Identifying Enemies in the Church

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Well, take out your Bibles and turn to the little epistle of Jude, if you would.
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And for our introduction tonight, we're going to read verses 1-16.
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As we are aware, likely, this is one of the shortest books.
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The whole series is on the little letter, so this book is very short, and so we could read the whole thing at once.
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But because we're going to focus on verses 8-16 tonight, I would like for us to not forget what we have learned so far.
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So we're going to read, beginning at verse 1.
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Verse 1 says, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God, the father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
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Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
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For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
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Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
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And the angels, who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
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Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
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Beginning now at verse 8.
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Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
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But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you.
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But these people blaspheme all they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
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Woe to them! For they walk in the way of Cain, and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perish in Korah's rebellion.
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These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
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It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
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These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.
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They are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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And Lord, as we seek to understand it tonight, I pray that you would keep me from error as I teach, and keep us on the track of your word.
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Keep us tied to the post of the Scripture.
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Lord, help us to not wander off like waves of the sea.
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And I do pray, Lord, that tonight as we look at this text, that you would help us to understand how this would apply, even in a small church like ours.
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The danger of those who would come in, in a clandestine way, and seek to make themselves a part of the church, but to have no intention of doing the church good, but rather to do evil to the church.
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And Lord, that is the picture that we see tonight, of those who are hidden among the sheep, the wolves in sheep's clothing.
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Lord, let us have eyes to see and ears to hear what you have for us in your word.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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It's not often that I get a chance to listen to Dr.
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John MacArthur.
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I certainly enjoy Dr.
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MacArthur very much, but just because of time and everything else, I don't often get a chance to sit down and listen to one of his sermons.
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They tend to be rather long, and I know that could be the pot calling the kettle black, because our sermons are probably about the same length.
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But I did get an opportunity to hear him talk about these verses.
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And so, because I always believe it is important to give credit where credit is due, I do want to make mention that he used an illustration that I'm going to use, because it was great.
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And so, anytime I borrow an illustration, I like to share where it came from.
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And when Dr.
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MacArthur, and this is actually in his commentary too, I went and looked at his commentary today, and it went right along with what he said in the sermon.
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And basically what he said, and I think is true, is that what we're seeing here, if we wanted to use a modern example of what we're seeing in this text from Jude, it would be the idea of terrorism.
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Because what terrorists do is they infiltrate unseen, and then they use that trust that they build up, or that community that they infiltrate, as a source of their terrorism.
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And perhaps it is that they build friendships, or perhaps it is that they build a following, or perhaps it is that they are able to create for themselves trust within the group, so that they ultimately bring about their original aim, which was the terrorism.
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And the picture that he painted is somewhat powerful.
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He said, they get everyone's trust, and then they blow everyone up.
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And I thought, what a picture, because that's not a euphemism.
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That's literally what terrorists do.
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They sneak in.
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They look like everyone else.
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But unbeknownst to the group, underneath their jacket is a bomb.
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And that bomb is waiting to go off.
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And at a certain point, they're going to push the button, or pull the pin, and then they're going to wreak untold havoc.
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And even though they themselves are going to be part of what is destroyed, they don't care, because they've only come to be an instrument of destruction.
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What a powerful illustration it is for what Jude is talking about here, because that is what we're seeing.
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The people who come into the church for the purpose of wreaking havoc, and even if it harms them, it doesn't matter, because they are willing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of destruction, if it means getting what their original intention was, and that is to create division, to sow seeds of doubt, and to create problems among the body.
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And so tonight, we're going to read through this text, and we're going to talk about the ways that we can spot these people, because that's what Jude is giving us.
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He's giving us, as it were, an outline of things to look for.
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If we look first at verse 8, he describes to us what the danger is.
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He says, Yet, in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
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Alright, well, let's for a moment take a step back.
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Who are these people? Well, verse 8 speaks about these people, and we know if we go back up to verse 4, that's the people he's talking about.
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It says in verse 4, For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated, and as we talked about in our first lesson, marked out for this condemnation.
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It was literally written about them, that they would be marked out for this condemnation.
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This is the people that are in view here.
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And he gives us three things about them that we need to understand.
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He says, first, they rely on their dreams.
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Two, they defile the flesh.
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And three, they reject authority.
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Now, we're going to talk about blaspheming the glorious ones in just a moment, but I want to look at the threefold outline because I have something up here I want to just point to.
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How can we see and recognize people who are false, and particularly false teachers within the body of Christ? Well, number one, they will almost always claim some form of personal revelation.
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God spoke to me.
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Look at what it says again in verse 8.
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It says these people rely on their dreams.
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They're relying on their personal revelation.
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How does it say it in the King James, Mike? Okay.
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But it calls them filthy dreamers, right? And in the ESV, it says relying on their dreams.
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It speaks of their personal revelation.
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And I don't know about you, but have you noticed that that is becoming more and more popular even in the quote-unquote mainstream evangelical church, that people will come to the pulpit and say, God spoke to me this week, or God said to me thus and so.
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And this type of personal revelation has become so normal, there was even a pastor here in Jacksonville, a very well-known, very big-name pastor, who just a few Easter's ago talked about his having a personal interaction with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that Jesus had appeared to him, had sat with him, had talked with him, had shared with him a certain truth that he was now going to share with the congregation.
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Often the reason for these personal revelations is because we have come to believe that the Bible is not enough.
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We've come to believe that we need something on top of the Scripture, something over the Scripture, that we will use to draw closer to God, because it's just not enough to have the Scriptures.
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And so they are looking at their personal revelation.
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The second thing we see here in the ESV, it says defile the flesh, and in the King James it says these filthy dreamers are...
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Say it again, brother? Yeah, defile the flesh.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I've said Jude is a Baptist, I said that last week.
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Yeah, Jude knows how to put things in threes, he knows how to group things together.
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So we see first personal revelation, and then we see personal satisfaction.
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The personal satisfaction here is that they are concerned with the satisfaction of self.
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They're concerned with the satisfaction of themselves.
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Again, going back to what we see in these teachers, oftentimes what is it that they're most concerned with? They're most concerned with fleshly and worldly things.
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They come out onto the chancel.
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They call it a stage, I won't.
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They come out onto this platform, whatever you want to call it.
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I don't like calling it a stage, because a stage is a place for performances.
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That's the difference.
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But we come out on the chancel, they go out on their stage, whatever, and immediately they start talking about things that satisfy the flesh.
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How your marriage is, how your finances are, how your relationships are, and everything becomes so consumed with the flesh.
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Now you might say all those things are important.
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Marriages are important.
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Money is important.
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Jesus talked about these things.
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Yes, but when these are the all-consuming thing, when these are the focus of everything, when everything we do is about us, then we are no longer living for the glory of God.
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We're living for the satisfaction of self.
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There are many sermons that are not sermons at all, but are just self-help messages wrapped up with a Bible verse.
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Maybe not even that at all.
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So we see personal satisfaction as a focus, but then also personal exaltation.
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And the reason why I said we were going to look at blaspheming the glorious ones, because blaspheming the glorious ones is actually an extension of this one.
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Because notice what it says.
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It says they reject authority and blaspheme the glorious ones.
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Those two ideas are connected by the Greek word kai.
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The Greek word kai, kappa, alpha, iota, is the word for and.
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It's our word and.
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And so the idea of rejecting authority and blaspheming the glorious ones, or I do like the King James on this one, it says dignitaries.
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Speak evil of dignitaries, blaspheming or speaking evil dignitaries, because that is how they exalt themselves.
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They exalt themselves by putting themselves in a position of authority and rejecting the authority of others.
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Now, think of Jude's time.
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Who would have been the highest authority at the time of Jude's writing? Well, the apostles, right? I would say the the the apostles are still alive in the time of of of of Jude's writing.
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And so when he talks about blaspheming the glorious ones, a lot of people think that he's talking about angels because the very next thing he does, he does go into talking about the angels.
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He talks about Michael and Satan and their interaction.
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But understand this.
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Hold on, let me let me finish my sentence and I'll answer your question.
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What he is, I think what he is saying is that they are rejecting authority by putting themselves above the term here.
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The Greek term is doxos.
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Doxos means glorious ones.
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Excuse me.
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But the word glorious ones here can be used, as we said, dignitaries or apostles.
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Let me read this one quick thing and I'll answer your question.
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John Gill says this.
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The Arabic version reads the glory of God.
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This is to be understood either of angels, those glorious creatures called thrones, dominions or ecclesiastical governors.
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And this is how I'm interpreting it.
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Who are set in the first and highest place in the church and are the glory of the churches.
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And so what Gill is saying, it could be angels, obviously, but it could also be that these men are setting themselves up above the authorities that are already in the churches.
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These men are coming in and putting themselves in a position where they are setting themselves up as the highest authority in the church.
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OK, go ahead, Matt.
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Yeah.
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And again, what's most important to me always is the Greek, right? And the word here is the word doxa.
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It's where we get the...
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You've probably heard the song, the doxology.
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Doxology means glorious word and the idea of doxa is glory.
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So actually the rendering would be the glorious ones.
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And so however, the NASB or King James or whatever, the idea there is those who are in a position of high rank, those who are in a high glorious position.
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And so could be speaking about angels, could be speaking about apostles, could even be speaking of elders in the church because they're in a position of high rank at that point.
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These people do not want to accept any authority over them.
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Go ahead.
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No, because the word angel is not there.
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The word doxa is there.
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So we're having to interpret how that word is.
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The word angel is not there.
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Remember, anytime you have a translation, there are sometimes words that are not in the original but are being used by the translator to help make the point.
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And so angelic is not a word that's there.
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In fact, I have the Greek in front of me here just to double check.
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It is athatoosan doxas de blasphemousen.
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Blasphemousen, of course, the word blasphemy.
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Yeah, there's no word here for angels.
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So the word doxas is the word there that's being translated, glorious.
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Yeah, and don't be offended by that because everybody does that.
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Every interpreter, as he is translating the text, has to include what we call dynamic equivalencies.
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A good example of this is in the King James Bible.
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The King James Bible in Romans 6, it says, Shall we continue in sin so that grace should abound? God forbid.
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Right? Well, the term there is not God forbid.
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It doesn't have the word God.
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It doesn't have the word forbid.
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The word there is me genoita.
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Genoita means the origin of something or the being of something.
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And me is the adversative.
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So the adversative me means never or not.
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And genoita means to be.
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And the idea is may it never be.
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But the dynamic equivalent of that, especially at the time when the King James was written, was the idea of God forbid because that means may it never be.
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God forbid.
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And so the word God's not there.
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The word forbid's not there.
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But it's what it means.
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And so we can understand why they would translate it that way in the same way that when Scott goes to speak to the Tao people, he has to translate like he talked about.
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Remember the pages of the book where the white leaves because that's what they see.
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That's what they understand.
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And that's how translation works.
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And I don't have.
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Huh? No, no, because what they're trying to accomplish and I don't have time to go through it tonight.
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But when I teach on Bible translation, there's actually a spectrum.
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You start with what we would call the essentially literal translations.
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And that goes as far away as what we call a paraphrase.
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And typically we want to hang closer to the literal translations.
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And it's sort of use.
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The paraphrase is just more like commentaries.
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And because you're going to get more dynamic equivalent and things over there.
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Yeah, no, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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That's a good, very good question.
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So we have here.
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These are the things that mark them out.
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They are concerned with personal revelation.
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They're concerned with personal satisfaction.
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They're concerned with personal exaltation to the point that they're going to put themselves above anything else in the church.
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And I would say even over Jesus.
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There are people who set themselves up as the highest authority.
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I love this story.
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And I think I think some of you probably heard it before.
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I just love it.
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One of my professors, Dr.
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Jerry Powers, man, I respected and loved very much.
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Pappy Powers is what we called him because he was just so sweet and kind.
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He had a wonderful story.
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He said he visited a church where he was going to be the interim pastor for a short season while the church was looking for a full time pastor.
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And when he went there, he met the first day a guy who met him at the door and he introduced himself as Deacon so-and-so, whatever the guy's name was.
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And he said, I want you to know that I am the head of this church.
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To which Dr.
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Powers said, well, that's good to know because I always thought it was Jesus.
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It was good to know it's you.
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Love that response.
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But that's the idea, right? People want they set themselves up as the head.
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Now, we understand that within the church, there are structures of authority.
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The Bible does set up an authority structure with the elders as being in a position of leadership.
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But one of the things that we have to be careful is when somebody's hungry for that, when somebody desperately wants to be the guy in charge, that's the guy you don't want in charge.
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Because that now I'm not saying that you shouldn't desire.
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If God has called you to be an elder, you should have that desire.
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In fact, it says in 1 Timothy 3, right, Andy, that the elders should desire that because it's a noble task.
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But the man who comes in immediately and starts pushing himself around and demanding people follow him and creating a following for himself.
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That is a dangerous man.
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And so we see here they are all about personal exaltation.
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So the example he gives, verse nine is actually from the book called The Testament of Moses.
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And this book talks about a story which is not in the Bible.
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And when I say it's not in the Bible, we know that Moses died looking at the promised land.
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But the Bible does not say that anyone was there to bury him.
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The Bible says God buried him.
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But it doesn't tell us how that happened.
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And so The Testament of Moses, an extra biblical, non-inspired book, let me just clarify, it's not an inspired writ, says that Michael was in charge of fulfilling God's role of burying Moses.
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And as Michael came down to bury Moses, Satan intervened and they struggled over the body.
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Now, did that story happen just that way as it's described in The Testament of Moses? We don't know.
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And Jude is not saying we know.
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Jude is using an example that everybody would have understood.
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He's using an illustration, like if I were to say Tom Sawyer fooled his friends into whitewashing his fence because he wanted to go fishing.
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Now, if you've never read Tom Sawyer, that is a story from a fictional book, but it gives a moral message.
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And if I use that in my sermon, we all would understand that I'm using a fictional account to make a moral message, right? So could it be that Jude was using an account that wasn't necessarily meant to be taken literal, but as an example of someone who blasphemes people who are in a position of authority? I think it's possible.
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But I'm also not going to say it didn't happen because Jude does use that.
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So I'm going to say my favorite thing to say when I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I don't mind saying I don't know.
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I think that there's an important sense in which we're all.
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None of us have arrived.
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None of us know everything.
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And so I can say this.
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If Jude is just using this as an example, I'm fine with that.
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I'm fine with that.
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But if this did happen exactly as he's describing it.
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Wonderful.
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The point that he's making is that Michael would not even speak a word of evil against the devil.
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How many people, you know, throw out ugly words about the devil all the time.
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People come into church, talking about we're going to bind the devil.
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We're going to do this to the devil.
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We're going to do that to the devil.
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You know what always bothers me about that? Votie Baucham pointed this out.
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So again, this didn't come from me.
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But he said, how do you keep getting loose? You bound him.
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Why do you keep letting him out? You're not binding him.
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You're doing nothing.
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You're running your mouth.
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This whole idea of binding the devil and you having authority over the devil by binding him is not biblical.
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The Bible does say we will crush Satan under our feet.
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Says that in Romans 16, verse 19.
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It says, though, what does Romans 16, 19 say? Oh, none of my young ones are here.
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We sing this on Fridays.
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Romans 16, 19 says, be excellent at what is good, be innocent of evil and the God of peace will soon crush Satan.
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God will crush Satan under your feet.
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So how is God crushing Satan under our feet? By obedience to his word.
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Be excellent at what is good.
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Be innocent of what is evil and God will crush Satan under your feet.
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Not by binding him by saying, oh, I'm binding the devil.
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No, but by being obedient to God's word.
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That's how Satan is bound.
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Not through some mystical speech pattern or some special words.
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We don't have a mystical religion.
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We have a religion that's supernatural.
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But the power is in the word of God.
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Not in.
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Silly words of men.
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So we see here.
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Even Michael would not bring a word against the devil.
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So what's that example? Verse 10.
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But these people.
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Blaspheme all that they do not understand.
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These people.
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Will blaspheme.
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Anything, why? Because they're not concerned.
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They're not concerned with anything, but their own personal revelation, personal satisfaction, personal exaltation.
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It's all about self.
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Again, if you want to know who the people are, who are the most dangerous.
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It's the me, me, me, I, I, I group.
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And honestly, this is what bothers me.
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And I'm taking a little aside.
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Y'all know in a few weeks we're having our Bible conference.
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I'm going to be preaching on music.
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As, as one of the things that we do in worship.
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And one of the things that bothers me in not all, because I'm, I'm certainly fine with a lot of contemporary music, but a lot of music, particularly not just the latest, but in the 90s, especially was all about exalting self.
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It's all about me.
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It was like, it was, you know, like a rose trampled on the ground.
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You took the fall and thought of me above all.
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Really? I don't know if you've ever heard that song.
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That's Michael W.
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Smith.
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Sounds great.
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But what's it saying? It was all about me.
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Now you may have a different take on that song, but it's, that, that was the theme of the 90s and the early 2000s was it was all about me.
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Everything.
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And it becomes the theme that is the theme of our ruin.
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It's not about me.
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If I die tomorrow, God's kingdom is going to keep moving forward.
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So it says these people blaspheme, all they do not understand.
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They are destroyed by all that they like unreasoning animals understand instinctively.
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Now that one's a little difficult to understand.
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What I believe he's saying there is these people claim to be spiritual, but they actually demonstrate themselves to be fleshly.
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They're like unreasonable, unreasoning animals.
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Now our next week in our lesson on verses 17 to 24, I'll actually show you.
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He calls them fleshly people.
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He calls them sensuous.
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And so I think that that ties in to this idea that these people, again, are focused on the flesh.
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And that's another thing.
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When it's all about the flesh, when it's all about sensuality, it's all about personal gratification and personal satisfaction.
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And again, am I exaggerating when I say that's what we see in a lot of the church? I mean, have you ever heard a Stephen Furtick sermon? Oh, don't name names.
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I name names if I want to.
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And I name his name all day long because he is crazy.
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You listen to Stephen Furtick sermons and it is all about personal satisfaction.
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So what does verse 11 say? Woe to them.
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Woe to them.
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For they.
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And it gives us three examples.
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They walked in the way of Cain.
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They abandoned themselves to Balaam's error.
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Excuse me.
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Abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error.
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And they perished in Korah's rebellion.
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Now, if you have if you're taking notes or if you would like to take notes and give you a few verses, because.
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I said this on the first night I was in Jude.
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I said we should know who Cain, Balaam and Korah are.
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But not everybody does.
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Right.
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Some of us didn't grow up in church.
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Some of us don't have a background in Sunday school and Old Testament, things like that.
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I understand.
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But Jude expects us to know our Bible because he's using biblical examples.
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And by the way, all three of these are biblical examples.
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Of course, Cain, who is Cain? He is the son of Adam and Eve.
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There's Cain and Abel.
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And what did Cain do? Cain was the first murderer.
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But what was the reason for his murder? Because his brother's sacrifice was accepted and his was not.
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We could say it was jealousy.
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We could say it was anger.
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We could say all kinds of things.
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And there's a lot of dispute and debate about why God accepted his sacrifice and why he didn't.
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And if you want to know more about that, go back and listen to my sermon in Genesis four, because I did deal with that a lot.
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And I don't have time to go through it tonight.
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But I do want to read you one passage.
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And this is from Hebrews chapter 11, verse four.
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This tells us sort of the tale of the tape.
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In Hebrews 11, verse four, it says this.
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By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous.
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God commending him by accepting his gifts and through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
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So what does that tell us about the distinction between Cain and Abel's gift? Abel brought a sacrifice of faith.
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See, some people think it's because it had blood.
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And there are arguments for that.
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But I don't think it's about the blood because Hebrews says it's about the faith.
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Cain brought a sacrifice of faith and Abel brought...
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I'm sorry, strike that, reverse it.
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Abel brought a sacrifice of faith and Cain did not.
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Because they both brought a sacrifice of what they had.
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Cain was a man of the field.
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Abel was a hunter.
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They both brought what they had, whether it was an animal or whether it was a vegetable.
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It was both from what they did.
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It was a sacrifice of what they did.
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But one came in faith and one didn't.
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So what's the example here? The example here is someone who is hateful, who's envious.
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Yes, that's true.
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But it's also someone who's unbelieving.
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Cain's biggest problem was that he was an unbeliever.
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Can I ask you a question? Are there people in the church who are unbelievers? Yes.
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There are people in the church who don't believe.
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And you say, how can that be? People have all kinds of motivations for the things that they do and it's hard to nail anything down.
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But there was a time, especially not recent history, but fairly recent history, there was a time when being a part of a church had some value socially.
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There was a time when you sort of had to be a part of a church if you wanted to function in society.
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And so people would come and be part of the church for that reason.
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That's sort of gone away.
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In fact, I recently have heard people Christian commentators and stuff have been talking and different teachers and stuff have talked about the end of cultural Christianity.
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The end of cultural Christianity.
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Anybody heard that? You understand what they're saying? They're saying that the time when it was beneficial to be a part of the church on a social level, that's sort of gone away.
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And see, that created a social, cultural Christianity that actually wasn't really good because you had a bunch of unbelievers in the church.
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So this may be a negative in the sense of cultural Christianity goes away, so does the culture.
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But also it tends to purge the church.
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Because if there's no longer any social reason, social benefit for being a part of the church, then you see sort of a culling of the herd.
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But again, going back to Cain.
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Cain is an example of unbelief.
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In fact, 1 John 3.12, there's another verse.
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1 John 3.12 says, We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother.
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And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.
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His deeds were evil.
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What he did was evil.
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Bringing a sacrifice of no faith is an evil thing.
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The second one is Balaam.
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Now, what do we know about Balaam? Come on, give it to me.
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He had a donkey that spoke.
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Let me say this about that.
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Well, my first the first book I ever studied in seminary, first class I ever took in seminary was on the book of Numbers.
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And I remember telling one of the people here at church.
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I think it was Miss Hoffman.
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I said, yeah, my first seminary class is on the book of Numbers.
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And she said, oh, that's going to be so boring.
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Man, that was the most exciting class.
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If you've never read with fresh eyes the book of Numbers, go back and read.
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It's just so incredibly interesting.
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There's just one story after another of failure and God's judgment and then God's grace and then bringing them back and then all these different things.
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There's so many powerful stories.
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But the one story that got my attention, of course, was in Numbers 22 where the donkey speaks.
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But see, that's not the part of that's not the part of Balaam's story that's most important.
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What's important about Balaam's story is that he was hired.
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So he was a prophet for profit.
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I'm not the first one to come up with that either.
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A prophet for profit.
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He was hired to curse Israel.
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But when he came to curse Israel, he couldn't.
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God would not let him curse Israel.
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He blasphemed Israel.
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I'm sorry.
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That's blessed.
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Thank you.
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He blessed Israel.
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He couldn't curse them.
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No.
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Yeah.
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He couldn't curse.
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So he blessed them.
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And Balak, the one who had hired him to do this, said, what are you doing? I hired you to curse.
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I can't curse them.
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So he didn't curse them.
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But you know what he did do? Because he still wanted the money.
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He told Balak how to hurt Israel from the inside.
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I'll read this to you.
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Just if you want to.
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This is numbers 31 16.
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Numbers 31 16.
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It says, behold, on Balaam's advice, these people caused Israel to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident at Peor.
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And so the plague came upon the congregation of the Lord.
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You said, what does it mean? He caused them to act treacherously.
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He encouraged them.
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He encouraged Balak to send in women to encourage the men to be unfaithful to the Lord.
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And women are pretty powerful at causing men to be unfaithful.
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In fact, Revelation 2 14 says this.
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It says, I have a few things against you.
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It's talking about to one of the churches.
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It says you have the same there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food, sacrifice to idols and practice sexual immorality.
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Those women came in with them ham sandwiches.
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I'm just being a little exaggerative there.
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But he taught.
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He said, I can't curse him, but here's how you're going to.
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Here's how you can do this.
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Because I want that money.
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You go in.
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Send in the women.
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And encourage them from the inside to turn away from the Lord and turn to idolatry.
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So right there we have Balaam, who is a prophet for profit.
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We have Cain, who's an unbeliever.
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And then finally, we have Cora.
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Cora is the third example.
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And Cora is is Cora is a man who would not abide by God's authority structure.
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Simple as that.
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God had set up an authority structure.
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What was the authority structure? Moses is the man that God has called to lead the people.
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And what did Cora say to Moses? Well, I'll read it to you.
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It's number 16.
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Again, numbers is exciting.
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Two out of these three stories come from the Book of Numbers.
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And in number 16, Cora is speaking.
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It says now Cora, the son of Ishar, son of Kohath, son of Levi and Dathan and Abiram.
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Sorry, excuse me.
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The son of Eliab and on the son of Peileth, sons of Reuben, took men and they rose up before Moses with a number of the people of Israel, 250 of the chiefs of the congregation chosen from the assembly, well-known men.
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They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, You have gone too far, for all in the congregation are holy, every one of them.
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And the Lord is among them.
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Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? Notice what he's saying.
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He's going to Moses.
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And he's saying, who do you think you are? God has called all of us, not just you.
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So I'm going to put all of us, but not really all of us, because I'm thinking me.
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In a position above you, I have been.
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I've been in situations before.
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Not many, but there have been times.
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Where there have been situations come up where there will be a hard and difficult person to deal with.
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And they would say something to the effect.
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Well, who do you think you are? And I say, I'm one of the men that God has called to pastor this church.
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And therefore, I have a position that's important to recognize.
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Doesn't make me infallible.
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Moses wasn't infallible.
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I'm not infallible.
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Doesn't make Andy, me and Mike the last word on every single thing.
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But we do have a position that is important within the structure of the church.
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And therefore, it is a place that if someone tried to lead a coup against that would be wrong.
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In fact, I've I've had that conversation before.
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People come to me and they say, what if my elders are doing something that is ungodly? I said, well, you have a couple of choices.
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One, you can try to divide the body.
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The Bible says that's wrong.
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I said, or you can.
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The first thing you should do is go to your elders and try to talk to them.
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That that may not bear fruit.
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But that's the first thing I said.
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Or you may have to leave.
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I said, but do not divide the body.
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Do not be the divider.
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As the Bible says, there's six things the Lord hates.
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Seven are an abomination to him.
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And number seven is those who sow discord among the brethren.
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And so that's what poor is doing.
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You might say, you might say, does that mean the elders are not to be questioned? No, that's not what I'm saying.
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Understand, that's not what I'm saying at all.
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That's why I say the first thing you should do is go to the elders.
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If you have an issue, you go to them and you talk to them as godly men among godly men and have that conversation.
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But in the times that I've dealt with this the most, it has almost always been people who do not want to respect the authority that God has established.
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And that's the spirit of.
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That's the spirit of Korah.
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The spirit of Korah is those who do not want to recognize the authority that God has established.
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And I'll give you a quick quote from David Guzik.
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He says this.
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These three men, Cain, Balaam and Korah.
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These three men came from quite different backgrounds.
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Cain was a farmer.
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Balaam was a prophet.
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Korah was a leader in Israel.
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Apostasy is never confined to one group of people.
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They there are apostates in the pulpit, in the palace and in the poor house.
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Thought that was kind of cool.
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There are apostates in the pulpit, in the palace and in the poor house.
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And like I said, I can tell you stories.
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People have private meetings.
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People try to set up divisions and create divisions.
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And it's it's not what God has called us to do.
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So woe to them for these three things.
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Now we get some examples from nature, and I am going to finish this tonight because the rest of this is going to go relatively quick.
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We have examples from nature, he says, beginning in verse 12.
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These speaking again of these people, there are hidden reefs that your love feasts as they feast with you without fear.
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They're shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruit trees in late autumn, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
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So he gives us a few examples, hidden reefs.
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What's a hidden reef? Well, think about a boat.
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Boats going across the water doesn't see the reef.
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The reef tears the bottom out of the boat.
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They're unseen.
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That's number one.
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The unseen danger.
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Number two, waterless clouds.
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They look like they have something, but there's nothing.
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There's nothing in them.
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That's what a waterless cloud is.
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And that's when you start to hear somebody teaching or you hear them talking.
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They don't have anything, but they look like they have something, but they don't.
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We're going to watch after Andy's done with chapter three, we do Philemon.
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We are going to spend one evening watching a video called Clouds Without Water.
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And it's a very powerful video about false teachers.
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And it points out some very specific men.
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And it's by Justin Peters.
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If you ever heard of him, it's called it's his lesson called Clouds Without Water.
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And that's going to sort of bring all of this to a conclusion.
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Fruitless trees.
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Well, what's a fruitless tree? Doesn't have any fruit.
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He says it's twice dead.
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Why? It's dead in one sense because it has no fruit, but it's dead in the second sense because it's been uprooted.
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That's why he says twice that uprooted has no fruit.
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Wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame.
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He also says I missed it, but it was shepherds feeding themselves.
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They're self feeding shepherds.
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They're wild waves.
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They're wandering stars.
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All of these are just natural examples.
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Of men, vivid illustrations of men.
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Who have nothing to offer the church.
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Except.
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Division and their desire is not to give, but to take.
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Now I do want to point one thing out, just just an aside in verse 12.
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Looking at the beginning, it says they're hidden reefs at your love feasts as they feast with you without fear.
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That that that is a term that we should at least understand the term in the Greek is the agape feast.
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You guys know the word agape.
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There is the word for love.
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It's very common Greek word.
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Many people know it.
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That was the feast that the early church would have where they would have communion.
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And so basically he's not just saying they're coming to your potluck.
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They're sneaking into your potluck.
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No, these are people who are gathering around the communion table with you.
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Now they didn't do it like we do, but you understand the picture.
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These people are there at your table with you.
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They are proclaiming to be like you, but they aren't.
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That's the danger.
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Now I know some of you get all nervous start looking around.
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Now.
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This is not saying that we should be mean or automatically assume the worst about people.
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But it is telling us that there are people out there that are a danger to the church.
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What do we read in 2 John and 3 John? There are people who use the church to financially build their own, to fill their own coffers.
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This is nothing new.
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This has been going on for 2000 years.
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Verse 14 and 15, he quotes Enoch.
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So jump to the next.
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I wrote all this down.
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Verse 14 and 15 quotes Enoch.
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Now I talked about the quotation from Enoch whenever I did the introduction, because I talked about using extra biblical sources.
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But notice what he says.
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Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners.
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Notice the word all, all, all.
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The word all is in there multiple times.
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Anytime you see a word that comes up multiple times, it's important.
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And in this sense, the idea is they're not going to get away with anything.
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They are not going to get away with one iota of what they're trying to do.
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Notice what it doesn't say.
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You are to be the judge.
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No, no.
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The Lord will execute judgment.
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Now, that doesn't mean you do nothing.
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We do have to rebuke the the the the the false teachers.
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We do have to call them out.
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That's what church discipline is.
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There are processes for things like this.
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But understand, you may not get ultimate satisfaction in this life, but it ain't up to you and it ain't about you.
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God is the one who's going to bring judgment and he's going to bring judgment on all the ungodliness and all the unrighteousness.
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They will not get away with anything.
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And I hear people will say, oh, man, that guy beat justice.
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Nobody beats justice.
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You either receive mercy from God or you receive the full justice and recompense for all your sins.
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But nobody, nobody beats justice.
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So we're going to end on verse 16.
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These he says these again, he's talked about these since verse eight, these people, verse eight, these people, verse 10, them, woe to them.
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Verse 11, these verse 12.
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And now here again, verse 16.
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These are grumblers, malcontents following their own sinful desires.
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They're loudmouth boasters showing favoritism to gain advantage.
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All right, just real quick.
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Notice how this again, it's that threefold thing.
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He says they're grumblers, malcontents.
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And there he says loudmouth boasters.
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I just wrote boasters.
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But notice, notice what it all revolves around.
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Words, the most dangerous thing.
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That the false teacher brings into the church.
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Or his words.
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Because words are used to destroy.
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Words are used to deceive.
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Words are used to draw people away.
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Words are dangerous.
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I know we all heard growing up.
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Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
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That's not exactly true.
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Because words, in one sense, do have power.
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I'll give you an example of one of the ways that the, what are they called? Prosperity gospel.
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Prosperity love the Old Testament passage that says the life and death are in the power of the tongue.
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Because they always use that to talk about speaking things into existence and speaking words into existence.
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That's not what that means.
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When it says the life and death are in the power of the tongue.
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It's not saying that you have the power to speak the world into existence.
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It's not saying you have the power to speak your own success into existence or to speak your own failure into existence.
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That's not what it means.
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But what it does mean is this.
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There is power in our words.
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And our words will either be used to build up God's people or our words will be used to destroy God's people.
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Our words will be used to encourage God's people or deceive God's people.
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And words in that sense do have power.
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So when he says they're grumblers, those are people whose words are always negative.
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I tell you, it's easy to get really, really, really frustrated with that.
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When all someone ever brings you is what's wrong.
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They're malcontent and they're boastful.
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I'll read you a quote from Spurgeon.
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You know, the sort of people alluded to here, nothing ever satisfies them.
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They are discontented even with the gospel.
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The bread of heaven must be cut into three pieces and served on dainty napkins or else they cannot eat it.
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And very soon their soul hates even this light bread.
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There is no way by which a Christian man can serve God so as to please them.
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They will pick holes in every preacher's coat.
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And if the great high priest himself were here, they would find fault with the color of the stones on his breastplate.
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They are malcontents.
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They are grumblers.
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They are self boasters.
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Well, these are the people that we should be wary of.
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These are the people that we should watch out for.
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These are the terrorists in the church, as John MacArthur said, and these are the ones that Jude is warning us about.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for tonight and the opportunity to study again.
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I pray that this will be fruitful in the lives of your people and Lord that we would not be heavy handed or critical with every person we meet, but that we would be discerning and always aware that your word tells us without question that there are going to be scoffers among us, and they are going to do their best to bring destruction to your people.
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And Lord, we know the devil is always at work.
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So help us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
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In Jesus name, Amen.