Jude 1-4

It is indeed amazing that you love us. It is indeed amazing that you have washed our sins away. It is indeed amazing that, in spite of who we are and what we've done, that you, by virtue of the person and work of your only begotten son on our behalf, have redeemed us grant by your grace, that we would never cease to be amazed by this truth. Father, we thank you for this one day and seven that you have set aside, this one day and seven that you have set aside to remind us that all days are yours, through your claiming of this particular day as yours, this one day and seven that symbolize as the whole that belongs to you, This one day and seven that reminds us of our great need and your great provision, This one day and seven that reminds us that our tendency is to wander and to stray, and that again and again and again we have to be reminded. We need these ordinary means of grace. We need to be fed and sustained. And so Lord, we ask that you would do that, that you would feed us till we want no more. And as we open your Word, we ask that, as we have come before you and worship, and as we have proclaimed things to you and about you that we know and believe to be true, that in these moments you would speak to us clearly and powerfully through your word, to the end that we might be conformed to the very image the Son in whom you so delight. We ask these things in his name and for his sake. Amen. Amen, Well, it is good to be with you today. It is good to be selfishly. It is good to be with my friends. It's good to be with the Joneses. And my wife is quite jealous that I have had this opportunity to be with the jones And that's okay. As Pastor Kenn has said, my latest book is Expository Apologetics, and it's really just me writing about who I am as a Christian and as a preacher. My whole Christian life has been about apologetics, about the defense of the faith. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. For the most part, I grew up there, was raised by single teenage Buddhist mother, and I never heard the Gospel until my first year at university. And so because of the way that I came to faith. I have always had an eye out and an ear out for those individuals who are on the outside looking in, those individuals who have legitimate questions that need to be answered. I've always thought about, always thought about Christianity from the perspective of an outsider. Not so much that I see myself as an outside of the Christianity, but I remember what it was like when I read Biblical texts. I am always trying to think of the questions that I would have been asking and how to best answer those questions. And that's what expository apologetics is all about. But one of the reasons that I read that I wrote the book was because I have seen over the last many years, the falling out of favor of this very concept of apologetics, this falling out of favor of the idea of defending the faith, of giving a reasoned response. We get the word apologetics from Peter's Epistle, where Peter says in one Peter three fifteen that we're always to be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks us the reason for the hope that is in us. The word that he uses there in the Greek is the word apologia, and so apologetics is really a transliteration of that word apologia, and it means a reasoned response, a reasoned defense. Think about a lawyer in a courtroom giving a defense, a detailed, reasoned response to why it is that you ought to believe what he's trying to convince you of. Apologetics is falling out of favor for two main reasons, I would argue. One of them is this whole idea of sentimentalism and this whole idea that the last thing you want to do is offend. The last thing that you want to do is openly refute. We believe that it's just not Christian. I'm not necessarily a social media fan, but I use the tools. And one of the things I use the tools of social media for is I use it kind of as a Petri dish to sort of find out what's happening out there. And one of the things that I've seen in recent years is that when I would bring up certain issues, certain cultural hot button issues. You know, you mentioned an issue, and you post an article or something that speaks out openly and plainly against a particular issue of our day, and then I just wait, because I know what's going to happen. I know it's going to come the individual who's upset because you're not being loving. Because what's wrong with our culture is not sin. It's just that we don't love people enough. That's what's wrong. And there are these people who will confront me for confronting sin, and I always find it interesting because ultimately, what they're saying, and I point this out to them, ultimately what you're saying is that the issue that I brought up to you that is a direct violation of God's law, a direct violation of God's character, a direct affront to God himself, is not as offensive to you as the idea of me disagreeing with somebody for offending God like that. It's the sentimentalism, and the second one is mysticism. Mysticism. We were not a fan of apologetics anymore because of this sentimentalism. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Because Jesus would never do that. He would never call people whitewashed sepulchers. He would never would. He would just never call them a brood of vipers. He would never turn over tables and run people out of a table. He would Jesus would never do those kinds of things. And so this sentimentalism over here and then over here there is this mysticism and mysticism. You know, the United Negro College Fund, their motto is the mind does a terrible thing to waste. Modern American Christianity has perverted that motto. We just say, mind is a terrible thing, and we despise the discipline, rigorous, detailed study and treatment of the Word of God and instead embrace well, the Lord told me. The Lord spoke to me this idea of the immediate and mystical revelation of God. And the result of that is we don't know what we believe and why we believe it, because there is no discipline, there is no rigor, there is no detail. You can't do apologetics like that. You don't even know when someone is offering you something that is a direct contradiction to God's word. And if they put the Lord told me in the front of it, you believe that must be God's word. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. So people can stand up and spout heresy. But if they couch it in terms like and I was asleep and I woke up straight out of my bed, and the Lord just spoke these words to me as clearly as you are hearing my voice right now. And God said to me, D D D D. And I said what, Well, now you know they lying, because if God said something to them in the middle of the night, their response wouldn't be why, it would be to fall back like a dead man. And we hear it, and we're sucked in, and they spout this heresy and we don't even have sense enough to know that it's heresy, or they spout the heresy and we feel uncomfortable because we have an inkling that's somewhere over in the Bible, maybe over in Second Hesitation, somewhere that it says something that's not that. But after all, they said God told them, So if God told them, then it must be I'm misremembering Second Hesitations and they're right. And so what we need to do, what we have to do is we have to address this issue head on and look at the fact that we're called to be apologists and that our culture, even in the Church, has made us feel uncomfortable with what we're called to be. Something's got to give, and it can't be God's word. So Jude verses one through four. What I want to do is just take several objections, one at a time, because Jude deals with them right here in this text, because he's calling us to apologetics. But the first objection is the idea that apologetics is only for certain Christians. It's only for certain people. It's for those you know, green Beret, Navy Seal, Marine Force recon Christians who not just normal Christians like me. This is for those special Christians. And this is for those people who are trained in theology and you know, and and who are trained in philosophy and you know, comparative religions and all this other sort of stuff. So they have to have this special training and this special mentality. You know, they have to be skilled debaters. And if we're honest, a little bit of a jerk gon't tell the truth. Shame the devil, right, We believe that you got to have, you know, a little bit. That's the apologist. And there is only a few of them, and we're grateful that they're out there so that we don't have to go and do apologetics. But look at what Jew says. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James two to whom those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Now you might not have recognized it immediately, but this is a Trinitarian reference. Okay, called by the Spirit, beloved in the Father and kept for the Son. This is a Trinitarian reverence. So this is the Triune God. These are people who have a relationship with the Triune God. What kind of relationship with the Trian God. Well, the Triune God has called them, Well, that's all of us. The Triune God has loved them. Well, that's all of it, all of us, and the Triune God has kept them. So the only way that you get out of this call to apologetics is if you get yourself out of your relationship with the Trian God. In other words, if you are a Christian, this call is for you. It is not possible for you to read this text and go and come away from it saying that apologetics is only for certain special forces kind of Christians. This is for all of us, all of us who are found in relation to the Triune God through his calling and loving and keeping of us, all of us who by this gospel have been redeemed by the Triune God and for the Triune God, every last one of us. There is no out here. In fact, even Peter's words. Turn back with me to the left, and let's look at Peter therein fir Peter, this text from which we get the very word for apologetics. And we'd like to run to verse fifteen. But you can see that verse fifteen is right in the middle of a thought. Go back to verse fourteen. But even if you should suffer, well, who's the you? Go back to verse thirteen. Now, who is there to harm you? Well, let's go back to verse eight. Finally, all of you, or as we'd say in Texas, all y'all, Amen, all y'all. Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, or revive for reviling. But on the contrary, bless for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. It's still all of us. For whoever desires to love and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Now, who is there to harm you? If you are zealous for what is good? This is still everybody. But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as Holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect. So, whether we look at Jude or we look at Peter, the clear teaching of the Bible is that every believer is called to be an apologist. Every believer is called to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is in him. Every believer. Now, one of the reasons that we try to make this separation and say that well, apologetics is only for certain individuals is because we have a wrong understanding of what apologetics is. What we believe that apologetics is knowing everything there is to know about those other religions and color out there, knowing every objection that people could possibly come up with to Christianity knowing you know, all of the history of philosophy and debate and this and that and the other. No, no, no, no, no. If you look at that passage in Peter more carefully, basically, here's how you can define it. Know what you believe, know why you believe it, and be able to communicate that to people who ask you. That's apologetics. Know what you believe, know why you believe it, and be able to communicate that to people who ask you what you believe and why you believe it. There's apologetics. You define it that way, and it becomes even clearer that this is for every believer. I'll say more about that momentarily. Here's the second objection. The second objection I alluded to is from this this sentimentalism. But apologetics is just not loving. It's not christ Like to do apologetics. It's just not christ Like to go about disagreeing with people in that way. Well, to those who are called beloved in God the Father kept for Jesus Christ, keep that trinitarian mode. May mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you. May mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you. There's a triune calling and then a triune blessing from the Triune God for his people. Then and verse three, Although 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. The word that's used there in the Greek is ebagonidzami. You gotta say it like that too, doesn't it just sound like ebagonidzimies agonized greatly. It's a word that's taken from the field of hand to hand comeback. If you put this word in the form of a word picture, it would be two men striving with one another in a wrestling match, probably Brazilian jiu jitsu, something like that. But it would be two people striving with one another. That's the picture that is used here. So here's the problem. We believe that striving and contending over ideas is actually non Christian or even anti Christian and not loving. But Jude juxtaposes the idea of mercy, peace and love being multiplied to you with the idea of striving and contending for the faith. So how can it be that it's Unchristian to strive or unloving to strive. When Jude says love is multiplied to you and one of the outgrowths is striving contending, here's the problem. The problem is our definition of love. You see, we define love horizontally, as opposed to vertically. We think the loving thing is the thing that makes you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, no matter what, and anything that I do to make you feel uncomfortable in any way is not loving. Why Because you are the center of universe. Therefore, my pursuit of love is the pursuit of whatever it is that you desire. But if love is defined by God, and if God is the center of the universe, then the loving thing centers upon who God is and what God requires, and not upon you. Now why is this significant? Here's why it's significant. We just go with me for a moment. We will wade out into the deep end. But I'm gonna hold your hand. We must not define love horizontally. We must define love vertically. Why the Bible says to us that God is love. Don't miss this the triunity of God, this one God in three persons, who has existed throughout all eternity as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. You're read about in a nice and creed today, the Son eternally begotten to the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, this God who has existed for all eternity in perfect unity, perfect harmony, and perfect love. By the way, here is the difference between Christianity and those unitarian religions like Islam. You see, according to Islam, they hold to this extreme unitarianism. God can have no partners. So the idea of a triune God is blasphemy or shirk to the Muslim, which is why the Muslim can't talk about God or Allah as loving. You see, if God is this radical unitarianism that they say, then there was never anyone or anything for God to love until the world came into being. So love would have to be something that was added to God later, which means that he wasn't perfect before creation. But because our God is triune and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always existed throughout all eternity and perfect unity, perfect harmony, and perfect love, love is an attribute that God has always had and he didn't have to learn or attain it. In other words, love wasn't invented by our creation or for our creation. It exists independent of our creation, which means that I define love vertically and not horizontally. Therefore, there may may be times when doing something that makes you uncomfortable is the greatest act of love I could do for you. Well, here's another objection. The other objection, and this goes back to what we talked about and set it's cool this morning. The other objection is, well, you know what, all that apologetics you're majoring on, you're majoring on minors. We need to be talking about the gospel. Saving souls a secondary issue, not a primary issue. Okay, Beloved. Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I'm gonna go in and say that's primary. Amen, somebody. So an apostle, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit sat down to write a letter about salvation. This same apostle, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, switched gears and wrote about either something else or another aspect of this same thing. I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints, or was for all delivered to the saints. So an apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is writing to the church. He's writing about salvation, and he feels the need to write to them and to tell them to contend for the faith. In other words, this idea of contending for the faith is not at odds with the idea of the gospel and salvation. This is of primary importance. But why I'll introduce this next idea and then come back here this faith that was once were all delivered to the saints. I'll say more about that momentarily. For why certain people have crept in unnoticed that there are people who have who have crept into the community. We didn't see him coming. They slithered in like snakes. We didn't see them coming. But they're here. We know who they are. How do we know who were long ago were designated for this condemnation. Oh now we're condemn people. We are just contending. Now we're condemn it. You got a problem with contending, You showed on like condemn it, Amen, ungodly people. Now we name calling Jude, gonna get a letter from you need to be more like Jesus, because you're contending and you're condemning, and now you're name calling and that's just not Christian. You apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who do two things pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. What are they doing? They're perverting the gospel. Apologetics is about the gospel. It's about not allowing the gospel to be perverted. Why because a perverted gospel won't save. A perverted gospel is no gospel at all. So if individuals are perverting the gospel. If individuals are perverting, then the person and work of Christ. And if they are proclaiming a gospel that Paul would say in Galatians is not a gospel at all. If they are presenting a gospel, it's not a gospel at all. Then we have two choices. Either number one, we love lost people enough and we love God enough, and we love the gospel enough to stand up, confront, condemn, and call out so that the gospel can be heard rightly. Or we choose a false, unbiblical, horizontal definition of love that would have us, in the name of love not say in while the perversion of the gospel is passed us as the gospel and people are condemned because of it, and unfortunately we've come to choose the latter. You've come to choose the latter and not the former. We'd rather people like us than know God. Now let's back up, and a couple of things to tie this together. Number one, notice that he says here appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. This is not contealing, contending for opinions. This is not contending for preferences. This is contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. This goes back to that second. Remember I said that the one was sentimentalism. The other one was this mysticism, this idea, that rigorous and intellectual thing that that's not godly. It's when you're in the flow. It's when you're flowing with the prophetic. That's when God is there. And so someone spends the entire week in their study and stands up with the message to preach, and you know, and we go, okay, whatever, Oh, but lets somebody stand up and say, you know what, the Lord just changed my message. Who were getting ready to get it now, y'all? God doesn't change this message that means the Holy Ghost is here because he can't be in your study all week. Huh. But this is how we think, This is how we've come to believe. I remember when I was going off the seminary. Don't you let them change you? Don't you let them get you so tied up and tangled up and all that doctrine and theology. Don't you get so heavenly minded that you know more earthly good? Now? Granted, people go off to certain places and come back with heresies, and that's terrible, but that wasn't what people were saying. The idea there is that there is something more godly about ignorance, and so we flee from discipline and rigor. We no longer categorize. So how do we make disciples? Then? What does it mean to be a disciple? What are the things that we are teaching? What is this faith that was once for all handed out? It seems like there's something orderly here that was passed down. We're anti credle and anti confessional. Now, no creed but Christ. The only problem is that's a creed again, that this is the attitude that people have no Creed but Christ. Forget all of these creeds and confessions, and I believe the Bible. Okay, great, First of all, that's kind of big. Secondly, does that mean the Mormon is okay? Is it Jehovah's witness? All right? Well no, no, no, no, no, because what they believe about Christ is Wait a minute now, because now guess what you're giving me. You're giving me a confessional statement. So we've moved, and we've drifted away from the old landmarks. We've moved and we've drifted away from the idea of there being an orderly succession and progression of things. We've moved away from the idea that we're called to believe some things in particular, in which case it's impossible to do apologetics. So here's what happens. If sentimentalism reigns and anti intellectualism and mysticism reigns, then ultimately all we do is we have competing levels of happiness. And this is our apologetics today. Here's our apologetics. Girl. Listen, I used to be at about a four or five on a happiness meter. Now I met Jesus, I'm at like nine to ten. If you want your happiness level to increase, the word my happiness level is then you need to experience what I've experienced, because I'm happier than you are, and ultimately that's all we've got. But here's what I know. When I'm not happy, the truth is still true. Amen, you can be happier than me. You can have more money than me, you can drive a nicer car than me, and still bust hell wide open when you die. Because what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? And so here he puts it into those two categories. Number one, the grace of God turning into sensuality. This is really a general statement about the Gospel and the message of the Gospel and the clarity of the message of the gospel. And secondly, you know they're preferring our only master in Lord Jesus Christ. They're wrong about Jesus. And if you want a starting point, if you want a baseline, here's your baseline. You need to know who Jesus is, and you need to know what Jesus has done. Not as I didn't say who he is to you and what he's done for you. I said you need to know who he is full stop. And you need to know what he's done full stop. Now, if you want to talk about how that is applied to you afterwards, knock yourself out. But make sure that first you're clear about who he is full stop and what he's done full stop, because it doesn't help you to know that Jesus got me out of this, that or the other, unless and until you know that in his active obedience he kept the whole law and was completely righteous, which is important because the first atom had failed at that point, and we were under the federal headship of the first atom and therefore condemned and on our way to judgment. But now the last atom has come, and he succeeded where the first atom failed, and he kept the whole law. Therefore he is righteous, completely righteous in every way, which is important because I need someone who can impute righteousness to me, because I am not righteous, nor can I become righteous. I'm under the federal headship of the first atom, and because I was born of ordinary generation, I am born in sin and shaped in iniquity. So I need someone to give me some righteousness. But in his active obedience he has righteousness to give to me. Wait a minute, there's another problem. Not only do I need to have righteousness imputed to me. I need my sinfulness imputed somewhere else. So in his passive obedience, having kept the whole law in his active obedience, in his passive obedience, he offers himself as a vicarious atoning substitute to propitiate the righteous wrath of Almighty God, who is holy and just and must punish sin. But how is God going to love me and be merciful to me, And how is he going to call me and keep me if I'm a sinner and He's just and holy and righteous. Well, somebody's got to take it. So in his passive obedience, Christ dies of death that he does not owe, so that my sinfulness can be imputed to him. And through this double imputation, I have an alien righteousness that is not mine, and I no longer have the sinfulness that I owned before. Now, well, once you know that, we can talk about all the other stuff he did for me. But you got to know that first, because if you don't know that first, you don't know how he did it for me. You may think he did it for me because because I don't do what I used to do. Amen, somebody, Well, I don't do what I used to do. Well, then you might just not do that no more because you got too old. There's a lot of things that can make you stop doing what you used to do. Amen, you might just not have the opportunities you used to have. So we have to understand the person and work of Christ, and we've got to know it well so that when people are communicating it falsely, we can contend earnestly, and we can contend without being contentious. Amen. It's a beautiful thing to be able to contend without being contentious. But we must contend. Here's the great irony. I'm not worried about all that apologetics. I'm just concerned about the gospel. I'm concerned about saving souls. I'm concerned with lost people. It is the passion for lost people that causes us to defend and contend for the one hope that lost people have, and that is the true gospel. It's because we love lost people that we can't stand by and just watch. We can't. We can't, And it doesn't take a lot. Part of it is just knowing. When you know who he is and what he's done, nobody has to sort of wind you up and get you. You know, one of the things that you heard was how it was a pastor in Texas. I wasn't born in Texas. I just got there as quick as I could. And and I love the state of Texas. All Texans do. And it's an amazing thing. People outside of Texas think Texans are arrogant, and then you get to Texas and you realize it's not arrogance. It's really not it's really there's just something about Texans. They just know Texas and they're glad to tell you what they know about Texas. You say something about Texas that's not true. A Texan will help you, Amen, somebody, a Texan will help you. Oh you from Texas. And you know, all y'all is out there in the country and you live all in that No, no, no, not all country. Three of the ten largest cities in America or in the state of Texas. Oh okay, Well, I just thought, you know, y'all just you know, but y'all all, you know, wear your boots and your hats and all that. No, not all of us, some of us ain't haven't reached that level of sanctification yet, you know. But they'll just they'll just they'll just let you know. That's how you are when you know and love something. And when we know and love Christ, and we know and love the Gospel, we will not We cannot sit idly by while it is twisted and disfigured. First of all, because we love the Lord, We love who Jesus is and what he's done. Mm hmm no, no, no, no, no no, you got to get that right. Uh, you got to get that right. And secondly, because we have an insatiable desire to see that Christ has the fullness of the reward for which he died. We want all to hear and we want them to hear it right. Therefore, we contend earnestly when somebody's saying it wrong, and that's the loving thing to do, because if they're saying it wrong and leading little ones astray, my Jesus say better that they have a millstone tied around their neck and be thrown into the deepest part of the sea. I'm trying to help you out, amen, I can't believe that you would confront listen if you knew what was said about people who do what you just did. You realize I'm helping you so No, this is not just for special forces Christians. No, this is not unloving. No this is not making a secondary issue primary. This is primary. And no, this is not about you knowing everything, but it is about you knowing the main things. And no, this is not about putting something over the pursuit of souls. This is about being passionate about the pursuit of souls. You see, because if you're here today and you've never heard this gospel before you came through those doors this morning, and no one had ever told you about the active and passive obedience of Christ, and all you had ever gotten was this sort of here's your happiness, and you can have more, you can have less. Then you needed that when you came in here. And guess what else, if you've known that and just hadn't heard it in a few days, you needed that when you came in here. Amen, every last one of us. And it's because we needed so desperately that we fight for it so fervently. Let's pray God, how we think you