Jude 14-25 (Perseverance is more than endurance, Ben Honeyford)

That's new to us, probably new to you, but I put it on the videos for the last few weeks. It's called Christ Our Hope in Life and Death. Bunch of artists got together, like the Gettys and Mad Papa and a few others.

This modern hymn, they call them, they're very rich in lyrically. They have lots of depth and meaning. And this was a song they were gonna release right around Easter, right before Easter. They actually started releasing it before that, a little bit before that, because COVID was starting and we were getting in quarantine and they thought this song would really minister to the church.

And that was the first week that I heard it and the first week I put it on the video and I thought it had just a great meaning and some great words. So join us this morning as we lead this song. We're gonna use this song in the beginning and the end so you can get used to it.

We have come to really like it. So join me as we begin.

Our hope in life and death. Christ alone, Christ alone. What is our only confidence. That our souls to Him belong. Who holds our days within His hands. What comes apart from His come He'll keep us to the end.

The love of Christ in which we stand eternal to you. Now and ever we confess our hope in life and death For my little message that I give every Sunday morning,.

I was not influenced by the song because quite frankly I hadn't heard it yet and I'm in Psalm 31. Now here's the thing. Psalm 31 written by David. Wow, poor David. He experienced trials. He was being attacked.

He was being assaulted. He was being accused. He witnessed idolatry. He witnessed all this other kind of stuff. All of the stress and all the troubles. Quite a bit of what we're singing about right here.

If I go to verse one in Psalm 31, he says, "'Let me never be put to shame.'". And then I go to verse two and it says, "'Incline your ear to me, rescue me.'". Speedily as he cries out to God. Then in verse 90 he says, "'My eye is wasted from grief.'".

Just the tears and the anguish that he expresses in verse 10. "'My life is spent with sorrow.'". In verse six he says, "'I hate those who regard vain idols.'". You see, he was experiencing the intensity of what's going wrong.

Now here's a little tease. Pastor Ben is going to go in a very similar theme. Now, was this all coincidental that my message here was here that Michael chose the song that Ben is taking us where he is?

No, God is sovereign. But here's the beauty in Psalm 31 in verse 19, David cries, "'O Lord, how abundant is your goodness.'". Out of context, everything else he says, unless you recognize the goodness of God.

With everything else he says, "'O Lord, how good is your goodness.'". See, we have a God that loves us. We have a God who is able and who is willing to care for us. That's our God. God, it's his goodness that is abundant.

Jesus said, and it's recorded in John 16, 33, "'These things I have spoken to you, "'that in me you may have peace. "'In the world you have tribulation. "'But take courage, I have overcome the world.'".

So our challenge to you right now is threefold. One, understand God's love. And understand that his love is greater than any challenge or difficulty that the world may give you. All of these things that get in the way, we have a God and with the psalmist, we can declare, "'O Lord, how abundant is your goodness.'".

Amen. Some announcements, a week from tomorrow, that will be the 27th at seven o 'clock. Here in the sanctuary, we'll have a congregational meeting. It will be live for those who can. For those who are not yet ready, it will be on another media.

It will be shared online. Michael will be putting out the details for that. There is an agenda, it's online at our website, but there are also some hard copies for those who don't have the comfort going online to pull it down.

Out in the foyer, there is a t-shirt table and there are some copies of the agenda. Pick one up. It has been over four months now and this pandemic has placed us in a situation where you just can't get together with good friends.

Sandy and I have these friends, Dan and Pam, and she's going through some tough times. We would love to be able to go to dinner with them, to visit with them. It's just not right at this point in time.

But here's the thing. We are still brothers and sisters, one family in the church of God. We can still reach out to each other. I'm gonna challenge you this week. Now, mine's a flip phone. Most of you have smartphones.

Some of you have landlines. But we've all got phones. Call. Don't text, call. Call somebody. Talk to them. Maybe it's a good friend. Talk to them, encourage them. Maybe it's somebody that you've just met or you don't have a close relationship.

Call them, talk to them, encourage them. Reach out to them in person. Now, speaking of reaching out and being encouraging, we've talked a couple of weeks ago about a concept that we as a church are going to be ongoingly encouraging our local police, those who stand the front line for us.

We had a board meeting Friday night, and a topic that came up, I have never seen the board so excited, enthused, and engaged over a concept. We are going to have an opportunity for each one of us to be part in ministering and reaching out and caring for our police.

I'm not going to tell you the details yet, but it's a tease. Be ready, because it's an awesome opportunity. You're going to need to step out of your comfort zone just a little bit, but we're going to be able to say thank you to these men and women who stand the line for us.

Speaking of encouraging one another, we have seen a lot of people joining us since the pandemic started. We will be having a starting point class. It will be in September. Most likely it will be Sunday evenings.

It will be recorded. There will be multiple ways for you to participate in it, but it's a chance to learn about our church, the E-Free denomination, what it means to be a member, so be watching for that.

Tonight at 6 .30, the Women's Ministry, their Adult Bible Fellowship here in the sanctuary. At 6 .30, Kimberly's excited. If you can come. If not, there is a Zoom. It was in the Thursday Pastogram that went out.

On Friday, the 31st, Pastor Ben is hosting a youth and family activity outside, a outside movie. It will be at 8 .15 on Friday, the 31st. I'm sure more word will come out from that. I think the movie is called Overcomer.

Put that on your calendar and come out and be with us. Two opportunities out on the foyer. I mentioned it, the T-shirts, the Tetelestai T-shirts. We've gotten more. If you desire, get it. Pastor Ben's book.

Ah, Carol, hold that up so everybody can see. There it is. Can you model it for us? There you go. Thank you, Vanna. Pastor Ben's book, if you're interested in it, you can see me, see Pastor Ben. I'm sorry, Pastor Jeff's book.

Ben, did you write a book? No, okay. Pastor Jeff's book, so we encourage you for that. Now let's pray. Father, we come before you as a broken, as a sinful, as a disobedient people deserving, deserving the punishment for our guilt.

But as children of God, we sit in front of you as part of your family, washed clean by the blood of the Lamb and through the strength of the Holy Spirit, crying out, Abba, Father. What an amazing blessing we have.

We come together in fellowship, worshiping, praising your name, and we thank you for that. We do lift up our pastor, Jeff, and his family as they continue their vacation. Refresh them. We look forward to their return.

Give wisdom, Lord, for this church as we approach the fall, as we think how do we continue to increase in our gatherings together safely. Protect our country. Give us guidance. We pray for those who have lost loved ones to the violence, and we pray, Lord, for the hearts of those people who are doing evil in these days.

Your spirit, your grace can reach into the hearts of these people. Pray, Lord, that you would reach into the hearts, that you would claim these people. Now, Lord, as Pastor Ben is getting ready to open up in the book of Jude, be with him, anoint him with your wisdom, and prepare our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

We're gonna sing again, if you would like to stand. Don't feel obligated, but you may.

The dark, a song that lights up the stars One breath that gives life, one sovereign power Who speaks with thunder and fire There is no other that can compare to you You are the one alone in greatness The one Jesus, you are the one in glory Jesus, the one true God can compare Jesus out to the let us sing your joy on your head

Let's turn to the book of Jude, starting in verse 14 as Pastor Ben comes forward, starting in verse 14. And Enoch, also the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, behold, the Lord cometh with 10 ,000 of his saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed.

I noticed in the first service, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking in their own lusts, and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage.

But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.

These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, and of some, have compassion, making a difference, and others, save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

Now, unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever.

Amen. Amen. How's that coming through? Good?

All right, guys. Much cooler in here. Feels a lot better. I've dried out a little bit. Let's pray together as we open God's word. Our Father, we come to you now in Jesus' name. We're so grateful for your word that's open before us, that we can study, that we can accurately handle, that we can take and enjoy.

Holy Spirit, speak, we pray, that you would sow these words that you have written to us deep in our hearts, and that you would change us into the image of Jesus as you bring conviction and you bring change.

So we commit this time to you. We pray that you would speak. We pray your spirit would fall afresh upon us, and we ask it in the name of Jesus. Perseverance means more than endurance, more than simply holding on until the end.

Love the picture of Oswald Chambers paints for us in my utmost for his highest. He describes the Christian life as being in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hand of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but the Lord continues to stretch and to strain.

And every once in a while, the saint will say, I can't take it anymore. Yet God pays no attention, and he goes on stretching until his purpose is in sight, and then he lets the arrow fly. What a picture.

We are not pressing on in the Christian life like Chris Farley in Black Sheep, falling down the side of a mountain, clutching on to whatever he can hold, finds a branch, and then it breaks, and he falls all the way down.

No, the Christian life is more than that. We're not falling down a mountain, hoping everything works out in some worldly sense. No, we're called to clutch on to every promise of God as we meditate on his word day and night.

We're called to trust God to the end, not simply being hopeful in a worldly sense, but in a biblical sense, having a hope that does not disappoint, according to Romans 5 .5, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts.

We serve a God that loves us so much that he poured his Holy Spirit into our lives. Last week, we were challenged by the first half of the book of Jude, this letter that the half-brother of Jesus writes to the church and brings intense challenge, but he does bring encouragement.

He says, who you are in Christ, what God says about us as a believer, and what we need from God so that we can contend for the faith, that we can warn people about normalizing sin and the coming judgment.

And this week, we look at the important principle in the Christian life of persevering. What is perseverance? And why is it so important for Christians to have this in view? Well, we find it in what the reformed theology calls the doctrines of grace, radical depravity, sovereign election, definite atonement, irresistible call, and last is preserving grace.

We're not gonna spend time going through that, but the last of which, preserving grace, I think is an important element in the Christian life. It is God who preserves us. It is God that keeps us. Remember, he called us the beloved, the called.

That is who we are. And as we read this morning in verses 14 to 16 of Jude, what do we see? Number one, perseverance in the truth because there's so much falsehood out there. Interesting here what Jude does.

He references what's called an apocryphal work, the Book of Enoch. Now you say, well, what is that? I've never heard of that. Apocryphal, how do you spell that? I won't do that, but apocryphal in a general sense, it's a book or a work whose origin is uncertain.

We don't know who wrote it. We don't know the authenticity as it relates to it. Outside of the Bible, there are tons of what's called apocryphal works. In the Catholic Bible, there are extra books that the Protestants don't include.

Why is that? Well, these books refer to as the apocrypha, meaning hidden, or also called deorudit. Deorudit canonical. Deuteronomy, put that word and then put canon at the end, second canon. These include books like Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, the Book of Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch.

You're like, I've never heard of them. That's right, we don't have them in the Protestant Bible, but they're included. So why do they include them and why don't we? Well, here's some of the issues that the early church had with these apocryphal works.

Few of the Christians believed that they belonged in the canon. The canon is just the books of the Bible that are put together. All the books in the Bible that we agree on is called the canon. And few Christians said that they should be included.

Why? Because there are some contradictions to the Bible. If you look at Tobit 12, verse nine, it says, alms doth deliver from death and shall purge away all sin. Well, I have a problem with that. It conflicts with First John 1, seven, says we know that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

And then there, of course, there's historical errors. Judith mistakenly identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the king of Assyrians, when in fact he was the king of Babylon, according to Second Kings 24, one. And there's a ton more.

But just because Jude references the book of Enoch does not make Enoch any more authoritative than it wasn't intended. In fact, the commentators believed that Jude references the book of Enoch because the people at that time were familiar with that text.

So he's using a bridge to kind of speak to the people with a language that they understood. So we need to persevere because there's so much falsehood out there, not only with incorrect interpretation of scripture, but books of the Bible included in the scriptures that aren't intended to be included.

The second is we need to persevere because the Bible is trustworthy. Did you know that? It's important to understand, well, how did this Bible come together? How did they determine? Was it a group of men that sat down in a room and said, you know what, we're going to decide that these books belong in the Bible because I like them, because they're written in a certain way.

No, it wasn't up to a group of men or a group of people. It was already understood and believed what books should be included, specifically the New Testament canon, the early church, one of the tests for canonicity or the canon is the early church, churches, agreed on these books as being authoritative.

There's also a self-authenticating test. Second Timothy 3 .16 says that all scripture is breathed out by God. Second Peter talks about the prophetic word is not come from man, but by the Holy Spirit.

And so it's not according to man, but according to the sovereignty and decree of God that he would ordain that these books of the Bible will be included in the canon. How about another test? Conformity to the rule of faith.

If we have books of the Bible included that do not conform to the rule of faith, which is just what? What we believe, what we practice, is there contradictions to the entire rule of faith? If so, then we shouldn't include that book in the canon.

So the early church accepted it, and it was also according to apostolic authority or those close to the apostles. See, the apostles were those that saw the risen Jesus. They were in direct contact with him, and God gave them a particular authority to write the word of God.

He gave them divine inspiration to write as they did. So self-authenticating, conformity to the rule of faith, written by a prophet of God or an apostle or someone close to an apostle, and then the general acceptance and usage by the early church.

That's how they came up with it. Those were the tests of what should be included in the Bible, in the New Testament. They agreed on the Old Testament, but the New in particular. Again, they didn't sit down and just say, how do we want to do this, guys?

For the rest of our existence, what should we determine? No, it was much more than that. They simply agreed on what had already been established. They affirmed it as the verbal, plenary, inspired word of God, meaning that every word of the Bible was breathed out by God.

And as John MacArthur puts it, inspiration is God's revelation communicated to us through writers who use their own minds, their own words, and yet God had so arranged their lives and their thoughts and their vocabularies that the words that they chose out of their minds were the very words that God determined from eternity past that they would write his truths.

It's a long one. But they didn't sit around as robots and God dictated to them and they wrote as they heard. No, God used their personality, their experiences, and he spoke through them as they were inspired and gave them that authority from eternity past.

So we go back to Jude in verse 14. Our third point is to persevere because as a Christian, you escape the judgment of God. That should cause you to persevere. There's a hope that you have. Jude references Enoch who was the seventh down the line from Adam.

So if Adam's number one, Seth is number two, Enosh number three, Kenan number four, Mahaliel number five, Jared six, and then Enoch. And we read in Genesis 5, 24 that Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him.

So what we see here in verse 14 is a reference to Daniel chapter seven and verse 10. It describes the picture of God as the ancient of days, seated on his throne with fiery lava substance flowing all around him and around him were 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 people all around his throne.

What were they doing? These were humanity being judged by God according to their sin. It's a picture that is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God, a holy God. And it also references Mark eight, verse 38.

For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with holy angels. So clearly what Jude is doing is setting up for the church that which is to come.

It's a warning. It's the great day of the Lord. Should we be prepared? Yes, this parallels also second Peter two, which goes into a similar level of detail regarding the judgment of God against Sodom and Gomorrah, against Balaam, who followed after his own personal gain and much more in the way of false prophets.

So coming back to judgment against the ungodly, what do we see happening in verse 15 and 16? Take a look. Number one, God is executing judgment and convicting ungodly sinners in two ways. For what they do and what they say.

The word convict here is not the same word that we use as we talk about the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit brings conviction in the Christian's life by doing what? By bringing a reminder of your sin and to turn away from it.

Convicts you, it doesn't condemn you. But this type of conviction is one as it relates to someone that's getting sentenced for their crimes. And they stand before the judge and the judge executes the sentence and there's a shame that the criminal feels for what they have done.

It's not a pleasant experience to sit before a judge and be convicted for a crime. But how much more so to sit before a holy God and endure his conviction and his judgment for all that you have done and that you have said.

Jude goes on to explain just how bad these sins are. Not only are these ungodly, but the way in which these acts are committed is incredibly ungodly. It's bad enough that you've continued in sin and rebellion, but you have to do it in such an awful ungodly way.

And that is the picture of the depravity of man. Sure, man can do good things in a very general sense, but we know according to the Bible that there's nothing that we can do to please God apart from faith.

Hebrews 11, six. Every human being seeks to do good in order to assuage the guilt. If I do good, it will make me feel better about my sin and conviction and my conscience bearing judgment against me. Doing more good works, that'll help.

If I do enough good works, it'll outweigh the guilt. And then God will accept me. No, that's not how it works. Every religious system will say, here's the works that you must do in order to reach some existence of whatever it is, to have eternal life.

But the Bible, the Christian faith says, you can't work to earn his favor. You can't work to earn his righteousness. He gives it to you based on the work on the cross, and he imputes it to you because he endured the wrath of God and paid the penalty for your sin.

So the reality is the gospel is that you can't do anything to earn it, but Jesus did it all for you on the cross. Your good works will never outweigh your bad works. It's hard to understand because everything that we know, we work for.

We work for our careers. We work for everything in life that's good. We have to work at it. And then we have the gospel and we go, I can't work at that. It's just receiving it. I don't understand. So there's a ton of things here that we have done, that I have done to earn God's judgment.

Romans 6 .23 tells us the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So the principle here is that each and every one of us earns death by the sin that we commit.

Just like you exchange work for your employer and you get a paycheck, you sin and you earn death before a holy God. Think about the reason that death exists is because of sin. That's why there's death.

If there was no sin, there would be no death. I'm sure you're feeling great right now. Nice encouraging word on a hot Sunday. Judgment of God. Wow. Can I leave now? Where's the exit? What's happening?

No, let's go even further. Look at some other ways that you and I have spoken against God. Verse 16, check it out. Grumblers, murmurers. Under your breath. Under your breath, speaking, complaining against God.

Unhappy. Those of you who have kids. Sorry kids, for those that are in the room. What does a parent just get so annoyed with is complaining. Oh, would you stop complaining? Would you stop murmuring? Your voice, I can hear it getting shriller and shriller.

But what am I doing? I'm complaining about their complaining. I'm guilty. How about this one? Malcontents. Another good one. A person that is not only dissatisfied, but also rebellious. Think about all these rioters tearing down statues across America.

Not only are they unhappy, but they're rebellious and they seek to do whatever they want to do to destroy. They follow after their own sinful desires. There's that lust in their heart. There's that deep craving for the things that are wrong, whether it's treating women as sex objects or wanting so badly to the point of getting something that you'll do whatever is necessary to get it by looting and stealing.

Interesting. How about loud mouth boasters? I thought I was a loud mouth, but bad enough that someone is loud and boasts against the Holy God. Shaking their fist at God. Demanding rights, demanding privileges, demanding the things that they think they should have.

And then also saying how great they are apart from God. Showing favoritism. One thing that we know about God is that he is not into playing favorites. Romans 2 .11, Ephesians 6 .9, Acts 10 .34. God hates it when we pay particular attention to someone because of the fact that they are gonna help us somehow.

Well, they have a lot of money or they have a lot of power or they have a lot of influence or they have a lot of this or that. And we look to them and go, wow, I just have to give all my attention to you.

And then there's someone else that the society doesn't view as as important and we just pay no attention to. And God says, I hate that. I hate that you show favoritism to some person because of whatever reason.

It's a list. It's a real intense list, but there's none of us that are innocent. You think of it through those things. You say, well, I'm not that bad. You grumble. I grumble. I complain. I show favoritism.

Think it's gonna help me in my career or whatever the case may be. I've broken all the law of God. So what's the difference then between a Christian and a non-Christian? Since we've all done these things, we've all grumbled and complained and lusted and boasted and showed favoritism.

How is it a Christian is not under God's judgment? I mean, what makes them so much better? It's a great question. And it's answered in the person of Jesus. What's so significant about him? Yeah, everybody agrees he was a great teacher and he performed all kinds of miracles, but what did he do for us that's so important?

And he lived a righteous life, fulfilling the law in every way, perfectly, never broke one part of it. And then he goes to the cross, suffers, endures the wrath of God poured out upon him, paying the price for our sin, dying and rising again on the third day, defeating death for us.

So what's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? Forgiveness as a result of the mercy and grace of God. There's nothing in the Christian that makes them any better than the non-Christian.

There's nothing special about them, nothing that God's like, well, they're better than the other person. No, nothing, no merit do we bring to God. He simply has mercy on us and calls us to repentance and faith, and we trust in him.

We do two things, repent and believe. Repent means to turn from your sin, to acknowledge your sin before a holy God, that it's wrong, and simply turn, not to say that you will stop sinning, but you've acknowledged for the first time in your life that, man, I'm a mess, and I need a God who can rescue me because my sin deserves death and punishment from a holy God.

And then as you turn from your sin, you put your trust in Jesus, not just in a flippant way, not just, oh, I trust, yeah, I believe in Jesus. No, your whole life depends on it. When someone asks you if you're going to heaven, you say, absolutely, in Jesus' name, I know that I know that I know I'm going to heaven.

It's not a doubt, it's not a question, it's not I hope so. It is a confidence that we have. And that's the difference. It's the work of God to believe in the one whom he sent. John 6, 29. And so it's no surprise to hear from Jude describe these last times, and check it out in verses 17 to 19, what types of people are common in the day we live.

Verse 18, scoffers. Another word for a scoffer is a mocker. Anybody that's been a Christian for any amount of time has probably been mocked for being a Christian. What do you mean? You believe the Bible?

Are you insane? You believe homosexuality is a sin? You're hateful. You're mocked. I can't believe you would follow such an outdated religion. And these scoffers do what in verse 18? They follow after their ungodly passions.

It's whatever comes natural, lust, pride, selfishness, pleasure. It's interesting with this pandemic, none of us was able to go to a sporting event, to go to our favorite restaurant, to go to a movie, to do the things that we love to do.

All of a sudden, can't do any of them. And now we're left on quarantine and lockdown and thinking to ourselves, oh man, this is miserable. But what it also does is shows us in our hearts those things that we truly value.

When they're taken away, what is your response? Here's what we also know what this pandemic did. If you consider pornography usage, it has increased. You consider, disgustingly, the use of child pornography has increased over this period of time, these four months.

Sex trafficking has increased over this pandemic. What is wrong with the human heart? We are desperately wicked. Who can know us but the spirit of God who searches us? What else do we know about people these days?

Well, they're mockers and they cause divisions. What do you think Black Lives Matter is all about? It's abundantly clear that they wanna break down society and then build it back up under this Marxist utopian dream that they believe can happen.

Guess what? It's not gonna work. Equal opportunity, equal outcome, evil. We participated, many did, with Blackout Tuesday and they put the picture of a black square on their Instagram account thinking, yeah, who doesn't believe that all black lives matter?

Of course we don't. And if I don't do that, then somehow I'm considered a racist. Of course not. But now we see police being taken funds away, crime is increasing. This is a sign of the times in which we live.

So people are mockers, causing divisions. They're worldly people. This word worldly refers to someone who's governed by their appetites and desires. You think of worldliness as kind of, oh, they just want stuff.

No, they're governed completely by today. Whatever I want today, whatever's happening now, I can't think about the future. It's all about me. It's all about what I want. Whatever feels good, destruction, looting, burning, things people would never do on their own, now in this, literally all hell is breaking loose in places.

A worldly person concerned with the here and now, whatever's possible to satisfy the deep desires of the flesh. So scoffers, worldly people, causing divisions, lastly, devoid of the spirit. Pretty simple here.

They don't have the spirit of God, which of course should be no surprise. What happens when we don't have the spirit of God? Well, we're completely controlled by the things that are natural. Everything is sin apart from God.

We're unable to please God. We seek after those things that satisfy, even good things, which make us feel better about our guilt for sin. But in light of all these crazy things happening in the world, and as Jude brings to us this morning, he does bring us some encouragement because that's a hard thing to look through this list of accusations, of guilt, of judgment.

But Jude encourages us knowing what we know now, and none of this, of course, comes as any surprise, but what now? Which brings us to this fourth point here, to persevere by disciplining yourself spiritually.

So in light of all these things, in light of all that's happening, number one, verse 20, build yourselves up in the most holy faith. How does this happen? How does a Christian grow? How is the church strengthened as we gather together under the teaching of God's word?

I wanna pause there for a moment and just point out that there's something today being attacked like it never was before. And people will say, well, aren't you being a little over the top? Isn't it about saving lives?

Isn't it about flattening the curve? Isn't it about keeping social distance? Well, in California, the governor says you can't sing in church because it's possible that the virus will travel out of your mouth and infect someone else.

The reality is that God inhabits the praises of his people together. There's something special about the assembly of the brothers and sisters of the church. It's not about the building, but it is about the assembling.

And what the real point here is, Satan wants to do anything that he can to keep us from gathering together. Why? Because he knows there's power in it and there's something special in it. And God is present with us in a special way.

Of course, God is omnipresent, but he's present with us in a special way as we gather together in Jesus' name. The enemy would love to keep this torn apart. Yeah, keep the lockdown longer. Can't come back to church.