Living Waters of Grace 09.05.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Lewis

Harold, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland

County in Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Lewis as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

The heart of Cain was exposed because he became jealous, even

to the point of a murderous spirit.

Because of his pride and self righteousness, he killed his

brother. And we have to be careful of our

motives when we do things. Are we doing them out of pride?

Are we doing them out of self righteousness?

Or are we doing them in faith, understanding that none of our

good works are going to be good enough to get us into heaven?

We don't do good works in order to earn our salvation, but we do

good works because we are saved. If there were only one way to

reach heaven, how do you think it could be obtained?

Is it through a life dedicated to giving back?

Is it by being a good person? What if I told you that only one

thing truly matters? In today's message, Pastor Lewis

reminds you that there is only one way to have eternal life

with Jesus by placing your faith in Him.

No amount of good deeds or perfect living can bridge the

gap between you and eternal life.

It is only through Jesus and His grace that you and I can be with

Him eternally. Now here's Pastor Lewis in the

Book of Jude, chapter one with today's edition of Living Waters

of Grace. I was home one Saturday morning

recently and I heard the knocking on the door.

Kind of had an idea who it was. So that's why you didn't rush

down to answer, right? So we come down, we answer the

door. I think my wife actually

answered the door 1st and then I was upstairs.

I was trying to hide and, and she eventually answered the door

and started talking with them. And she said, wait a minute, let

me ask my husband. I thought, oh man.

So so I came downstairs and this, you know, woman was there

at the door. There was two other people on

the sidewalk looking, watching. So we knew exactly what this was

about. Total witnesses.

So this woman is trying to share her Watchtower information with

me and share her scriptures and try to make me convince me, you

know, that Jesus was not God in the flesh, right?

Yeah. She's just, you know, I believe

in Jesus too, just like you do. I said, oh, do you?

Yeah. I believe that Jesus, you know,

is the Son of God. Do you?

Yeah. I believe she is the Son of God.

Yeah. Well, I believe that Jesus is

God in the flesh. Oh, no, no.

So she begins to explain to me why Jesus is not God in the

flesh. And because she said it's just

not logical. There's a number of things that

she mentioned. It's just not logical.

And that's one of the things I've noticed that they will say

when you start talking about the things of God, you know, these

things are not logical. For example, they think the

Trinity is not logical. So they don't, you know, talk

about the Trinity or what are you talking about?

You know, God in three persons. What are you talking about?

It's not logical, doesn't even make sense.

So I listened to her talk about that.

And then she, you know, we, you know, we even talked about the

the incarnation. Of course, you know, she totally

got rid of that. No, Jesus, you know, you know,

no, he's not he. He's a son of God.

He was created being, you know, but he's not God in the flesh.

Talk a little bit about that. And and then she went to the

resurrection talked a little bit about about that.

Well, he resurrected, but Aiden resurrect in fully, you know,

body. He's resurrected.

He was just a spirit. What we just got finished

reading last week, right, that when he resurrected, he

resurrected in the in the body, right, Because Mary Magdalene

grabbed his feet, right? You can't grab the feet of a

spirit, right? So anyway, I made this one

statement to her and this woman turned into an angry demon and

all I said to her, well would you know these things are only

discerned in the Spirit, Only the Spirit can recognize these

things. Or you said I don't have the

Spirit of God in me. Yes, yes.

And she went on a rant that I never thought a woman that now I

was, I'm about 6-1. Well, I was probably 6-1 then

this woman, you know, probably only came to about here, but I

mean, she just rant and raved and looked up and just I mean, I

she wow, she was angry. She was really, really angry.

We never had another person come back after that.

Never had another person called. Have we anybody come back after

that? Yeah, we never had another

person come back after that. So she obviously wouldn't told

her homies just bypass that house, OK, 'cause they 'cause

they hanging with it. But yeah, I couldn't believe how

angry she got. But it's the Spirit of God that

discerns these things. That's why Paul prayed to the

Colossians. When he prayed for the

Colossians Church, he prayed that they would be filled with

the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual

understanding, spiritual understanding, because that's

how these things are understood. But these false teachers don't

have that. They don't have the Spirit, so

they can't talk about the scriptures or the things of God

from a spiritual standpoint. They can only look at it through

the natural. They can only look at it through

the natural. And that's why they get into so

many problems, because they can't see it through the Spirit.

First Corinthians chapter 2 and 11 says for what man knows the

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

things of man except the spirit of man, which is in him.

Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the spirit from the world.

If you have the spirit of the world, you understand the things

of the world. People who are in the world,

they can have a conversation with each other and say things

that to us now, those things may sound absurd to us or just like

things. There's no way we're doing that.

You know, there's no way I'm, I'm going to be in agreement

with this, but you can see in the times how people are fine

with some of the way that society is changing.

The people of the world are fine with it.

They're totally fine with it. But us, we're grieved by it.

And it's because the world takes on its own.

The world loves its own. The world deals with its own.

They understand those things because they have the spirit of

the world. But we have received not the

spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we

might know the things that have been freely given to us of God.

We get those things freely through the Spirit of God.

But they, they have no understanding of, but yet they

speak negatively about the spirit when you know someone

that could be even someone who goes to church all the time.

And because you may be, you know, walking in obedience,

because the Holy Spirit, you're developing this relationship

with the Lord and you're walking in the Spirit and you're

walking, you're trying to, you're walking in obedience to

the Lord as much as you possibly can in your own cause.

And we, we're all still sin and we're honest about that with

each other. But yet you get someone who's

not into walking in obedience and they begin to start speaking

evil of you. Oh, he thinks he's too good for

us. He thinks he can't do this

anymore. He can't do that anymore.

You know, they start speaking evil of you.

And that's exactly what happened when they start speaking evil of

the teachers who were teaching the truth.

They're speaking evil, those teachers demeaning them to other

people. So then we going down here to

verse 11, like he said, he says, whoa, he said they're like, you

know, before he said they're like group beasts and they

corrupt, you know, they, they, they corrupt themselves with the

things that they do know. And then in verse 11, he says

woe to them for they have gone the way of Cain and in the era

of Balaam for prophet and in rebellion of Korah.

Well, first of all, they're brute beast.

And that means that they're only living in a way that satisfies

the flesh, their primal instincts, brute beasts.

You're living like a brute beast and that means you're just

living to satisfy your urges. That's why animals are able when

he said, you know, they corrupt themselves and in, in those

things that they that they do know, because the only thing

they do know is their urges, their loss, their desire for

natural things. And that's why animals can get

trapped. We have some people here who are

hunters. They trap animals or they lure

animals. How do they trap them?

They lure them. How do they lure them?

They lure them by things that they're driven to eat, things

that they're driven to do. If you got an animal who loves

meat, you put a piece of meat in a box, he's coming for it.

He's coming for it. And when they come for these

things, they don't come with a regard of the consequences of

what they're. They don't even think about

those things. Only thing they're thinking

about is that I want to get to the meat because I'm going to

satisfy this urge to eat. I want to satisfy this urge to

eat. That's all they have, That's all

they know. And when we live in disobedience

to the Lord, when we live just doing what we want to do,

ignoring the Spirit of God, then we live almost like brute

beasts, just satisfying our flesh, satisfying our flesh.

And how many times did we and men today, how many times do

they fall into trouble following after their urges?

How many pastors have fallen? How many people have fallen

falling into these traps that the enemy sets to try to lure

you to satisfy your flesh? I'm going to tell you something

that's going to everyday there's something that the enemy is

going to try to do in your life to try to set you up to fall

into one of his traps and he knows what you desire.

He knows where you're weak. So I so important stay close to

the word of God and in prayer and to be filled with the spirit

to ask every morning, Lord, fill me with your spirit today so

that I can walk in obedience to you because I can't do it on my

own. We would fall into every trap

that the enemy was set if we try to do it on our own brute

beasts. So when we try to please our own

selves, that's what happened. We're like brute beasts.

And he says woe to them. That woe means it's like an

expression of of coming up calamity.

Whoa, it's almost like a cursing.

It's like an expression of of calamity or judgment.

Woe to them. Jesus used it quite a bit in in

Matthew 23 when he was talking to the Pharisees and he said woe

you hypocrites, woe to you. They have gone in the way of

Cain the heir of Balaam for profit, and also of Korah.

Now it's interesting because Jude almost makes it seem like

he thinks you already know what that means.

You know, like he's like, he's sure that everybody who's

reading this knows what that means.

What does it mean to go in the way of Cain?

What does it mean to go in the in, in in the era of Balaam for

profit? What does it mean to go on the

rebellion of Korah, of Korah? What does that mean?

Well, unless you read the Old Testament, you won't know what

that means. And but he just assumed that

everybody read it because that's all they had was the Old

Testament. So let's look at these.

He said, first of all, you go in the way of Cain.

How did Cain go? Well, if you read Cain's story

way back, Genesis 4, that's where you read the story of Cain

and Abel, where Cain actually killed his brother Abel.

Now prior to that, though, they both came to God and offered a

sacrifice. Abel, Cain's brother, offered a

sacrifice of blood. There was a he was a shepherd,

so he offered a sacrifice from his flock.

It was a sacrifice of blood. Cain, on the other hand, brought

a sacrifice that was from the field.

Cain was a farmer, so he brought a sacrifice that was of the

field, of his of his produce. Now, is it wrong to present a

sacrifice of produce? No.

Is it wrong to present that sacrifice of blood?

That's not what the issue was. The issue is that only one of

them presented it in faith. Only one.

And it was Abel. And the reason why it's even

said that Abel presented it in faith.

Again, you'd have to go back into Genesis chapter and chapter

3 before where they were, when Adam and Eve sinned, when they

were in the garden. If you remember when they

sinned, they made fig leaves to put around their bodies to cover

themselves up because they knew that they were naked, their eyes

were open, they made fig leaves. God wasn't satisfied with that.

That's not the sacrifice that he wants for sin.

It had to be a blood without the without the remission, you know,

without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of

sin. So it had animal had to die.

Something had to die to cover that sin.

So he, God sacrificed an animal for them.

So the blood had to be shed for the remission of the sins and

they put, he covered them with that.

So when Abel came in that same vein, because of faith, the only

way we're getting to the Father is through Jesus Christ and

through the blood of Jesus Christ.

So when Abel came and he presented the sacrifice with

blood, that was in obedience to the sacrifice that God wants,

and it was done in faith. It was done in faith.

Hebrews chapter 4 he says very clearly, and I'll read it to

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

you, you don't even have to go look for it, I'll read it to you

over in Chapter 11. He says this.

Hebrews 11 For by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent

sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that

he was righteous God testifying of his gifts.

And through it he being dead, still speaks.

He received that sacrifice because it was sacrifice.

And faith, you see, Cain offered a sacrifice that was just from

works of his own hands. Works.

It was a sacrifice of works. You know, look what I do I earn

this, but Abel understood that without the remission of blood

there can be without the shedding of blood, it could be

no remission of sins. He understood that.

So that's why his his offering was accepted and and Cain's

wasn't Bible also said, and this is my favorite Scripture.

In fact, when I'll die, I want this to be on my head stone

because it brought me through when I first got saved.

Help me understand faith. Hebrews 11/6.

But without faith it's impossible to please Him.

When you come to God, you must believe that He is and that He

is the rewarder of them. That not casually seek Him, but

diligently seek Him. That verse got me through a lot.

That verse got me through a lot. So that's why Abel's sacrifice

was accepted and Keynes was not. But as a result of the heart of

Cain was exposed because he became jealous even to the point

of a murderous spirit. Because of his pride and self

righteousness, he killed his brother.

And we have to be careful of our motives when we do things.

Are we doing them not a pride? Are we doing them not a self

righteousness? Or are we doing them in faith,

understanding that none of our good works are going to be good

enough to get us into heaven? We don't do good works in order

to earn our salvation, but we do good works because we are saved

and it's who we are. It's who we are.

So then we're going to go just just one more Balaam, he said.

You'll run greedily in the air of Balaam.

Well, Balaam was back in the Old Testament also.

In order to get to Balaam's example, you'd have to go back

to Numbers chapter 22. And I definitely suggest that

Numbers 22 · chapter mention

you go back and read that when you get an opportunity because

it talks about Balaam who was a, was a prophet, but he was a

prophet with, he's kind of unscrupulous, put it that way.

He used his gift of prophecy that God gave him.

He used it for money, for filthy lucre, use it for money.

And because he used it for money, eventually, again

exposing his heart, he could not curse, which is what Balak the

king at that time wanted him to do.

He wanted Balaam to curse the children of Israel and they were

coming out of Egypt and they were now on his territory and

they wanted, he wanted those children cursed.

Well, Balaam realized that he couldn't curse them because God

had blessed them. However, because of his heart

and because he wanted the money, I'll show you how to lead them

into sin so that they become a curse to themselves.

And he tempted them with the women, the Pagan women.

He tempted them with them and they fell into sin with these

Pagan women. Again, sexual immorality being

the headline of that particular sin because of the urges that

these men had, not being able to restrain them on their own and

went into disobedience against God.

So Balaam cursed was able to have those children basically

curse themselves. And I'm going to wait before I

go in the court because that's a story that takes a little bit

more of a description that I think is really important.

And I don't want to rush through that.

Now think about, as we talked about earlier, our our

thankfulness to just be saved, the salvation that Jesus Christ

came and died for for us. And when I think about all these

men, all these situations that these false teachers have fallen

into because of their rejection of Jesus Christ, because of

their rejection of the apostles doctrine and truth, they are

bringing sin on themselves. But Jesus Christ came and he

brought his word with he gave us his word.

And as we said, all Scripture is inspired by God and it's all

profitable for doctrine, which means it's profitable for

teaching. It's also used for to correct

us. It's used for reproof and for

instruction in righteousness. And I'm so grateful that Jesus

came as the word of God, Word made flesh that we would

actually people who witnessed his life actually saw, not just

read, but actually saw the word of God being lived out in the

person of God the Son. And we have that opportunity

when he gave his life and paid for our sins, which we could

have never done on our own. No matter what, how good we

think we were, how good we think we are, we would never be good

enough to be able to achieve salvation.

But Jesus Christ died on that cross that we would have our sin

debt paid. It's paid in full.

It's already done. So for those of you who have not

taken advantage or those of you who have not received His

salvation, you don't have to do anything for it.

It's already done. You just have to accept it.

Accept it. First of all, accept the fact

that we needed it. I needed Jesus to come and die

for me because I'm a Sinner. I needed Him to die for me.

We have to accept that and the fact that He died not for

himself, but He did it for us. He died for me.

He died for you, God, for all of you.

That's why He's our God. You've been listening to Living

Waters of Grace with Pastor Lewis Harrell at Calvary Chapel

Westmoreland in Greensburg, PA. As Pastor Lewis continues to

preach through the book of Jude, he wants you to realize that you

can't be a part time Christian. If you're going to follow Jesus,

He is going to ask for your undivided loyalty.

If you try to serve your own interests while following Jesus,

you find that you can't do either one successfully.

But if you run after Jesus with everything you have, you'll be

amazed at how He provides for you and sustains you on the

journey, even when you have no idea of where your provision

will come from. If today's message has

encouraged you, we'd love to hear your feedback.

You can visit [email protected]

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