends, we also should see it as a big deal to us to fight for the integrity and the purity of the Gospel and the Christian faith.

So here’s what Jude does. Jude pulls a few stories from the Old Testament that they would have been familiar with and he pulls out of these, stories, both the characteristics of a false teacher, a false Christian, and the consequences for having these characteristics. So we’re going to work through these and I want you to see the characteristics of a false Christian, a false teacher, and then the consequences that come. That’s what Jude’s doing to help them kind of fill out who they should be looking for in their own local church.

So here’s the first thing I want you to note. Jude says that these characteristics of these false Christians would be the first characteristic is remarkable disbelief. Remarkable disbelief. Look at verse 5 with me in Jude.

He says, Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt,

afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

So now we’re very familiar with that story. It’s a popular Christian story even if you’re not a Christian. But what happens? You know, God’s people, they’re enslaved and God comes to Moses and says, Hey Moses, you know, you’re going to go and set my people free. You know, let my people go. And the big song. And they part the Red Seas. And how does that happen? God sends all these plagues on the Egyptians. The water turns to blood. Frogs. Dust to gnats.

The flies that bite. Livestock that die. Boils. Hellfire. Locusts. Darkness. All these crazy things that God sends on the people of Egypt. Not His people, even though they’re like in proximity. God has shown Himself strong in the way that He has crippled the Egyptians, their economy, their gods, everything. And He’s shown that He is strong. Right? He parts the Red Seas for them to go across. He crushes the Egyptian army. Then God as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, He’s with the people as they travel. He brings sweet water out of the log for the people to drink. He drops bread and quail from heaven. So, like, what else could you want God to do to say, hey, I am like the strongest God ever, only, and I love you and I’m always for you. My way is good. I’m trustworthy. What else could God have done for these people? He’s right here in their face saying, I want you to know me. I want you to experience my glory. I will be your God. You will be my people. Trust me. I’ve shown you I’m good. I’ve shown you that I am the strongest.

That’s what God has done for these people. It is God saying, let me manifest my glory to you. That’s what God’s saying to us and it’s what He’s saying to these people. Yet if we look in Numbers 14, we see their response. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and saying, how long shall this wicked congregation grumble against Me? I’ve heard the grumblings of the people of Israel which they grumble against Me. Say to them, as I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in My hearing, I will do to you. Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And of all your number listed in the census from 20 years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell except Caleb and Joshua. But your little ones who you said would become a prey, I will bring in and they shall know the land that you have rejected. God has said, I have made it so plain and clear to you who I am. Yet the people said back to God, no, we don’t trust you. You’re going to kill us. Instead, the people cried out the loud cry, would that we had died in Egypt. Would that we had died in this wilderness. They wouldn’t pick up arms to fight the Canaanites. What do you call that? When God’s that close and you still won’t go along with it. You call it remarkable disbelief.

The Hebrew writer sums it up well when he says this in Hebrews 4, verse 2, for good news came to us, just as to them, referring to the Israelites that didn’t believe. But the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed, believed enter that rest, as he has said. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Why? Because they did not believe. And I hope that our definition of faith is filling out biblically more and more over time as we talk about it. Because faith is not just a word. Faith is not simply what you agree to be true. Faith is the truth that reshapes, redirects your whole life. How do you know that Abraham really believed in God? He didn’t just say, okay God, I believe you that you’re going to make me the father of many nations. Abraham got up and he left. He went. Gideon didn’t just say, yes, I believe that you’re strong. Gideon went and faced that whole army with just 300 people. So a real genuine Christian faith doesn’t just say, yes, I believe. I believe it’s true. It is a life that’s completely reshaped and reformed because of said truth. Now Abraham tried to do the, hey, what about a little bit of my way and your way thing? Remember that? He said, hey God, let Ishmael be the one. Let my son Ishmael be the one. And God said, no. It’s going to be your son Isaac through Sarah because that’s what I said. My way is best. My whole way is best. Only my way is good. And it’s the very same characteristic you see that Jude is drawing in those kinds of things. The kinds of disbelieving, wicked Israelites that you would find he connects the dots with the false Christian and the false teacher who say, no, I cannot believe the Gospel as it is. I cannot take God at His word. I must manipulate and change it to some degree to fit what I want it to be and then I will believe.

Friends, self-reliance, it just is not congruent with the Christian life.

Jesus calls us to come in simple faith.

Not some faith and some understanding. He calls us to come in simple faith and believe that He was a poor Jewish carpenter who was previously the eternal Son of God. And then He lived this perfect life and He died as a perfect sin offering and He rose from the grave. And then when He rose from the grave, He put His Spirit on His people and His apostles taught the people and we have this thing called the Bible and it’s called the Bible. It’s got these lofty doctrines. Most importantly, the Trinity, that our God is three persons in one God and He’s good and He loves us and He’s for us. All this does not say, hey, God needs you to manipulate it somehow. God needs you to change it so you can like it and make it a little bit more sense for you. It just says, take the whole thing as it is or reject it. That’s the Christian faith. And Jude’s warning them, hey, watch out when you see that kind of spirit and people are poking it. I don’t know. I’m poking that. I’m poking that. And there’s nothing wrong with asking honest questions about why things are the way they are. That’s how you learn. But there’s a difference between, hey, I’m curious to know why this is the way this is and how can I change and manipulate that truth because I don’t want to believe it. I want it to be something else for my personal gain so that I understand it.

The story of Christianity is the story of God. It’s a story about what God is doing from the garden to the cross to the grave to eternity. To bring glory to Himself by sending His Son Jesus

to die and to live again. It’s God’s story. It’s God’s glory. And the moment you and I want to change and manipulate the story, you know what we’re doing? We’re making it our story. To say to God, God, I will worship You and serve You if You do it my way, that’s the same thing as saying I just really want to worship myself. If God becomes the God of your imagination, friends, you are your own God. It’s no longer faith.

And so friends, we’ve got to go back and again, in the 21st century, we live in a very rationalistic age. Like, everything needs a very square answer. No faith. They’re like, I want to get it. But Jesus is saying, if you want to follow Me, you must believe. You must trust. You must see with the eye of your soul.

Jude knows this. You and I have an enemy who’s always hot on us. We have a sinful flesh that’s always leading us to do wrong. We have a world around us tempting us. What we don’t need and what we cannot have is a cowardly attitude that allows non-believers to live in the same walls with us and constantly berate us with lies and manipulate the Gospel. That’s what we can’t have. And Jude’s saying, if you don’t do it, it’s going to come at the cost of your own soul. So contend and fight for the faith. It’s that important. It’s that important. I know I referenced Pilgrim’s Progress, sometimes, just because I like it. It’s just good examples. But there’s that part where Christian comes up on talkative. And talkative is just that. He’s talkative. Whatever you want to talk about, he can talk about that and sound like he knows what he’s talking about. So they start talking about Christianity and religion and how they’re on their pilgrimage to Jesus together. But Christian knows this man. He knows this man because they’re from the same town. And he knows that talkative, he says whatever he needs to say in the moment, but actually, he’s a terrible friend and he’s abusive to his wife and children. And so Christian knows that talkative just says what he needs to say in the moment. He doesn’t really mean with any earnest anything about Jesus or religion. And so he parts with talkative. Here’s the sad thing for you and I in the 21st century. And you have to live in your context. I say that all the time. You and I, we have a countless number of talkatives around us. Because of the internet, just the way the world is, you cannot believe,

when someone says they’re a Christian author, that they are a Christian author. Can’t do it. If that ever was a time, we don’t live in that time anymore. If you think, just because someone says they’re a Christian preacher or evangelist, that they are one, they are not. Friends, we have to know our own words so well that we can quickly say, hold on, that doesn’t jive with this stuff right here. That’s not the faith that was once for all delivered to me. So we just have to be thinking Christians. We have to love God with our minds. We have to constantly be saying, how can I be word saturated so I can protect it? But I want to make this second point. The Bible assumes, and I want to say Jude largely assumes here, that he’s writing to a group of people who live in close community together. Jude is not writing, hey, one of you in the church, can you be like the contend fight person for the gospel? That’s not the letter. The letter is all of you Christians who are living together, you know, in a Christ-centered community. You together need to be word saturated so you can together protect one another, protect the community. So it’s a team sport. So talking about word saturation, protecting it, it requires, friends, that we know it and learn it together so we can keep the community healthy and holy. Because if the community loses its likeness to Jesus, it loses its witness to the world. So are you careful to be a word saturated Christian? Are you willing to be in Christ-centered community, loving the other as the other loves you, protecting them, they protect you from poisonous, noxious fumes of a false gospel?

That’s what Jude’s saying you must contend and fight for. And next week we’ll talk quite a bit more about how we do some of these things about word saturation and Christ-centered community.

Go back to verse 6 because I want to see the second characteristic, the second characteristic here that Jude points out.

He says, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness

until the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities which likewise indulge in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire or strange flesh, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. So what Jude’s doing right there in verse 5, he’s making a reference to Genesis 6. I’m going to read this here. Genesis 6, it says, When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His day shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

So Jewish culture, Jewish belief, Jewish tradition constantly would associate the sins of the angels with this passage. So, Enoch, the book of Enoch, which Jude references in verse 14, the book of Enoch largely goes into the sins of the angels. And it largely talks about this account of these angels, these fallen angels who assumed male bodies. So that sounds, I know this is weird. It is weird, but it’s what the Bible is talking about. They assumed male bodies, and we see that angels assume human bodies elsewhere in the Old Testament talking to Abraham. And they, they did what they should not have done and they procreated with women.

So we’re starting here with Jude giving this Jewish reference to this account in Genesis where these angels first did what? Well, they first, he said they left their, let me find it, didn’t stay within their own position of authority. So God said, you’re an angel, you’re created to serve me. And think about what the angels had there in the glory of God, but following, Satan’s lead, they in pride left that and said, no, we want to be in charge. We don’t want to do things your way, God. So rising up against God, they’re thrown out of heaven. And then we get this account of these angels assuming male bodies and procreating with women. And for it, God says they’re in these gloomy chains of darkness until the final day, until judgment. So that’s kind of, I know it’s like, whoa, that’s like weird mythology stuff. But again, if it’s in the Bible, we’ve got to talk about it. So there’s that. And I want you to see now how Jude parallels it with the next story. He says, judgment of the great day, verse 7, just as, just as. So he’s making a parallel between the sins of the angels and Sodom and Gomorrah. So what happened between, in the angel situation and what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah that’s like? Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, served as an example by undergirding, undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. So the heart issue problem here is pride. Why did the angels do what they did? Pride. Okay? Now, what have they done in Sodom and Gomorrah? Well, in pride, they are living life as they want to live it. And what happens, friends, when we throw off our moral obligations?

Well, we do whatever we want to do and we go deep into whatever gives us the most pleasure. So notice, I want you to notice what Jude doesn’t say about those in Sodom and Gomorrah. He doesn’t say they struggled with unnatural desire. He says they indulged or glutted themselves in sexual immorality and then see it says they pursued unnatural desire. Pursue means to make a conscious journey from one place to another. They chose to migrate to a lifestyle where they were having these same-sex relationships. It was a conscious choice they chose to pursue.

So both cases, pride leads to gross sin and uninhibited sin leads to what in both cases? It leads to great judgment. In the angels, it says the judgment on the great day and then undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. What is Jude doing? He’s saying, watch out because when you throw off obedience and humility, it’s going to lead you deep into disobedience and sin which is going to lead you to the very harsh, to the very harsh consequences.

Remarkable absence of obedience leads to a remarkable presence of sin in our lives.

Sinful man does that which comes most natural. Sin. And I want to say this and I’ve said it a little bit before. I don’t want to be the sin guy. Some preachers like to talk about grace and Chad likes to talk about sin a lot. I don’t like to talk about sin. I think there’s a huge hole in most pulpits today where we don’t talk about sin at all. And I just am under the condition until we reckon with our sin nature and the sin problem that gospel’s not good news. Jesus didn’t die on the cross and bleed so that you and I could have a better life. He didn’t die on the cross so we could have a blessed life. He didn’t die because we were sad and we’re having a bad day. Jesus died as a sin offering. It’s why it happened. So when we downplay sin, friends, we do not see the beauty of Christ crucified.

Friends, we all have a sin orientation.

Whether that’s pride,

anger, heterosexual sins,

homosexuality, greed, drunkenness, whatever it may be, we’re all hopelessly oriented towards sin. And here’s what’s worse. And again, we have to go back to our context. You and I live in a feelings-driven society. We live in an emotional world. How do you feel? If you feel that way, let that feeling lead you to what you want to do. That is largely, by and large, the world in which we live. And you think about a philosopher, John Locke. He famously gives the example. If you go by feeling, emotion, experience, you’re going to be misled. If you take a canoe paddle and you stick it in the water, what happens? Well, it bends. It looks like when you stick an oar in the water, it bends. So could you imagine someone arguing with you, like, I have stuck an oar in water and when it bends, I’ve seen it. And their experience has told them, the oar bends, right? And you would feel really sorry for this person because their experience has misled them. What their eyes see is not true to what’s actually happening there. The water makes it look that way. And in the same way, friends, emotions and feelings aren’t bad things, but they go through the filter of a sin nature and so they’re so often misleading to us. So here’s the thing we’ve got to constantly keep in mind. God someday is not going to judge us according to how well we lived up to our feelings. He’s going to judge us according to His holy standard.

That’s what God’s going to do.

Living in full submission to Him requires remarkable obedience, which requires great sacrifice.

The Apostle Paul says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Living sacrifice. Sacrifice. Holy. Acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern. Discern what’s right. That’s what Paul’s saying. You have to discern what’s right. What’s the will of God? What’s good? What’s acceptable? What’s perfect? It’s not a feelings-driven life.

Whoever said being a Christian was easy.

Whoever said that the pathway wasn’t straight and narrow. Whoever said the cross wasn’t heavy.

Well, not Jesus.

It’s these great pretenders. That’s who says it. And given the opportunity, friend, they would invite you to live according to your feelings and your emotions and not submit those feelings to the eternal, once for all, Word of God, Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And when you think about it, it’s a remarkable disbelief, is not disconnected from remarkable disobedience. The more you are okay with disbelieving something, you know, it becomes easier to do, live a sinful life, because if I don’t believe all that’s true, man, I give myself some free space to do what I want to do. But friends, who is our Master? And does He desire the best for us or not? Even when we don’t feel like it. I tell Darcy and Dawson to do things all the time they don’t feel like doing, right? But it’s what’s right.

You’ve ever been in the car and you’re going down the road and you’re listening to whatever you like to listen to, music. And you turn it up. And you turn it up. And you turn it up and it’s loud. And you’re enjoying it. But you get out of the car and you go into the store, whatever you’re doing, and you come back to the car and you turn the car on and it blares you and you’re shaking like crazy. And it’s like, how is it this light? You can’t stand it. It’s the same way, friends, with the way we approve of sin. There’s no sin in our life. No one wakes up an adulterer. No one wakes up a drunk. No one wakes up addicted to pornography. It was just, well, you know, and it’s a series of baby steps and you wake up one day and realize, oh my gosh, I’m 10,000 miles from where I should be. How did I get here? Well, I slowly let my emotions and my feelings control me rather than constantly letting the truth of God’s Word sift my heart and point out to me where I’m drifting from the truth. That’s how we do it. So again, there’s this safeguard in constantly bringing our feelings, our thoughts, our actions back to the Gospel, back to the Word of God, certainly when it doesn’t feel good. Because it’s right. And at the end of the day, are we doing what feels good or are we living for the glory to come in the future? It’s suffering now. It’s glory then. Christ suffered and was raised to glory at the right hand of the Father. So Christ suffered. Christ has laid that out for us. If we’re wanting a Christian life that looks different from Jesus’ life, that’s not a Christian life. That’s not a Christ-like life. It is some version of some religion that you are entertaining until you find something else that fits your fancy. Jude is saying, watch out for these false Christians, these false teachers. They’re going to be okay with disobedience and they’re going to lead you away if you passively let them stay around.

Charles Spurgeon, said a servant’s true obedience can sometimes be as well seen in what he does not do as in what he does.

So are we learning to not do the things we ought not to remain in obedience to the Lord?

I think when we read this, and certainly again I think with just the general nature of church today, because let’s be honest, Sunday mornings, I forget who I was talking about this, Sunday mornings is not a place anymore where we’re incredibly sober, it’s weighty, there’s a ton of reverence here. You know, I went to a Catholic Mass for my grandmother a few weeks ago and while there was a million things that were quacky, I think there was one thing, there was one thing there that I think sometimes we lack in Protestant churches and it’s a sense of reverence when we’re there.

And when I read this passage, I think if you’re Christian live, it’s practical, it’s lighthearted, it feels good all the time, I think a passage like this rubs you raw until you remember God is a holy God and God’s holy standard will be seen and we will undergo it someday. So to our 21st sensibilities, I think the question is, is this too harsh? Is Jude being too harsh with all this language of gloomy darkness and eternal fire? Well, I want you to think about it and see if it is. And again, I want us to think as back to the Gospel. What is the Gospel? The Gospel is God who before time began, the Father who eternally loved and was satisfied in the fellowship of His perfect Son. The Scriptures say all things were created through Him, for Him, and by Him. So literally everything that exists exists for this perfect Jesus who deserves all worship, who deserves all, who deserves all praise.

That God creates us in His image. We spit on that God. What does that God do? He bleeds and He dies. He’s humiliated, naked, unrecognizable by His Mother to save us from our sins. That holy, perfect Jesus does.

That is a powerful, precious message. Friends, when we manipulate and play with that to feed our sinful nature that Jesus died to set us free from, I would not say that it’s too harsh. I would say that when you think about the glory and the greatness of God, the humility and love of Christ who did not have to but chose to love His enemies. Friends, this harshness is not harsh at all. It is just judgment for making light of God’s Gospel, for making light of the Christian faith. So let it be a great encouragement to us this morning. We have been set free to live in the truth of this Gospel, to follow Christ, but we’ve also been given the privilege and responsibility to contend for it, to fight for it, to know it, to love it, to defend it, to preach it in all of its purity and in all of its integrity.

Jesus says in Luke 9, verse 51, it says about Jesus, when the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to Jerusalem. He set His face. And friends, it’s the same about Jesus. I think posture you and I must have until we are with Christ in glory. We must set our face to do that which is right. We must set our face to obey. We must set our face to believe even when it’s difficult. And certainly until we’re in glory, it will be. But we do it because we love our Savior, we love our King, and we love His Gospel. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Father, I know we gather on Sundays so often and we talk about the Gospel and we talk about the truths of Scripture and I’m afraid sometimes they can become old hat and we can take them for granted.

Lord, I pray that we would be reminded that inside and outside the church,

the Gospel, until you come back, it will be under attack. The truth will always be under attack.

I pray that you would give us a love for the name of Jesus. You’d give us a love

for what the Gospel means, that we can be set free to know You and to have eternal life. I pray that we’d be so moved just by the greatness of Your glory, Lord, that we would always contend for this faith.

We would dive deep to know this faith. To live in the presence of God. To live in the power of this faith, knowing that You will never leave or forsake and You’re with us always.

Jesus, You are both the place to which we’re headed and You are the power for the journey as well. So thank You that even as You give us this very big command to struggle and contend for the faith, Lord, You’re also the one who’s giving us the power to do it. It’s not of us. It’s not our strength. It’s not our power. It’s Your goodness. It’s Your goodness. It’s working in us and through us by the Spirit and the Word, Lord. So we just trust Your promises and we trust Your goodness. And we pray for providence, Lord. We pray that providence today and for all the years until You return, Lord,

providence would be a church where the Gospel remains unadulterated, where the truth of Your Word is set forth and people are changed because it is Your Word alone.

We just bless Your name. We just love You this morning. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.