Jude 4

The Shepherd's Church

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Let's pray, Father God, Lord, I ask that you would illuminate your word for us today.

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Lord God, we are used to reading verses that make us feel good.

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We are used to reading verses that encourage us. We are used to reading verses that minister to our needs.

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And Lord, these verses are strong. These verses are warning.

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These verses are stark. And Lord God, I confess that in my weakness as a man, that there have been times when

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I've been afraid, that I've been fearful to share the truth that is in this book.

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Lord God, I pray that you would cover me so that I may speak only what you would have me say.

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So that I will share only the truth that is in this book. And Lord, that I would share it in a way that's consistent with the way

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Jude meant it. Lord, if it's a warning, let me share it with courage.

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Lord, I pray, as we were just considering Matthew 5 in our reading, and it says to pray for your enemies.

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Lord God, much of what I'm going to say in this sermon is about those who hate you, and about those who do not love you.

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And Lord, that angers me. And Lord, that hurts me. But Lord, I pray for them.

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I pray that they would repent. I pray that the wolves and the false teachers, I pray that those who distort your gospel of grace would repent.

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I pray that they would turn to you. In Jesus' name, amen. If you'll remember from last week, we were reminded of two great truths that saturate this book.

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And that's in the first two verses, that we are called, that we are beloved, that we are kept by God. And this includes every single

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Christian in this room. And the reason that those truths are so important is because we can contend. We can contend with hope.

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We can contend without fear, because we are called, we are beloved, and we are kept. And because God is multiplying mercy, grace, and peace into our life.

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And when we get to verse 3, we realize that when Jude calls us to contend, we must realize that this is a command that we are called to live out, whether it's easy for us or whether it's hard.

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If we look at this text and we say that this does not apply to me, then we are in error, because this is what the text says.

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We are called to contend. We're called to fight, to struggle, to go to war for the sake of the gospel.

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Because as we've learned, the church, the denomination, the university, the seminary, or anyone else who abandons the truth of Christ will eventually slide into error.

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Jesus says that it only takes a little bit of leaven to leaven the entire loaf of bread. And it only takes a little bit of error, and a little bit of heresy, and a little bit of falsehood, unreputed and uncontended, to ruin the believer and to sour the church.

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So we must obey what Jude is saying. We must begin to see ourselves as men and women who will contend for the gospel.

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And you may still be curious, what does that mean? How am I to do it?

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What new habits am I supposed to add into my life? And what bad old habits am I supposed to repent of?

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And while it is not my goal to re -preach last week's sermon, amen, we can summarize last week's message with two overarching truths.

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And that is that we are called to contend like lions against the outsiders that come against the church of God.

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And we are called to contend like lambs to those dear brothers and sisters inside the church, to help them, to help them understand truth, to help them understand what the gospel says.

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We are to contend to outsiders and insiders. Both are important because when we think about outsiders, we contend like this because we are citizens of heaven.

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And because we're citizens of heaven, we should not assume that the enemy who runs a different kingdom is not going to come in and attack.

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We shouldn't be surprised when he sends godless thinking and godless people into the church in order to have them raise up in the ranks of the church in order to tank the church.

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This is 2000 years now of Satan doing this, infiltrating the church with false doctrine, infiltrating the church with wolves.

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We must contend like lions for the truth of scripture from the outside era that is seeking to come in.

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There's an example of this, many examples of this, but one I'm going to give you. In the 1600s in England, near the height of the

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Puritan era, the slave ships sailed from England to the coast of Africa. And in the course of 200 years, 3 million

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African people were uprooted from their homes, were imprisoned against their will, were transported on British ships back to the mainland of England.

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Why? Because godless men took power over powerless people and brought them into their control.

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And when they arrived back in England, what did the church do? Did she contend?

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Did she fight for the truth? Did she look in Genesis and see that all people are created in the image of God and that there is no slave nor free, there is no

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Greek nor Jew? Did she contend with truth? In large part, she did not.

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In 200 years in both England and America, the church woefully failed to contend for the truth that it knew from scripture.

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And because of that, millions of people suffered. They failed to see the full personhood and the humanity of all people were made in the image of God.

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And there were various responses. Some tried not to think about it because the truth was too hard.

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Some tried to ignore that slavery was happening. Some tried to justify it and say, no, this really is a biblical thing.

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But the vast majority of people did almost nothing. There was a less than adequate response, to say the least.

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And because of that, millions of people were affected. Now, when we think about the world's response, this is not the church, we can understand this.

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The world has no philosophical warrant to say that anything is wrong.

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We're the accidental by -product of random mutation and blind chance. And if some men are more powerful than others, well, that's just natural selection.

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Darwinian evolution and the world and naturalism has no moral argument against slavery, against euthanasia, genocide, murder, theft, or anything else, because we're all just animals acting like animals onto each other.

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And in many ways, this is the ploy of Satan himself. This is his attack.

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Isn't it funny that when Satan comes into the garden, the result is slavery to sin and death? Is it ironic that over thousands of years of human history, slavery and death have been perpetrated by men who follow after Satan and his schemes?

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But I will give the world this, the world is at least consistent in their worldview. The world doesn't have the

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Holy Spirit of God, so when they do awful things, they have no philosophical warrant to say that those things are wrong. They're at least being consistent in their beliefs.

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But what about the church? What about the church who knows about the sanctity of human life? What about the church that knows about the sacredness of every single creation, that human beings were made as the special creations of God?

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What about the church? Why didn't she contend? Why didn't she speak up?

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I don't know the answer. It's complicated. It's complex. There's many moving factors.

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But I will say that the church, although not totally responsible, the church has a responsibility. When the church doesn't contend, when the church doesn't stand up, she will stand before the

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Lord on that. She will stand before the Lord on the fact that she did not contend against the error that came against her from the outside.

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We are called to contend. The church in England today is now a wasteland for Christianity.

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They went from passively not contending to actively rejecting the truth in a single generation.

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The next generation went from ignoring the truth and the moral apathy. The next generation went from moral apathy into downright rejection so that now the

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British church has swung so far into error that you can only say that they're in a state of moral confusion and that the church in England, I would argue, is one of the largest graveyards for Christianity in church history.

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From the heights of the Puritan era now to the confusion that we see where there's almost no evangelical churches left.

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If you go to England, you can go to many churches and they are restaurants and they are condos and they are everything but churches.

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And the ones that still do exist don't even know the truth because they didn't contend. A little bit of error that's not contended against in several generations will lead a church to slide into error.

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And to fade into oblivion. Now that's not to say that there weren't some that contended.

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I want to share with you a couple examples because I don't want you to have the idea that in this situation, no one contended.

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There's a man named John Newton. If you've never heard of John Newton, he's a great biography about him.

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He wrote a song called Amazing Grace. And John Newton was a slave owner. John Newton was a man who sailed on the ships.

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John Newton was a man who purchased slaves and sold slaves. But when the gospel of Jesus Christ gripped

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John Newton's heart, all he could cry out was amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, that saved a slave trader like me.

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I once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see. And John Newton spent the rest of his life contending for the truth.

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Somewhat alone. He was one of the few. There's another man named William Wilberforce in England.

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And he fought for two decades. William Wilberforce was a Christian who believed the gospel and he went into politics in order to help affect change.

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And he spent 20 years fighting this issue of slavery before on his deathbed, three days before he died, slavery was abolished in England.

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He spent 20 years fighting for the truth. One truth in Genesis that man is created in the image of God and has set this man on a course that he spent 20 years fighting for the truth.

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It was hard. It ultimately put him through so much stress that it killed him.

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But it was what he knew God had called him to do. I don't know if that means that we should be entering into politics.

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I'm not arguing for that. But I do think that we should educate ourself to the truth of Scripture.

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We should know what God's word says, what it commands, and we should understand the implications of truth. There are consequences to truth.

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There are consequences to ideas. If we know that people are made in the image of Almighty God, then it doesn't matter what color their skin is.

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We can't just kill them. And it doesn't matter how small they are. We can't just kill them. And I would say that in America, one of the greatest challenges that the church is facing today is the issue of abortion.

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Because here you have a situation that is so similar to that that was happening in England where people were killing people because they thought that they were powerless and they were unwanted, they were unneeded.

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And you have the same situation that is going on today where the tiniest, most defenseless little humans in our society are being killed because they're unwanted, they're unneeded, they're unnecessary.

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That's the lie that is coming into the church. And I've heard so many Christians say that this is a matter of choice.

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This is not a matter of choice. We don't get to choose what God has already decided. There's consequences for our ideas.

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If people are made in the image of God, then they are made in the image of God. Where are the

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William Wilbur forces of our day? Where are those who will contend and take up the fight anytime, anywhere that human life is desecrated?

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And I'll confess to you that I don't think I've done enough in this regard. I've done what most people have done.

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I've posted a few things on Facebook. I've written an article about it once.

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I've not done enough. I was thinking about this this week. This month is a month where we remember infants who have died.

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And I just think about the fact that there's so much that I could have done. There's so much that we can do as a church.

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So I only say that because there's an outside error that's coming into the church.

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And we have a responsibility to do something. And there's nothing in the Bible that says you must join this organization or you must partner with this ministry or you must give this amount of money to this.

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Settle your conscience between you and the Lord. But I'm just telling you that we're supposed to contend. That we're supposed to stand up against the error that's attacking the church.

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That's the first point is that we have to stand up against outside error. The second is that we must be willing and committed to contend for our brothers and sisters who have faulty ways of thinking still.

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Who still don't understand the gospel. You see, there's a difference in the way that we contend with insiders and outsiders.

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I said it earlier, we contend like lions when the wolves are trying to come in and attack the church of God. We contend like lambs with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Jude begins the letter. The way he structures the whole book is the whole book on contending for the gospel.

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Verses one through three is how do you contend with Christians? You contend with them with mercy. You contend with them with peace and love.

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You love your brothers and sisters and you mercifully interact with them. You graciously interact with them.

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You interact with them in a way that's kind and considerate. But when the wolf comes in, you stand up like a lion and you defend the truth of the gospel.

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Because as we will learn today, the wolves will come in. Now we contend inside the church for doctrinal purity.

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I would say that a ministry or a minister that leaves his church in the kiddie pool of Christian doctrine is doing them a horrible disservice.

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Paul says in Colossians 1, 28 through 29, it's him we proclaim,

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Jesus we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ for this

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I toil, struggling with all my energy that he powerfully works within me.

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It's the responsibility of the church to contend for the truth of the gospel so that all of us can grow into maturity of the faith.

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That's the purpose of this book. That is the purpose for why Jude is writing so that we will contend against outside error.

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We will contend against the inside error. So now if you'll turn with me to verse four, that's gonna be our introduction to this text.

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We have now entered into a new section of the book. We've been in a section where Jude is talking about how do you contend with the insiders?

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Now we're gonna transition into a four or into verses four through 16 on how do we contend with outsiders?

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So I want us to keep this clear. When we are talking about these texts, this is the lion text. This is the text where we stand up against the wolves that are coming against the church.

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These are hard texts, but it's an opportunity that we have to look at these and to understand what it means to contend.

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So let's start with verse four. It says, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our

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God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now there are four things in this verse and I think that these four things are in logical order so that there's a stage one of what happens to a wolf.

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There's a stage two. There's a stage three. And there's a stage four. There's four stages of how a wolf comes into the church of God.

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And there is four things that I want us to know today. So we're going to start with the first one. And by the way, just so you're not worried about us going three hours in this sermon, the first one is about 80 % of our time.

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I just want to tell you that right up front because I have a conviction on this that if you stop the wolf at the first stage, then you don't have to go to the second, the third and the fourth.

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So we stop the wolf early. What does Jude say? Jude says that the wolf sneaks into the flock of God.

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That's the first thing that he says, that the wolf sneaks into the flock of God unnoticed.

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He says, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed. So I would say that they are creeping in with intentionality.

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They are creeping in with wicked intentions and great secrecy. The word here that Jude uses, peresidusan,

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I didn't write it in English. Normally I write it in English, but it's in Greek here. So I'm like, wait a minute, peresidusan.

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This word means to slip in stealthily, to sneak in without being noticed or to join a group with malicious intent.

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The very character of this is to sneak in unnoticed. It's to try to come in camouflaged and to not be seen.

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The reality is that there are wolves that exist who are trying to sneak into the church of Jesus Christ.

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And I will tell you, the wolf is not content to remain in the congregation. The wolf is trying to get promoted into the positions of leadership so that they can devour more sheep.

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They are sneaky. They are calculating. They are deceptive. And the thing that we must recognize is that they really do exist.

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There are men and women out there who are trying to infiltrate the church of Jesus Christ, whether they know it or whether they don't, whether it's conscious or whether it's unconscious.

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Satan has been doing this ever since the very beginning. There are wolves that exist and we must know how to identify them.

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In a great book called Let Us Pray, P -R -E -Y, meaning let us feast or let us stalk or let us chase.

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It's a fascinating study on narcissistic personality disorder and how it enters into the church.

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It's a fascinating book. The authors concluded that narcissistic personality disorder was 10 times more likely in pastors than an average people walking on the street.

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10 times. And I don't say that to frighten you, but I say that because there is an agenda, a satanically motivated agenda that he's trying to send wolves into the flock of God.

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They come in unnoticed. They sneak in. They learn the lingo. They impress people with their learning.

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They raise up in the ranks of the church. And before you know it, they're promoted as pastor and they're devouring the flock of God.

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I think the most shocking part is that they come in unnoticed. Jude says they come in unnoticed.

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He says for certain persons have come in unnoticed and he's not the only biblical author who makes this case.

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Jude makes it. Paul makes it. Peter makes it. Jesus Christ himself makes this argument. Look at what

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Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11, 13 through 15. For such men are false apostles.

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They're deceitful workmen. They're disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

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And no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it's no surprise if his servants also disguised themselves as servants of righteousness, but their end will correspond to their deeds.

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Peter says something very similar in 2 Peter 2, 1 through 3. But false prophets also arose among the people.

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It doesn't say that they might. It says that they did. Just as there will be false teachers among you. There will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who has bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

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And it says many will follow their sensuality. And because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed.

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And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.

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Jude, Paul, and Peter are all alluding to the fact that by the time you see the wolf, they've probably already been there and they probably have already done damage.

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By the time you notice them, by the time you diagnose them, it's usually too late. Rarely do we catch a wolf when they're burrowing under the fence trying to get into the sheep pen.

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Rarely do we spot them when they are moving into position. They come in secretly.

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They come in deceitfully. They come in destructively. They come in like Satan himself.

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Remember back to the garden. Satan came in not walking, slithering.

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He came in not marching. He came in sneaking. He came in to destroy the family by sneaking up on them and attacking them with truth.

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And just like the serpent of old who infiltrated the garden, wolves come in quietly. They don't make a lot of noise when they come into the church, which shows me that false teachers and wolves are motivated by Satan.

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You know, they say that a child ends up looking and acting like their parents. I see things that Graham does that annoy me on one hand and remind me of my childhood in many different ways on another.

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Kids end up looking like their parents. I love you, Graham. You're just right in front of me.

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Kids end up looking like their parents. So when false teachers look like Satan, they talk like Satan.

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They deceive people like Satan. They're children of Satan. They're children of wrath.

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Like Satan, they come in hidden. But here's the key. They don't stay that way. That's how they enter.

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Again, Peter says, false prophets also arose who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. And then what?

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Many will follow their sensuality. And because of them, the way of the truth will be blasphemed.

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They come in quietly. They come in stealthily. They come in sneakily. They come in slowly, but they don't stay that way.

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One suggestion here, one false idea there. They test the boundaries. And before long, they're rising the ranks of the church.

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And we are seeing this happening today. Unfortunately, this is not a new problem.

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This has been happening throughout every era of church history. But a new breed of wolves have risen up into the ranks of the church and mainline churches and evangelical churches and other types of churches seeking to do damage to the kingdom of God.

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I think this is why Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven, beware, beware of the false prophet who comes to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

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They're deceptive. They come in to trick you. Would Jesus have said beware if this kind of thing was rare?

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Would Jesus have said be weary if this sort of danger did not exist? Not only do these type of men exist,

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Jesus knew they would come. Jesus know that they would sneak around and try to infiltrate the church of God.

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Jesus knew that many of them would actually get in. And the worst possible outcome for the church is to fall asleep.

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Like a hired hand in a sheep pen, one nap is all it takes for the wolf to devour the flock of God.

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And while the church in America sleeps, the wolves come in.

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It's not a time to be sleeping. I would say it again, many have rose up in the ranks of American church and they're gluttonous wolves.

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And I'll say this, I don't make it a habit of calling people out by name publicly, but when things are done in error publicly, there is a public warrant to warn the flock of God of people publicly.

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When error is given publicly, there's a warrant to publicly warn the people of God to avoid certain teachers.

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And we cannot be exhaustive. But men like Kenneth Copeland, who have a billion dollars from stealing money from the sheep.

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Creflo Dollar, who asked his church because God told him in a dream that he needed an airplane to buy him the nicest, most luxurious jet so that he could swag around the world and preach the gospel from his, whatever the name of that plane is.

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People like Benny Hinn or Paula White, Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, Todd White, the list could go on and on.

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And each of these men are heretics. Each of these men are wolves, women.

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The list could go on and on and on, but there are so many wolves out there today that I think the situation is desperate.

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I cannot remember a time in church history when there were so many. I cannot remember a time in church history when the wolves were multiplying faster than the sheep.

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And how has the church responded today? Some churches have been sleeping.

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Some churches have abandoned their good shepherd and they followed after the wolf. Some churches have thrown really great parties and act like everything is fine.

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It's not fine. Some churches have become incredibly religious and snarky and prideful and said that we're better than that.

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That'll never happen to us. I wouldn't say that. Instead of these, we must contend.

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We must be humble. Like Jude says, we must be slaves of Christ. We must be serious.

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We're, this is not peace time. There's, this is time of war. We must be faithful as we understand that this is happening.

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Humble, but yet unapologetic. We must contend. Now, you may be wondering, how do you actually identify a wolf?

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Because it could kind of sound like at this point that you're on a firing line and you're just praying that someone misses.

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You could think there's no defense. We're just vulnerable to attack. Jesus actually tells us how to identify a wolf.

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Jesus actually tells us one verse later. He says in verse 15 of chapter seven, beware, verse 16, he tells us what to do.

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He says, you will recognize them by their fruit. Our grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistle.

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So every healthy tree bears good fruit. But the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

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A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

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What Jesus is saying is that even though these men sneak in secretly, that there are certain identifiable markings by which we, if we are discerning, can understand who the wolf is.

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There's diagnostic tests that we can run to see if someone is a wolf. We can look at someone's life and at someone's ministry and see, is that a person that I should be listening to?

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Is that a person that I should be submitting my life under? Or is that a person, a wolf?

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Now, I just wanna speak a word to everyone here who is a part of the Shepherd's Church.

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There are more wolves out there than we have time to name. So I would beg you to take care and be discerning on who you listen to.

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Jesus did not warn us for no reason. These men are crafty. These men are excellent at what they do. They're manipulative, and they are better at manipulating than we are discerning.

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Please be discerning with what you listen to on the internet. Please be discerning with what you listen to in your car or when you play

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Christian radio. Please be discerning when you watch Christian movies. Please be discerning when you put anything in front of your eyes, because it's an opportunity for the enemy to grab a foothold in your life.

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Be discerning. Know the word of God. Know scripture. Guard your heart diligently from error, because Jesus said these wolves would come in.

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Now, let's go back to what Jesus said. How do we identify a wolf? We look at their character. We look at their fruit.

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Before their delusions can spiral into destruction, there is fruit in their life that we can identify, and we can test that fruit.

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We can subject their teaching. We can subject their life. We can subject the things that they say, their attitudes, their behaviors.

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We can subject all of it to the word of God, and we can see if a person is a biblically qualified faithful minister of the gospel or if they are a wolf.

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We can do this. We are not defenseless. It is like a jeweler. A jeweler has an obligation not to put a false stone in the stand and to sell a fake to the people who come in, and they take that stone and they look at it under intense magnification and they look at it under light and they look at it and they see if there's impurities and imperfections and they look at it and they see if it's a real stone or if it's a fake stone.

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Well, we have the word of God. We have the light of the gospel that we can put anyone and everything under its authority and see if it's true or see if it's fake.

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This work is too important. I would share a few examples from scripture as we seek to understand.

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We can ask questions like this. Is this person seeking to honor Jesus Christ with all of their life? Is this person exemplify the fruits of the spirit that are found in Galatians 5?

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Does this person exemplify the beatitudes that we read earlier that comes in Matthew chapter 5?

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Do this person live out the two great commandments of loving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving their neighbor as their self?

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That's Matthew 22. Do they meet the qualifications of eldership in 1 Timothy 3?

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We are not defenseless. All of us who sit under anyone who are listening to anyone can examine their life against the authority of the scriptures and we can tell if they're a fraud or if they are real.

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Again, attacks are coming from all sides and I cannot stress this enough. We must contend.

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We must contend. Now, I believe that it's a blessing that we're going through this book.

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There's a reason why churches don't preach through this book because it's hard and every week at the

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Shepherd's Church from here on out is not gonna be, you have to go after the wolf. Sorry, but we have an opportunity here.

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We have a great opportunity to understand what this means there's a chance we will never be in Jude again.

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I hold this as very, very sacred that we look at this because it really does apply to what we're going through today.

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It really does apply to the people who are coming into the church. Prosperity wolves say that you can name it and claim it.

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If you send $1 ,000 in so -and -so's ministry then you'll get $10 ,000 in return. Those are wolves.

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Those are wolves that are devouring the people of God. There's new cults and new cult leaders that come up every single year.

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There's men who provoke false miracles, false prophecies, false signs, false wonders, they're false teachers.

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They claim to be false apostles. They don't claim to be false ones but they are false ones. There's false anointings.

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There's made up revelation and then there's wolves that are bringing in destructive ideologies in the church like evolution, abortion, naturalism, homosexuality, pluralism, relativism,

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Americanism, feminism, easy believism, entertainment over holiness, consumerism over the sacraments, ear -tickling messages over biblically faithful sermons.

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I didn't have to work hard to come up with that list because we're being surrounded by wolves.

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It's happening all over the place. I had to take a moment and just say I'm not going to write anymore because it's happening so much.

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And I'll tell you I'm part of the problem because for years I lived in fear. For years

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I said I don't want to offend anybody at the core of who I am. I struggle sometimes with being a people pleaser and I want to make people happy and saying things like this and saying that these people are wolves it's hard for me.

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But the Lord and his word are worth it. It's worth standing up for.

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When I stand before my Lord and Savior one day and when you stand before your Lord and Savior one day and he asked did you contend it doesn't matter if we struggle with this or not.

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He's worth it. We can be loving in the way that we do this and I feel like right now this is a loving thing that we are doing.

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We're talking about things that will affect you in your life. It's like a doctor.

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No one would consider a doctor loving if he came into the room and he said everything is fine. When they had stage four brain cancer that doctor would be a monster.

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That doctor would not be loving at all. I sometimes get afraid. I sometimes tremble.

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But I've learned that the most loving gracious and merciful thing is to tell the saints of God what

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God says. To tell the saints of God what this book says. Because that is the words of life.

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Now that's the first trait. We spent a lot of time on that. Because I believe that if you can identify a wolf by their fruit before they hit stage two you can protect not only you but you can protect the church.

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So trait number two that Jude talks about is that they've been marked out for destruction.

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So after they've snuck into the church after they've snuck into the sheep pen after they have come in unnoticed the second thing is that they're marked out for destruction.

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

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And I'll just tell you we're going to spend next week dealing with this verse because I think this verse is important for us to deal with on its own.

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So we're not going to be able to get into all of that today. But when Jude says certain persons

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I'll give you a summary. When he says certain persons he's saying that these men are not even worthy to be named.

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But this is why I think this is so important is because they are not unnamed God knows them by name and that we can have hope as we contend even though they sneak in even though they come in unnoticed they might be unnamed to us.

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We can read Jude and we can say he doesn't name them we don't know their name but God knows their name and God will protect his people because in verse two it says that we are called that we are beloved and that we are kept for the day of Jesus Christ.

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Verse 25 says for him who is able to keep you from stumbling they're unnamed but they are surely going to be judged for what they are doing.

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Our victory has been won in Jesus Christ praise God their end has been worked out by the father already and that's hope for us.

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That means that we can labor not in vain but that we can labor with hope. So that's the second characteristic is that they're marked out for destruction.

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The third is that the wolf is ungodly and that they do ungodly things without conscience.

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Jude says for certain persons have crept in unnoticed those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation ungodly persons who turn the grace of our

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God into licentiousness. What Jude is saying is when the wolf sneaks in they are marked out for destruction and over time they're no longer unnoticed but they get bold in their deceptions and they start living an ungodly life and they start doing things that are sinful.

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Certain things that you can see their character starts to become known and Jude tells us that there's two ways that they do this they not only do ungodly things but they turn and they twist the grace of our

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God into a justification for their sin. Romans 6 .1

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says what shall we say then are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase may it never be but this is the way that these men live.

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These men are antinomians which just means that they turn God's grace into a license for sin. They basically look at God and they say

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God I'm a sinner you're a forgiver we are a match made in heaven I'll sin you forgive and we'll both be happy.

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That's the way that they treat the father. They treat him like he exists to just forgive them and that it doesn't matter what they do in their body.

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These men are like the Gnostics who believe that their spiritual life was different than their physical life so they could go have sex with whoever they want they could destroy their body with whatever they want they could be gluttons and they could be everything else because it didn't matter what they did in the body it only mattered that they said that they had a profession of faith and how many

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Christians today make a decision for Jesus Christ they raise their hand they say I'm going to follow Jesus but they spend the rest of their life living like hell and then they wonder when they get before Jesus and he says depart from me

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I never knew you. This is important. This is the lie that the wolf brings into the church they not only come in unnoticed but they come in bringing a damning doctrine that will not save.

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The gospel is not that we do things in order to be accepted by God but because we're accepted by God it will cause us to obey it will cause us to love

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God it will cause us to worship him this is a lie that they bring in that says if you accept Jesus you can go do whatever you want that's not the gospel.

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When I was in seminary I heard an example of this my professor I was in a class called pastoral ministry and we're reading a book it's an awful book it talked about all of the horror stories of pastors how they fell into various different sins and it would shock you and it was an awful awful book to read but he was telling us he said there's a man currently right now he's an evangelical mega church pastor well known and every night he goes to sleep in a tent in his backyard because his wife has kicked him out of the house he's a vicious drunk he drinks himself to sleep he wakes up in a drunken stupor and he still goes to church every single day and leads a church of 20 ,000 people his elder board has entirely turned against him and soon he will be deposed from his leadership because he refuses to repent and his elders have asked him repeatedly to repent and that was about four years ago this man actually did end up losing his church his wife divorced him and after a short stint in rehab he self -proclaimed that he was ready to be a pastor again his old church wouldn't hire him so he planted a rival church down the street

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I watched one of his messages and it had so much vulgarity and profanity in it that I couldn't even stomach it this man's been given over to satan this man is unrepentant this man is not a true shepherd of the flock of God this is a wolf who outed himself in the fact that he snuck into this church and then eventually his ungodly behavior got the best of him he showed the signs of a wolf and I wish

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I could say that this was the only case and the only example I have countless examples of this now

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I want to be clear no one perfectly meets these qualifications especially first timothy three first timothy three is that great chapter that talks about what a pastor is supposed to be and if you're a pastor and you don't read that chapter trembling if you're someone who serves in a church you don't read that chapter trembling if you're a deacon and you don't read that chapter trembling you're reading it wrong this is not about perfection this is about is your life submitted to the lordship of Christ are you growing in these areas are you blatantly disregarding the truth of scripture there's a difference between a struggling sheep and a ravenous wolf there's a difference we must be on guard now that's the third so so far we've talked about a progression that has happened a wolf sneaks into the church with an agenda and they do it often unnoticed and then they start living an ungodly life and then once they do that it says that they deny the lordship of Jesus Christ Jude says in verse four

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I'm going to read the whole verse now for certain persons have crept in unnoticed those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation ungodly persons who turn the grace of our

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God into a license for sin and deny our only master and lord

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Jesus Christ Jude is saying once the wolf has snuck in once they have authority and influence once they start living an ungodly life then their sum total end is when they deny

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Jesus there is a example of this that happened really recently a man named

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Joshua Harris he wrote a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye he became a pastor and then subtly sin became apparent in his life and he began justifying his sin he began using scripture to justify his sin he divorced his wife he began preaching that homosexuality was not a sin he eventually

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I think ended up stepping down from his church and about a month ago he denied

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Jesus Christ on Instagram he didn't even have the dignity to deny him publicly he shamefully disregarded his lord on social media this is a man who was a pastor of thousands of people who showed himself for what he is he was never one of us he's a man who came in he snuck in he came in unnoticed his life showed itself for what it was and he left denying

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Jesus Christ that's the character trait of a wolf that's the fourfold progress of what happens when a wolf comes into the church and I would say that what

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I'm most concerned about is not the overt wolf and I'll tell you why when a person has come to stage four of this journey and when they deny

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Jesus Christ I would hope that none of us would say that's a person that I want to follow yeah they outed

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Jesus on Instagram let me follow that guy that's not subtle that's when it falls apart

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I actually think the wolf is a lot more dangerous when they're unnoticed when they're still leading people in error but no one yet has figured it out

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I want to conclude by just praying for our church that we would be a church that is protected by the

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Lord from this I want to pray that the

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Lord would protect me that the Lord would protect Derek that the Lord would protect anyone who serves in any capacity any church planter that ever comes from this church

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I want to pray for this church that we would be protected from this and I want to pray that we would have courage to be able to stand up and if for whatever reason

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I turn out to be a wolf pray to God that that's not true and I believe with all my heart that that's not true because I know who my

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Savior is but if that were to happen I would expect every single one of you to leave this church and never sit under a word that I have to say because it's not worth putting your spiritual life in jeopardy to sit under a wolf now before we pray

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I want to end with some of the best words in the whole book Jude calls out these false teachers but he reminds us in the very beginning of the book that we are called that we are beloved and that we are kept so we fight with safety at the end of the book he says to him who is able to keep you from stumbling so Christians do not be afraid as you fight do not be afraid as you contend for the truth do not be afraid that a wolf is going to come and take you down if you're in Christ you are not going to be able to stumble and that Jesus Christ is going to make you stand in the presence of his glory blameless with great joy so let's pray and let's ask