Jude 4 (Part 2)

The Shepherd's Church

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Let's pray, Father God, I pray that you would be with us right now as we open your word and as we examine the truths that Jude would have us to examine.

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Lord I pray that we would look at these texts with sobriety and with earnestness and that we would understand what

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Jude has to say. Lord I pray that as we go outside of Jude today and Paul and Peter and James and John, that we would understand what they have to say and what light they can bring.

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Lord I pray that as we examine this topic that it would be helpful. Lord I know that these texts in Jude are not often the most favorite because they are heavy, but Lord there's a season for heavy.

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There's a season to look into the truth of these things and to examine what you have to say and Lord I pray that we would learn and that we would examine and that we would understand and that Lord ultimately like Jude tells us that we would earnestly contend for the faith.

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So Lord I ask that as we do that here this evening that you would lead, guide, and direct.

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Would you allow me to speak only the words that are in your text? Would you allow me to be accurate and to speak with care and to not reduce or do damage to this text in any way through my carelessness?

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Lord would you protect me? Would you keep me? And Lord would you by the

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Spirit's power write these words on all of our hearts? In Christ's name, amen. So last week we talked about basically what wolves do.

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We talked about how they have a four -fold strategy and I want to just for a second give you a reason why that we're using the word wolf because Jude actually doesn't use the word wolf.

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If you have been reading you'll see that the word wolf doesn't appear at all in the text of Jude. And there's three reasons why we're using this word and the first is because Jesus himself uses this word.

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He calls these type of people ravenous wolves. Jude calls them certain persons, but Jesus says that they're ravenous wolves.

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They're talking about the same group of people and we're using the word that Jesus uses. We're also using the same word

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Paul uses. He calls them savage wolves. So this is a common biblical word to describe this type of person who sneaks into the church and who does damage.

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So we're using that word. The second reason that we're using that word is because I think it communicates a consistency in our language.

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There's many things that we could call these people. We could call them wolves and heretics and false prophets and charlatans and we could use any number of words that come in the text and it could get fairly confusing.

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So I want us to use one word that kind of describes everyone in this category so that we can have consistency.

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And then the other reason is because I think this metaphor is rich and it communicates much by it.

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When I tell you that someone is a wolf, that doesn't make you think that they like you. That doesn't make you think that they have your best interest at heart.

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That makes you think of someone who wants to attack you. Someone who wants to harm you. This is the word that scripture uses and I want us to approach it with gravity because this is what a false teacher is.

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Someone who wants to come in and do damage in the church. Now again, last week we talked about that there's four stages that the wolf goes through in their opposition to the church.

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They sneak in unnoticed. They come in and they come in like stealthy spies and you can't even see them oftentimes because they come in in camouflage and they come in hiding and they come in unnoticed.

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The second stage is that they begin to live a life that is marked out for condemnation and we'll see more about that today.

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The third stage is they begin sinning regularly and they use the scriptures to justify themselves and finally, the fourth stage, the final stage, they deny

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Christ either through their behavior or through their theology. Today I want us to look at a slightly different angle.

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Last week we looked at what the wolf does. Today I want us to learn who the wolf is.

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I want us to look at the general characteristics about wolves so that we can understand not only what they do but who they are and so that we can diagnose the people that we listen to to see if they are true and faithful men and women of God.

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Now my goal in this and I want to give this warning right up front is that we are not doing this so that we can become hyper -vigilant wolf hunters with that badge of honor because if that were the case then every single person that we listen to we would start pointing fingers and saying that is a wolf and that's totally inappropriate.

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Our goal is not to resurrect the spirit of Salem, Massachusetts here with all of its confusion and all of its finger pointing and all of the damage that happened.

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We are not out to just be wolf namers. We are here not to be pretentious proud finger pointing

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Pharisees. We are here to understand the wolf so that we can contend for the faith. We are here to understand the characteristics of false teachers, heretics, and wolves so that you and I can be protected from that so that we can contend personally for that and so that we as a church could be a faithful and true church that contends for the word of God.

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So today I want us to look at five categories of wolves. Now I've looked at many, many scriptures this week and there's about five different categories of wolves that I want to just kind of summarize.

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We're not going to go exhaustively into any of them. We are going to just summarize these five categories of wolves so that you will know kind of who they are.

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And then the second thing I want us to do is I want us to look at our response to the wolf, God's response to the wolf, and how

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Jude structures his entire book to teach us how we should respond and how God responds.

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Is that clear? We're going to talk about the five categories and we're going to talk about the response. So let's look at Jude 4.

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It says, 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

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God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.

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Now, for me, one of the frustrating things that Jude does is that he doesn't name them. He starts out with certain persons, which is really esoteric, thank you,

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Jude. You might want to ask, who are these people? Where did they come from?

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Why are they here? What false doctrines are they bringing into Jude's church? Why is this verse even in the

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Bible if they're not going to tell us what it's about? Why doesn't Jude name them? Have you thought about that?

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And I think these are very important questions. And here's a few observations on, I think, why Jude doesn't name them.

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The first is because his audience already knew them. He's writing to a particular people, a particular church, and he's writing to them and they have the same shared knowledge that he does.

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He doesn't name them because they already knew them. So that's the first. The second reason that Jude doesn't name them is because books were expensive to make.

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And I don't think this is a major reason, but I think every single line was important. If you look at Greek manuscripts that are found, there are no spaces.

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Every word is jammed together and it's because books were expensive to make. The Book of Romans would have cost $10 ,000 in American money according to their standards of how to make books.

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So it was expensive. Again, I don't think that's the major reason, but I think that's a reason. The most probable reason why

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Jude doesn't name them is because he's doing it intentionally to shame them and to dishonor them. They're not even worthy of being named, and that is a common biblical thing to do.

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Jude is leaving them unnamed because he wants to showcase a powerful theological truth, and that is that they have no real and lasting identity.

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They don't belong to God. It says that they've been marked out for condemnation. They don't belong to God so much so that their names aren't even written in the

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Lamb's Book of Life. So therefore, Jude doesn't feel the pressure to name them in his book. I think that's what

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Jude is doing. But that's not the only reason that we should consider why they're unnamed, because Jude is not the only author of this book.

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Now I'm not trying to argue that there's another human author of this book. I'm saying that Jude is not the only writer of this text, and he's not even the primary author of this text, because the

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Holy Spirit is the one who wrote this book. So we now need to ask, why didn't God include the name of this aberrant group of people?

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Why didn't God tell us what was going on in this church so that we could be prepared, so that we could study how to defend ourselves from it?

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And I think there's a good reason for that. When you come upon a text like this, if the exact situation we're described with the exact people and the exact problem listed out in the text, we might be tempted to look at this verse far too narrowly.

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Let's give an example. If Jude said that this group's problem was as they were preaching that Jesus was not born of a virgin, then what would we do?

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We would study this text, and we would learn all the defenses of why Jesus was born of a virgin. We would learn the arguments, and we would learn the strategies, and we would spend all of our time focused on how to defend against people who come in and say that Jesus wasn't born of a virgin.

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And that's great, but that's not the only kind of wolf that there is. That's not the only kind of attack that can come into the church.

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If Jude would have listed out this entire fiasco, we would have been tempted to rail against this and to miss the overarching concept that this is not the only way that the church undergoes attack.

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There's other types of wolves. There's wolves who deny the deity of Christ. There's wolves who deny the humanity of Christ.

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There's wolves who deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the atonement of Christ. And that's just in our Christology.

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There's wolves who deny God the Father. There's wolves that deny the Holy Spirit. There are many types of wolves, and I think the

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Holy Spirit, who authored this text, did not want us to focus solely on that one particular thing so that we could see things in a little bit more general sense.

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And it's here that I want to just discuss for a moment the Bible's use of particular language and general language.

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And we will cover this fairly quickly, but I think this is important. In the Bible, there's two types of ways that God authors the text.

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He sometimes talks in particular, specific language, and sometimes he talks in general language.

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For instance, David read earlier in Matthew 6 the Lord's Prayer. Well, in that prayer, it doesn't say that Jesus is a way, that Jesus is a truth, that he's a certain way that you can have life in a pluralistic society.

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That would be a general way of describing it. Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, the life.

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No one comes to the Father but by me. It's entirely particular. It's specific.

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It's exclusive. Jesus is being particular here for a very good reason. Now, I can only imagine the confusion if Jesus would have said that he's a way to God, because then we would have thought that any way that was sincerely held could be a way that get to God.

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A Christian who is very sincere in their faith, right alongside of a Darwinian atheist, both are on equal footing because both are sincere, and we know that's utterly foolish.

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Because Jesus is the way. He uses specific language in that sense. But there's also a time to use particular language, general language.

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There's also a time to use general language. In the Lord's Prayer, it says, give us this day our daily bread.

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That's general. That's not particular. If that were particular, then maybe you would think that the only food that God blesses is his bread, and then only a certain type of bread, the daily bread.

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If you have monthly bread, well, you're out of luck. If you have broccoli, you're out of luck. If you have kale, well, you're never going to be blessed.

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That was funny. The point I'm making is that sometimes the

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Lord speaks in particulars. The other times, sometimes the Lord speaks in general. Bread, in this sense, is just an example of food.

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God provides for our needs. Now, in this text, I think that God, who authored this text, is speaking generally.

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And I think he's speaking that for a very good reason because he doesn't want us to believe that there's only one type of wolf that can come in and attack the church.

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It's just like an army. An army doesn't have just foot soldiers. They have sometimes cannon men and artillery men.

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They have LPN nurse type men. There's all types of people who go into the army.

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It's just like a dog. There's many types of breeds. There's some that you wouldn't even think are a dog. They look like an oversized rat.

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And then there's some very large dogs that you would want to put a saddle on and go ride. There's different types of dogs.

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There's different breeds. And in the Bible, there's different breeds of wolves. Jude doesn't tell us exactly who it is because I think he's making a more general point that wolves are coming into the church and that we should be on guard.

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Now, the reason today that we're going to leave Jude for a moment is because while it is a good exegetical point that Jude says that all types of wolves exist,

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I don't want to leave it there. I want to actually go outside of Jude for a moment and talk about the different types of wolves that exist so that we will understand who they are and how to diagnose them when we see them.

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So the first class of wolf that the Bible generally describes is the most general one of them all, and that's the heretic.

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That's the first class of wolves is the heretic. And what the heretic does is they twist scripture, manipulate scripture to suit their own ends.

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They do it so they can teach others their error, and then they splinter and fracture the church.

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In order to be a heretic, you must espouse heresy. That's really profound. In order to be a heretic, you must espouse heresy.

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It seems simple enough. To espouse heresy, then, is to believe a doctrine, to believe and teach a doctrine that's contrary to one of the core doctrines of scripture.

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It's when you change one of those core doctrines that you lose Christianity altogether.

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Just like if you don't have a virgin birth, you don't have a Messiah. If you don't have a resurrected Christ, you don't have a

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Savior. When you change them, you lose the faith, and you create an entirely new religion that's utterly powerless to save.

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This is why heresy is so dangerous, because when you twist one little thing, you end up with something that's not even

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Christianity. It won't even save. Now, the word heresy actually is a funny word.

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It means something different than what we actually think about it. It means to splinter, or to fracture, or to break apart.

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It means to kind of create a rival group. In the Book of Acts, this word is used six different times, and it's never translated by the

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English translator as heresy. It's translated as sect. So it says the sect of the

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Pharisees, meaning that they're this group that has splintered off from the other. The sect of the

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Judaizers means that they've splintered off from the others. It means a group that has adopted a new teaching and has divided themselves from the main group.

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They're splintered. They're fractured, disenfranchised. Now, a heretic, then, is someone who teaches something that is false and takes other people with them.

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That's kind of the point. These men are incredibly intelligent. They produce fine -sounding arguments.

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They sneak into the universities and seminaries and the churches in order to deny the fundamental truths of Christ so that they can take other people with them.

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They are theological kamikazes. That's what they are. 2

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Peter 2 .1 -2 describes them this way. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

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Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be maligned. What Jesus is saying is just like in the

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Old Testament when many false prophets rose up among the ranks of the church or among the people of God, in the

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New Testament, many false teachers are going to rise up. They're going to sneak into the church, and they're going to do destruction.

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Another example maybe is Acts chapter 20. Paul has planted a church in Ephesus, and he's been working in that church for about two or three years.

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He's raised up leaders. He's equipped people. He's discipled them. And he's on his way out the door, and in his final conversation with his people, he tells them this.

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Be on guard for yourselves and for the flock. This is him talking to the leadership. Among which the

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Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.

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I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.

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Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years

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I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears. What Paul is saying is that we have to be passionate and vigilant against the incoming attack of the heretic, of the wolf, because he knew that the church as the bride of Christ is vulnerable because Satan himself hates

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Christ. So why wouldn't he hate his bride? Why wouldn't he hate his church? Why wouldn't he send his heretical minions into the church to try to destroy the church?

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Paul knew this. Paul knew that wolves are relentless, so therefore we must also be relentless in defending against them.

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He tells them that the attack is going to come. Now, there's many other examples of heretics that we could go through in the

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Bible, but I'm going to leave it at those two. I think that we understand the fundamental point is that heretics are a class of wolves that deny a fundamental doctrine, they lead other people to deny fundamental doctrines, and then they cause damage in the church.

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That sound good? Great. Our next class of wolves are also considered heretics, but we're going to nuance this a little bit.

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Every single one of the ones I'm going to tell you about tonight deny the doctrines of the

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Bible, but they do it in different ways. So the next four that we're going to talk about,

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I'm going to call them the multipliers, the dividers, the subtractors, and the adders.

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I'm doing that for a pedagogical reason, because I want us to learn them and not be confused by them.

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So we're going to make it simple. Multipliers, dividers, adders, subtractors. These are what these four classes of people do.

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Real quick, before we do that, I want to give a qualification. These terms aren't found in the Bible. I don't know if you thought about this, but you're not going to go into any book of the

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Bible and see a multiplying wolf. It doesn't exist. This is just for us. And the second thing

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I want to tell you is that these are general characteristics. They're not absolutes. So one heretic might have the characteristic of just the multiplier, while another might have all four.

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These are general characteristics. They're not absolutes in that regard. Now, the multiplier wolf.

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These are men who sneak into the church to multiply personal gain. These are people who come in seeking to get more money.

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These are people who come into the church and go into church leadership to get more power and more status and more popularity.

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These are people who come in to abuse the sheep and to dominate the church of God. These are people who want to multiply all the benefits that they think that ministry gives them for their own personal advantage.

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The first group of these multipliers are the ones who want money. They come into the church for that reason, and they come in and they abuse the sheep.

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Sadly, they use the Bible as a weapon against God's people. They use God as a weapon against his own people in order to extract resources from the people of God.

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These are wolves who want to get rich off of ministry. And they don't care who they have to hurt in order to have it.

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1 Timothy 6, 3 through 5, talks about this type of person. It says, If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of those of our

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Lord Jesus Christ and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved minds and who are deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of great gain.

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Paul starts out talking about a general heretic who's twisting scripture, and then at the end he says that they're doing this because they want gain.

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They want financial gain out of this. Paul begins by talking about that, and he says that they're weaponizing the

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Bible against the poor. And unfortunately, this is not an uncommon thing in the

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American church. Pastors of many megachurches are some of the wealthiest men in the country.

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It's honestly appalling if you look at the list of millionaire pastors. It is shocking when you go on Instagram and you look at preachers in sneakers, which is an

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Instagram tag, where three, four, five thousand dollar shoes that they're wearing on stage just to gloat in their own wealth.

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It's shocking if you look at the multi -million dollar homes that these men have. It's obnoxious.

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And what's even more sick is that they've learned how to manipulate people to give them money, to give them lots of money.

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I remember watching on YouTube Kenneth Copeland brag about the fact that now he's a billionaire because of his ministry, that God had ordained that he have a billion dollars so that he could have a billion blessings, so that he could speak to billionaires, because God can't speak to billionaires unless you have a billion dollars, because God's limited by our wealth.

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It was unbelievable. The man had this maniacal, demonic look on his face, and it was appalling.

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He's a wolf. Verse nine, I think, brings some balance to this discussion of wolves that are seeking after money.

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It says, but those, meaning those teachers who want to get rich, fall into temptation.

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And a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.

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For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. And some, meaning not all of them, by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

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I want to be careful here because all pastors are sinners. All men, all women, all people are sinners.

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And there's some pastors who struggle with acceptance. There's some pastors who struggle with other things.

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There's some pastors who struggle with money. And Paul is not saying that everyone who ever struggles with money is a wolf.

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I want to be careful here. Paul says some. He says, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

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That means some who come into the church and who struggle with money are definitely wolves, but some are not.

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It means that some in this congregation probably struggle with money. I know for times I do,

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I often wonder when the bills are going to get paid, how the bills are going to get paid. Sometimes I think about that too much and I have to repent.

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You see, what makes a person a wolf is not what they struggle with. It's the fact that they refuse to repent. That's what makes a person a wolf.

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Not what they struggle with. All of us struggle with a multitude of different sins. It's the fact that they've given themselves over to the sin.

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That they don't submit their sinful desires to Christ. They live in such a way that their desires consume them.

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And what Paul tells us is that because they do that, they walk away from the faith. Jesus even says you cannot have two masters because you'll love the one and you'll hate the other.

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If your God is money, you will end up hating God. That's the truth. Paul echoes this concern in the book of Titus when he says in chapter 1, 10 and 11, for there are many rebellious men, empty talkers, and deceivers, especially of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they're upsetting whole families.

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Teaching things that they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. Paul's saying that money -grubbing wolves are coming into the church in order to disrupt it, in order to cause chaos in families and in the church of God, and they must be silenced.

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That's the first kind of wolf. A very general overview of the multiplying money wolf. There's also another type of multiplier.

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I'm going to call them the abuser. This is one who wants more power, more status. And oftentimes with that comes sexual deviancy in the scriptures.

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These are men who are bullies and abusers. These are men who find creative ways to dominate people so that they can feel important.

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They come into ministry so that they can have status, power, authority, and they use it in disgusting ways.

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2 Peter 1, 2 says, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them.

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And now watch this. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be maligned.

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What Paul is saying is that one of the key characteristics of the power -hungry pastor who is a wolf, is that they also are given over to sexual deviancy and sensuality.

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Verse 10 in that same chapter says, especially those who indulge in the flesh and its corrupting desires, and they despise authority.

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Do you see how he pairs those two concepts together? They despise authority and they go after the flesh.

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They despise the authority of God, and they give themselves over to licentiousness. And at first, these things don't seem to go together.

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But when you look at every single pastor who has ever fallen because of sexual sin, you will also see in their life a rejection of the truth, a rejection of godly authority.

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You will see these two hand in hand going together, because as a wolf, they're giving themselves over to these things.

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They're not repenting of these things, and they fall because of these things. Verse 13 through 15 says, they count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.

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They are stains and they are blemishes, reveling in their own deceptions as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart that is trained in greed, accursed children forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.

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Just a few verses down in 18 through 19, it says, for speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality.

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Those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption.

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For by what a man is overcome, to that he is enslaved. That is a powerful line.

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To what, or by what a man is overcome is the thing that he is enslaved. If Christ is the one who has overcome you, then you are a slave to Christ.

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But if you continually, like a dog returning to the vomit, continually are given over to lust, or given over to the love of money, or given over to power, or given over to anything unrepented, then you have to come to Christ and say,

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Christ, I need you. I need you to be my savior, because it is clear that I am continuing and continuing and continuing to do this without repentance.

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This is what the wolf does. They give themselves over into these things and they sneak into the church so that they can amass power and so that they can devour the sheep.

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I don't want us to be naive about this, especially on a day when someone just came into a church and shot multiple people just 10, 15 miles from where we're at.

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There is an evil presence in this country who wants to come into the church and there are wolves that he is sending in there to attack us.

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I know we're a small church. I know we're new, but one of the easiest ways for a wolf to get into your home is on your iPod or on your phone or on YouTube.

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It's easy. They proliferate the internet. The amount of pastors in our day that have fallen to these things is almost sickening.

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And they've allowed their power and their influence to overcome them so that they're given over to a life of deviancy.

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There's a pastor, grandson of Billy Graham. His name is Tully Intervention. He was an evangelical darling.

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He was writing books. He was one of the up and coming mega church pastors and because of unrepentant sin in his life and because of this wolf -like tendency, he was a predator in his own church.

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He had multiple illicit affairs with multiple different women. And instead of repenting and instead of realizing that he has disqualified himself for ministry, he not only left that church and became a pastor at another church, but when they fired him because he did the same thing there, then he decided that no one would sponsor him.

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He'd go plant a church. This man has refused to repent and he still to this day believes that he's a part of the flock of God.

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And I just pray that he doesn't attack another woman, that he doesn't do this again.

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We live in a day when this is common and that to me is shocking. And it's not just pastors.

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We live in a day where pastors really need to have sexual type of training for these things because there are people who come into the church and who convince children's workers that they should be volunteering back there.

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They build up trust, they get back with the kids and then before long, they take advantage of this. When I had a seminary class on this, it was shocking to me how many churches where ordinary people from off the street come to the church, they build trust with staff, they start volunteering in the kids ministry and then before long, someone's child is molested.

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This is disgusting and yet this has the fingerprint of Satan all over it. We must be vigilant against these type of wolves, these wolves that I'm calling multipliers because all they want is more power, more status, more money.

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They don't want God. That's the first type of wolf that we're gonna talk about tonight. The second is a little shorter.

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These are called the dividers. Their name kind of gives up who they are. They're ones who come into the church solely to cause division.

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Jude talks about these in verse 18 and 19. He said, in the last time there will be mockers following after their own ungodly lust.

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These are the ones who cause division. These are worldly minded people who are devoid of the spirit.

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These aren't wolves who are seeking to get rich. These aren't wolves who want more power. They're simply contentious people.

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They cause unnecessary divisions in the church. They're constantly striving to draw up controversy and Jude is harsh on this kind of behavior.

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He is just as harsh on this as he is on sexual deviancy when he lists that in verse four.

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These are people who are devoid of the spirit of God because they constantly cause division in the church.

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In the book of Proverbs, it says, God hates the one who calls disunity in the community. This is a big deal to God.

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In Romans 16, 17 through 18, Paul says, now I urge you brethren, keep your ear or keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you have learned and turn away from them.

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For such men are slaves, not of the Lord Christ, but of their own appetites and by their smooth flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.

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That's shocking that Paul talks about contentiousness, cantankerousness on the same level that Jude is talking about sexual deviancy, but both are disgusting to God.

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These are people who twist the scriptures and they aim to cause unnecessary divisions in the church. When I was growing up, there were people like this who split churches in half and they had a habit of doing this.

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There was a family in the church to which I grew up in who if they did not like the pastor, they would gloat that they could have them gone within a several weeks.

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They had all the power in the church and I do not think that those people represented the Lord's heart. They did this multiple different times and they destroyed the church that I grew up in because of their desire for power and they acted it out in divisiveness.

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They're not lovers of God, not fit for the church. They're lovers of conflict, lovers of strife and lovers of controversy and we must avoid those type of people.

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It says in Titus chapter three, nine through 11, avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions and quarrels about the law for they are unprofitable and worthless.

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And for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him knowing that such a person is warped and sinful and he is self condemned.

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Paul assumes that there are going to be some Christians who out of misguided zeal are going to cause divisions in the church and in a lot of circles, you call that cage stage.

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They learn some good doctrines and they become almost appalling to everyone else because all they want to talk about how you're right or you're wrong, they're right.

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You need to repent and believe their doctrine. They call them cage stage because you put them in a cage for a couple of years so that they'll get all their energy out and they'll be fine.

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Finally, they'll learn how to deal with normal people. But Paul said, if these people persist in their sin and I hope you're hearing that as a theme tonight that if they don't repent of their sin and they persist in divisiveness and they persist in creating divisions in the church then you should have nothing to do with them.

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That's what the Bible says. He, Paul and the rest of the scriptures treat division as a really serious offense in the church because it brings disunity and it fractures the church.

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So after warning someone two or three times of this and they don't repent, you should treat them like a wolf. Now, that's the second type of wolf.

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There's the multiplying wolf that's trying to get more and more and more. There's the dividing wolf who's trying to tear down and tear down and tear down.

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The third, I'm calling the subtractors. These are wolves who twist the word of God by reducing it, by bringing a reduction in the weight of it, by taming its significance, by muting its offensiveness, by watering it down in order to please men.

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The Bible calls these men ear ticklers. These are people who don't uphold the word of God as sacred but they water it down because they believe that the church can't handle

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God's words. They assume that they know better than God on what the church can actually handle, which is the word of God.

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2 Timothy 4, three through four says, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and they will wander off into myths.

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Paul's saying that there's a time that's coming and I believe that time is already here when there will be a growing number of churches who can't endure sound teaching but who just want a cheerleader to stand up on stage and rah, rah, rah, make them feel better, never talk about sin, never talk about hell, never talk about heaven, never talk about grace, never talk about truth, never talk about doctrine, but placate people in their own delusions and then send them home feeling better while marching them arrogantly towards hell.

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That I think has happened over and over and over. One of the churches that I went to was just like this.

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There's many churches that I could list for you that are just like this. They avoid the word of God. They subtract its offensiveness and they placate people and they're wolves.

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That's one type of subtractor. The other type is listed in Jude chapter four.

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These are people who don't just subtract and reduce and water down preaching. These are people who subtract and reduce and water down doctrine.

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They make all of life grace so that because Jesus has done this, you can do whatever you want.

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They eliminate godliness. They twist the scriptures in order to remove sanctification.

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They say, once you're saved, you're always saved, so go do whatever you want. Jude four talks about people like this.

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It says, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn

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God's grace into a license for sin. They begin promoting a lifestyle that is shallow at best.

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It's called cheap grace. You can do whatever you want and God has to forgive you.

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They eliminate holiness. They effectively remove obedience from the equation.

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We all know as Christians that we don't obey God in order to be accepted by God, but we know that when we are accepted by God, it causes us to obey.

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They remove that. Those are the subtractors. They remove a fundamental doctrine.

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They lessen it in its significance or they water it down completely. That's the third category. The fourth, the final category is the adders and there's several different ways that this shows up in the church.

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The first is new revelation. These are people who add to the Bible by saying that we need new revelation.

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We need new doctrine. We need new teaching because the Bible is not enough. We need more because the

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Bible is somehow less. The canon of scripture is still open. God is still speaking and the fundamental reason that people do this is because they wanna put themselves on the same authority as scripture.

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The Catholic church has done this for a thousand years. The Pope, when he speaks, he speaks ex cathedra which means he speaks the words of God which means that when he speaks, it's on the same par and authority as scripture itself.

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And why would he do that? Why would that tradition creep into the Catholic church? Because if you wanna add something in with no one challenging you, you put yourself on the same authority as holy scripture.

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And this doesn't just happen in the Catholic church. This happens in a lot of churches where new revelation is claimed where they say that we have this new authoritative message that everyone ought to listen to.

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And this is a common trick that the enemy uses to take people away from the true word of God.

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1 John 1 .4 says, "'Beloved, do not believe every spirit "'but test the spirits to see whether they are from God "'because many false prophets have gone out into the world.'"

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What John is effectively saying is that a false prophet doesn't speak for God which means they speak for who?

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Speak for Satan. We know from scripture that a false prophet is one who errs in one of their predictions over the body of their entire work.

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If they err once, they have completely just exposed themselves as being led by Satan.

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They are not to be trusted. It says that we are to test the prophet to make sure that what they say is true.

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The Old Testament, the people of God, stoned these people because they realized that if we had a serpent in the camp, then that was utterly dangerous.

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The same serpent who came into the garden twisting scripture is the same power behind these new prophets that have arisen in the church who say that this revelation is new and this thing is new and they are not from the

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Lord. If they disqualify scripture in anything that they're saying, they've disqualified themselves as being from God.

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1 Timothy 4 .1 says, "'The spirit explicitly says "'that in the latter times some will fall away "'from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits "'and the doctrines of demons.'"

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In 1 Timothy 6, he says, "'Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, "'avoiding worldly and empty chatter "'and opposing arguments, "'what is falsely called knowledge.'"

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These people are claiming to have had a special sense of knowledge, a new information and insight about God.

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And what Paul is saying is guard against that and guard against that with the Bible that has been entrusted to you because new knowledge is not from the

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Lord. The canon of scripture is closed, what Paul is saying. We have the

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Bible, that's the first, Christianity plus new revelation. The second type of adder is the

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Christianity plus the law. These are people who add laws to your life and say that you can't really know

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Christ if you don't obey X, Y, and Z. Again, the Catholic is a fundamental example of this.

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They, over years, have said, you can't be a Christian if you're not baptized as an infant. You can't be a Christian if you don't take the last rites.

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You can't be a Christian if you don't take Catholic communion. You can't be a Christian if, if, if, if, and if.

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And they create this tradition which says that you have to have the church as a means of grace in your life or you can't be in Christ.

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I grew up down the street from a fundamentalist church that said, if you listen to Britney Spears, you can't be a Christian. There's all types of people, and Britney Spears is no longer popular.

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Many kids here won't know what that means. But that's what they said during my time.

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There's all types of people who want to add to the Bible and who want to make a different rule and a different law.

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This happens all in the Bible. The Pharisees are a classic example of this. They're constantly holding the law over people's heads.

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I don't know if you know this or not, but the Pharisees are the ones who made up the term, the sinners. The word sin was already in the word or in the

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Greek language, but they turned it into a pejorative to beat people over the head, saying, you bunch of sinners.

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You can't live up to our standard, so you may as well be damned. That's what the Pharisees were saying, that our law condemns you.

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And believe it when I say that the spirit of the Pharisees is still alive and well today. It's been in the church for 2 ,000 years.

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As soon as the church began to spread, wolves came into the church called Judaizers.

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And Judaizers were people who said, you can't be a Christian unless you also follow the law of Moses.

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Paul writes about these in Galatians 1 .6. He says, I'm amazed that you Galatians are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel.

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And that different gospel is Jesus plus the law. That's a gospel that doesn't save. That's Jesus plus something else.

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And it's saying that Christ is not sufficient. Galatians 2 .4 -5 talks about this as well.

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It says, it was because of the false brethren secretly brought into the church who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ in order to bring us into bondage, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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He says in verse 21, I don't nullify the grace of God for if righteousness comes through the law, then

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Christ died needlessly. If you have to earn your salvation, then Christ's salvation that he offered wasn't powerful enough for you.

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And if Christ's salvation wasn't powerful enough for you, there is nothing you're gonna do to be able to add to it.

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You're lost. That's how dangerous this doctrine is, that if you have to add to anything that God did, you can't add enough.

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And because of that, you're lost. This is why this is so destructive. Paul puts it plainly that this cannot save you, that Christ died needlessly if this were the case, that his substitutionary work would not be enough.

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Again, this type of wolf advocates for Christianity plus the law, and that will not save you.

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The final type of the final group of adders is those who advocate for a

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Christianity plus novelty. Everything for them is about new. They're obsessed with new, obsessed with new teaching and saying something novelly, saying something, they're speculators in the

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Bible, and they're ones who try to predict the end with the Bible code. I know you've heard of these. They're ones who go after the fundamental doctrines of Scripture, and they twist them, and they give new perspectives on things like justification.

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N .T. Wright is a man in Britain, and he writes lots of books, but in one, he is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.

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He's N .T. wrong in this sense, because he takes the doctrine of justification, and he twists it, and he brings a new perspective on it simply because the man loves to be novel.

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Hebrews 13, nine says, do not be carried away by the varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace.

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Paul's warning Timothy that constant speculation distorts the true word of God. He says in 1 Timothy three, or sorry, one, three through seven, as I urged you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines.

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If you remember earlier in Acts 20, Paul says he knows wolves are coming in. This is a good example. He's telling the church to protect against that, protect against these strange doctrines, not to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith.

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For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the law, even though they do not understand what they are saying or matters about which they make confident assertions.

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Here Paul is saying that there's people who add to the truth and it's wrong.

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We've talked about five different types of wolves, the heretics, the multipliers, the dividers, the subtractors and the adders.

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And the reason that we did that is so that we could understand all of the various different sorts of people who are trying to come into the church.

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Now with that, I wanted us to now focus on our response for the time that we have remaining.

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And we're gonna do this briefly, but I wanna offer two suggestions or two practical advice on this.

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Number one, when wolves come into the church, the Bible tells us that we must contend with biblical truth.

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Jude says, I felt it necessary to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints.

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Since wolves are attempting to subvert the truth, we must combat them with truth. The second, which

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I think often is neglected, is that we must also work hard to prevent them from coming into the church.

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The Apostle John gives one of the greatest verses on this topic in verses, in 2 John 9 -11, he says, anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have

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God. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have

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God. The one who abides in Christ's teaching has both the father and the son.

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If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, this teaching, do not receive him into your house and do not give him a greeting for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil.

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So what John is saying is don't let this in, or don't let false doctrine into your home.

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What he's saying is don't let false teachers into your ear pods. He's saying, don't let people like this into your church.

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He's saying, prevent false doctrine from coming into your life and the life of the church because it's destructive.

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Now, I don't listen to people like what we've been talking about as a habit.

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I have listened to a couple of things, but I think it's dangerous. So I wanna just really quickly say that if you know that a teacher is a wolf, but you're trying to pull some of the things out that you think are good, and if you think that you can discern good from bad, and you think that you're strong enough to listen to someone who maybe is very encouraging and very positive, but they're a wolf,

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I would just say that you're playing an error. I would just say that you listen to faithful, serious people who love the word of God and don't play around with wolves.

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Don't play around with snakes. Don't be an infant tickling a cobra. It's not worth it.

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Listen to people who love the Bible and who love the word of God. Let those be your guides.

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There's plenty of good pastors, plenty of good teachers out there who you can listen to. And we live in a day and in a culture where this is not the only sermon you're probably gonna listen to in a week.

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That's just the reality of where we live. Back 100 years ago, 200 years ago, when you went to church, that was the only time you heard the word of God.

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Now there's studies and there's books and there's podcasts and there's all sorts of things. Guard your life carefully with who you listen to because this is serious.

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Now, I say all that because we are supposed to respond vigilantly. And the book of Jude responds vigilantly and he gives us things that we should know.

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We're halfway through the book of Jude, just so you know. We're in verse four and we're halfway through a 24 -verse book.

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Well, that's intentional because all of the essential doctrines that we need in order to contend are right here in the front.

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Right here at the very beginning are the doctrines that are important for us to contend well for the truth of God, to guard our lives, to trust in Christ, to know that we're called, that we're beloved, that we're kept, and that God is multiplying mercy, grace, peace, and love in our lives.

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And because we know those things, we can contend well against the wolf. Now, in the weeks ahead, we're gonna learn what

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God's response is to the wolves as well. And this is what I think is so fascinating.

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Jude 4 is the key to understanding the rest of the book. It says, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, we know how

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God feels about that because of this verse, because of one simple word, or actually a couple, it says they were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation.

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And I think those two phrases are incredibly important for the rest of our time in the book.

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And I'll just really briefly give you the key to it. Long beforehand does not mean eternally in the past, these people were condemned, although we can talk more about that.

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That's not what Jude is saying. It does not mean that 20, 30 years before they were marked out for condemnation.

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What he's saying is that the Bible itself is what marks them out for condemnation. When he says long beforehand, this condemnation, he's saying, look at verse five, when

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I talk about how the Israelites were destroyed for their rejection of me. Look at verse six, where the fallen angels are destroyed because the rebellion.

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Look at verse seven, where this condemnation comes upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude is stacking his argument in a biblical way.

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He's saying, we know that these people are condemned because these types of people have always been condemned.

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These are the ones that scripture says are condemned. These are the ones that we know that God does not tolerate.

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And we know that because our God is faithful, not only to save those who are his, but also to bring justice upon the ones who are not, that we can trust

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God. These verses are heavy verses. These verses are hard verses because they talk about things that we're not used to hearing about.

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But what I want us to pull out of this is that God's glory in these verses is being shown forth in a very interesting way that we are not used to seeing.

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God's glory does not only happen when lost people are saved. God gets glory when wolves also are condemned.

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And that is a tough biblical doctrine, but God gets glory through everything that happens.

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And because God is faithful to his text, he will bring those men and women who oppose him to justice.

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And that's what I want us to end with. These verses are not shared so that you will be afraid or so that you'll be frustrated or so that you will lose hope in the church.

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The true church of Jesus Christ, his bride is beautiful to him. The problem with the church today is not the church, it's that goats and wolves have come in because we're so busy entertaining people that the true church is mixed in with wheat or with tares and with all types of other people.

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It's that the church has been infiltrated by people who don't love God. And it doesn't look very godly anymore.

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And it doesn't look like people have affections for Christ anymore. And it doesn't look like that because the church has stopped doing its job in this country.

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But I'll tell you that the real church, the true church, those who love Jesus are beautiful to him. And they're protected by him.

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In the verses it says that we are kept. Did you know that the word kept is mentioned three times in this book?

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The word kept. We are kept safe for the day of Jesus, that we must keep ourselves in the love of God.

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And the third is that we will be kept from stumbling. What this means is that God is sovereignly going to keep us safe.

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As we contend with wolves, as we deal with evil in the world, as we deal with all of the problems,

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God is gonna keep us safe. But we also have a responsibility to keep ourselves in the love of God.

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We cannot be lost, but every single day we must live a found life. We must live a life where we are chasing after God because we're gonna face hard things.

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And we rest in the truth knowing that God is gonna keep us safe until the day that he comes back for us. So we say all these things so that you will know them, you will appreciate the truth of it, but you'll also rest in the hope that God has you, even when wolves come in.

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Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for this day.

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I thank you for this time. I thank you for the fact that we were able to go into so many different verses.

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Lord, I thank you for the fact that we're able to cover so many different topics and be able to examine all the different types of wolves that traditionally have came into the church.

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Lord, I pray for us as a church that you would protect us. Lord, I pray corporately that you would protect us.

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Lord, I pray that as this country continues to shift, that you would protect us. And Lord, I pray individually that you would protect us.

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Lord, I pray you would protect any future person who comes to this church. Lord, I pray that this would be a place where truth would be proclaimed, where your word would be shared with boldness and truth and confidence.

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Lord, I pray that we would never water down scripture here. Lord, I pray that we would always preach it accurately and truthful here.

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Lord, would you guard us? Would you keep us? And Lord, more than anything, I just, I ask that you would help us be a people who rejoice in your truth.

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And Lord, we would love your truth. That Lord, like David on his bed at night, he said he delights in the law of the

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Lord, that it's a lamp unto his feet and a light to his path, that we would delight in the law of God, that we would love it, that we would rejoice in it.

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And Lord, even in books like Jude where the teaching is hard and it's warning, and there's a reason that we're looking into that, that Lord, I pray that you would even help us rejoice in the book of Jude, that you would help us rejoice in its truth, and that you would help us rejoice in the fact that even though these things are true, that you still love us and protect us and keep us.

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And Lord, as we take communion together as a family, I pray that we would, our hearts would just be filled with gratitude and love for you for all that you've done.