Living Waters of Grace 09.03.25

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. Pastor Clark always said there's

a famine for the word of God and it's so true.

There's a famine for the word of God.

And that's why I love this church because when you come to

church, you come bringing Bibles, you come with the

intention to hear the Word of God.

You come with the intention to learn more about the Word of

God, to dig into the Word of God.

So we thank God that in here we can be able to share the

Scripture one verse at a time and to hear what God has to say.

As Christians, we journey through life with Jesus by our

side. However, there are times when we

may overlook the fact that His Word provides the sustenance we

need. We might find ourselves running

on empty, and before we realize it, we can end up in a difficult

situation without thinking about turning to Him for help.

That's why in today's message, Pastor Lewis reminds you that

attending church is not just about fulfilling an obligation

or participating in a social event.

It's an opportunity to fill up your spiritual tank.

Now here's Pastor Lewis in the Book of Jude, chapter one with

today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

Before we go into all that, I do want to share or just kind of

give us a backdrop of where we've come so far.

If we remember a few weeks ago when we first started this, the

whole idea is the reason why we're talking about these false

teachers is because Jude, who initially intended to write this

letter for the purpose of being able to just encourage the

believers, encourage them in their in their faith, just to

talk about the common salvation and all the things that they had

in common being saved. But the Holy Spirit moved on

them and said, no, I want you to take this a different way.

We are in a time right now where there's so many false teachers

and so many such a big famine for the word of God and, and,

and we need to do more than just talk about the common salvation,

but we need to exhort the believers to contend earnestly

for the faith. So he decided that he would

write this to exhort us and them to be steadfast to be unmovable

when it comes to the faith, and not just a faith that comes with

someone's opinions or faith that includes someone's psychology or

someone's philosophy. But he said the faith that was

once for all delivered to the Saints, that mean the very word,

the very doctrine that was passed down from the apostles

that they received from Jesus Christ, that they gave to the

people. And we now share with each other

that faith is what we need to contend for, that striving to

strive for that faith, to agonize for that faith and to to

do it earnestly, to do it with everything that we have on the

inside of us. And then he goes on and he tells

us he said been the reason why we need to contend for the

faith. And it's not much different than

what it is now. We need to contend for the faith

because you know, there's false teachers, there's teachers that

are teaching things contrary to the faith that was given to the

apostles, just like today, there's teachers that are

teaching things that are contrary to the faith.

Pastor Clark always said there's a famine for the word of God.

And it's so true. There's a famine for the word of

God. And that's why I love this

church because when you come to church, you come bringing

Bibles, you come with the intention to hear the word of

God. You come with the intention to

learn more about the Word of God, to dig into the Word of

God. So we thank God that in here we

can be able to share the Scripture one verse at a time

and to hear what God has to say. But here he said in verse four

said that there's certain men crepin.

I said that they were creeps that crept and they crepin and

they came in unnoticed and they begin to do ungodly things and

speak ungodly things and speak things that were untrue, abusing

the very grace of God, even denying Jesus Christ.

And then in verse 5 he says, but we can always be encouraged when

he used that word. But he said, but I want to

remind you and he wants to remind them about the and us

about the character of God, the holiness of God, the

righteousness of God. And in doing that, he gives us 3

examples of those who sinned against God and were judged.

And of course, if you remember, we talked about the children of

Israel who was in, you know, once they got out of Egypt and

he delivered them out of Egypt, how they were unbelievers in the

wilderness. And those who, who, who were

unbelievers, they perished in the wilderness, they were

judged. And even the angels in verse 6,

he talked about the angels who didn't keep their proper domain,

but they end up sinning against God and rebelling against God,

even coming down and committing sexual acts with, with people.

You can read about that over in Genesis in chapter 6, how he was

these, the sons of men came in and, and, and had sexual

relationships with the daughters of men.

And they created these giants and these Nephilim and, and

thank you. And these people and these

people end up being they, they perished in the flood.

They perished in the flood. And then he also talked about

Sodom and Gomorrah. And again, we, we talked about

how God judged Sodom and Gomorrah because of their

perversions, because of them going after strange flesh,

having unnatural desires, men desiring men and women desiring

women and, and, and, and the place was just a mess, even to

the point where they challenged or threatened to abuse the

angels of the Lord who came to the check the place out because

they wanted to make sure before they destroyed it that they had

good reason to do so. And they did so these three

examples, Old Testament examples gave a a peek into the the, the

character of God and to the holiness of God and to the

righteousness of God. Sin will be judged.

Sin will be judged. So now we come here to verse 8

and he says likewise. I want you to look at that word.

He says likewise also these dreamers.

And I'm going to, I'm going to just go ahead and read it down

to read verse 8:00 and 9:00 and then we'll come back and we're

going to make comment about that.

He says likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh.

They reject authority and speak evil of dignitaries.

Yet Michael the Archangel, in contending with the devil, when

he disputed about the body of Moses, deter dared not to bring

against him a reviling accusation.

But he said, the Lord rebuke you.

There's a lot in this little one or two verses when he says

likewise, he's mean. Yeah.

In the same manner as or just like Sodom and Gomorrah, just

like they how they defiled their flesh, these dreamers defile

their flesh. Just like they rejected

authority and did not want to listen to the authority of God

or the word of God. So these dreamers reject

authority and they speak evil of dignitaries.

Now this dreamers, what in the world is he saying to be these

dreamers? What exactly is a dreamer?

Well, for them, they're dreamer. They consider them dreamers

because they're really, they don't, they don't really live

in, they don't really live realistic lives.

They they live their lives based on these dreams that they have

that they think came from God. But it obviously don't because

they're doing things that are contrary to the word of God.

So these dreams come from other places or these visions that

they have, and they live by these things thinking that it's

OK, it's OK, you know, to live this way.

Even these visions that say that sexual immorality is a part of

salvation and it's OK, you know, to defile your body sexually,

it's part of salvation because your body is evil anyway.

It's your spirit that you have to be concerned about.

That's evil. That is not of the Lord.

Those are visions that they're making up.

They're unrealistic. I told you a while ago, my

grandmother and her wisdom she taught me years ago when I was

young, she said to me, we're talking about how preachers are

called to the ministry. And, and she was explaining to

me how pastors and those who preach the word of God, they're

called by God and then they're sent out.

But then she warned me, she said, now there are those who

are sent and then there's those who just went.

And, and she was explaining to me that there's some false

teachers out there, that they were not called by God.

They were not called even by their authority.

They just got up and decide they want to start pre.

They just went. They just went, and that's

exactly what we're talking about here with these dreamers.

These are just men who they were not anointed by God, they were

not called by God, they didn't have the Spirit of God, and they

just start teaching and preaching, coming out from the

body, speaking things that are contrary to the doctrine of the

apostles. It's also true that they're out

of touch with reality and they live these unrealistic lives and

instead of believing according to the truth of Scripture, they

have their own way of doing things according to their own

dreams. They turn away from God's truth

and they feed themselves. They feed their themselves on

these false doctrine. And when you feed themselves,

they're feeding their own flesh. They're not filling the spirit,

they're not feeding the spirit, they're feeding their flesh.

Then, because they're feeding their flesh, their egos and

pride begins to rise out of that, and that encourages them

to rebel against truth. These aren't doctrines that come

from the Holy Spirit. These aren't doctrines that they

receive from the apostles. These are demonic doctrines,

doctrines of demons. First Timothy 41 and two says

that they depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits

and doctrines of demons. These dreamers and one of the

things that there's three things that he said that these dreamers

do. First thing that they do is that

they defile the flesh. These dreamers defile the flesh.

Now obviously you're talking about the same way that they did

with the sexual immorality over here and what was Sodom and

Gomorrah over in verse 7, how those and that lived in Sodom

and Gomorrah and the surrounding areas, how they defiled their

flesh by having immoral sexual relationships going after

strange. But perversion is basically what

they what they end up doing. And in doing so, they defiled

their bodies, they defiled their minds and, and now what

defilement is basically it's being impure.

When you defile your flesh, it's being impure.

It's dishonor it desecrate desecration of the body and

mind. Usually when you talk about

defilement, they're usually referred to sexual immorality.

But like it like it wasn't solemn.

However, there's a lot of ways that we can defile ourselves

now. Now back in the Old Testament

when they talk about defilement, you know, there there you talk

about defilement in terms of, you know, not being clean.

So if someone touched the dead body, that was defiling to them.

If someone ate with unclean hands, that was like defiling to

them or any of those kind of thing.

Tucks A leper. You couldn't, you know, you were

defiled. You weren't clean until you had

to go through the ritual. And they had all these rituals

of how to make one clean, you know, washing the hands.

Jesus talked about that over in Mark 7.

He talks about how they did wash their hands several times and,

and, and how they have to do all these, these rituals to become

clean. Well, now you don't have to do

all those things to become clean.

You confess your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ and you repent

of those sins and it's the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses

us. The blood of Jesus Christ

cleanses us, but there has to be a confession and there has to be

a repentance. That's the that's the humility

that we need that can make us clean.

And we can't cleanse ourselves. There's no way that we can

cleanse ourselves, but we can become cleansed through the

blood of Jesus Christ that he shed for us on Calvary.

And thank God for that. In that blood that he shed 2000

years ago, it's still just as efficacious today.

It can still cleanse, still cleanse sins today, hasn't lost

its power, thank God. So he talked about this, this

defilement and, and how they defile themselves.

They defile themselves even through the way that they think.

Jesus taught us over in Mark 7, and I'm just going to go there

very quickly because I want to read that scripture over in Mark

7. He taught us that defilement

doesn't come from anything that we put in to our bodies, but the

defilement comes from what comes out of us.

It comes out of the heart. And he talked about the things

that defile us. And over here in Mark Chapter 7,

Mark 7 · chapter mention

speaking in verse, starting at verse 21, he says, For from

within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,

adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness,

wickedness, deceit, a lewdness and an evil eye, blasphemy,

pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within a

man and defiles a man. So these are the things that

come out of the heart. These are things that we store

up in the heart that defiles us. It's not the things that we eat.

It's not washing, it's not eaten with unwashing hands.

But these men, these dreamers, these false teachers, they

defiled themselves because of the things that were in their

heart. They were covetous.

They were ungodly men. According to the Scripture here,

these were men who, who, who, who were involved themselves in

sexual morality and deceit of all types.

They defiled themselves. So then it also talked about the

fact that they rejected authority.

Well, if men are not godly and if they're doing things on their

own, then they will reject authority.

And that's exactly what these men did.

They rejected authority. They didn't want to do what was

according to the word of God, and they rejected those who God

had put in authority over them. It's a dangerous thing to be to

reject the authority that God puts over us.

He put something, He puts people in authority over us for a

reason. Not only when they reject the

authority, they think that they're rejecting the person

themselves, but they're not. When you reject the authority

that God puts in place for you're rejecting God, you're

rejecting God. Samuel told Saul that the

people, when they wanted a king, Samuel felt like the people were

rejecting him. And God said no, they're

rejecting me, they're rejecting me.

So God's authority and God put authority in place.

That's the authority that we should submit to.

But these dreamers, they don't practice submission to

authority, They practice rejection of the authority.

And we have to be careful with that, not to reject the

authority. Even if we don't agree with

authority, the word of God will deal and God will deal with the

authority that we may object to. He says, therefore, you know,

therefore, basically when they reject the authority, they

reject the authority because they want to be an authority

themselves. Often times that's what makes

them the Antichrist, because they want to be in authority

instead of Christ. So it makes them an Antichrist.

And then of course, the third thing that they mentioned is the

fact that they speak evil of dignitaries.

That's speaking evil with angels or the glorious ones speaking

evil with them. And then go a little further.

We can go down a little further. And once we get to verse 9, he's

going to give an example of what he means by that.

But you know, angels would play the a very prominent role with

the Lord, even though we know angels are lower than Jesus

Christ. But yet it was angels, It was

angels who was here during the time that the Lord had it even

brought in the law. I'm going to go back to

Deuteronomy, go Old Testament here for a second, and I'm going

to try to show this to you how important it is to God about how

important angels were in the prominent place that they had

with him because they were there for a number of very important

events. And over here in Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 33 · chapter mention

chapter 33, it's going to read this small verse here 33 and

verse 2. I'm going to read 1 and 2.

It says now this is a blessing with which Moses the man of God,

blessed the children of Israel before his death.

And he said the Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from

Sire and he shone forth from Mount Paran and he came with 10

thousands of Saints, in other words, 10,000 of angels from his

right hand came, came a fiery law for them.

And then verse 3 say yes, he loves the people and all his

Saints are in his hand. They sit down at your feet.

Everyone receives your words. So angels were there during the

time that when he came down and he appeared and even over here

and this is and this is one that I I thought was very interesting

as well over here in Acts. Let's go to the book of Acts

real quick concerning the angels in the book of Acts Chapter 7,

Acts 7 · chapter mention

and most of you probably already know that we're talking about

Stephen. So now we're looking at what

happened when Stephen was being persecuted.

And Chapter 7, verse 53, and I'm going to start at verse 52, he

says, which of the angels did your father's not persecute?

He's talking to the Pharisees and those religious elites who

wanted to kill him. And they and they killed those

who foretold the coming of the just one of whom you now have

become the betrayers and murderers.

And verse 53 is the one I want you to pay attention to.

He says, Who have received the law?

How do they receive the law? By the direction of angels and

have not kept it. Direction of angels and have not

kept it. And then just one more Galatians

in the book of Galatians. Just trying to draw a picture

here of the significance of these angels and why he's

talking about how they basically speak evil of dignitaries of

these angels. Galatians chapter 3 and look at

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

with me at verse 14. I'm going to start at verse 2.

It says this only. I want to learn from you.

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the

hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun

in the Spirit that you are now being when I'm now being made

perfect in the flesh? And then I want you to go over

to verse chapter 4 and in chapter 4, go to chapter 3,

verse 19. There we go.

OK, chapter 3, verse 19. This is what it says.

What purpose then does the law serve?

It was added because of transgressions till the seed

should come to whom the promise was made to.

The seed obviously was Jesus Christ, and it was appointed

through angels by the hand of a mediator.

Now a meteor does not mediate for only one, but God is 1.

So he talks about the importance of angels and how important it

was at the time of the law and the presenting of the law, how

the angels even came with him. Over in Exodus talks about how

the angels, the Lord came with him at the time when he came to

to Mount Sier, which is where he came to present the law.

So when you talk about all these things and all these things, how

they combine and these men who did not have a problem with

speaking evil of these dignitaries.

And so he gave an example. He said, no, wait a minute, you

being mere men don't have a problem speaking evil

dignitaries. Yet Michael the Archangel who is

more powerful than most men, he wouldn't even speak evil to an

Angel. So look at what he says in verse

9, back in Jude verse 9, he says, yet Michael the Archangel

and contending with the devil when he disputed about the body

of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling

accusation, but said the Lord rebuke you.

So he's making a point here. And what he's saying is that

these dreamers, these false teachers, they don't mind

speaking evil about angels or dignitaries or these spiritual

authority, spiritual authorities, they don't mind

speaking evil of them and they don't know anything about them,

but yet they speak evil of them. But yet Michael the Archangel

who was constantly before the throne of God, who was basically

the battle Angel. I mean, he would come to me back

in the book of Dan and talked about Michael the Archangel

doing battle with the devil when he wanted to come to Daniel,

when Daniel had requested a word and he was coming, but he was

being delayed because he was in battle with the devil, with a

demon. So Michael the Archangel was not

a wimp. He was powerful Angel and had a

lot of authority. But yet he will not bring a

railing accusation against Satan.

He said the Lord rebuked you. 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, we want 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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