The Forgotten Letters - Jude (North OC)

Eric Ennis: good morning.

My name's Eric.

This is my twin Justus.

Yes.

Um, but we're gonna be finishing up our, our Book of Jude, and I want

to do something a little different.

And that is this, uh, oftentimes when you read these letters, it's hard because,

man, we want to go so deep into this, but we also wanna explore as well.

But the problem is, the deeper you go, the harder it is to explore.

And so realize that I'm just gonna be mostly exploring today.

But I wanted to begin by having our brother, justice from the campus

Ministry actually read you the letter.

And the reason is, is because these letters would be circulated

to the churches and they would be read to the churches.

And so before we go into the letter, I want you to hear

it read through its entirety.

It's very dense, I guarantee that.

Um, but I want you to kind of pick out some of the major themes and what's

being talked about here and kind of put yourself into a first century mindset.

Of what it was like for those Christians to hear this book.

So our brother from Campus Justus, I'll have him read now.

Justus: Jude chapter one, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother

of James to those who have been called, who are loved and God the father,

and kept for Jesus Christ mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we

share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once

for all entrusted to god's Holy people.

For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about a

long, long ago have secretly slipped.

And among you there are, they are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God.

And to a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign.

And Lord, though you already know all this, I want to remind you that

the Lord at the one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later

destroyed those who did not believe.

And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but

abandoned their proper dwelling, these has, he has kept in dark darkness.

Bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great day.

In a similar way, soda and Gamora and the surrounding towns gave themselves

up to sexual immorality and perversion.

They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment

of eternal fire in the same way on the strength of their dreams.

These ungodly people populate their own bodies, reject authority and

heap abuse on celestial being.

But even the Archangel Michael when he was disputing with the devil

about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for the

slander, but said the Lord rebuke you.

Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things

they do understand by instinct as irrational animals do will destroy them.

Woe to them.

They have taken the way of can.

They have rushed for profit and the baums error.

They have been destroyed in Cora's Rebellion.

These people are blemishes at your love feast, eating with you without

the slightest Qualm Shepherds who feed only themselves, they are clouds

without rain, blown along by the wind.

Autumn, trees without fruit and uprooted twice dead.

They are wild waves of the seed foaming up their shame.

Wandering stars for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

Enoch the seven from Adam prophesied about them.

See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge

everyone and to convict all of 'em.

Of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness and

of all the defiant words and godly sinners have spoken against them.

These people are grumbler and fault finders.

They follow their own evil desires.

They boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.

But dear friends, remember what the apostles of the

Lord Jesus Christ foretold.

They said to you in the last times, there will be scoffers who will

follow their own ungodly desires.

These are the people who divide you, who follow more natural in

instincts and do not have the spirit.

But you, my dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy

faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love as you

wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, to bring you to eternal life.

Be merciful to those who doubt.

Save others by snatching them from the fire to others.

Show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing.

Stand by corruptive flesh.

To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present

you before his glorious presence, without fault, and with great joy.

To the only God our savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority through

Jesus Christ, our Lord, before all ages now and forever mourn.

Amen.

Eric Ennis: Amen.

Thank you, Justus.

Thank you.

I've always wanted to have a lesson where we just read the Bible and then go, amen.

And just go home.

Um, it's not gonna be today, but someday that may happen.

So just know if I pull that off, it'll be amazing.

Um, but we're gonna go through this book and, and you can hear,

man, there's a lot being said here.

Uh, it's intense.

And so this is a study guide that I, I.

I use and help create.

It's, you know, you start with a good translation.

You take notice of the genre, you gotta kind of understand the context,

discern the major themes, and most importantly, always, always yield

to God and what God has to say.

And so we're gonna kind of go through this book and kind of parse out what is

Jew trying to tell us, and ultimately what does God want us to know now?

The translation we're using is the NIV.

Uh, it's kind of a good for overall comprehension, but I'm gonna parse

in some of the NASB, which is more of a Greek to English translation

Bible, because there's certain words there that I think are just very

important that we're gonna pick up on.

Also wanna remind you, this is a letter we don't know who is written to.

We know whoever is written to, uh, there was an urgent need, but

it was about the idea of warning them against these false teachers.

Encouraging disciples to defend the faith.

The context of this is a Jewish audience.

And how do we know this?

Because he reads in a lot of scripture, a lot of biblical references here.

He just says like, I remind you, like you're just expected to know all this.

And he also puts in several texts from Jewish tradition, uh, in here as well.

Again, that would've been widely known amongst the Jewish population.

And at this point, the church is meeting in homes.

They've, they've left the synagogue and I wrote, left the synagogue.

I probably should have wrote, kicked outta the synagogue.

But they're no longer meeting in synagogues.

They're meeting in homes and all they have with them are these letters and scrolls.

There is no published bible for them.

They have many of the Old Testament scrolls that they might have, have made

copies of, or they, they've made copies of these letters, and this is why we

have so many letters from the Bible in such abundance as far as testament,

because they would get these letters and they would just copy them and

copy them and pass them and pass them.

And they would commonly meet in what they known as agape feasts, these love feasts.

And that's how they would gather together.

And by this point, the church has spread all across the Roman Empire.

It's estimated this book is written somewhere between 65 and 80 ad.

Uh, we're not fully sure, but by this point the church has been

scattered mainly through persecution.

And, and again, because of this, there's been some needs.

Now who wrote this?

Uh, or the major theme, I should say?

The major theme that he's talking about is this idea of contending for the faith.

And I'm gonna go through this verse here in a moment, but the idea of contending

for the face against false teachers.

So let's get into Jude.

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James.

That's how he introduces himself.

Now, this word servant is, is difficult because.

This word servant means a lot of things and he starts off by saying, Jew.

Now notice he didn't say his full name, Judas.

And you go, wait a minute.

I thought Judas is dead.

No, this is a different Judas Jud is just a shortened name of Judas,

kinda like Mike is to Michael, and Judas is the Greek name.

Judah is the Hebrew name.

Now he's going by Jude because he doesn't wanna be associated with the

Judas that you probably are aware of.

So he is going by the name of Jude.

It's kind of like we don't walk around meeting Adolfs anymore.

You know?

When's the last time you met one?

You know, you don't kind of go by that name anymore.

It's kind of, certain names are dead now.

My wife and I are in the process of trying to create names, uh, for our child.

Uh, what name is it gonna be?

And, uh, I'm a teacher, so there's a ton of names I have to eliminate,

uh, because all the years are just going, no, not that kid.

I remember that one.

Nope, not that name.

Nope, not that name.

Um, ju names Matter.

So he is going by Judy's, a shortened version.

And he says, Jude Bond servant Doulas.

Better translation of that slave, A voluntary slave.

I'm a slave to Jesus Christ.

And brother of James, well, who's his brother of James.

Isn't this the carpenter?

Isn't this Mary's son and brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon.

This is Jesus's half brother.

Now, if I'm writing a letter and I'm Jesus's half brother, I lead with that.

Yeah.

That is my opening line.

Half brother of Jesus, here I am, but he doesn't do this.

He says, I'm the brother of James.

You know the guy who's leading the church in, in Jerusalem at this

point, but I'm a slave to Christ.

Amen.

Wow.

Wow.

What Humility.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Yeah.

Eric Ennis: Now I wonder why.

I think maybe it's because at the time he wasn't a believer during Jesus' ministry.

This is for, even his own brothers did not believe in him.

Jude wasn't a believer during Jesus' ministry.

So what changes, what goes from, this is my brother to, you know, he's

kind of crazy, you know, a little out there to I'm a slave to that guy.

Yeah.

I don't know if you guys have siblings.

I have an older brother and I was trying to think what would it take for

me to believe my brother is a Messiah?

A lot.

A lot.

I grew up with him.

Now people always think Jesus must have been perfect and never got in trouble.

I actually don't think he never got in trouble.

I think he got in trouble all the time because he still had imperfect parents.

Just because the kid might have been perfect doesn't mean the parents were.

That may hurt some of your feelings.

But that's probably reality.

Remember, we see him go to the temple early on and his parents

were like, why were you here?

They're all yelling at him and upset again.

Jude witnessed all of this, but all of a sudden he flipped a switch and

what flipped the switch for him?

The resurrection.

Jesus resurrected.

We know he appeared to James.

He could have appeared to Jude if my brother died on a cross.

Then several days later, he's walking around going, yeah, yeah,

they killed me, but I'm back.

I'd be like, I got you.

I wanna listen to this.

You have something to say.

From my mind, this is one of many proofs of the resurrection, is the fact that his

own brother was like, yeah, he came back.

It's hard to fool that.

To those who have been called who are loved in God, the father of, of

kept in Jesus Christ, he's basically writing a letter to us Christians.

So for those of us here who are Christians, he's writing a letter to us.

Mercy and peace be yours in abundance and, and in the Greek it actually

means love be multiplied to you.

And I love God's math to us because we are tit for tat society.

You do nice, something nice for me.

I'll do something nice for you.

Yeah.

That's how we function.

We addition, you add something to my life.

I'll add something to your life.

You subtract something from my life, I'm subtracting from you.

God multiplies.

God multiplies his abundance.

Then we get into it.

I'm eager to write about the salvation we share.

He wanted to write this nice letter like let's talk about our salvation,

how amazing this is gonna be.

Let's have a good time.

But instead he goes, I felt compelled to write and urge

you to contend for the faith.

This word contend is where we get the word agonize from in

English, agonize for the faith.

You gotta give it your all.

You gotta fight for it.

Why?

Because certain individuals have secretly slept, uh, slipped in among you.

And they're perverting the grace, creating a license for immorality

and denying Jesus Christ.

This is very, very sobering.

'cause what he's saying here is in these church meetings and homes, they were

visiting teachers who were coming and they were teaching a gospel other than

the one that Jesus wanted to talk, and it was corrupting their viewpoints.

During this time, what was being taught was this idea of God's grace

covers all, so who cares if we sin?

If God loves me, I can't do anything wrong, and this is one of the

challenges when we just preach God's love without preaching repentance too.

Because why do I need to repent?

If God loves me, why do I need to change?

If God just loves me, there's nothing I can do wrong.

God just loves me.

Yeah, and this is what the other church was starting to deal with themselves.

It's like, well, then I can sleep whoever I want with God loves me.

I can do whatever I want.

God loves me.

They saw it as a license for morality.

They're perverting the grace and therefore denying who Jesus Christ is.

Yep.

There's a couple definitions I want to give you just because I

might mention these words later.

And if you hear them, I want you to at least know the difference.

And that's heresy and apostasy.

They're words that really only religious people use nowadays, although I

think there's a band named Heretic.

But heresy is when you kind of start contrary.

Contrary to the doctrine, I, I kind of put in three images there.

The disciple is following Jesus.

The heretic is just kind of turning to the side and just kind of walking a to stray.

And the apostate.

The apostasy is when you abandon the faith.

Because of the heresy, these, these beliefs that were

being taught in the church.

This time, people began to drift away from following Jesus, and over time they

just abandoned the faith altogether.

And this is the warning that Jude is giving, how important it is

to follow Christ entirely, to not drift in even a little bit.

It's amazing how much, if I'm walking straight.

And I just turn a little bit how different of a place I'll be.

Mm-hmm.

Versus where I was going.

Yep.

And this is what was happening in the church

and what's alarming is we have to take this also.

Speaker 3: Yep.

If

Eric Ennis: the reason what's included in the Bible is because

this warning goes to us too.

Amen.

I thought of some false teachings of our church.

In our historical past,

and for us, this was probably our biggest.

Come on, Eric.

Come on.

You know, I've been a disciple 30 years, 60% of my life.

It's easy to do the math,

but this idea that God accepts me based upon how well I perform, this was us.

This idea of be fruitful at all costs.

We had some false teachings in the past.

I'm grateful that we're working on some of those.

I don't feel like we're legalistic like we used to be, but I was also trying

to think what do we struggle with now?

Because I think it's easy to point at other churches and go, well, look at them.

They teach this over there, look at them.

They teach that over there, but Jews not writing, talking about

other groups, he's talking about us.

What are we dealing with now?

And the few I thought of.

First one, this has a nice, big religious naves, moralistic, therapeutic deism.

Okay.

Another way of saying this is main character syndrome.

It's when you read the Bible as if you are the main character, when the

Bible revolves around you, when the Bible becomes your self-help book.

When the Bible's about how do I make myself happy?

Rather than, how do I serve God?

Jude's opening line, I'm a slave to Christ, not, Hey,

Jesus is gonna make me happy.

And we start to get a narcissistic faith because now we read the

Bible with our lens going, God, how are you gonna help me?

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: I've given some counter scriptures in there.

I told you, I'm just exploring, I can't go into any depth on this,

but if this is something that you're like, man, I I, I see this for myself.

Please study this out.

Another one I thought of that we have to be careful of is emotionalism.

And this has, i, I made up this name, I don't know if it has a name.

I should have made up some fantastic name, but I've called it Emotionalism is when

we elevate our personal feelings above scripture, elevate our personal experience

above Christian, uh, above scripture.

Another way of saying it is similar is existential subjectivism.

I feel it.

It must be truth.

You know my truth.

Your truth,

man.

That's scary.

Yep.

And I think something as an older Christian that we have to be aware

of is sometimes our experiences are guiding us more than scripture.

Now, come on, it's a temptation.

Yeah.

I've seen the church.

I know what's right.

Well, what does scripture say?

Do I continue to go back that I feel this so deeply?

You are right.

You do.

What does scripture say?

Speaker 3: Yep.

Amen.

Eric Ennis: Do we start with scripture and end with our emotions, or do we

start with our emotions and go, no, no.

What does scripture say?

Speaker 3: Come on

Eric Ennis: and use scripture to override our emotions.

Last one I thought of is this one progressive Christianity.

I'm not trying to make a political stand here.

I'm not saying conservative Christianity is good.

Progressive Christianity is bad.

This is not political, but it's progressive.

Christianity is when you try to match.

Scripture to culture where you try to blend into the culture.

That's scary.

And man, it's hard helping out with the campus man.

They are dealing with this on the front lines.

The teens are dealing with this on the front lines.

It's so easy to go, ah, I don't like this verse.

Mm-hmm.

I wish it wasn't there.

I wish instead I can just make a quick change to it to

blend in with everyone else.

Yep.

But scripture should be changing culture.

Culture should not be informing us of how to see scripture.

I

share this because I worry about me

right now.

My wife and I are what's call a nesting face.

We're a few weeks from our, our, hopefully our birth soon it's coming up.

And right now we're just building stuff in the house.

If you came over, this is what we're doing.

I'm building and I put this wardrobe closet up here.

'cause that's, I just assembled it.

I was gonna say build it, but I, like, I didn't build it.

I assembled it, but I just assembled this thing.

You know, it comes with instructions and while I was assembling it, you know,

you, you kind of, you get a feel for what you're supposed to do after a while.

And the directions just kind of become secondary.

Yep.

You know, you're kinda like, I, I know where this is supposed to go.

I know what this is and I'm putting it together and, and I, I get most of

it done and I, I lift it up and it was quite heavy and I was so proud of myself.

I wanted to make sure that by the time my wife got home, she

would see, look how great this is.

And I realized I put in one of the walls backwards.

Yep.

And I'm like, dang it.

And you're in that place of like, okay, if I could just unscrew this

one and unscrew this one, could I just take out this one little wall and

flip it around before she gets home?

Had to take the whole thing apart,

start over.

And it was right before we're going to a party.

And I was like, you know, now, now, now my wife's having to pray

with me on the way to the party.

'cause I don't even wanna leave this wardrobe.

I wanna build this thing.

It's not gonna defeat me.

The same is true with our faith.

Come on.

If we start corrupting just even one wall of it, right?

One wall, the whole thing doesn't work.

How important it is.

And, and, and before you start going, yeah, you know, I need, I need to

worry about those false teachers, Eric especially, uh, Marcel worried about him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I believe me, I'm too, um, the false teacher I'm most worried about is myself.

Yeah.

When I read scripture, do I truly understand what God wants me to know?

Am I confident?

Do I contend for the faith?

Let's keep reading

though.

You already know this.

I wanna remind you, I, I like this, especially to us, all the Christians.

He goes like, I, you already know this.

Yep.

But you need to be reminded.

And he shares out three stories.

Now, he gives a bunch of old Ference, old Testament references, and again, I

encourage you to go back and read through these, but he starts out with the story

of Egypt, who delivered his people out of Egypt, but he had to destroy those

who didn't believe because they get out of Egypt, they get to the promised land,

they send in 12 spies, and only two came back with like, yeah, we can do it.

The other 10 were like, no, we're done.

And God allowed them to die in that desert, that generation.

Before he let him in 'cause they didn't have the faith.

The only two that got in was Caleb and Joshua 'cause they had the faith to go.

Then he talks about these angels who had positions of authority and

abandoned their proper dwelling.

Probably a reference to Genesis six.

Even celestial beings need to be obedient to God because when they

weren't, they were bound with everlasting chains for judgment.

This could be a reference to even what, uh, the biblical passage

when Jesus was talking to a demon possessed man named Legion.

And Legion goes, please don't send me to the abyss.

That could be a reference to this, to these angels who

abandoned their proper dwelling.

And then he talks about another city or two, Sodom and Gomorrah,

who with their sexual moral and perversion, God destroyed them.

God destroyed that city.

What's interesting is, is historical points.

From even Jesus' time.

So there were his Jewish historians from Jesus' time that would talk about that,

those cities, 'cause they knew where those cities were, that they were still

smoldering thousands of years later,

that somehow that was still happening.

God takes this very seriously.

Do not corrupt my word.

And the very same way on the strength of their dreams.

These dreamers, these, these false teachers, these ungodly people, pollute

their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings.

You start to see the impact that these teachings are having.

People are polluting their own bodies.

They're, they're not taking care of themselves spiritually.

They're rejecting authority and they're even heaping abuse on celestial bodies.

And then he goes into the story that's nowhere in the Bible.

It's from a, um, a Jewish tradition about the Archangel Michael

having this conversation with the devil about j uh, Moses' body.

And Michael doesn't even go, ah, Satan heck with you.

He goes, the Lord rebuke you

and my youth.

Which is another translation of in my stupidity, um, I remember times like,

ah, Satan, you got nothing on me.

I got this.

Even Michael wouldn't do that.

But the recognition that we slander what we don't understand, we act by instinct.

We act by irrationality.

And that will destroy us.

Jude 11 wo to them, they have taken the way of Cain.

They have rushed for prophet into bain's error, and they

destroyed and core his rebellion.

Think about all the references Jesus has just put in there from the or.

Jude has just put in there from the Old Testament

how well this group knew their Bible.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: A bunch of references and he just suspected you should know your Bible.

Mm-hmm.

There was a time when churches, not us, we got this one, but there was a time where,

where it was common in church culture to only have priests read the Bible.

That was a common thing back in the Middle Ages.

It would be taught in Latin and the people didn't even speak Latin.

And people hungered so much to have the Bible written in their own language

that many people died for that just so they could read the Bible themselves.

And what's sad today is how many of us have Bibles in our

house that we don't even read?

Yep.

People lived and died for that freedom.

And Satan doesn't even have to prevent us from doing it.

We do it ourselves.

Yeah.

And, and, and the expectation that Jude had for these followers

to know the scriptures, and they didn't even have a full Bible.

They just had some scrolls and some letters.

It's like, yeah, but you know this how important it's for us to be in God's word.

Preach.

You woe to them.

So what is the way of Cain?

It's the way of empty religion.

Cain offered a sacrifice, but it wasn't his first fruits.

It wasn't his best.

Yep.

And again, we're here and I'm grateful we're here and for the people online,

but are we fully here?

Yeah.

Kane gave the sacrifice,

but it wasn't really much of a sacrifice.

It wasn't his best, it was his leftovers.

And again.

I'm staring at you, but I'm thinking of me.

Am I giving my best, right?

Or am I going the way of King Rush for prophet into balaam's error?

Balaam was a prophet of God who was being seduced by a king to speak ill

of Israel to prophesy against them.

And every time he would try, God only allowed him to bless Israel.

He couldn't even curse him.

And this is the famous story of Blum's Donkey, where a donkey

thought that actually spoke to Blum.

God used an ass to speak to somebody.

Are we listening to what God has to say

or we rushing in for greed and materialism?

Is this what we're sacrificing for now?

Or Cora's Rebellion?

Moses was leading the people of Egypt and Cora thought, you know what?

I got this.

I could lead this.

He was a Levite.

It's like, you don't have this position Moses.

And Moses being humble, goes, let's take it to God.

God, who do you want leading?

And God goes, Moses, step over here for a moment.

Leave core right there.

And the ground swallowed him up.

Do we respect God's authority and those appointed for authority?

What does he have to say about these people?

They are shepherds who feed only themselves.

They are clouds without rain, autumn trees that are just dead

wild waves foaming up the sea and wandering stars.

Jude gets poetic here.

But this idea of these love feasts, these agape feasts, these people are

going and just eating it for themselves.

It's the idea of you're going to church, but it's only for you.

Mm-hmm.

I go to serve myself.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: No, that's not why I'm here.

There are clouds without rain.

For farmers, that's the worst thing because the expectation of, oh, rain's

coming, but there's nothing there.

It's shallow.

It's empty.

Autumn trees are supposed to be giving fruit by now, but they have nothing.

Nothing to offer.

The wild ways is foaming at the sea.

I had to look this one up because I was like that.

That sounded nice actually.

But there's a reference in Ezekiel talking about foaming up, you know, dirty foam,

like foaming up, you know, the dirt and grime, and then wandering stars.

You know, you have comets that just die out.

Sobering.

If you came here today and go, man, I can't wait for an encouraging lesson

where I wanna be built up, and like, man, I'm gonna walk in there going,

man, I, I read through the book of Juah.

I'm like, man, God, this is sobering.

Sobering.

Then he references Enoch, a man who was taken from God, and again,

a story from Jewish tradition.

But he says, see, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of

his holy ones to judge everyone and convict them of their ungodly acts.

And what are some things that you're gonna see with these people?

All their defiant words.

They are grumbler, they're fault finders.

They pursue after their own evil desires.

The n his peace says, follow after their own lust.

They boast about themselves and flatter others just for for their own gain.

And again, I had to look at how much am I in this?

Okay.

Am I seeking solutions or am I finding problems?

You know, one of the things as a teacher, uh, we talk about in our class is just you

can find problems and a intelligent, or you can find solutions and be intelligent.

Do we just find problems?

There

Speaker 3: we go.

Eric Ennis: Do we just grumble behind the scenes?

Yep.

And boast about how great we were in my day, man, when I walked on water,

when I raised people from the dead.

Woo.

The ministry was amazing.

Or do we have the humility to go, okay, God, help us and

help me find how to help us.

But dear friends, remember what the apostles of our

Lord Jesus Christ foretold.

They said to you in the last times, there'll be scoffers.

Another word for that is mocks.

Another reference to that is false teachers.

What are they gonna do?

Follow their own ungodly desires.

These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural

instincts and do not have the spirit.

They divide us.

They have slipped in and they divide us.

They follow their own natural instincts.

This sounds right, this feels right, but they're not living by the spirit.

And so what do we see in this corruption of false teachers?

Speaker 3: Come on,

Eric Ennis: their belief gets corrupted,

starts with their belief.

You start perverting your belief, you start changing just a few things

and all of a sudden you start denying Christ and who Christ really is.

Then it affects your conduct.

You start living out differently than what you would have had you

really been following Christ.

I can give into this sin a little bit.

This sins not that bad.

I mean, do I really have to follow that one?

I don't know.

And then it starts to change our way of thinking and how we even see reality.

We reject authority and even look at the spiritual reality differently.

It affects our character, greedy, violent, rebellious.

It affects our speech and how we speak to one another.

Whether we grumble or boast or flatter, and ult ultimately affects our motivation.

We come here self-serving, what is this church gonna give me?

Speaker 3: Okay.

Eric Ennis: What is this relationship gonna give me?

And it's flat on spiritual.

Mm-hmm.

This is the warning against false teachers and false teaching and God's scripture.

We have to contend for the faith.

Yep.

Fight for it, agonize for it, because we do not want this corruption

in our church and we certainly don't want it in our own hearts.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: A house divided cannot stand.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Eric Ennis: A house divided cannot stand.

You know, when you look at churches.

That are, that are growing.

They're typically in places of high persecution and typically

places where it's very challenging.

The churches that are shrinking are typically places where life is

in abundance and things are easy.

Our church used to be a fast growing church, but it was also

a time of great persecution.

Mm-hmm.

'cause we had to contend for the faith.

Now it's hard pressed to find out if we're different than

the church across the street.

Are we blending in so much because we wanna be so accepted that

we're compromising our faith?

And if so, then we won't last.

Yeah, we have to take a stand.

And that stand is God's word, period.

Otherwise we'll be a house divided.

So how do we protect ourselves?

Now that I've just said, man, this is tough.

This doesn't sound good.

How do we protect ourselves?

But you dear friends, by building yourself up in your most holy faith

and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourself in God's love.

As you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

So how do we protect ourselves during this challenging time?

We build ourselves up in the faith.

We go after God's word, and we pray in the spirit.

This idea of God's spirit will pray for us even when we don't know what

to say, but we trust in God's word.

We trust in God's spirit.

We don't trust in ourselves.

Yep.

That's how we protect ourselves.

But I just said that our church isn't about us.

It's not just about me.

How do we protect others?

Be merciful to those who doubt.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: Save others by snatching them from the fire and to show mercy

mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stain by corrupted flesh.

He kind of mentions three different groups of people here.

One mercy to people who are doubting.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: If you have people in the fellowship, they're just kind

of in that place of slight doubt.

Like, do I really need to, you know, I don't know.

Share my faith.

Do I really need to read the Bible?

Am I starting to doubt?

Be merciful to them?

If people have gone further down and starting to fall, save 'em.

If you're snatch 'em from fire, think firemen, save them.

And if people have left his response, have mercy on them.

But mix it with fear that you don't fall through the same temptation.

The idea of man, as people struggle around us, do we demonstrate this mercy

to one another and help one another?

This church isn't about me, it's about God.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: What does God want for me?

And what does God want for you?

What does God want for us?

And are we living this out every day?

So what are our action steps this week?

Come on.

Content for the faith.

Agonize.

For the faith.

I thought something might be cool to do.

Take a key doctrine of Christian faith.

It could be baptism, it could be evangelism, it could be sanctification.

Anything.

Write it down and why it matters.

Write it in a way that you could explain to others.

Back it up with scripture.

Get into your Bibles.

Can I fully explain why giving to the poor is so important biblically?

Write it down.

Write why it matters.

Don't just go by your experience.

Your instincts go by God's word.

Secondly, guard against false teaching, and that is me here.

And you there

evaluate the content that you consume.

What podcast do you listen to?

What c what commentaries do you read?

What music do you listen to?

Heck, there's some Christian songs.

I'm like, ah, that's wrong.

Evaluate.

Be a Berean.

Evaluate this lesson.

Go back, read Jude.

There's a bunch of stuff.

Go back and read all the Old Testament references.

Read through the book of Enoch and the Testament of Moses, which was two

of the things I quoted here today.

No God's word for you.

And finally show mercy.

Reach out to someone who you know has been struggling.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Eric Ennis: Reach out.

Give 'em a phone call.

Say, Hey man, I wanna spend time demonstrate mercy,

leading them back to God.

I'm grateful for the people who have have had mercy on me over the years.

My times of doubt, and my times of failure, and my times of hurt who've

demonstrated that I don't want us to be a place we just consume.

I wanna be a place that we give

as I end.

I'll end with this To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present

you before his glorious presence, without fault, and with great joy.

To the only God our Savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority

through Jesus Christ, our Lord, before all ages now and forevermore.

Amen.

As we close up this, this chapter of, of Lost, or I should say

forgotten books, they're not lost.

We can find them, but they're forgotten.

But as we close out this, just the reference of of going back to following

scripture and how important each one of those was calling us back to.

And as we think through communion, it says we get to present ourselves

before his glorious presence.

Without fault and with great joy, not because of how good

we are, because who Jesus was.

Mm-hmm.

And why could Jude write this?

Because he saw Jesus.

He knew who Jesus really was.

He had changed his mindset.

He was no longer a brother who no longer believed he was a brother who

was willing to be a slave to Christ.

And as we come before him, now in our communion, we get

to come to him without fault.

Not because we are sinless, because Jesus was, he was the perfect sacrifice 'cause

it was through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let's pray for communion now.

Father, as we come before you, um, father, I am humbled.

As someone who's standing up here talking now, as someone who wants

to fight and contend for the faith,

God, I pray that we have the humility to look at the teachings that are going

on both externally, but also internally,

that we root out false teaching in our own hearts, but also in our fellowship

that we have mercy on one another.

But God that we fight for our faith because God, you agonized

for the faith as well when you were in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Not my will, but your will be done.

You have paved a way for us.

Father, I pray we follow it completely, not half-heartedly, but wholeheartedly,

because God, it's only you that can save.

Father, we love you.

But more importantly, we know that you love us and we are grateful to be in

your glorious presence without fault and with great joy because we know that

your son died, but also resurrected, and we pray this in your son's name,

Speaker 3: amen.