Turning the Grace of God Into Lasiviousness — David Wilkerson

I want to thank this congregation for their prayers on our recent trip to Helsinki and to St. Petersburg, Russia, and then to Moscow. And we experienced the greatest moving of God's Spirit I've seen in all my years of ministry, in 40 years, almost 50 years of ministry, and a mighty moving of the Holy Spirit in every place.

Next Sunday we hope to have a 20-minute film to show you a complete picture of what God was doing in Russia and in Finland. We thank you for your prayers. I look at my schedule when I come back and say, I don't know how, preaching up to four times a day, and doing national television early in the morning, and coming home stronger than when I left.

So that was a wonderful thing. When Gwen left, when we left, she had a bad knee, she could hardly walk. She walked all over, everywhere, for miles, and not one bit of pain. We knew that there was prayer going up.

I could feel it, sometimes this feeling, so weak. In fact, I left rather sickly, a bad cold, and I said, this will never work, but many, many people were praying. We thank you for it, because the Lord has truly answered, and we give you thanks in Him, Lord, to Pastor Carter and his staff, their faithfulness and prayer support, and reminding this congregation of our prayer.

We thank you very much. I'm going to speak this morning on the subject, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. Now, every time we preach, there's somebody backstage gets the title, and they say, Pastor, what's the title, so you can put it on the screen.

And I said, turning God's grace into lasciviousness, he said, turning God into what? I said, Lassie, he said, Lass, Lass, Lass, what? Lassieusness. I'm not even going to have you try to spell it. Turn to Jude, please, Jude, right before Revelation for those new converts, verses 1 through 4, please, do you have it?

Jude’s Warning About Turning Grace Into Lasciviousness

Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. Mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, I want you to stop just a minute.

He said it was, I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation. He's very diligently preparing another message, another epistle, regarding just the common salvation. Is salvation common to all of us or understood by all of us?

And something happened that he saw in the church that changed his mind and he switches and now he says it was needful for me to write unto you. In other words, he says it was needful that I change my course.

I've seen something in the church and I've got to speak about it. It was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

For there are certain men prepped in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation. Now listen to it, friends. Ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Heavenly Father, I ask you now to anoint me, anoint the words that come out of my mouth, sanctify this vessel, and give us ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to feel. Lord, I need you and I trust that your word find its mark and its place.

Lord, you've touched me by your word this morning and I ask you to touch everyone hearing this message. Let no one escape what you're trying to say. Let us receive it, Lord, with open hearts and open minds.

Lord, you are speaking to the body of Jesus Christ in these last days in strong words and in loving words, in edification and in reproof. And we receive it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, Jude here is warning that in the last days there'll be ungodly men stealing into the church or creeping into the church of Jesus Christ with one intent, and that's to turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.

Defining Lasciviousness as Unrestrained Sin

Now, to understand the seriousness of Jude's warning, we've got to understand the word lasciviousness. Lasciviousness embodies every conceivable species of iniquity known to mankind. It's a cover word covering all iniquity known to human flesh.

It means lacking moral discipline, having no regard for accepted moral standards. It means lawlessness, casting off all restraints. It represents everything that is filthy, degrading, lewd, obscene. It speaks of unbridled lust.

It's licentiousness. That's from a Latin word, lascivia, which means loose, runaway passions and lust. Now, listen again to what Jude said. Listen to all those definitions I've given you of this word, and you understand how serious this warning is of Jude to the body of Jesus Christ, because he's speaking to beloved brethren.

He's speaking to those that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. And he said, I'm warning you that they're going—the devil's going to cause men to come into the church, he's going to cause a teaching to come into the church by ungodly professors, teachers, evangelists, and pastors, and people in the—ordinary people in the congregation that come from other churches or where they come from.

He said they're going to take the grace of God and twist it and turn it and manipulate it and turn it into lasciviousness. The grace of God turned into lasciviousness. Now, Jesus called this the sin of the heart.

He said it pours out of the abundance of the heart, for out of the heart of man proceeds deceit and lasciviousness, and these are the things that defile the man. That's what Jesus himself said, speaking of this very word, lasciviousness.

Paul’s Warning to the Corinthian Church

I want you to turn to 2 Corinthians, please, the twelfth chapter, and hear what Paul the Apostle says of this word also to the church of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians, the twelfth chapter, verses 20 and 21.

2 Corinthians 12. So, I fear lest when I come—he's speaking to the Corinthian church—I fear lest when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, that I shall be found unto you such as you would not, lest there be debates, envies, envying, strife, backbiting, whispering, swellings to much.

Now, listen to this closely. And lest when I come again, my God will humble me among you, that I shall be well, or mourn for many which have sinned already, and not repented of the uncleanness, and fornication, and lasciviousness which they have committed.

Now, he had just called them dearly beloved. These are his children that he has mentored. He sent Timothy to this church, he sent Titus to this church, and also many other brethren, the scripture says.

There was no other church in the New Testament better pastored, more loved, and better taught than the Corinthians. You go to 1 and 2 Corinthians, and you read the doctrine that Paul brought to them—resurrection, hell, heaven, death—and all the doctrines of the church, the gifts of the Spirit, they were fully taught, they were edified, they were reproved, they received the full-orbited gospel.

He's addressing those that were in the church, and he says, many of you in this church where all the gifts of the Spirit were in operation, where there was speaking with tongues, there were prophecies, there was preaching, they're convicted and edified.

And yet Paul the Apostle said, two times I have warned you of something I've seen in your body there. I've seen people who sit under this ministry, who have heard us teach and preach, who have been fortakers of the grace of God, and they've understood the message that we preach of grace, and yet it has been twisted because they're living yet in uncleanness.

There are many, and he addresses them, two times have come to you. And he said, really, my gift is edification, not destruction. My gift, God has made me an edifier. And he says, what I prefer, I prefer to come to you and edify you.

He said, two times I've written to you about this problem. There are many in the body that are still living unclean. And you, in fact, are living in lasciviousness. All of these things that I've mentioned, you come to God's house, you praise, you worship, he's suggesting this to them, because he's speaking to dearly beloved, and he said, many of you, many of you in this body are still living in sin.

He said, in lasciviousness. And he said, this time when I come, this is the third time I'm coming to you, and I'm not going to spare you this time. He said, I don't want to come and speak a harsh word.

I'm going to preach a message this morning that will not apply directly to the majority of you. In fact, you may think, we don't need this because we're not of the Corinthian mode and we're not living in lasciviousness, none of these things apply to us, I'm going to be edified.

Well, there comes a time when Paul says, I'm going to come and I'm not going to spare because there's something the Holy Spirit has revealed to me. And when I read, when I go to 1 and 2 Corinthians and I read the teaching that these dear folks had, and then the despair of hearing Paul say, many of you are still living in uncleanness.

How did they remain in such an unrepentant condition in the midst of such blessing and anointing? We expect that in the world, we expect the wicked to live in lasciviousness, but we don't expect to find it in the church.

But we can ask that same question today. How can so many who call themselves believers come to God's house, worship and fellowship, speak in tongues, talk about being baptized and filled with the Holy Ghost, and still watch porno movies, and still bring in these rented films, still fornicate, still live in adultery, in all kinds of manner of lasciviousness, as Paul calls it.

Pornography, Entertainment, and the Church

How is it that people today become addicted to these things? In the United States, you go from the hills of Kentucky, you go to the little villages in Idaho and Montana, and all over this nation, and you'll see satellite dishes, and you will see grandmothers and grandpas, even in their seventies and eighties, watching the worst filth and garbage ever emitted out of the bowels of hell.

You will find it all over the United States. A hotel chain in the South that features conventions, they have huge hotels, and their greatest number of customers are conventioneers. And they released a statement not too long ago that the greatest number of X-rated movies, in-room movies, pay-TV, the most requested are during religious conventions, mostly pastor's conventions, more than all other business conventions combined.

How is it that in the Pentecostal church and in the evangelical churches, the divorce rate is even higher now than in the world? In my book, The Vision, written twenty-seven years ago, in 1874, I want to read, I was reading through this book the other day, it's out of print, and we're having hundreds of requests to reprint it.

I'm not trying to sell it because it's out of print. Page 43, now this is twenty-seven years ago when you couldn't even use the word sex on television. This is before VCRs, and here's what I said, I said, world to all the inhabitants of the earth and the sea, for the devil's come down to you with great wrath to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect.

And how will Satan attempt to vex and deceive God's chosen people? He's going to do it by seducing mankind and creating a moral landslide. He's going to open the floodgates of hell and seek to baptize the world in erotic filth, smut, and sensuality.

This moral landslide will surpass anything the human mind can conjure. Already demonic spirits of lust are sweeping over the nations, bringing nudity, perversion, and a flood of filth. There's a dirt bath coming to vex the minds and souls of the most devout Christians alive today.

The Bible says Lot vexed his soul night and day by the things he saw and heard in Sodom. Christians are soon going to be exposed to such violent filth and sensuality that it'll take a firm grip on God to survive.

Those who are on the fence are going to fall flat on their faces. Those who don't enter into the ark of God's safety are going to be swept away by this flood of filth. Major TV networks will be caught up in this landslide.

I predict the network programs will soon attempt bare-breasted scenes. Toplessness will be the new fad to those trying to liberalize the media. It will be done tastefully at first, but when the artistic community joins in a chorus of praise for this great breakthrough in freedom, floodgates are going to open and then everything will go.

Even clergymen will applaud nudity on television and say it's a healthy development. Surprisingly, those who speak out against it will not be ministers and those known as devout Christians, but rather those in politics and in Hollywood itself.

And that's happened. Be warned, in the not-too-distant future, the most wicked X-rated porno movies will be shown on select cable networks before midnight, after midnight. Cable television is already a target of pushers of pornography.

In the few major cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe, triple X-rated movies are already begun to show in some hotels. They're from Sweden, Denmark, and the United States. These vile films will project nudity, sexual intercourse, homosexuality, animal perversion, and sadism.

People will pay for these erotic movies piped directly into their living rooms. And I go on to say it will be played through an electronic attachment. Now, I had no idea what that might be. Piped into their homes, and their homes will be called pleasure palaces.

And it goes on and on, and I warned in 1974, twenty-seven years ago, and folks, every bit of that has happened. And it is absolutely sweeping out of control at this point. In Revelation 12, don't turn there, but the Scripture said the Bible warns clearly that a mad devil is coming down, having great wrath, and out of his mouth will come a flood, and he will persecute the woman who brought forth the man-child.

That's the church of Jesus Christ, and he's going to spit out, he's going to spit out of his mouth a flood, in an effort to carry away the elect. To carry them away, a flood so vast, so powerful and strange, that it would carry many away.

The serpent cast out of his mouth waters of flood out to the woman that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. In fact, this is what Paul's referring to, to the Corinthians. He is suggesting that many had already been carried away by a flood of fiddle.

The Gospel of Grace Is Not Permission to Sin

Now, as I said before, this doesn't relate to the majority of you here, but let me tell you why I'm preaching this, and why I'm putting out this warning, because what I preach, and what all of our pastors preach here, goes beyond these walls, by tape, video, and audio all over the world.

In fact, when I was in Helsinki, we were in a nice hockey arena that seats about 8 ,000, 8 or 9 ,000, and it was filled twice, 3 o 'clock and 6 o 'clock on Saturday, over probably nearly 18 ,000 people.

And in the first group were for Christians, and asked how many were receiving our messages, and the great majority waved their hand, they were all receiving Times Square Church messages. So, I'm preaching not just to this audience, but to those watching on video, and also listening on tape.

And let me tell you why I'm putting out this warning. See, I'm not warning Christians about going off, sneaking off to pornographic movies. I'm not talking about you going out and renting a filthy film, and bringing it into your house.

I'm not even talking about cable that you may have, that you can pipe and playboy, and all this other stuff. I'm not talking about that right now. The reason I'm preaching this, this has to do with the gospel you believe.

This has to do with your concept of grace. And we'll follow through on this, and you'll see where I'm going in just a moment. See, the devil, he's not interested, he knows he can't get you involved in things like that.

All he wants to do is pervert your concept, your understanding of the grace of God. And if he can get you to seeing the grace of God as an excuse to sin or permissiveness, he will lead you down the path until you will be doing things, and seeing things, and involved in things that you could have never conceived, because he has succeeded in selling you a lie.

He cannot touch a Christian, he cannot touch a believer with any eroticism, he can't touch you with any kind of lasciviousness, if you have the right biblical concept of grace. This is what the Bible said, this is going to be an attack against your knowledge, the true knowledge of God's grace.

This is what it's all about. It's not just about the gospel, it's how, he has to break the foundation first so that he can get to you. He knows he can't sell you the lie that God brings to sin, he knows he can't tell any Christian that, that God is easy on sin, you won't believe that lie.

Again, Jude, the fourth verse. There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before God ordained to this condemnation, in other words, he said, there are prophets, he's referring to Enoch probably, because Enoch prophesied of this very thing, in fact Jude refers to Enoch who prophesied that these men were ordained for that, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God, Lord Jesus Christ.

Look at me please. The same Holy Spirit that moved Jude and Paul to warn of this is the same Holy Spirit that's moved on me to speak this this morning. Same Holy Spirit. Now, Paul, or Jude refers to these men as ungodly, creeping into God's house, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.

Now Jude lays bare the devil's plan to attempt to deceive the elect of God. He will secretly bring in this kind of gospelist teaching to pervert the gospel of grace. Now, true biblical grace, let's start with this, what is true biblical grace?

Grace as a Teacher of Holiness

What is the grace of God as we believe it in this church? Go to Titus, the second chapter if you'll please. Titus 2, I know you love the word of God, if you do, would you just say yes? Titus, the second chapter.

Let's start with verse 11 please. Verse 10, no, verse 11. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Alright, what is the grace of God? He goes on to tell us what the grace of God is.

Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. What is grace? It's that power, it's that teaching, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, it's a power, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.

In verse 13, looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Look at me please. True grace produces in us a desire to walk godly, holy, soberly in this present world.

Soberly, with reverence. Now, Jude calls these ungodly men, and if you look up the word that was used in the Greek, it means men without reverence. No holy awe of the things of God. No reverence, but men of frivolity and lightness.

Jeremiah the prophet says, my people have gone into error because of the lies and the lightness of the prophets, the false prophets. He says, they stand before you in things that should have brought awe and reverence and soberness, sobriety, before God.

They laugh at, they ridicule, they make fun of it. Ungodly men, men of laughter and frivolity, are going to come into the church. Men without reverence. Nothing better explains what is happening in the church of Jesus Christ today.

I've seen leading evangelists, well known with great followings, talking in tongues before a multitude and joking in tongues. When I saw it on tape, I just burst out, I couldn't handle it. It broke my heart because the scripture said there will come men without reverence for the things of God.

You see, if the devil can get you to look at the things of God, look at the truth of God, without sobriety, without seriousness. In fact, the scripture makes it very clear, they turned the grace of God, that word turned in Greek, it means they laid it flat.

It was erect and they laid it down and that's why the prophets of old said truth has fallen into the streets and into the mire and they trample on it. They take this awesome, holy word of God that is to produce the fear of God in us, and take away the sobriety of it, take away the reverence for the word of God.

There are many, many people today go to churches where there's nothing but lightness, foolishness. I saw a tape of one church, a sinner-friendly church, and this was Sunday night, and I think I've told you about it, I couldn't believe it, they had David Letterman night, and ten reasons why kids get bored in church, and what those ten things were are so foolish and so out of character for Christians that I can't even repeat them.

And everybody laughing, everybody clapping, everybody standing up, everybody standing and applauding, and it's just Sunday night. Folks, these men are going to turn the church of Jesus Christ into frivolity, to take away the power of the gospel of grace, twist it and turn it, bring it to the ground to take away its effectiveness and power.

Grace Produces Reverence and Expectation

Grace produces in people a longing for the coming of Jesus, looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Grace produces in believers a godly fear.

Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and with godly fear. Here, grace is tied to reverence by the writer of Hebrews. Peter said, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

He said, you want to understand true grace? And he ties it into this sobriety, this soberness before God. He's not talking about long-facedness, he's not talking about going around humped over and putting yourself down, that's not what he's talking about.

But he said, when you have a true revelation of the glory of Christ, when you've been shut in with God and you see Jesus as He is, and He reveals His nature to you and His love and His power, and even the terror of Almighty God, you will come to it with reverence and you will come to it with awe.

You will come to it in the presence of God sober and not foolish. Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for that grace that is brought to you by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah. The devil's aim is to make you believe God's not serious about sin, that there's no wrath in God. In other words, don't fret about your secret sin or lust, there's abundant mercy and grace and forgiveness.

Paul said, these men hold the truth in unrighteousness. You see, there's a sin they didn't want to let go, there was a compromise, they decided, I'm going to stay in the house of God, I'm going to be a part of this body, but I'm not going to forsake my sin, and they held the truth while they were living in unrighteousness, Romans 1 .18.

He showed it to them, he showed them the truth, they knew the truth, they'd been reproved, they'd been edified, and he said, in spite of it, they turned and gave themselves over to their sins, and finally God did the same.

They turned to their lascivious ways. Jude said, they turned the grace of God. The word there means modified, something added, and the root word is to prostrate it to the ground so that it'd be not taken seriously.

Isaiah described it this way, it is falling to the streets, a truth is falling. Now, where do these ungodly men come from? These ungodly men and women that are going to creep into the church. Does the devil go down into some portal theater and pick up somebody and dress them up with some kind of angel light and put them in the church?

Does he get an atheist somewhere well-educated and subtle and bring him in and put him in the church? Church? No, no, no, no. He doesn't have to do that. These are those who've been shown the truth, that knew the meaning of grace, that they are those who've been addicted to an unforsaken lust, those who've held the truth in unrighteousness, and they've invented a false grace to excuse the sin they refuse to lay down.

It's an invented gospel with another Christ, another gospel. Now, I've got to get this out of my innermost, and I want to do it in love. Let me tell you why I believe the Holy Spirit is leading me to share this now.

Because the majority of you are not like these that Jude speaks of, filthy dreamers, defiling their flesh, despising dominion, speaking evil of dignities. Very few in this house could identify with that.

Most of you are walking in righteousness with Christ, you're obedient, you're God-fearing, you're walking in that grace that teaches us to deny ungodliness. But how many in this congregation, how many listening to me, struggle with occasional encounters with something that is unclean?

Occasional encounters. In other words, you're not given over to it, but you occasionally indulge. I call it lapses into lasciviousness. You lapse into something that once had your heart, and you sit here listening to me today, and I want this to be done in great love, because God never tries to expose anything other than to heal, other than to edify and to change and to build up.

At first he has to tear down those walls that keep them from reaching that purpose. How many are struggling with falling back? You go along so well for so long, and then there's suddenly a fall, something happens.

Now listen close to what I'm going to say. The devil knows he can't reach it this way. He knows that as long as you have a measure of the fear of God in your heart, you're going to feel guilty, you're going to cry out to God, you're going to say, forgive me, try me one more time, you're going to run to the grace of God, you're going to run to God, and you're going to receive forgiveness.

And he knows that. He can't get to you there. He knows the Holy Ghost has the power to mortify every lust that is in you if you really have a desire to be free and to be delivered. He cannot bind you or habituate you to any lust or any sin while you still have a measure of the fear of God in you.

The Lie of Presumption and the Believer’s Responsibility

So how can he bind you to sin? How can he get you? How does he get to you? How does he get to the elect? How does he get to the Corinthian church like this where Paul, the apostle, and Jude, and you'll find it even from Peter, speak of lasciviousness in the church?

Those who have had everything given to them of the Spirit and the Word, why is it this persistence in sin? The only way he can do you is to sell you on this lie I'm talking about. He has to get you to believe that a lie is the truth.

He has to persuade you that you can hold on to truth while still living in sin. He has to totally convince you that grace, the very grace of God, is nothing more than an ever-ending river of forgiveness.

That's 95 gospel and 5 poison that can kill you. There's nothing ever spoken by the devil or those ungodly men that come in about the conditions of grace, the conditions of the new covenant, the conditions of the new covenant.

Not that they are merited, but God has made requirements upon us. Now I want you to listen very, very closely now. The lie is this. You can keep going back to your pet sin as long as you keep running back to the altar.

Didn't Jesus, and this is the lie the devil comes, you can sit in a Holy Ghost meeting just like this, and you can hear us talk about new covenant grace, unmerited grace. You can hear us tell you of all the promises of the new covenant, how God says, I will be merciful to you of sins, I will implant the Holy Ghost in you, I will put my fear in your heart, and I will cause you to walk in my ways.

You can sit in the audience and hear us talk very plainly and lovingly about the promises of the new covenant that we have preached for months and even years in this church now. You can hear it taught.

You have no power in your flesh. You have no power to overcome the devil and sin, and that's true. That's the gospel. That's the new covenant. Yes, there's a fountain filled with blood and it is ever running, it is ever flowing.

Yes. But the devil will come and say, didn't Jesus say, first of all, isn't this a wonderful gospel? Isn't this life free? And it is. And then he'll come to you and say, well, didn't Jesus say that you would forgive your brother at least 499 times?

You haven't gone back to your lust 499 times. In fact, if you, if it's never-ending forgiveness, as long as you have a repentant spirit, as long as you know how to cry over your sin, you can go into a bar room and a guy's half drunk and the drunker he gets, the more he starts crying over sin.

You'll find more crying, more tears on a bar stool than anywhere else. Well, I believe in repentance and folks, I've wept and wept and wept many, many times. But he will come to you and say, as long as you keep confessing, keep saying, I'm sorry, you can indulge your sin a thousand times and he will freely forgive a thousand times.

Over and over and over again. Now, do I believe that there's any end of God's grace, any end of God's forgiveness? Nor if a man truly comes with a repentant heart, there is unending forgiveness for those with a repentant heart.

Truly repentant heart. You could say to me, Pastor Dave, that could never happen to me, because you see, these men, Jude and Paul and Peter, talking about a church where ungodly men have crept in to the pulpit and into the thing.

Now, we don't have that here. We sit under godly teaching and there's nobody here trying to twist the grace of God. You see, you can sit in a church that preaches a pure biblical message of grace and mercy for the struggling, about the Holy Ghost providing power over sin, but Satan can come and plant a lie in the midst of that.

That's what the Bible warns against, that many are going to believe a lie to be the truth. When they found rats in Central Park, an invasion of rats, they mixed 2 poison with 98 brain and it killed the rats.

There's only 2 of error, often, in what is taught, in what these men would teach, because the devil knows you won't buy an outright lie. He knows I won't buy an outright lie. He has to come with a very subtle lie.

The lie goes something like this. Since you don't have the power and ability to battle sin in your own strength, and the Holy Ghost has been promised you, to come and empower you, just go your way and wait for the Holy Spirit to come and empower you.

Because you can't be judged for what you can't do in your own strength. How can you be judged for that? That's the responsibility of the Holy Ghost. Haven't you been taught that? That the Holy Ghost will come and He will do in you, He'll empower you to do what you can't do, to obey His Word and walk in obedience.

The lie is this. You can sit and suddenly, if you don't want to be free of your sin, if you don't want to be delivered from the bondage of sin, this lie will grab your heart and you'll take the covenant and run with it, you'll take the preaching of grace and run with it.

Call word of that, sin that grace may be abound, they will sin that grace may be abound. He said, God forbid. He said, you're taking the truth and you're listening to a lie. There's been a lie implanted in the middle of this, that you have no responsibility until the Holy Ghost comes and do it.

You just go your way, if you're dodging sin, if you do what you have been doing, just go ahead and wait for the Holy Ghost to come. And that's what many have done, and they wait, when they go into sin, they turn around and say, Holy Ghost, where were you?

Where were you? I was waiting for you to come and give me power. I didn't get it. I was tempted and I gave in. It's not my fault. And the devil will do everything to try to give you a gospel that comforts you in your sin.

You see, the lie is that believers have no personal responsibility. Now, we can't merit anything of God's grace. We preach that, and I believe that, that's the core of what we preach, that there is responsibility.

There is responsibility that goes with us, with this teaching. Thank God there are safeguards against every lie of the devil. And Jude himself gives the three safeguards. Look at verses 20 and 21 in Jude.

Jude’s Three Safeguards Against Deception

Here are the three safeguards that he gives. But ye, beloved, building up yourself on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourself in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

Look at it again. Three safeguards against ever being seduced by any devil. This is the devil's lie concerning grace. But ye, beloved, building up yourself on your most holy faith. Now, how do you build yourself up in faith?

Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, not just by reading it. But the word hearing there means obeying. But by obeying what you read. The devil cannot get to you if you will use these three safeguards.

You will never be seduced by a lie. You'll never be twisted or turned in your grace. Your concept, your understanding of the grace of God will never be confused. You will be strong when the enemy comes in like a flood.