This event took place on March 5, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.

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From the foreword to the book by Tim Keller:

Here you will learn how we must contextualize, how we Christians should be as active in Hollywood, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, and Harvard Square (if not more) than the halls of Washington, DC. And yet, there are ringing calls to form a distinct, thick Christian counter-culture as perhaps the ultimate witness to the presence of the future, the coming of the Kingdom.

Tullian Tchividjian, one of todays brightest young Christian leaders, makes a refreshing call for orthodoxy. He does not apologize for the gospel; he wears it like a red badge of courage. Read this book to recover the faith once for all delivered to the saints in fresh, courageous terms.
Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and author of The Faith

Tullian Tchividjian is the real deal. His life and his words speak in stereo. I love reading books that challenge the way I think. Unfashionable goes beyond that. Its counterintuitive. Its counter-cultural. And its a must-read for those brave enough to really follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C. and author of Wild Goose Chase

With the right balance of reproof and encouragement, critique and construction, Unfashionable displays with succinct, vivid, and engaging clarity the relevance of the gospel over the trivialities that dominate our lives and our churches right now..
Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen professor, Westminster Seminary in California, and host of White Horse Inn

Plainly, powerfully, and pastorally, Unfashionable gives a birds-eye view of the real Christian lifeChrist-centered, church-committed, kingdom-contoured, future-focused, and counter-cultural all the way. It makes for a truly nutritious read.
J. I. Packer, professor of theology at Regent College and author of Knowing God

In this windowless world, God, transcendence, and mystery have become less and less imaginable. Everythings produced, managed, and solved this side of the ceiling, which explains why so many people are restless and yearning, as I was, for meaning that transcends this worldfor something and Someone different.
from Unfashionable

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Jude 3

Apostasy has plagued the church not only in individual situations, but in massive ways. Roman Catholicism is an apostate form of Christianity. Liberalism is an apostate form of Christianity. Neo-orthodoxy is an apostate form of Christianity. And every cult and ism and chism that’s come along in the name of Christianity that deviates from the true gospel is an apostate form. Every preacher who doesn’t preach the truth is an apostate preacher. Mysticism is an apostate attack on the church. Any denial of the singularity in authority that belongs only to the Scripture leads the church into a drift toward apostasy. That’s why all those false religions always have “other” authorities, whether it’s the Magisterium in the Catholic Church, or the Pope, or whether it’s Mary Baker Eddy Patterson Glover Frye or Annie Besant or Judge Rutherford or Joseph Smith or you name it, there’s always the Scripture and some other authority. But they hang around and stay within the framework. They creep in and they embed themselves. And the attack on the truth comes from the inside and so here we are facing this, having to deal with it from the inside and it doesn’t make us very popular. I’ll tell you it doesn’t. And the way it’s going today, it’s really hard to take a stand against the outright apostasy that’s easy to see and the drift toward apostasy that is coming so fast because of a lack of discernment and an unwillingness to be discerning.

Well all that’s introductory. And, you know, Jude is like a good journalist. He’s a good journalist. He would make a great newspaper writer because if you’ve ever taken courses on journalism and learned how to write newspaper articles or if you just are a little bit observant when you read the newspaper, you know that the first paragraph and maybe the second paragraph summarize everything and then paragraph 2, or 3, or 4 you start getting back into the details, you go back through everything and it gets expanded. Well that’s what Jude does. Verses 3 and 4 lay out the whole story and then verse 5 to the end goes back right through and opens it all up. We meet the people in verses 3 and 4. We have an expanded perspective in the rest of the book. We see the danger for which we must fight in verse 3. And that’s expanded greatly for us in the rest of the book, first the summary, then the details.

Well let’s look at the summary. “Beloved,” I like that. I always get stuck on that word. And I want to say this because this gives me a good opportunity to say it. So many times if you take a stand on something, if you draw the line where the Bible draws the line and if you do not compromise and you stand for the truth, live for the truth, proclaim the truth, don’t waver, people call you unloving. Is that not true? I mean, that is so typical…so typical. This is the common designation for the preacher who is true to the faith. He’s not loving. It’s the common designation for somebody who’s exposing the apostasy and exposing the apostates. But do you understand that what Jude is doing here is not because he doesn’t love, it’s because he does? It’s because he cares so much. He started to write a letter about common salvation, but he loved his people too much to leave them exposed to what he saw as a great threat. “Beloved,” he says. And then in verse 17, “But, beloved,” and then in verse 20, “But you, beloved.” This is not some kind of sentimentalism. This is not kind of…some kind of a shallow emotion. This is not some kind of tolerance. This is the real purposeful, powerful, loving concern of a man of God for the people of God to be protected from what could destroy them and their effectiveness and their ministry. It’s not love born of sentiment that God’s after, it’s love born of conviction regarding the truth and you have to keep making that distinction all the time.

You love someone when you tell them the truth. And Jude was prepared to go all the way to the truth even if it was painful. And so he says, “While I was making every effort to write to you,” what does that mean? That’s an interesting statement. “While I was making every effort to write to you…” You say, “Well, wasn’t he inspired by God?” Well, you know, it’s kind of interesting to think about. You can imagine him taking out his little writing instrument, “Nah…” throw that one out. I’m trying to get this going, it’s not going, it’s not working. Well he wasn’t writing what the Holy Spirit wanted him to write. He says, the actual language in the Greek is to hasten, make speed. That is to say, “I was in a hurry to write about our common salvation, I wanted to celebrate the union that we share in our salvation. I wanted to write about that. I just couldn’t…I couldn’t get it done.” So he says, “I was just making every effort to do it and I couldn’t…it just never would come together.” Now whether that means he was trying to get the time to do it, or when he got the time to do it he just couldn’t figure out how to lay it out, it was all being restrained, of course, by the Holy Spirit. I love that little phrase, “Our common salvation, nobody has more salvation than anybody else, we share all the same and I wanted to write about it, I just couldn’t get it out. As joyous as I am about our common salvation, as much as I love to talk about it and to write about it and to clarify it and to review it and to put it back in your remembrance, I couldn’t do it.”

And then, whether or not, a messenger came, or people came, or the Spirit of God just opened his mind, all of a sudden he realized, “I have to write something else.” And he says, “I felt the necessity to write you.” All of a sudden he tried and he tired and he couldn’t pull it off and then he was just compelled. “I felt the necessity,” that is a strong word. Paul used the same expression in 1 Corinthians 9:16, “Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.” We think about Paul in that text and we think of him under some heavy weight and mandate and burden to preach this message. That’s how Jude felt. “No wonder I couldn’t get it started when I wanted to write about our common salvation and I was all of a sudden overwhelmed by the Spirit of God and I knew exactly what I needed to do, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” That sentence is a mouthful…mouthful.

To feel the necessity, actually the root of that verb is compress. I felt divine pressure to write this. This is not whimsical, this is critical. This is not a human document, this is hard pressure from God-the Spirit. So we could say that certainly what Peter said is true of Jude, no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God, 2 Peter 1:21. Jude takes his place with those who are being referred to there who wrote the Old Testament. And Jude is a shepherd and he feels this pressure from the Spirit of God but he also feels it in his own heart because shepherds are by nature protectors. They have to be or they won’t survive as shepherds. They are fearful, in a healthy sense. Listen to Ezekiel 3:17, well 3:16, “Now it came about at the end of seven days, the Word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Son of man…Ezekiel’s called son of man…I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me.” You’re My watchman. Verse 18, “When I say to the wicked you shall surely die and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he should live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity but his blood I’ll require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he doesn’t turn from his wickedness or turn from his wicked ways, shall die in his iniquity, but you’ve delivered yourself.” Wow! God says to Ezekiel, “You’re My watchman and when I tell you to warn, you warn.” No wonder Paul said he ceased not to warn with tears night and day. No wonder Paul said to the Colossians, “I strive, laboring…I labor, rather, striving according to His power which mightily works within me.” What I do is impelled and compelled by the power of God.

So, Jude says I was just pressed as a faithful watchman, protecting God’s church to write and to write to you appealing. That’s really exhorting, counseling, calling alongside to help, coming alongside you that you contend earnestly for the faith. That is a powerful expression. At least I can get through that, that you contend earnestly for the faith. Contend earnestly, epagonizo…epagonizo. The root is agonizo from which we get agonize. Ep, again any time you see a preposition added to the front of a Greek verb it is intended to intensify it. This is to fight for, to fight strenuously for, to defend vigorously. I am calling on you to an extreme form of agony. It’s a present infinitive which means it’s continuous action. I am calling on you, I am appealing to you to an ongoing battle, continuous conflict. It’s an all-time continuous problem, apostasy. The word again, agonizomai, agon is a very interesting word. The word actually mean, agon means a bowl, a stadium, they were built like a bowl. And it was in a bowl, a stadium that you came for a battle, struggle, gladiators, fights. It’s a term that Paul uses when he talks about fight the good fight of faith, agonize. It’s like playing in the ultimate Superbowl and it’s an all-time struggle. It is a mighty battle, a fight to the death with the forces of apostasy. Paul is calling us to the same thing. Over and over again we hear these calls from the Apostle Paul, to Timothy, “Fight the good fight,” to the Corinthians, you know, he says, “I don’t shadowbox, I hit my opponent.” To the Ephesians he writes about putting on your armor and going into battle. And the defense of the faith has to occur within the church, within the framework of Christianity. In fact, that is where the battle is, I think, most agonizing sometimes because you have to deal with not only the error that’s there, but the resistance on the part of the people who are swept up by the error or unconcerned about it, or not discerning enough to know that it is error.

What is it that we’re actually fighting for here? Look at it, we’re fighting for “the faith…THE faith,” not for faith in some nebulous way, THE faith, objective…THE faith, the Christian faith, the gospel faith, the content. If you go down to verse 17 you get a little bit of a better understanding, “You ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The faith is constituted in the Apostles’ doctrine, the objective faith. As Acts 2:42 says, “They continued in the Apostles’ doctrine.” This is where the battle must be fought, for the protection of the faith. “O Timothy,” 1 Timothy 6:20, “Guard what has been entrusted to you.” And what had been entrusted to him? Back one verse, “The treasure…the treasure.” What treasure? The treasure of the truth. Over in 2 Timothy 1:14…1:13, “Retain the standard of sound teaching, sound words.” Verse 14, “Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you.”

If you are a pastor, even a Christian, you have a guardianship. We are not only proclaimers of the truth, we are protectors of the truth. We protect the truth. And I…you know this because it’s on my heart all the time and we’ve just gone through three epistles of John, I’m driven by the truth, not only by the proclamation of the truth, but the protection of the truth or there won’t be anything to proclaim. And sentimentality doesn’t come into play. Conviction is all that comes into play. We love within the truth, John says that again and again, doesn’t he? Whom…”Gaius whom I love in the truth.” And Christian love must be confined to those in the truth. And so we fight for the faith, the true faith. “If anybody preaches another gospel,” Paul tells the Galatians, “let him be accursed.” John says, “If anybody comes to your door and wants to come into your house and have you show them hospitality and they have a wrong doctrine concerning Christ and extending that and the gospel, don’t let them in your house, don’t even bid him God speed or you become a partaker in his evil deed.” This is that dangerous. We have to battle agonizingly all our lives for the preservation of the faith. And then he defines that faith in very succinct and very important terms, the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints, the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. Do you know what that says? It says the faith in tact was once given to the saints, once for all, hapax; delivered, paradidomi; entrusted. And this word, hapax, once for all, refers to something done for all time with lasting results, never needing repetition. The faith, dear friends, the Christian faith, the gospel truth in its entirety, in its completeness was in the past one time entrusted to the saints. There’s no new faith and this is why there’s no new revelation. The Christian faith was deposited through the Apostles and those who worked with them in the first century. The Canon was closed with John’s writings at the end of that century. And the faith was then given once for all time and all people to the saints. That’s why Revelation 22 says, “If you add anything to this, shall be added to you the plagues that are written in it.” Revelation does not continue and God is not adding to the faith.

Listen to this, people didn’t discover the faith, it was delivered to them. Nobody mystically discovered the meaning of Jesus. Nobody mystically discovered the meaning of salvation. Nobody mystically discovered how to get to God. Paul and the others who wrote the New Testament didn’t have some transcendental religious insight by which they ascended intuitively into the upper echelons of religious thinking and somehow touched the garment of God and drew down some deep understandings. I sound like Depoc Chopar talking. Nobody went anywhere to get this, it was delivered…it was delivered. It was entrusted by God in tact the faith. To add to the Old Testament, the faith; the New Testament, Matthew through Revelation…the body of teaching complete, the only acceptable revelation. There are no new doctrines, there is no new revelation. This rules out all seers and all those who claim new revelation. This rules out hanging around waiting to hear the voice of God. This rules out every cult, every ism, every false system that claims any other revelation than the Bible, any other divine authority than the Bible. This is so wonderful. All that God wanted to say and all that He did say He put in one book. That keeps it simple, doesn’t it? This book is all we need. Scripture is all we need. You don’t need to be running around checking out every new revelation and you don’t need to be listening as if God was going to tell you some secret that He hadn’t revealed to anybody else. You’re talking here about the once-for-all….literally the Greek….the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith. Faith comes last in the Greek order. What faith? The once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith. You get the message? This isn’t a trickle. We’re not still getting it. It was once-for-all-delivered. And Jude realizes this is under assault, this is under attack by people who have come in and they have found an opening. They’re unnoticed, they’re below the radar, under the surface. They’re like reefs under the water, he says later, hidden in the love feasts. They get intimate in the church. Many of them become pastors, theologians, teachers and they bring in their lies and we have to fight them inside the church.

And I would say this, too, that we can never do that effectively, never do that effectively and come across to the world as a nice kind of compassionate, easy-going group of folks who is just having a lot of fun. This is a war here. And when a non-believer comes in, I trust that they’ll see the love of Christ in the transformation that’s occurred in our lives, but they also are going to realize that we’re in a battle for the truth. People will say to me, “You know, I brought my old aunt and she’s a Mormon and you happened to say something about Mormonism that night and she’ll never come back.” All I can tell you is, bring her again and she might hear something about Mormonism another time because we have to do what we have to do in the battle. People have to be warned and we will do that because it’s critical.

So, because of the danger of apostasy, Jude says, “I have to write…I have to write.” Well, the opening description of the apostates in verse 4 is too extensive for me to get into it. So you’re going to have to hold on for a few weeks on this one. But next time, I’m going to introduce you to the apostates and you’re going to be able to look at some criteria about how to recognize them.

I’ll tell you this, folks. I…I’m thankful for many things in my life and ministry, but nothing more than being surrounded by elders, pastors, people like you who have the same love and passion for the truth. And I know you do because you’re here and you’re here and you’re here and you’re here week after week and month after month and year after year. And what encourages me is this church is getting younger and what that tells me is so wonderful because now we’ve brought into the army of contenders and defenders those that are going to be the leaders of the next generation. And they’re not only going to be able to proclaim the truth, they’re going to know how to protect it because they’re going to be raised in a discerning environment. That is so encouraging.

Well, let me close in a word of prayer and the Rob is going to come for a brief time. You can’t go anywhere. Rob is going to come and have a little annual meeting and then the right hand of fellowship.

Father, thank You again tonight for Your precious Word. I admit we get bogged down but what can we do, it’s so rich, it’s so rich and so much floods my heart and mind in contemplation of these matters. Just take it and use it and use us for Your glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

Compelled to Contend (http://www.gty.org/Shop/Audio+Lessons/65-3)

© 1969-2009. Grace to You. All rights reserved.

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Jude 3

Well again we return now to the study of this little epistle of Jude. I’ve entitled this study, “The truth war, its defectors and defenders.” It’s about the truth war.

As we look at the epistle of Jude tonight, I want to take you in to verses 3 and 4. We read, “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

This is one of the most interesting introductions to an epistle because Jude, the half brother of our Lord, tells us that he had one intention when he sat down to write and he actually wound up writing something other than he had intended. He wanted to write about our common salvation, but he felt the necessity to write about contending earnestly for the faith. I think he wanted to write an epistle that would celebrate the joys of salvation, but he received some information from somewhere. He received a report from someone. Or perhaps several reports, or perhaps he saw a trend and he realized that the very salvation which he wanted to celebrate, the very salvation which he wanted to write about was in danger of being severely compromised unless the church rose to the occasion of fighting for its survival. So what starts out perhaps as a friendly, encouraging, comforting letter, ends up as a call to arms, a war cry to believers to join the truth war, taking their side with the Lord. And behind the letter is a little bit of insight in verse 4, “Certain persons have crept in…” There has been in infiltration in the church of people who turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t know the specifics of this. We don’t know where or when, how the information came to Jude, but he became very alerted to it. And what we’re talking about in this epistle is the grave danger of apostasy, the grave danger of apostasy which is knowing the truth to some degree and abandoning it, knowing the truth and rejecting it.

This is not new to Jude, although Jude is the only letter in the Scripture completely devoted to apostasy. Apostasy is familiar to any student of Scripture. In fact, there is a parable that Jesus gave, He gave it in Matthew 13, but you can look at the Luke 8 parallel to the parable and you’ll find it familiar. It’s a parable of the soils. You remember that? The sowing of the seed in the various soils? And verse 12 of Luke 8 says, “Those beside the road, or those who have heard, then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And those on the rocky soil are those who when they heard received the Word with joy and these have no firm root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. And the Word fell among thorns and these are the ones who have heard and as they go on their way they’re choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to maturity.” And then He goes on to talk about the good soil, where the seed goes in and bears fruit.

Here are three different cases in which people hear the Word and turn away. This is essentially what apostasy is. It is hearing the truth, knowing what it is, and rejecting it. This is exactly what Jude is writing about. These people are the greatest danger to the church because they know something about the gospel. And they bring to bear against the church certain subtleties by their defection. An apostate is one who has received the truth of the gospel, maybe even one who believes it apparently or superficially for a time, but then turns away, falls away, goes away without ever bearing fruit. This would be like those people referred to in the sixth chapter of Hebrews. It says of them, verse 4, “In the case of those who have once been enlightened,” that is they’ve come to understand or to know the facts, “they’ve tasted the heavenly gift, they have some taste of the great power of God manifest in Christ, they’ve even been made partakers of the Holy Spirit,” that is to say the work of the Holy Spirit through Christ they have seen and many of them, of course, in the time that Christ was on earth had personal firsthand experience of that power. They tasted the good word of God. It’s all about tasting, isn’t it? It’s not about eating. They tasted of the powers of the age to come, kingdom power was released through Jesus. All of His miracles were really previews of coming attraction, foretaste of what He would do in the Kingdom. So here were these people on earth who heard the message and understood it in their minds, who got a taste of the heavenly power of Christ, who experienced the wondrous working of the Spirit of God through Him, who tasted the good word of God that came out of His mouth, who saw the miracle powers that will characterize the age to come. And then verse 6 says, “Then have fallen away.” It goes on to say it’s impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. If having all that information they turn and go the other direction, it’s impossible to be saved because they’ve rejected when they had full light.

Apostasy is to hear and understand, at least, and maybe to apparently believe but then to turn and defect. If you go back for a minute to Luke, there’s just a little bit of a thought there that may expand your understanding of this helpfully. It talks about…verse 13…those on rocky soil are those who when they hear receive the Word with joy. They receive the Word with joy. But they have no firm root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. That is the verb form of the word apostasy, that is the verb form of the word apostasy. They receive and they fall away.

I want to show you a comparison. If you want to make a comparison, the good hearers are also said to receive, they are also said to embrace the truth of the gospel. And I think it’s in Mark 4:20, I’m tapping my memory, yes, these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil and they hear the Word and receive it. And here the Holy Spirit uses a different word. Dechomai is the word receive as used by Luke referring to those that fall away. This is paradechomai. The good soil does more than a superficial reception, paradechomai is an intensified word, a stronger term indicating a deep reception. There’s a superficial reception, there’s a dechomai. And then there’s a paradechomai, a much deeper heart acceptance on the part of the good soil. Those who apostatize may hear the truth, understand the truth, but they never produce fruit because they never have any root. Jude says, if you drop down in Jude to verse 12, they are without fruit, doubly dead and uprooted. Jude is building on the language of this parable from Matthew, Mark and Luke. They are fruitless, dead, and ruthless.

Now when we talk about apostasy, we’re not talking about confusing that with mere indifference to the Word or ignorance of the Word, or error. There are people who have never heard the truth. There are people who are ignorant of the truth, indifferent to the truth, have not even exposed themselves to it and there are people who have heard erroneous presentations that purport to be the truth that are not. We’re not talking about that. When you talk specifically about an apostate, you’re talking about someone who has received the light but not the life, the seed but not the fruit, the perhaps the written Word but not the living Word. It is a willful and deliberate rejection of the truth after the truth has been heard.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:10 I think it’s well said. When the judgment falls, it falls on those who reject the gospel of whom it is said, “They received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.” They received the truth, they didn’t receive the love of the truth.

There’s another illustration of this and it’s in the eighth chapter of Acts. Turn, if you will, to it and we can pick up the story here in chapter 8. Quite a fascinating story about a man named Simon, Simon back in verse 9 is identified for us as a magician, astonishing the people of Samaria claiming to be someone great. He was a deceiver, obviously. But the people thought, according to verse 10, that he had the great power of God. Well in verse 12 Philip preached the good news about the Kingdom of God. Now you can be sure that this was a very, very faithful gospel sermon. This was a faithful presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He preaches the Kingdom of God, that is the sphere over which God rules those who are redeemed by faith in the name of Jesus Christ. People were being baptized, men and women alike. He was having an evangelistic impact there. And verse 13 says this, “And even Simon himself believed.” And how strong that faith appeared to be is indicated that he was after being baptized. And not only that, he continued on with Philip. And not only that, he was observing signs and great miracles taking place and was constantly being amazed. This looked like as good as it gets. But a little later on in the story, verse 18, “When Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the Apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give this authority to me as well so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’” The Apostles showed up, they laid hands on people, they received the Holy Spirit, obviously there was some visible manifestation of the coming of the Holy Spirit, no doubt in my mind that they spoke in languages which paralleled the occasion of Pentecost because this was in Samaria and they needed to know they received the same Holy Spirit on the same terms that the Jews did, lest there be a division in the church. And Simon saw this wondrous miracle.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this on Monday.]

Compelled to Contend (http://www.gty.org/Shop/Audio+Lessons/65-3)

© 1969-2009. Grace to You. All rights reserved.

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Jude 3

Now he believed and he was baptized and he continued and he observed the signs and he was constantly amazed. But Peter said to him in verse 20, “May your silver perish with you.” Peter just told him he was going to perish. Peter told him he wasn’t a believer. “May your money, your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have no part, or portion, in this matter for your heart is not right before God. Your not a Christian, you’re not a believer.” I’ve always preferred the direct method. This is it. “Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours and pray the Lord that if possible the intention of your heart may be forgiven you, for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness, in the bondage of iniquity. Simon answered and said, ‘Pray to the Lord for me yourselves so that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.’” Believed, baptized, never delivered from the bond of sin.

Well that day he became an apostate. He became the most dangerous person to the Christian faith and the gospel. The rest of his life he would say, “I’ve been there, done that, it’s not true, it doesn’t work.” Such apostasy is not just limited to the New Testament. Israel in the Old Testament was warned over and over again not to defect, not to become apostate. The Greek word apostasia appears numbers of times in the Greek Old Testament which is called the Septuagint. In Numbers, for example, 14:9 God says, “Do not apostatize,” this is forbidden. And you hear the same cry in Joshua chapter 22 verse 16, verse 19 and verse 22. And they’re just…you don’t read the word apostasy in the English, but let me just read you a couple of those verses, if I can get there. “Thus, says the whole congregation of the Lord, what is this unfaithful act which you have committed against the God of Israel? Here’s the word…apostatizing or apostatizing away from following the Lord this day by building yourselves an altar to rebel against the Lord this day.” And that’s repeated essentially in verse 19, then again in verse 22.

Over in Jeremiah you find the same thing again. This is again not a new problem. Jeremiah chapter 2 and verse 19, “Your own wickedness will correct you and your apostasies will reprove you. Know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God.” You don’t fear Me, He says, you don’t dread Me. Chapter 5 verse 6, “Therefore a lion from the forest shall slay them, a wolf of the desert shall destroy them, a leopard is watching their cities. Everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces.” This is God speaking metaphorically about Jerusalem’s coming judgment. Why? “Because their transgressions are many and their apostasies are numerous.” Knowing the truth and rejecting that truth.

In Hosea chapter 11:7, God says, “My people are bent on apostatizing, they are bent on turning from Me.” And so this is something that’s always gone on. People who knew the truth reject the truth. Even in the life of Jesus, if you’ll look at John 6 verse 66, is a result of this. “Many of His disciples withdrew, were not walking with Him anymore.” There was teaching that Jesus gave that drove them out and they literally apostatized, they vanished. They became apostate to the truth that they heard when they rejected it.

In the Olivet Discourse toward the end of our Lord’s ministry, Matthew 24 records in verse 9, “Jesus said, ‘Then they will deliver you to tribulation, they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations on account of My name and at that time many will fall away. Many will become apostate.’” Second Peter 2, just giving you a smattering of these, verse 20, it says, “For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.” If you know the truth, if you have come to the knowledge of the Lord and Savior in your mind and you go back and are entangled again in the defilements of the world, the last state is worse than the first, it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness then having known it to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them. They are like a dog returning to its own vomit or a sow after washing returning to wallow in the mire. The Bible does not have very commending language to bestow upon apostates.

And they are going to be everywhere. First Timothy chapter 4 tells us, the Spirit explicitly says that in the latter times some will fall away from the faith. There’s the same term. They will defect. In the words of Paul to Timothy, “They will make shipwreck of the faith,” back in chapter 1 verse 19. Or in the modern terminology, their…their faith will come to an end like a plane crash.

In 2 Timothy we find the same kind of thing. “The day is going to come,” writes Paul to Timothy, “when they will not endure sound doctrine.” Verse 4, “They will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

Now what’s really serious, back to Jude, is that these people get inside Christianity and embed themselves unnoticed. They creep in unnoticed. And so we have to go to war in a civil war sense. That’s hard to pull off nowadays, isn’t it? Because the big deal now is let’s love everybody, let’s get along, let’s not fight, let’s be tolerant. We’ve got a war to fight and the war that we have to fight is right here inside…inside the church. We have demon-controlled preachers and demon doctrines and hypocritical liars and people who don’t want the truth and they’ll go to churches that don’t preach it, not to ones that do. We have apostasy in the church. That’s where it’s dangerous. They’ve always infiltrated. They’ve always come in. That is the strategy. What does Paul say in Acts 20? This was so definitive and determinative in my early ministry. The twentieth chapter of Acts, I basically lived in that chapter for years in the beginnings of my time here. And the Apostle Paul tells the people in Acts 20:28, “Be on guard for yourselves and all the flock.” You’ve got to be on guard. Why? “Because after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock.” And here’s the danger. “From among your own selves men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them and therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I didn’t cease to admonish each one with tears.”

How you going to deal with it? Well, he says, “I commend you to God and the Word of His grace which is able to build you up.” The only way you’re going to defend yourself against this is to know the Word so well that you can recognize the apostasy. Apostates go away from the truth, they don’t necessarily go away from the church, right? They have a certain…many of them have a certain familiarity with the church and they can base their operation there and be very successful for the enemy and also make some money at the expense of people’s ignorance. There always have been apostates and always be apostates, always those who defect from the truth. It’s been everywhere. Do you know that the people in the generation of Noah heard the truth and rejected it? Walked away from it and drowned? It was apostasy from the truth that led to the Tower of Babel because the truth about the true and living God had been proclaimed. It was apostasy that made Israel fail to conquer the land under Joshua and ignore the warnings of Moses. It was apostasy that produced the immorality at the time of the Judges. It was apostasy that led Israel into Babylonian captivity. It was apostasy, the whole religion of Israel was apostate and that’s why they didn’t recognize the Messiah when He came.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

Compelled to Contend (http://www.gty.org/Shop/Audio+Lessons/65-3)

© 1969-2009. Grace to You. All rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: eternal security, Grace to You, gty, JOHN MACARTHUR, Jude, resources, series, sermons, Temporal Conflict

Jude 1-2

Now this idea of being called is really a rich part of the New Testament literature. In Romans 1:1 again, Paul says, “He was called as an Apostle.” In verse 6 he talks about the obedience of faith among the Gentiles among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ. I’m called, you’re called. You’re also beloved, he says, in the next verse, and you’re also blessed, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This language is then familiar to any reader of the New Testament. You see the 1 Corinthians again, 1:1, “Paul called an Apostle.” And then in verse 2 , “To the church of God in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling….by calling.” And down in verse 24, “To those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” We are the called.

Now in Revelation 17:14, that’s an important verse, you can jot that down because it ties these things together. It says here, “These will wage war against the Lamb and the Lamb will overcome them because He is Lord of lords and King of kings,” listen to this, “and those who are with Him…believers…are the called and chosen and faithful.” Those words belong together. If you’re called, you’re chosen. If you’re chosen, you’re faith sustains. Okay? That’s really a great text, Revelation 17:14. The called are the chosen are the faithful. If you’re called, it’s the same as being chosen. If you’re chosen, your faith sustains. There’s only one time this term is used in the New Testament in a general invitation that means something other than being chosen and that’s in Matthew 22:14 where it says, “Many are called, few are chosen.” Every other usage of this word is synonymous with the election. This is a settled call. It means to be efficaciously called, as theologians say. That is called with the desired effect that God has predetermined in eternity past.

Now it’s helpful for us to get a bit of a look at this, so let me help you with it. There is a general external invitation, no question. There is general preaching of the gospel, general preaching of repentance and the general offer of salvation. Isaiah 45:22 says, “Be ye saved all the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.” These are general invitations. Ezekiel 33:11, “Turn ye, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, turn ye from your evil ways for while will you die?” That’s a general invitation. Matthew 11:28, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That’s a general invitation. John 7:37, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.” Revelation 22:17, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come,’ and let him that hears say, “Come.’ And let him that is thirsty come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” That’s a general invitation. And Romans 10 says, “Faith comes by hearing a word concerning Christ. Have they not heard? Yes truly, their sound went out into all the earth and their words to the end of the world.” The invitation to salvation has covered the globe. This is a general, external invitation. This is the widest possible exposure of the gospel calling sinners to repentance and faith.

It is illustrated in a story Jesus told in Luke 14, verse 16. He said, “A certain man was giving a big dinner and he invited many. And at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything’s ready now.’ And they all alike began making excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I bought a piece of land, I need to go out and look at it. Please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I bought five yoke of oxen, I’m trying…I’m going to try them out, please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I married a wife,…that’s a bigger excuse….and for that reason I can’t come,’”…couldn’t get permission. Verse 21, “The slave came back, reported this to his master.” That’s an illustration of the general invitation. The salve comes back and says to his master, this is what happened… “The head of the household became angry, said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Master, what you command has been done and still there’s room.’ And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.’” I gave them the opportunity, I gave them the invitation…He’s talking about Israel here. Israel received the general invitation and they wouldn’t come. And the highways and the byways represent the Gentiles and the outcasts and the church.

And Jesus looking over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37 says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest those that are sent to you, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you would not.” I reached out, I reached out, and you refused. John 5:40, “You will not come to Me that you might have life.” Acts 7:51, “You stiff-necked uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit.”

So here, you see, there are all through Scripture such invitations. And when you preach the gospel, you get two responses…2 Corinthians 2:16 says, “Sometimes the preaching of a truth is fragrance of death to death.” Sometimes the preaching of the gospel just takes people from bad to worse. It heightens their condemnation. They go from one bad condition to a worse condition because they now have more knowledge which makes them more guilty which brings upon them greater punishment. And for others, the preaching of the gospel is a fragrance of life to life. People are always responsible for what they do with that invitation. It is a legitimate invitation. A sufficient sacrifice has been made on the cross. The offer is genuine and the offer is legitimate. And to refuse that offer is to bring upon yourself a just condemnation. People are responsible for their response to God’s general external invitations to salvation. Some will respond and believe.

And that takes us to the second category and the category of this concept that is being dealt with here. Not a general call but an efficacious internal call. Not an external call, but an internal call. This is the kind of call that we’ve been reading about in Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1, the called. This is not just an invitation extended to them on the outside, this is a moving of God on the inside. This is the work of the Holy Spirit on what the Bible calls “the elect.” This is the saving call. You will remember that Paul writing in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 says, “We should always give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God has chosen you form the beginning for salvation and it was for this He called you through the gospel.” He called you because He had chosen you. First comes the choosing, then comes the calling. First the choosing, then the calling. And He called you through the gospel that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ because that’s what He chose you for in the beginning, as Romans 8 says, that you would be conformed to the image of His Son. This is a call that the theologians have called irresistible. This is a call not apart from human will, but by the power of God the human will is awakened, given life and sight to embrace this call. And the caller is God. In this call the caller is not the preacher. In the general call, the caller is the preacher or the witness, or the missionary. This is God, 1 Corinthians 1:9, listen, “God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son.” This is a call from God. This is a call that awakens the dead. You were dead in trespasses and sins, when this call came you were awakened out of your deadness. It is what our Lord was talking about when He said, listen to this, John 6:45, “Every one who has heard the Father comes to Me.” When you hear this call, you come. And this call is predicated on the fact that you were chosen. This kind of call, as I said, cannot be resisted.

Listen to 2 Timothy 1:8 and 9. “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me as prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God…key word God…who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works.” In other words, this calling is predicated on anything we have done, it’s like God’s calling of Jacob over Esau before either of them were ever born, Romans 9. So, this calling has nothing to do what we have done…with what we’ve done, it is a holy calling not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which is granted us in Christ Jesus…listen to this…before time began. This is a calling predicated on nothing we have done, but according to a purpose and an act of grace predetermined to occur in Jesus Christ from before time began. This is so wonderful. This is the foundation of why we are secure. Our security is not found in anything we do anymore than our salvation is found in anything we do. Our security is found in the fact that from eternity past we have been chosen and we have been chosen unto eternal glory, we have been chosen to be conformed to the image of Christ, we have been chosen to be made righteous, we have been chosen to enter into the glories of heaven and worship there forever and ever. And to bring that original choice to its fulfillment, we must be called and justified, sanctified and ultimately glorified. And nobody gets lost, “All that the Father gives to Me,” Jesus said, “will come to Me and I will lose none of them but raise him up at the last day.” This is that calling. And if you look at Romans 8, for just a moment, I think it’s important to have you see this. In Romans 8 he pulls this word “calling” as I noted a moment ago together with the big scheme of things. Verse 30, “Whom He predestined, these He also called. And whom he called, these He also justified. And whom He justified, these He also glorified.” That is just a monumental statement. If you were predestined, you will be glorified because He will call you, He will justify you and He will glorify you.

No wonder the New Testament calls this a holy calling, 2 Timothy 1. No wonder the New Testament calls this a high calling, Philippians 3:14. No wonder the New Testament calls it a heavenly calling, Hebrews 3:1. It is defined in some amazing ways. In 1 Corinthians 1:9 it says we’re called to fellowship with the Son. In 1 Peter 3:9 it says, “We’re called to inherit a blessing.” In Galatians 5:13 it says, “We’re called to freedom.” In 1 Corinthians 7:15 it says, “We’re called to peace.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:7 it says, “We’re called to holiness.” In Ephesians 4:4 it says, “We’re called to hope.” First Timothy 6:12 says, “We’re called to eternal life.” That’s the call. It’s an efficacious call.

So our security against being washed away in the terrible tide of apostasy is that we are called and whom He calls He justifies, and whom He justifies He glorifies. We are the called. We have nothing to fear. The shackles of sin have been broken. We have been liberated and set free. The blindness has been removed and we see. The oppressing burden of sin has been lifted and we are released. And we who are dead have come to life.

And somebody might say, “Wow, what if I’m not called?” Well since the decree of God is secret, that’s not a problem for you. Jesus said in John 6:37, “Him that comes to Me, I’ll never turn away.” If you don’t come, you’re responsible. You say, “I don’t know how that can be. How can I be responsible to come and yet I can’t be saved unless God chooses me? How can I resolve that?” You can’t. You cannot resolve that. Don’t try. In fact, turn to Romans 9, I’ll help you with that, okay? This is going to be good help for you. This is the best help the Bible gives. Everybody asks me this question all the time. I can’t understand how human responsibility fits with divine sovereignty. I can’t understand how moral accountability fits with election. Well you can understand what the Bible says, right? So would you please notice verse 19 of Romans 9.

Somebody is going to say, “Okay, if God does the choosing, how can He hold me responsible? If I’m not chosen and I’m not called, how can I be responsible?” So you will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? How can God find fault with me? How could He punish me? How could He send me to hell, make me guilty for my sins and hold me guilty if I’m not chosen?” And you know what Paul’s answer is? Verse 20, “On the contrary, who are you, O man? Who answers back to God? Shut your mouth.” And then he gives this illustration. “The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ will it?” You know what he says? He says you going to God and saying, “Wait a minute, God, I don’t like this deal, is as ridiculous as an inanimate pot asking for an explanation of the way the potter made it. Pots don’t talk. Pots don’t think. There is an infinite gulf between a pot and a potter, that is a gulf that cannot be bridged. The pot can’t get there. Understand? There’s an even greater gap between you and God. You have no more right to assume that you need an explanation than a pot does from the potter, there is an infinite gulf. It is out of your capability to grasp. And so what do you do with it? Stop, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, stop at that point and let God be God, right? And shall not the judge of all the earth do right? I can’t harmonize all of that, but then again, I’m a pot and why would I expect to? But I do know this, God will do what’s right and sinners will perish because of their rejection of a gospel actually presented to them truly offered and we go to heaven because God chose us. I don’t know how all that works but I know that’s what the Bible says and there’s a time when you just stop and leave it with Him.

Well, we are not only called, secondly we are loved, “Beloved in God the Father.” This is so wonderful. Some versions say “sanctified,” but that’s not the best manuscript word. It is beloved in God the Father. We rest safely in the fact that we have been called because we were loved, this is so amazing. It isn’t a call of indifference. It isn’t a call, you know, it isn’t a lottery that got held in heaven. For reasons that are outside of us that may never be known to us, God uninfluenced determined to set His love on us. This is staggering. While we were His enemies we were loved. Before we ever were born we were loved. And God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, Romans 5:8. We are loved. We are loved. It’s a perfect participle that shows that the love was manifested in the past and continues now and in the future. That’s what the perfect tense does, in the past and on. We were loved in the past, we were loved in eternity. We were loved in the eternal heart of God in the timeless past when our election occurred. God determined then to set His love upon us and that love toward us was openly demonstrated at Calvary when Christ died as a substitute for our sins. And that love continued on until the time that God convicted us and called us and justified us. And it goes on and it goes on and it goes on and we literally live in that love. We are loved in God the Father. We have entered into a relationship with God and it’s a relationship of love. He loves us so much that He made us His own son, as it were. He loves us in the beloved one, Christ and we are joint heirs with Christ.

First John 3, we studied it a few months ago, 1 John 3 verse 1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us…See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God.” This is such a great love. It actually in the original, it literally says, “See what kind of love,” potapon(?), the classical Greek means what…from what country? From what tribe or from what race? In other words, this is a love that’s alien to us. I mean, God loves us with a love that must come from another race. So foreign it’s outside the human realm. I mean, people just don’t love somebody they don’t know, they don’t just choose to love people independent of how those people act, or particularly independently of how those people treat them. It’s an unearthly love, it’s a…it’s a kind of love that comes from somewhere else.

In fact, I would like to show you…I can answer the question, what kind of love is it? Look at John 17 and I’ll show you what kind of love it is. John 17, because He tells us what kind of love it is, verse 23, the Lord here is praying, He’s praying that all of those who belong to Him will be brought to glory and that the Father, verse 22, would give the glory which He had given to Him to us that we’d all be one, just as the Father and the Son are one. This is incredible. “I in them and Thou in Me that they may be perfected in unity.” The Son desires for us that we be brought to heaven and literally become one with God the Father and God the Son. And verse 23 then says, “That the world may know that Thou didst send Me and didst love them even as Thou didst love Me.” What kind of love is it that God has for us? It’s the same kind of love He had for whom? His Son….staggering. It’s one thing to love the perfect second member of the Trinity, it’s something else to love sinner. But God loves us with the same love that He loves His Son with. And He loved His Son so much that He brought about the whole redemptive story to get a bride for His Son who could serve His Son and adore His Son and worship His Son and love His Son forever and ever. It’s just staggering to me…I want them to know that You love them as You love Me. “Father…verse 24…I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am in order that they may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me, for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world.” I want them to know the love with which You love Me and I want them to know that as You loved Me before the foundation of the world, so You loved them before the foundation of the world. Wow!

And then verse 26, “I’ve made Thy name known to them and will make it known and the love where with Thou didst love Me may be in them and I in them.” Staggering stuff, folks. When you talk about being loved by God, you’re talking about being loved….what manner of love? The kind of love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father…a love from all eternity. Staggering. Ask yourself, how secure am I in that love and let Paul answer it…”What shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing. This is an eternal love. What do you think is going to separate the Son from the loving Father? Nothing…nothing. He loves us the way He loves His own Son and nothing will ever separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans 8:39.

Thirdly, Jude says we are kept. And some translations, NAS says, “For,” I prefer “By,” it’s a dative in the original language, could kind of go either way, but I think it’s better to see the expression here meaning by than for. We’re kept by Jesus Christ. Oh, that opens up a whole world of study. It’s from the word tereo, to watch, guard, keep. We are kept by Jesus Christ. And that’s again John 6, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me and Him that comes to Me I’ll never turn away.” And then Jesus says in John 6, “I’ll lose none of them but raise them up at the last day.” He knows who are His. John 10, I think it’s about verse 28, yes, “My sheep…verse 27…hear My voice, I know them, they follow Me….listen to this…I give eternal life to them and they shall never perish and no one shall snatch them out of My hand, no one. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Once you’re in the Father’s hand and the Son’s hand, nobody can take you out, you are kept and you are kept by Jesus.

How? Well first of all, because you are a love gift from the Father to the Son, He keeps you because that gift from the Father is an expression of the Father’s love and therefore has infinite and eternal value. You don’t really think, do you, that Jesus who is completely sovereign and omnipotent is going to lose someone who was given to Him as a love gift from the Father? And if the Father loves us and the Son loves us the way they love each other and we’re caught up in that love and nothing can ever change that love, by what would we ever been lost? And it is also true that when any accusation is ever brought against us that bring about our salvation into jeopardy, we have a great High Priest who intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father. First Peter 1:5 says we are protected by the power of God…protected by the power of God. What does that mean? There’s no greater power. If God holds us, there’s no power that can break His hold…none. And Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us before the throne of God. That’s Hebrews 7:25 . “And if any man sins…1 John 2…we have an advocate with the Father, a lawyer for our defense.” And 1 Peter 3:18 says, “Jesus suffered the just for the unjust…listen to this…that He might bring us to God.” He didn’t just suffer to make sure that we had our sins forgiven temporarily, He suffered in order that He might ultimately bring us to God. That’s glorification.

Then He gave us the Holy Spirit. Second Corinthians 5:5 is a guarantee, pledge, arrabon, engagement ring, seals us. You’re talking about being kept. Jesus keeps us by interceding for us. Jesus keeps us by His power, never letting anything come upon us that is more then we can bear. Jesus keeps us by giving us His Spirit as a guarantee. Jesus keeps us by loving us as a gift from the Father and the Father keeps us because His power cannot be overcome.

So, it’s a tough battle, it’s frightening, it’s fearful, it’s dangerous, but you can join the army, folks. Are you ready for this one? There are no casualties in this army. Nobody perishes, nobody perishes. We win and we all go into glory together.

One other thing. We are the called, the loved, the kept and the blessed. See it in verse 2 and I won’t take this all apart but just a comment or two. And Jude says, “May mercy and peace and love not be yours but be…what?…multiplied to you.” May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you because you’re the called and the loved and the kept. The verb here, plathuno means to be increased. May you just have a constantly increasing amount of this. It’s like Peter said, 1 Peter 1:2, “May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure.” Or 2 Peter 1:2, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you.” It’s the same thing. It’s…it’s the prayer and the pledge and the promise that no matter how difficult the battle is, no matter how hard, no matter how threatening it is, you’re going to not only survive but you’re going to experience multiplied blessing. And mercy is part of it.

Now if you could…if you could lose your salvation, it would have to be due to sin. Is that right? It would have to be due to sin. Somebody could say, “Well if you sin you might lose your salvation.” That’s what people say who believe that. But whenever we sin, God multiplies…what? Mercy. God is rich in mercy. And I love Romans 9:23, he says that God has made known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy. Do you know what a vessel of mercy is? Do you know what a vessel is? It’s a cup or a glass or a bowl. And God says that’s what you are. You’re a bowl into which I just keep pouring mercy. What a great idea. Just keep pouring it in and pouring it in and pouring it in. And you can always come to the throne of grace, Hebrews 4:16, to find mercy. So isn’t it wonderful that we are blessed with multiplied, multiplied, multiplied mercy for all of our sin? And not only that, peace. Peace in every situation multiplied peace, My peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you, not as the world gives give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled. Do you believe in God? Believe also in Me. I’m preparing a place for you, in My Father’s house there are many rooms. Rest.

Paul says in Romans 15:13, “My the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace.” And when trouble comes into your life, He pours out peace. When sin comes into your life He pours out mercy. You’re a vessel of mercy and you’re in some sense a vessel of peace. And thirdly he says, “And may love be multiplied to you.” Romans 5:5 says, “The love of God is poured out within our hearts.” Whenever we lack mercy, He pours out mercy. Whenever we lack peace, He pours out peace. Whenever we lack love, He pours out love. He’s just continually multiplying blessing. So here we are, it’s not as if we’re going to get into this battle. You say, “Ah okay, verse 1, we’re going to survive, we’re going to survive. I can see us, we’re going to get through by the hair of our chinny-chin-chin, you know, we’re going to barely get through. We’re going to survive, we’re not going to lose our salvation.” That isn’t the way to look at it. Get into battle, fight for the truth, understand that you’re going to triumph in the battle because you’re the called, the loved and the kept and know this, in the process it’s not going to be a meager existence, it’s going to be a lavish existence because as you go through this, all the time God is going to be multiplying whatever mercy you need, whatever peace you need, and whatever love you need. And I will tell you this, the more of that you need, the more of it you will experience, right? Now if that doesn’t charge you up to get on this list, I don’t know what would.

Apostasy is present in the church and it’s going to get worse. It’s bad now. You have nothing to fear. You’re secure in Jesus. And more than that, you’re not just called and loved and kept, but as you indicate your willingness to be faithful, you’re going to have a multiplication of everything you need of God’s mercy and God’s peace and God’s love.

Lord, there is much more to say about this and it’s so wonderful and so rich. But that’s enough for now. Thank You for these grand and glorious truths, that just overwhelm us. We are grateful. What can we say? Make us faithful in Your Son’s name. Amen.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

Eternal Security in Temporal Conflict (http://www.gty.org/Shop/Audio+Lessons/65-2)

© 1969-2009. Grace to You. All rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: eternal security, Grace to You, gty, JOHN MACARTHUR, Jude, resources, series, sermons, Temporal Conflict

Jude 1-2

Now back to the beginning for a minute. The book of Jude then becomes a manual for us for waging successfully the war for the truth. As I said, it’s a call to arms and since we live in the midst of growing apostasy and are called to engage ourselves in this battle for the truth, we need to know what Jude has to teach us.

Now in the opening verses, Jude greets the Christians to whom he writes and all of us who as believers will read and benefit by this epistle. The greeting is itself very powerful. Listen to this, “Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ….or kept by Jesus Christ…may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.”

Now last week we took a little bit of a look at that but I can’t leave it because there’s just too much there. I covered some of it last time, but let me just kind of take you back into that opening greeting because it is very, very important. First of all, Jude, the common name, there are quite a number of them in the New Testament, the Hebrew version is Judah, the Greek version is Judas. Jude here calls himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James and thus he identifies himself. We know it is not Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ. He can easily be eliminated. We know it is not Judas of Damascus mentioned in Acts 9:11. We know it is not Judas Barsabas mentioned in Acts 15:22 for there’s no indication that either of these men was the brother of James. We know it is not Judas not Iscariot who was one of the Twelve, also called Labbaeus and Thaddaeus, he had a lot of names. And unfortunately if you have a King James Version of the Bible and you’re reading in Luke 6:16 and even in Acts 1:13, Judas not Iscariot or Labbaeus, Thaddaeus, is said to be the brother of James, and that is a problematic rendering. The Greek construction in these verses should be translated “son of James,” not brother of James. So this Judas not Iscariot, this Judas who is Labbaeus, Thaddaeus had a father named James, not a brother. The only other Judas you have, or Jude, you have to choose from in the New Testament is indeed the half brother of the Lord Jesus. In Matthew 13:55 and 56 it lists the names of Jesus’ brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Jude, or Judas.

And so, this is the half brother of Jesus because there is another half brother of Jesus named James. Judas, a bondservant of Jesus Christ who is the brother of James. James doesn’t need any definition or description, it is the James that everyone knows, the James who is the half brother of our Lord and the James who is the leader of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, a leader really of the Jerusalem Church and the James who wrote the epistle of James. Really all we know about Jude is that he was the brother of James and thus the half brother of Jesus…and I say half brother because Jesus only had half the earthly parents that these men had. He only had an earthly mother, Mary, and God was His Father.

And you might wonder, why doesn’t he introduce himself, Jude, the half brother of Jesus Christ? Wouldn’t that give him more clout? Why did he say he was a bondservant of Jesus Christ?

Well I think the answer to the question sheds some light on Jude’s character. Had he referred to himself as the brother of Jesus, he perhaps could have been accused of boasting and no doubt that was the farthest thing from his desire. He may have rather been ashamed of the kind of brother he was to Jesus through most of his life. Remember that His brothers did not believe in Him and it was not until after the resurrection that they came to believe. Then after the resurrection, the earthly relationship that he had had with Jesus ceased to be the important relationship. It didn’t really matter after that what his earthly relationship to Jesus was, all that mattered was what his spiritual relationship to Jesus was and he was a bondservant of Jesus Christ, that took greater precedence than his physical relationship to Him. So he speaks, I think, the way he should speak about his relationship to Jesus. You remember one time when we pointed out last week in the third chapter of Mark, Jesus’ mother and brothers were looking for Him and Jesus said, “Well, whoever does the will of God, he’s My brother and sister and mother.” We know that after the resurrection Jesus appeared to James because 1 Corinthians 15 says that. We know that Jesus’ brothers and sisters who had come to believe in Him were in the upper room on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came, Acts 1:14. So there was a transformation but when the transformation came, all that was sort of physical was passed and he was no longer the half brother of this man named Jesus, he was bondservant of the Jesus who was the Christ, the Messiah…a servant of Jesus, Messiah, the Promised Messiah.

And the word servant is doulos, bondslaves. He knew what slave meant. He lived in a world of slavery. He was a slave in world of slaves. This was a very familiar way to designate oneself. Paul, Romans 1:1, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, Paul loved that designation, Philippians 1:1, Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ Jesus. And even Peter saw himself the same way, 2 Peter 1:2, “Simon Peter, a bondservant and Apostle of Jesus Christ.” And though we as Christians are free from the Law and we’re free from its condemnation, we are still slaves to righteousness and slaves to the righteous One. And I love the fact that he began that way. It really suits this epistle so wonderfully because apostates cannot handle that kind of slavery. Apostates cannot handle the true slavery of the regenerate. Look at verse 4 and you will see that. “Certain persons…the apostates…have crept in unnoticed, these who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness…see…and they deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.” That is to say they never will live under the authority and the lordship of Jesus Christ. They cannot handle this true slavery. They live, as it were, outside the boundaries because false salvation can’t restrain the flesh. And so whenever you see an apostate, you look at his life, he will manifest himself. And that will unfold for us all through this epistle.

Jude sets himself then in stark contrast to the apostates. He is a willing slave of Jesus Christ. The apostates will claim the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and turn into license and licentiousness and, in effect, deny the lordship of Jesus Christ over them. And they live, as it were, as if Jesus was not Lord. They live in what they assume to be grace as if they had no responsibility at all. So Jude happily and properly identifies himself as a bondservant of Jesus who is the Messiah and he includes that he is the brother of James, just to give you an earthly identification. And he knows his readers will gladly track that back to the fact that he is the half brother of our Lord Jesus, but that is not the essential reality of his relationship to Jesus anymore.

And after Jude then is properly identified himself, he then properly identifies the believers to whom he writes. And I want you to notice what he says. He says, “you’re called, you’re loved, you’re kept and you’re blessed.” This is a pretty obvious outline, called, loved, kept, verse 1, blessed, verse 2. This is very important against the backdrop, very important to understand why he does this because we’re going to engage our minds in this discussion about apostasy. We’re going to be faced with some very important questions. One of the questions that is going to come to mind is this…if all this is going on in the church, if all this corruption and apostasy is escalating and escalating and escalating and escalating, is God really sovereign? Are things running amuck because God really doesn’t have control over all of this? And if that’s the case, if this thing is out of hand, and if it’s so potentially dangerous, we might be engaging in this battle exposed to deadly things and just in the process lose our salvation. But the fact that…listen…we are called, loved, kept and blessed in the midst of an escalating apostasy, protects both the sovereignty of God and the security of believers. Yes, apostasy escalates. Yes, it’s dangerous. And that’s why he begins by saying, “You have nothing to fear. You’re the called, the loved, the kept and the blessed.” That’s how he begins and look how he ends, verse 24, a final note of encouragement, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen.” The bottom line is, he begins by telling us we are the called and we are the loved and we are the kept and we are the blessed and he ends by saying God is able to keep us from stumbling and make us to stand in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy. So front and back, the emphasis is on the security of the believer…the security of the believer.

In 2 Peter 2 which I said last time parallels Jude a lot, and we’ll see that parallel as we go, we see two striking examples of how God protects and delivers the godly who find themselves living in an ungodly culture doomed to destruction. And one of them Peter looks back to is the time of Noah and this is 2 Peter 2:5 to 7. Peter tells us God did not let Noah fall to the horrible evil of his day, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness with seven others…you remember Noah’s wife and his three sons and their three wives, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. God knows who belongs to Him. And then the second illustration in that same passage, he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, but He rescued righteous…whom?…Lot. And then Peter concludes, look at it in verse 9, 2 Peter 2:9, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” God knows how to sort us out. He knows who to punish and who to protect so we can engage in this battle, realizing it’s a serious one, realizing it’s a dangerous one. We are literally snatching souls out of the fire, as it were, and we have to be careful lest we get stained because we get too close to this. But at the same time we need not fear that God is not sovereign over all of this and we need not fear that somehow the Lord might lose us in the battle. He knows how to rescue the godly. What a great statement. He knows how to keep us from stumbling.

And why are we so protected? The answer right there in verse 1, “Because we are the called, the loved and the kept.” Consequently we are the blessed. We are the ones by God the Father called and loved and kept. This is just a tremendous insight into the great, great doctrine of election. And I’ve taught this enough that I don’t want to go back through everything we’ve said, but I have to give honor to this incredible text. You will notice the word “called” there, to those who are the called, the kletos, verbal adjective from kaleo, to call. Every time this term is used in the epistles, every time it’s used in Revelation, it means the same as chosen. It’s a synonym for chosen and it is the main word, it’s a verbal adjective, but it’s the main word in the sentence. It is at the end of the sentence in the Greek. The other perfect passive participles are in apposition or explanation of this main one. Because we are the called, we are beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. That’s the way you would understand the grammar here. Or you could read it this way, “We are beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ since we are the called.” It is this calling that sets us apart and makes us both loved and kept.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

Eternal Security in Temporal Conflict (http://www.gty.org/Shop/Audio+Lessons/65-2)

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Jude 1-2

We return to our study of the little book of Jude…little book of Jude, just 25 verses, but what a powerful, powerful epistle this book is. This book, as I said last time, gets lost in the shadow of Revelation. But if there’s any letter in the New Testament that the church today needs to hear, it’s this one…it’s this one. The church today is weak and compromising and tolerant and shallow, unwilling largely to give biblical truth its rightful place and certainly disinterested, if not outwardly opposed to going to war to protect the truth. The church today seems to have very little interest in defending the truth against all the assaults.

In the face of that reality as the church gives evidence of having lost its will to fight for the truth, and is therefore more and more encroached on by error, the call of this potent letter comes at a critical time. And you’ll notice verse 3 which, in a sense, is the theme or the heart of this letter. “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” It is a battle cry, this is. It is a call to arms, this letter. Jude understands that the times are critical, the truth is under assault and he is endeavoring to call together the people of God to become an army to fight for the true faith.

The times have been critical, as we noted last time, since the Lord came because with His first coming what the Bible calls the “last days” began. We are now living in the last days, the days when deceivers, doctrines of demons, hypocritical liars will pervade in their assaults against the gospel. This is the time when we are to expect apostasy, a falling away, a departure from the truth. And Jude’s theme is apostasy, actually apostates. He doesn’t really talk about the nature of the apostasy, that is what the doctrinal aberrations are. He is more interested in helping us to spot the apostates by looking at their lives.

Now to further kind of identify what an apostate is, an apostate is a defector from the truth. That is to say someone who has known the truth, been associated with the truth, around the truth, maybe even proclaimed the truth and still purports to do that. They know the truth but they reject it. And apostates often stay within the church. They pretend to serve God but they serve only their sinful desires. They pretend to belong to the church but they belong to Satan’s kingdom. They pretend to believe the Bible but they pervert its teachings and use it for their own ends. They pretend to speak the truth, to have deep spiritual insight, even to speak for Christ but they are the agents of Satan who in reality deny the lordship of Christ in His church. What distinguishes apostates from other false teachers is their connection to Christianity. They are those who have known the truth, been exposed to the truth, who stay in some way around the truth and claim to hold to the truth but do not. And as I told you last time, apostasy is an inside job. That’s why it’s so dangerous. In fact, you will notice in verse 4, and I remind you of this, as he begins to describe these apostates he says, “Certain persons have crept in unnoticed.” This is the MO for apostates. They take advantage of the people of God. They take advantage of their labels, of their connections to the true church.

Verse 12 further defines them as those who are hidden reefs in your love feasts. They’re there under the surface ready to tear up, as it were, the ship. In truth, the description of them in verses 12 and 13 is pretty amazing. “They are clouds without water carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit doubly dead and uprooted.” The picture here is that clouds give the hope of rain but these are clouds without water. Trees give the hope of fruit, but these have none. They come along telling you they have some spiritual reality to offer and they have none. They are, verse 13, “Wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.” And over in verse 16 they are described as “Grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts. They speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage. They are…in verse 18…seen as mockers following after their own lusts. They cause divisions, worldly minded, devoid of the Spirit.”

Now this gives you the characterization of these apostates. The fact that they come in under the radar, that they come in under the surface of the water, that they creep in unnoticed and then begin their deception makes them very, very dangerous. And if you would notice verse 23, you get a little bit of an idea of how dangerous they are. We are given the responsibility to rescue people, to save others, snatching them out of the fire. In this battle for the truth, we’re engaged in rescuing souls from the fire of judgment. And it even says in doing so in verse 23, have mercy with fear. In other words, you go into this battle, you go into this rescue operation with a healthy fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. You go in this very carefully for the reason that you don’t want any of the corruption that exists among these apostates to stain you. You hang around apostates and you’ll get your clothes dirty. You go in realizing that you can be polluted by this, that your mind can be corrupted, it can lose your confidence. You can begin to doubt and fear and wonder and ask questions. So we’re engaged in a battle, we’re engaged in a battle for the truth which puts us in direct conflict with those who need to hear the truth and are being exposed to those who are telling them lies. We therefore are engaged in a very close and intimate level in this battle and we have to be very careful because being so close to the enemy in our rescue operation, we can find ourselves polluted by the deceptions that they are being exposed to. So we’re in a battle that’s going to take some great wisdom and some careful preparation, lest we find our own garments polluted in an effort to rescue other people.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

Eternal Security in Temporal Conflict (http://www.gty.org/Shop/Audio+Lessons/65-2)

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Technorati Tags: eternal security, Grace to You, gty, JOHN MACARTHUR, Jude, resources, series, sermons, Temporal Conflict

Jude was written probably a few years after 2 Peter. If you look at 2 Peter, just three chapters, you will see that most of 2 Peter is devoted to apostasy, not all of it, and to false teaching. Some scholars feel that 2 Peter was written to a group of Christians, we don’t know to whom, and Jude was sort of the sequel written to the same group. The two books are very closely related. Peter says get ready it’s coming. Get ready, the mockers, the scoffers, the false teachers will come. For example, in 2 Peter 3:3, “Know this first of all that in the last days mockers will come…they will come.” Peter says they will come. He describes them in chapter 2 in this really graphic way. But again it’s future. Chapter 2 verse 1, “False teachers also arose among the people just as there will also be false teachers among you.” He looks back in the Old Testament, they had false teachers and false prophets and he says they’re going to come among you. Now remember, Peter’s writing probably 68 A.D. before the destruction of Jerusalem, most scholars feel or he would have mentioned it. And he is then in the early years of the church. The Lord has been gone about 30 years. The churches have been planted. And Peter is saying the false teachers are going to come. They came in the past, they’re going to come and they’re going to secretly introduce destructive heresies. That’s what they always do, they infiltrate, they come in, they corrupt the seminaries, they corrupt the Christian institutions, they corrupt the literature. They get into the church. They get into the media of the church. They do whatever they can inside the church to destroy the truth. They’ll do it, he says, and many will follow their sensuality and because of them…listen to this…the way of truth will be maligned…the way of truth, the gospel, the truth. And again, truth is the issue. They do it for greed and he goes on to describe something of their character. Well we’ll see that as we interact between Jude and 2 Peter.

But the point is this, writing in about 68 or 69, Peter says they’re going to come, they’re going to come. Jude, very close to that same period, after 2 Peter, perhaps just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., writes to say they are here…they are here. They have arrived. There will come mockers, Peter said. There will come false teachers. Jude says they’re here.

The church needs to know that, folks. We need to be aware of that. You cannot just accept everybody who says they’re a Christian, or a Christian teacher, or a Christian theologian. Jude is not redundant. It is not just a repetition of 2 Peter, it is a fulfillment of 2 Peter. The apostasy has begun and it’s going to go and grow until the Lord returns.

When I contend for the truth, when I battle for the truth, when I fight for the truth, when I give my life for the sake of the truth, and you do the same, we’re doing what we’ve been commanded to do in that verse, that third verse, right? To earnestly contend for the truth. It’s hard to find contenders, it really is today, very hard, very, very hard. I find myself a part of a shrinking little army. It use to seem to me that there were many, many fighting for the truth and I watch even people who at one time I thought were fighting alongside of me begin to abandon that mentality. That’s one of the reasons why we said, you know, we can’t just have a shepherds conference with three or four hundred people here, we’ve got to start a movement because we’ve got to build the army. We have a responsibility in this generation to raise a generation who is going to take the truth into the next one as the apostasy grows.

Peter speaks of this in future tenses. Jude speaks of it in present tenses. But we’re going to see parallels between Peter’s prophetic words and Jude’s words of fulfillment. And that’s why I say the best insight would tell us that Jude was written right after 2 Peter and right before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Now this book has high value to us today and this is what kept drawing me back to it because the apostasy was so serious in Jude’s day that he called for this kind of contending for the faith and it’s certainly more serious in our day because it’s accumulated through all the centuries since that time. It has grown to massive proportions. There was no massive Catholic system in Jude’s day. There was no proliferation of quasi-Christian heretical cults as in Jude’s day. There was no development of liberalism in Jude’s day. There was no mass of fake, phony false teachers who had reached the proportions of influence that those have today in television and radio and literature. Today it’s so far beyond you couldn’t…Jude would never even have conceived that you would have an apostate Christianity sweeping the world…sweeping the world.

Now a couple of other things to keep in mind. Jude’s description of these false teachers is not doctrinal. He doesn’t waste any time on their lies…why bother, right? I mean, you’ve only got 25 verses, be economical. He doesn’t say, “Here’s what they believe and here’s why it’s wrong. Here’s what they believe and here’s why it’s wrong,” because you couldn’t do it and cover all the ground, right? Because as soon as you think you’ve dealt with the last heresy, guess what? A new one shows up.

Jude isn’t going to get engulfed and Jude isn’t going to get entangled in trying to sort out every heresy. You know what he does? He doesn’t talk about their doctrine, he talks about their life…he talks about their life. He unmasks them. He says, for example, “They are…in verse 4…ungodly, who turn the grace if God into licentiousness.” Hummm, they live lavish, sinful lives and say it’s under grace. They deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. They will not live under the dominating Lordship of Christ. They are compared to angels that kept not their first estate. They’re compared to the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorrah. They are compared to those who went the way of Cain, those who can be bought to give their prophecies like Balaam. They’re like clouds without water. They’re like trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted. They’re like wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam. They’re wandering stars, verse 13, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. Verse 15 says that judgment is going to be executed on them because of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. They are grumblers finding fault, following after their own lusts, speaking arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of money. He never talks about their doctrine because you can tell them by these things. And that’s what Jesus said, they’re going to be…these false teachers are going to come like ravenous wolves, not sparing the flock. By their…what?…you shall know them. Not by their doctrine, well you can tell them by their doctrine, but they’re too subtle for that. You’re going to know them by their fruits. Jude’s description of them has to do with life and conduct. It has to do with how they live. Bad doctrine, of course, is implied. It’s just not described.

`To whom is Jude writing? We don’t know. About whom is he writing? We don’t know. But look at their lives, and this is what 2 Peter says in 2 Peter 2:10, “They indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires. They despise authority.” Verse 12, “They’re like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reveling in what they have no knowledge of.” I mean, they’re just corrupt. Verse 18, speaking arrogantly, words of vanity. They entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality. They’re slaves of corruption, verse 19. Whatever it is that can enslave a man enslaves them…sex, materialism, whatever. And so this is a very important epistle. It’s important for you and it’s important for me to engage in earnestly contending for the faith. And as we go through this epistle together, we’re going to see an exposure of these defectors and we’re going to hear a call to be a defender of the truth and we’re going to engage ourselves in this war.

At least let’s look at the first word of this epistle. “Jude.” In Hebrew that’s Judah, in Greek it’s Judas. Isn’t it interesting that a book written on apostasy bears the same name as the all-time apostate? The writer’s name is Judas, that very name is cursed. Do you know anybody named Judas? Personally I don’t like the name Jude because it’s a form of that. I should like it more because I should associate it with this guy. But the stigma that Judas has left with it is so strong. But this is Judas, Jude, Judah. And God in His wonderful grace, of course, has chosen a man who has the same name to write the epistle on apostasy illustrated by the greatest apostate of all time, Judas.

This is a very different man, he is a bondservant of Jesus Christ. I like that. He is a bondservant of Jesus Christ. You know what that means, he is a slave to the Lord. He is also a brother of James, brother of James. Just who is this man? Well there are several men named Jude or Judas or Judah in the New Testament, several of them. Two of them are apostles. There is Judas Iscariot and Judas not Iscariot, you remember? And there are others. In Acts 9:11 there was a Judas of Damascus. And then there is Judas Barsabas. According to Acts 15 Judas Barsabas was a leading man in the early church who with Silas carried the decision of the Jerusalem council to Antioch. So there is Judas of Damascus who helped Ananias find Saul after his conversion. Then there’s Judas Barsabas who was involved in the Jerusalem council and giving the basic decision of the council of Antioch. Then you have Judas Iscariot, the apostate. Then you have Judas not Iscariot. You know, he had other names? If you read Twelve Ordinary Men his name was also Labbaeus and his name was also Thaddaeus. It’s not any of those who are in view here, however. Here you see this Judas is the brother of James.

And who is James? James is the brother of our Lord. James is the Lord’s half brother. That is to say, Joseph and Mary were mother and father of the half brothers, we call them that, of Jesus because Joseph was not the father of Jesus, so He was only a half brother being virgin born. But if you look at Matthew 13:55 it says there that Mary was the mother of Jesus and His brothers name were James and Joseph and Simon and Judas. James and Joseph and Simon and Judas…so we know this Judas who is the brother of James must then be the brother of the James who is the half brother of our Lord. Also in Mark chapter 6, I believe it’s in the beginning of the chapter, yes in verse 3, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?”

And so he introduces himself in the first verse as the brother of James which makes him the brother of Jesus. Listen to Galatians 1:19, Paul says, “I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.” So here again this James is identified specifically in Galatians 1:19 as the Lord’s brother. He’s the head of the Jerusalem church. Now what is so fabulous about this, so wonderful about this is the fact that these brothers of Jesus didn’t believe in Him, remember that? In John chapter 7 it says they didn’t believe in Him, and, of course, we know later they believed in Him, after His resurrection, remember that? Two of them then were used by the Spirit of God to write New Testament books; James writing the book of James, Jude writing the book of Jude. And both of them critical to the revelation of God. James also became head of the Jerusalem Council, as we well know.

You say, “Well how do you know that this isn’t Judas, one of the…well, it wouldn’t be Judas Iscariot, but maybe Judas not Iscariot, how do you know that? Verse 17, he says, “But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And when he says that, he distinguishes himself from the Apostles so he’s not an Apostle, so he wouldn’t be the Jude who is one of the Apostles, he is rather not an apostle and the brother of James who is not designated as an Apostle either, and therefore we conclude he is the brother of the James who is the half brother of the Lord Himself. And so again, the wonderful grace of God reaches down and the brothers of Jesus who didn’t believe in Him come to faith and two of them are selected to write books in the New Testament. The death, resurrection, the ascension of Jesus produced a tremendous change with regard to the relationships that these men had.

Somebody might say, “Look, why doesn’t he say, ‘Jude, a brother of Jesus Christ.’ Why does he say a bondservant?” Because Jesus Christ went from being whatever He was on a human level to being what He was on a divine level and that is the Lord and Master of these men. Remember Jesus said in Mark 3 when His brothers and His mother came to search for Him and the people said they are outside looking for you? He said, “No,” He said, “you don’t quite understand.” He said, “It’s not about human relationships,” I think it’s Mark 3:35 and I’ll read you what it says, “For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother.” And even Mary at the birth of Jesus knew that this was her Savior. And so the relationships all changed and Jude views Jesus Christ not in some familial way but as his Lord and Master. From a human standpoint, he is the brother of James, but from a divine standpoint he doesn’t say he’s the brother or half brother of Jesus Christ, rather he’s the bondslave of Christ. He who did not believe came to believe by the overwhelming testimony of the resurrection. And so the Lord chooses this remarkable man to write this account of apostasy.

Now sets the book up and our time is gone. Next time, next Sunday night, we’re going to do verse 1 and 2. It’s really important that you get the overview. And when you look at it, it all looks familiar but some of the most wonderful truth you will ever know is contained in verse 1 and 2, what we haven’t looked at. And it’s critical to your dealing with the book. Let me tell you why. Do you notice in verse 1, those who are called beloved and kept? Those who are called beloved and kept. What do you think the emphasis of those words is? Well simply stated, we could sum that up in the word “security,” couldn’t we? We are protected. And what Jude does to begin this book is to tell us you can go into the war, you can go into the foray, you can go into the battle for truth because you never have to fear. That’s how he starts the book. You are the called. You are the beloved and you are the kept. Get in the war and don’t be afraid.

Do you want to see how he ends it? Verse 24, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, He will make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy.” You know, any time anybody goes to war, there’s always the fear that you might die, right? There’s always the fear that you engage in war, you may be a casualty. So Jude begins and ends with the fact that you cannot be a casualty in this war, you are the called, you are the kept, and you are the beloved and the Lord has committed Himself to keep you from stumbling and make sure when the battle is over you’ll be standing in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy. And we’re to look at that next time, our secure position. We fight and we can’t lose. We battle and we can’t be a casualty to the conflict.

Lord, we thank You for this wonderful book and tonight has just kind of set it up, I hope, in our minds and whet our appetites for what yet awaits us as its glories unfold for us. You have armed us in every way, all that is left is for us to be faithful and diligent. And I thank You so much for these people in this church who love the truth, who line up to get another Bible to be exposed to more of it. Lord, You have indeed raised a great front, a great force here for the truth. Thank You for that. And may this wonderful epistle equip us to be more effective than ever we could be in engaging in this battle with the confidence that we have nothing to fear from the enemy. We are the called, the beloved, the kept and You will keep us from stumbling as we engage this enemy and bring us in the end into Your presence. May we be faithful to this battle and enjoy the triumph that You promise, in Christ’s name. Amen.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

The Enemy Within (http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/65-1)

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John MacArthur explains what is wrong with the Purpose Driven Life.

 

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I could sum it up by quoting a text from Luke 18:8.  In Luke 18:8 Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”  When the Son of Man comes will He find faith on the earth?  That’s an amazing statement.  The world has been waiting for millennia for the incarnate truth to arrive.  The world has been waiting since the Fall for God to send the true One.  The world has been waiting for the truth, and finally the truth comes and the living truth, the Lord Jesus Christ comes and He opens His mouth and out of His mouth comes gospel truth, saving truth, the long-awaited freeing truth.

Immediate reaction?  Rejection.  All those centuries of waiting, all those millennia of waiting, when the truth comes it’s rejected.  The truth comes and first there’s an initial response, like in the synagogue at Nazareth when their initial reaction was, “Wow!  We’ve never heard anybody like this say anything like this.”  But before the day was over, they tried to kill Him.  In a microcosm, that’s exactly what happened in the nation.  At first they were wowed by what He said, they were drawn to His teaching.  But before it was all over they screamed for His blood.  All those millennia waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.  And He comes full of grace and truth and Jesus Himself before His life ends can see the direction this is going and says, “Will I find any faith on the earth when I come back?”  He anticipates what He says in the inspired text of John 1, “He came unto His own and His own…what?…received Him not.”  They turned on the truth as soon as He came.  They rejected the truth as soon as they heard it.  All the ministry of Jesus over three years and when the believers were gathered in Galilee after the resurrection, He had spent over a year in Galilee with incredible miracles and teaching and there were 500 who believed.  At least there were 500 who gathered.  And after all the ministry in Judea and His resurrection, there were 120 in the upper room.  And as the churches were founded and planted, the churches begin to defect.  And by the time John writes the book of Revelation, you’re at the end of that first century.  John is writing around 96 and already five out of the seven churches in Asia Minor which had been the hot bed of apostolic ministry through Paul where those churches were planted, those churches are beginning to defect and there’s only two of them left…the church at Smyrna and the church at Philadelphia that were still faithful.  But the battle for the truth has been a very, very difficult battle.

And Paul looks ahead down the road in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and sees THE Apostasy, THE falling away that occurs just before Antichrist steps onto the scene during the time of the Tribulation.  Paul warned Timothy, “People will not endure sound doctrine.”  In 2 Timothy he said, “They will want to have itching ears, they want to have their ears tickled by teachers who say what they want to hear.  And they will not endure sound doctrine.”  And Peter said, “False teachers are going to come and they’re going to bring in damnable heresies, denying the Lord that bought them.”  They’re going to identify with Christ, they’re going to identify with Him, they’re going to identify outwardly with the gospel and with Christianity, but inwardly they will teach damning heresies.  Jesus said it’s coming.  Paul said it’s coming.  Peter said it’s coming.  They all saw it coming.

Where does Jude fit in?  Jude says, “It’s here….it’s here.”  And Jude describes it and defines it and calls us to the battle that has to stretch all the way to the end of the church age.  The church can never stop fighting this battle.  Jude brings the biblical panorama to its necessary climax.  Jude says it’s going to be this way, it is this way.  He says, notice it, verse 4, “Certain persons have crept in unnoticed.”  Jesus says, “False prophets will come.”  Paul says, “False prophets will come.”  Peter says, “False prophets will come.”  And Jude says, “They’re here.”  John says, “You’re going to have to love the truth, you’re going to have to battle for the truth.  You’re going to have to test the spirits because spirits are going to come that are deceiving spirits, they’re going to lie.”  Jude says, “They’re here.  They’ve arrived and they’re going to stretch all the way till the events of the book of Revelation, all the way.”  And that provokes the question on the mouth of the Lord, “Will He find faith when He comes?  Will there be any true believers left?”

I mean, look at the world today.  When I say Christianity, what do you see in the big name Christianity?  The dominant individuals or the individuals that dominate Christianity in sheer numbers are non-Christians, true

You take Christianity as a term defining a religion and most Christians are not Christians.  And there is this small group of people willing to contend for the faith.  We’ve been used to the fact that other evangelicals will join us in the battle, now they’re abandoning the battle and embracing the non-Christians and calling them Christians.  And so Jude is saying, “They’re here, folks.  They’re not coming, they’re here.”  They were here when he wrote and they’re here now and worse than ever because evil men grow worse and worse, as Paul reminded Timothy.  And the apostasy escalates and escalates and escalates.  The longer Christianity exists in the world, the more corrupt it gets on the inside.  It’s not the true Christianity, but it’s the people who say they’re a part of it, whether you’re talking about the sacramental sacerdotal kind of religions of works that call themselves Christians, whether you’re talking about the ugly corrupting damning influence of liberal theology, the search for the historical Jesus, whatever aspect you want to look at, or whether you’re talking about the TV con-men who do what they do for money, they’re all a part of the corrupting apostasy inside Christianity.  And Jude says it’s here, and the truth is at stake and you need, verse 3, to join the force of those who would contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.  That’s the biblical faith.

This is a book about apostasy and I’m telling you, Jude has a big sweep, a really big sweep.  Do you know that Jude mentions the fall of Satan?  That’s way back where the apostasy has its birth.  Jude mentions Adam.  Jude mentions Cain.  And he mentions Enoch.  And he mentions Sodom and Gomorrah.  And he mentions Balaam and Korah.  And he mentions Moses.  I mean, he is sweeping across the history of this spiritual war.  Now I don’t know about you but I love big picture concepts that help me understand the sweeping saga of what God is doing in some condensed fashion.  Jude is sort of Cliff notes on the long war against God, he just sweeps across all of it.  It’s really a monumental book and I think, sadly, it’s a neglected book.  The first commentary I ever wrote, some of you may have one stuck in a corner somewhere, many, many years ago, I don’t even remember how many years ago, before I should have been writing commentaries, actually, the first commentary I ever wrote was on the book of Jude and the title of it was, Beware of the Pretenders…Beware of the Pretenders.  And, folks, Christianity in our time is literally crammed full of pretenders who assault the truth.  The waves of apostasy roll higher and higher and higher and higher as you get closer and closer to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And obviously we’re closer now than we’ve ever been.  They’re characterized in 2 Thessalonians 2:10, “By all deception of wickedness.”  And the reason they are so wicked and deceiving, listen to this, is they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.  You can’t be saved apart from the truth, right?  An inadequate gospel doesn’t save.  Believing the wrong thing doesn’t save.  Believing the wrong thing about Jesus, or the wrong thing about the means of salvation will not save.  These people not only did not believe the truth, they did not receive the love of the truth, in fact they hate the truth.  They are haters of the truth who creep in unawares, who are like reefs hidden below the surface that create shipwreck in the Christian environment.  They say they believe, they don’t.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

The Enemy Within (http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/65-1)

© 1969-2009. Grace to You. All rights reserved.

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… I’m very passionate about the truth, very passionate about divine truth, God’s truth.  My whole life is devoted to the truth.  My whole ministry is devoted to the truth.  It’s driven by the truth revealed in the Scripture.  Really I live and breathe for the truth.  I realize that God has exalted His truth as high as His name.  I know that He is the God of truth, that’s how He identifies Himself.  I know that Jesus Christ, the glory of God in human flesh, according to John, is full of truth.  He is the way, the truth and the life.  I know that Jesus said that the truth would set the sinner free from sin and death.  The Bible is called the Word of Truth.  Jesus said to His Father, “Your Word is truth.”  And in the Scriptures we are commanded to worship God in truth.  We’re commanded to obey the truth, to love the truth, to judge by the truth, to speak the truth in love, to walk in the truth and as we learned in John’s epistle, to love in the truth.  Literally, we are engulfed in the truth.  That’s why the church is called by the Apostle Paul “the pillar and support of the truth.”  We are responsible to hold up the truth, to wield the truth against all the speculations raised up against the knowledge of God.  The church is to proclaim the truth, to bring deceived souls to the knowledge of the truth that saves and frees.

… In fact, the whole relationship that we have to God in all its fullness is based on truth.  We hear the truth, we understand the truth, we believe the truth, we assent to the truth, we live the truth, we learn the truth, we proclaim the truth.  Jesus said, “Thy Word is truth.”  And it is the Word that saves and sanctifies and gives the hope of glory.  Truth then is more precious to us than anything, than everything.

As a result of the importance of the truth, the truth is always under attack.  We’ve said that many times in our studies of those epistles and other studies as well.  All through the millennia since the fall of Adam and Eve, God has been revealing His truth, His saving truth starting with the revelation that a true one would come and crush the serpent’s head and provide true salvation from sin, death and hell.  And the unfolding of the message of the truth is the real story of Scripture.  Of course, all the way along Satan has done everything he could to obliterate the truth, to cover the truth, to hide the truth, to twist the truth to bring about lies and deceptions.  One way or another the truth has always been under attack and there are sad, sad realities throughout the history of God’s redeemed people, both Israel and the church, great sweeping eras of time when the people of God, so-called, abandoned the truth, lost heart for the truth, lost interest in the truth and failed to contend or fight for the truth.

It has been a long war against God and against His truth in which the devil has engaged and he has employed demons and he has employed men and women.  Most effectively he has employed those people who are associated with the truth in some way.  The deadliest assaults against the truth come from the inside.  This is what we call apostasy.  It is a defection..it is a defection.  The most effective attacks against the truth come from those people who purport to know the truth and even to believe the truth.  The greatest assaults against the truth don’t come from the outside, they come from the inside, from apostates, defectors who name the name of Christ, or once named the name of Christ, and now are the enemies of Christ, who once affirmed their trust in God, belief in God, and affirmed the Scripture and have become the enemies of the Scripture.  They’re on the inside.

… Jude is concerned about this issue.  He is concerned about the most dangerous corruption that can occur against the truth, and that is on the inside.  The long war against God certainly comes from the outside, comes from every false religious system on the planet.  Second Corinthians chapter 10 verses 3 to 5 talk about every speculation, every idea, every ideology, every theology, every religion, every philosophy, every viewpoint raised up against the knowledge of God, being a damning speculation.  The spiritual war certainly has to be fought against those who attack from the outside.  And the long war against God has not just been from the inside, believe me, it’s been from the outside, but the most formidable blows against the truth come from the inside.  Anybody will tell you that.  The greatest danger to an army is from the inside, traitors, defectors, spies really working for the enemy who are trusted.  Jude is concerned about this and he wants us to be concerned as well.  He wants to engage us all in the battle for the truth, the long war for the truth.  He wants us to be the defenders against the defectors.

And so, the call to us comes in verse 3 in this epistle.  “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation…”  This apparently indicates that he started to write a letter in which he wanted to talk about salvation, a positive letter, an upbeat letter, a celebratory letter in the sense that he was going to celebrate with them the wonders of their common salvation.  However, while he was making an effort to do that, it was interrupted and he said, “I felt the necessity to write to you…” and that necessity was a Spirit-inspired necessity, we would all agree, since the epistle is inspired by the Holy Spirit.  “I felt it necessary to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, that you contend earnestly for the faith.”  That is a strong verb, contend earnestly, epagonizomai, agonizomai-to agonize, to fight, to struggle, to battle, to give great effort, to give great exertion.  You add the prefix preposition and it intensifies it and it’s a good translation “to contend earnestly,” or to battle mightily, or to struggle powerfully for the faith.  Faith being the body of truth, the word is objective, it’s not subjective faith, objective faith.  “I had some other things I want to talk about, I wanted to write you a positive letter, but I felt the necessity to write a letter under the compulsion of the Holy Spirit to engage you in the battle, in the fight, in the struggle, in the war against the faith, against the body of truth we know is the Christian faith.”

… Now this isn’t like it’s new to us.  I mean, you can go back to the first book in the New Testament and the first great sermon that Jesus preached, The Sermon on the Mount, and in Matthew chapter 7 listen to what Jesus said in that sermon.  “Beware of the false…what?…prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves, you will know them by their fruits.”  Beware of the false prophets.  Jesus knew they were already around.  They would come in the future against the truth of the gospel.  In the sixteenth chapter of Matthew Jesus said, “Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, watch out, beware.”  He said it again in verse 11, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they appear to represent Me, they appear to be a part of the Kingdom of God, they appear to be the very spokesmen and teachers of divine truth, beware, their influence corrupts.”

And, of course, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, when Jesus gave the Olivet Discourse which looks at the future, Jesus said in verse 11, “Many false prophets will arise, mislead many.”  So Jesus warned again and again.  He said, “There will come a time when false christs, false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.  Behold, I have told you in advance.”  And Jesus was saying, “They’re around now.  Beware of them, they’re here.  They’re Pharisees and Sadducees.  And they’re very dangerous because they say they represent Me and they represent the truth and they believe My Word and they’re going to get worse and they’re going to get more effective.”  Jesus said that.

He warned in the other parallel passages in the gospels of the same thing.  You come into the book of Acts and in the book of Acts there are tremendous warnings about this same thing.  For example, take Paul’s warning in Acts chapter 20.  “I know…in verse 29…that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you.”  That’s always where the great war is most deadly.  If the enemy can get inside the camp, his devastation is greatest.  So I’m warning you, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock…from among your own selves men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.  Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.  And your guardianship over the church means you’ve got to be aware of the savage wolves who want to infiltrate the church and destroy the truth.

You come in to the epistles, it’s the same.  You can hear it from the Apostle Paul, chapter 4 of 1 Timothy.  The Spirit explicitly says, “In the latter times…that’s now…since the Messiah has come, some will fall away from the faith.  Pay attention, deceitful spirits, doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own consciences with a branding iron, they come into the church.”  They are demonic in their doctrine.  They are devilish in their intentions.  They have departed from the faith.  They espouse or they purport to believe.  They are hypocrites.  They have no conscience.  They will use you and abuse you.  Paul is telling Timothy, “Timothy, you’ve got to counter this.  How are you going to counter this?”  He says, “Until I come, give attention to the reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.  Take pains with these things, be absorbed in them.  Pay attention to yourself and to your teaching, persevere in these things.”  He engages Timothy in the spiritual battle for the truth.  And in 2 Timothy it’s the same thing.  He writes in 2 Timothy chapter 3, “Realize that in these last days difficult times will come, dangerous seasons, literally.  Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable,” and he goes on with the list.  “They’ll hold a form of godliness though they have denied its power.”  They have all kinds of degrees, they purport to be theologians and teachers, they purport to have the secret true knowledge of God, but these men oppose the truth, they have depraved minds and they reject the faith.

And not only does Paul warn about these things but Peter warns about them, I’m not going to read it, 2 Peter, the whole chapter, chapter 2, and most of chapter 3.  And John…John warns about them as well.  First John chapter 4, “Do not believe every spirit, test the spirits to see whether they’re from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  And 2 John, do you remember this?  Second John, “Many deceivers…verse 7…have gone out into the world and do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.  This is the deceiver and the antichrist, watch yourselves…watch yourselves.”

James even talks about false teachers.  False teachers who go so far as to harm the true representatives of the faith.  And, of course, the book of Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3 talks about false teachers that infiltrate the church.  They literally get into the church, according to Revelation 2 and 3, and corrupt the church.  They corrupted the church of Pergamos.  They corrupted the church of Thyatira.  They corrupted the church at Sardis.  They corrupted the church as we all know of Laodicea.  All the way to the end of the church age, churches are going to have to battle for the truth.  And the most formidable war against that truth is going to come from the inside.  All of this is prophesied, prophesied, prophesied, prophesied.  And without Jude’s letter, this whole development, I think, would be incomplete.

[JJJUDEBOOKS: We shall continue this tomorrow.]

The Enemy Within (http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/65-1)

© 1969-2009. Grace to You. All rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: Bible, Book of Jude, heart, holy spirit, Jesus, jjjudebooks, JOHN MACARTHUR, Jude, Jude 1, persevere, scripture, Sermon

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