This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to week five, day four of our look at the New
Testament. We're going to look at the book of Jude today, which is about how to be
a contender for what's right. Now, let me just ask you, what's the first thing
you think of when you hear the book of Jude?

You think, hey Jude, that's all I'm going to sing. I could sing the whole song,
you'd love it, I know, but that's all I'm going to sing. It's just interesting to
me that a song from the Beatles is more familiar to us, me too, than this book
from the brother of Jesus.

So let's get more familiar with this book from the brother of Jesus. Jude was
the brother of James, the writer of the book of James, and Jude and James were
half brothers of Jesus. The family ties in the New Testament are amazing.

You just see them all through the New Testament. God uses families in powerful
ways, both in reaching people for Christ and in growing people in Christ. And
Jude is actually a nickname.

Jude's full name was Judas. Jesus had a brother named Judas. Isn't that
interesting?

The disciple that was going to betray him, he had a brother who had the same name.
There was also, by the way, another disciple named Judas. It was a very common
name in that day.

How would you like to have been the good Judas, not the bad Judas? But that's
the way it went in that day, with the name Judas. Jude did not believe in Jesus
until after Jesus' public ministry, along with the rest of Jesus' family.

They struggled. Mary understood, but his brothers and sisters struggled. Jude
was present in the upper room just prior to Pentecost, so he was there for the
birth of the new church.

And he writes this book. God challenges him to write this book, and he inspires
the book as he writes it. And it's a book that's on one subject, apostasy.

An apostate is somebody who has rejected the faith. As the church began to grow
and reach more people and become more popular, it began to face a problem. How
do you deal with the people in the church who've rejected the faith?

They say that they're growing up, that they've gone on to something better,
something new. The New Testament says they never really believed. How do you
deal with people who've rejected the faith?

The main verse is verse three. Contend for the faith that was once and for all
and trusted to the saints. I love that phrase.

The faith once and for all and trusted to the saints. And there's this battle
that goes on throughout this book, the book of Jude. Two contenders.

In this corner, we got the challenger, the challenger to the faith. In verse
four, for certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have
secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men who changed the grace of God
into license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign and Lord.

Now look at what they do. They turn grace into an excuse and they deny the
uniqueness of Jesus, that he is Lord. Ask two questions immediately of any
church, any teacher, and you'll know whether they're from God or not.

What do they say about grace? And what do they say about Jesus? If they make
grace into an excuse for sin, if they deny the uniqueness of Jesus in the place
of salvation as the son of God, they are a false teaching.

I don't care what other good things they say, if they struggle with grace, if
they struggle with Jesus, they're a false teaching. So that's one contender. And
then in this corner, we got the eternal champion.

We got what we're fighting for. Jude verses 24 and 25 is a prayer to him who is
able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence
without fault and with great joy to our only God, our savior, be glory, majesty,
power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages, now and
forevermore, amen. So in these verses, he reminds us, you make grace your
confidence.

How do you fight a false teaching against grace? You make grace your confidence.
He is able to keep you from falling, not you are able because of his grace.

He is able to present you before his glorious presence without fault and great
joy. You can't do that, that's only by his grace. You don't make your works your
confidence.

He has works for you to do, but that is not your confidence before him. It is
his grace. And then you exalt Jesus.

That's how you fight false teaching. These verses talk about his glory, his
majesty, his power, his authority. You exalt him.

The Book of Jude, in many ways, is a book about how to win the fight for what is
right. And it has two major sections in how to do that. You gotta have a good
defense and you gotta have a good offense.

Verses one to 16 are about having a good defense. And in talking about that,
Jude says you gotta first study past battles. He talks about three specific
battles, the battle in Egypt, the people who wanted to go back to Egypt rather
than go to the promised land.

And how they lost that battle. They wandered in the wilderness. The battle of
the angels that rebelled and fell.

The battle in Sodom and Gomorrah, those cities that fell. He turns to some
battles that were lost and he says, you don't want to go that direction. He also
talks about three people.

As he says, you gotta look at what happened in the past. He talks about Cain and
Balaam and Korah. You might remember the story of Cain and the fact that he lost
his battle and murdered his brother.

Balaam and Korah, you can look up in the Old Testament. And remind yourself that
in order to win the battle against the enemy, you gotta study the past battles
and how they were lost because people trusted in themselves again and again. In
all these battles, you see that people trusted themselves instead of trusting
God.

People trusted the circumstances instead of trusting God. They lived for the
moment instead of living for God who's eternal. So you have to know the battles.

You also have to know the enemy that you're fighting. And as Jude talks about
our enemy, he gives six clear pictures of the enemy of false teachers. He calls
them ugly blemishes.

The Greek word there is also used for hidden rocks, rocks that could rip the
hull of a ship, sink it before the sailors even knew the danger. He talks about
selfish shepherds. Talk about a contradiction in terms.

When a shepherd's favorite meal is lamb chops, it doesn't give the sheep a lot
of confidence. So he's talking about these shepherds, so-called shepherds of the
church who are just doing it to get what they need. This third picture is clouds
without rain, all promise, no delivery.

He gives the picture of dead trees, no fruit, no root. He gives the picture of
wild waves. I know, that sounds like an amusement park, but there's nothing
funny about this.

They are destructive to life. He gives the picture of wandering stars as last
picture. It's the picture of falling stars.

There's a quick and impressive flash, but they just don't last. So you gotta
have a good defense. You have to understand the past battles.

You have to understand what you're fighting right now. But then he says you also
have to have a good offense in order to win this battle for the truth. As he
walks through this, he says, you gotta remember some things.

Remember he says that there's going to be scoffers. We talked about that in First
and Second Peter. In boxing terms, don't let down your guard.

Don't think, okay, everything's great with my family. Everything's great with my
church. Nothing's going to go wrong.

That's how I know that I can trust God because everything's great. There's going to
be people who scoff. There's going to be people who fight against the faith.

So don't let down your guard. Don't come to that point in life where you think
because something wrong happened in my life, it means that God doesn't have an
eternal plan for my life. He told us we're going to face suffering in this world.

He also told us he's going to give us his promise for eternity in the next. So just
remember, there's going to be scoffers fighting against the church. He also says
you gotta build yourself up in your faith in this good offense.

Get yourself on a good training program to allow God to speak to your heart. Let
God's words sink into your heart day after day after day. And then he says you
gotta pray in the Holy Spirit in this good offense.

Not just pray, but pray in faith, recognizing the power of the Holy Spirit. Pray
recognizing that God is in you to direct and empower your prayers. He says the
fourth thing you gotta do to have a good offense is you gotta keep yourself in
God's love.

Never lose the focus of a father who loves you. Never forget how deeply God
loves you. And then finally, the fifth thing he says is you gotta deal with
people with merciful discernment.

The idea of merciful discernment, this is one of several places in the Bible
that points to this. You deal with different people in different ways. You gotta
discern, is this a false teacher?

How much time should I spend with them? Or is this a hurting person? How much
time should I spend with them?

Your strategy should recognize the need of the person, but it also should
recognize your needs. And in fact, it needs to recognize your weaknesses and
your strengths. So with those who are in doubt, your attitude towards them is
arms out to them.

You want to welcome them in. With those who are in danger in their faith, your
attitude is arms around them. You embrace them because they're hurting.

But to those who are in the depths of sin and are unwilling to admit that
they're in the depths of sin, you hold them at arm's length. Bad company
corrupts good morals. You don't spend time with rebellious people.

Why? Because you recognize your own propensity to lean in that direction. And we
think we wouldn't, we think we'd be fine.

But the Bible warns us, don't spend too much time around people who are involved
in sin and will not admit that sin, 'cause you'll get tempted by it. You'll get
drawn into it. You say, "Nah, I wouldn't.

" Well, the Bible says we all can and would. So I'm trusting the Bible rather
than my own emotions in that one. That's how you have a good offense.

Let me read those again. You remember that there's going to be scoffers, but God's
still faithful. You build yourself up in your faith.

You pray in the Holy Spirit. You keep yourself in God's love. And you deal with
people with merciful discernment.

Our Father, as we pray, help us to do just that. Help us to live lives of faith
in this world. And we're hit by false teaching or we're hit by circumstances
that would make it seem like we should doubt you.

I pray that you'd help us to remember the depth of your love. And that we
continue to build ourselves up in our faith even through those difficult times.
That God, we remember that even though there's troubles in this world, your
promise of the next and your promise of your presence and comfort and guidance
in this world will never fail us.

So we look to you right now. And we pray that you'd build our faith even through
difficult times. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, tomorrow we end our look at the New Testament with the book of Revelation,
the book of hope.