The True Teacher & Christian (08/18/2002)

Park Meadows Church

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Let me read you a little, before I get into the message, I want to read you a paragraph from a beautiful book that a friend of mine in the ministry gave me.

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He found it in a used bookstore, and it's an old, old book, might have been one of the early printings of this book by Spurgeon, to his students, to his preacher boys.

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And I'm going to read a little bit from the introduction of this book to you that I thought would be interesting for our particular church.

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As it would be quite unwarrantable for us to interfere with the arrangements of other bodies of Christians who have their own methods of training their ministers, and as it is obvious that we could not find spheres for men in denominations with which have no ecclesiastical connection, in which we have no ecclesiastical connection, we confine our college to Baptists.

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And in order not to be harassed with endless controversies, we invite those only who hold those views of divine truth which are popularly known as Calvinistic.

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Isn't that interesting? So the only students he allowed to come to his school were Calvinistic. Not that we care for names and phrases, but as we wish to be understood, we use a term which conveys our meaning as nearly as any descriptive word can do.

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Believing the grand doctrines of grace to be the natural accompaniments of the fundamental evangelical truth of redemption by the blood of Jesus, we hold and teach them, not only in our ministry to the masses, but in the more select instruction in the classroom.

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Latitudinarianism with its infidelity, that's kind of what we call situation ethics today, and unsectarianism, these are terms we don't use so much, with its intolerance, that kind of means like what we would call the real strict legalistic churches that we have today, are neither of them friends of ours.

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We delight in the man who believes and therefore speaks. Our Lord has given us no permission to be liberal with what is none of ours.

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We are to give an account of every truth with which we are put in trust.

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He makes it so clear, and I'm going to make this available to everybody. I brought it and I'll make copies and put them down here for you.

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Just the introduction to the book. You might find it in an old used bookstore somewhere, but he makes it clear that he made absolutely no attempt to be in fellowship with every group of Christian that there was.

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He never said anything disparaging towards them. He just said we cannot be in fellowship with everybody because we'll be in endless arguments.

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He said, so for that reason we invite young men to come to our institution who are of the

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Calvinistic persuasion. Today, do you realize how unpopular that is? The masses of Baptists around the world who hate the

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Calvinistic position talk about Spurgeon in almost every sermon. The Prince of Preachers, the great

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Spurgeon, and they'll quote from him, and yet they don't want to believe like he did, but I'll tell you what.

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It is the truth. It is the way. Let's go into Jude, which has a lot to say about false prophecies and false teachings.

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I get the impression from reading Spurgeon's introduction that he didn't have a lot of time for those people, that he focused on the truth, preaching the truth, and hanging around those who also believed the truth.

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He was not ugly or nasty to the other groups, he just didn't have anything to do with them and didn't have time to get off into their errors and to argue with them, so he didn't do it.

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Now, as you know, we've studied through this book of Jude, which was an offshoot from our verse in Romans chapter 3, verse 3.

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It talks about how even those who don't believe right bring glory to God, isn't that amazing?

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Even those who don't believe the truth, God still is the truth and is still glorified.

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That brought us into this parallel passage in the book of Jude, and we studied through this large portion of the book, most of the book.

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In fact, if you think about the book of Jude, you think of words spoken against false prophets.

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Actually, worse than just a false prophet, a particular kind called an apostate.

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An apostate person is a person who seemed to have believed the truth and snuck in among those who believed the truth and stays there, but he teaches errors that are so grievous that it becomes obvious that he was foreordained to go to hell and spend eternity in the blackness of darkness forever.

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This is a person who was preordained by God to spend eternity in hell and to teach false doctrine in the church.

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Now, you say that just doesn't seem to make sense. Well, it does when you understand that the

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Bible teaches there must be a great apostasy before the Lord can come back, and there will be a great apostasy.

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And so, God leaves it up to the individual in the church to be in the words so much that when one of these comes in, he may be there for a while, because it says they come in unaware.

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That means you think they're a brother or a sister, and you love them. And they're there for a while, and all of a sudden, they start to speak things from their mouth and do things with their life that you see is not consistent.

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And Jesus says, you judge these by their fruit. That verse is used a lot, but you know that it specifically is talking about judging teachers and false prophets.

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You judge them by their fruit. And this passage talks about all the attributes that they have, and we've discussed that.

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So then we came down to the last of the book in verses 20 through 25, and all of a sudden, it started talking about some attributes of true born -again believers,

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God's children, and true teachers. So what I felt like we should do at that point is most people read this book, and all they focus on is the false, which it speaks so strictly and sternly about the false, amazingly strong language against these false teachers, that you can miss that it also gives the symptoms of a true teacher and a true

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Christian. So we went all the way back to verse 1, and we saw some of these last time.

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We'll review those, and then we'll jump from about verse 3 all the way over to verse 20, because everything between verse 4 and verse 20 has to do with the false, and we're looking at the true.

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So we'll look at verses 1 through 3, and then jump to verse 20. We already started looking at verse 1. It took the entire message last

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Sunday. So read verse 1, follow along with me. It says,

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Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God, the

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Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called, mercy unto you, peace and love be multiplied.

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Well, in this particular verse, we found these doctrines of the early church.

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First of all, the lordship of Christ. He says, I'm the servant of Jesus Christ. You can't be a servant unless you have a lord.

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So he's subtly speaking of the lordship of Christ, and then he talks about sanctification, being set apart by God, unto

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God, and from the world. And then he talked about the sovereignty of God, God the

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Father. And then he talked about eternal security. We have been preserved in Christ Jesus.

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And then he talked about being in Christ, in other words, the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Christ.

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We're not just preserved. The method by which we're preserved is in Christ.

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We're baptized into his body and become part of him. And then they talked about, down in verse 2, the mercy of God.

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And then, also in verse 2, uses the word peace, and this has to do with the doctrine of reconciliation.

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We have been reconciled to God, and therefore we have peace with God. No man has peace with God because of the wrath of God and the justice of God if he's not covered by the blood of Jesus.

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So only a person who has had the blood applied personally to his personal, individual life has peace.

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But that person has peace because he has been reconciled to the Father by the blood of Jesus Christ.

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And then, in verse 2, we see eternal love, which we discussed somewhat in Sunday School this morning.

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The eternal love of God, this agape love. Mercy unto you and peace, and love be multiplied.

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God's love is multiplied in our hearts as we mature as Christians. As the

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Holy Spirit works in our life and causes us to grow, others will see more of that kind of unconditional love in us.

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All those things are mentioned in verses 1 and verse 2. That gives you, believe it or not, in those two verses, 10 attributes of the early church and of true

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Christians and true teachers, true teachings, true doctrines of the early church. Well, that brings us to verse 3.

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Let's read that one. Follow along with me. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, this is a phrase that has to do with what we're about to talk about, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for, and I want you to put in quotes or circle or underline the phrase, the faith.

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As we've spoken about earlier, this is a word, oh my mind is not here today, formula, a word formula that you'll find throughout the

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New Testament that means the actual New Testament Christian faith. It doesn't just mean someone has faith.

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It's talking about the faith, the true biblical Christianity. And so it says we must earnestly contend for the faith, and I want you to notice this, which was once delivered unto the saints.

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Now let's talk about this verse for a few moments this morning. It's interesting as we look at this word once, the word once where it says which was once delivered is very similar to the phrase in the hymn that Brother Roger led us in this morning, where it says

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God has spoken unto us once. This word once is the Greek word popox, and it literally means this, one time conclusively.

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Isn't that interesting? The Bible says about itself that the faith, in other words, everything that we need to have for doctrine and practice in the

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New Testament church, that faith has been delivered once, conclusively, one time.

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Now when you go beyond that to the tense of the verse where it says has been delivered, what does that sound like in the

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English as far as the tense of it? Is it something that is continuing to be done?

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Is it something that will be done in the future? Or if it says it has been once delivered, is that something that's been accomplished in the past, in the past, and accomplished, done?

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Once delivered, you could almost add the word already in English to get the sense of the way it reads in the

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Greek. It's been once delivered already. We already have it. It has been once delivered.

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Actually in the Greek, it's in a tense that we don't have in the English language, and it's called the eros tense.

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The eros tense is characterized by emphasis on the action without regard to the time involved, past, present, or future.

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So the emphasis is not on the time period, it's on the fact of the act. The fact that it has been once delivered is what is emphasized by this.

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However, when you translate this into English, the scholars will nearly always put it in the past tense or the past perfect tense.

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There is a form of eros called cumulative eros, which means having ended at a certain point.

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So, when it says that the faith has been once, that means one time already accomplished, delivered in the eros tense means it is accomplished at a certain point, and we don't discuss the time of it anymore because it's a done event.

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So we see when it says it's been once delivered to the saints that the folks today that are running around saying

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God is still giving revelation are wrong. They simply have to violate this verse among many others, but this is the verse we happen to be studying today, and it's interesting that this verse is the one that's found in regard to these false prophets of the end times.

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They are prophets who will not tell you that the word of God has been once delivered. They will tell you

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I am still delivering it to you. Now it's really interesting in this book by Spurgeon that I read a little bit from the introduction.

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If you go on into the body of the book, he was battling a group in his day that claimed that when they came to church, and it had a particular name, they gave it a name in his day for this heresy, but there was a huge group, not unlike the charismatic movement of today, a huge group that when they claimed that when they came into the assembly and the doors were closed and they were all in that the speaker spoke with the inspiration of God, and you should hear the magnificent words that Spurgeon uses to blow that one out of the bathtub.

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He didn't believe in that because he said our faith is once delivered, and so what we see around us is not new.

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There have been little outbreaks of it in the 1800s and the early 1900s, and now we have it in the end days, and the promise keepers and all of these groups that are putting forth this idea that we should all come together and just forget about doctrine and just love each other and have unity.

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Spurgeon did not do that, and yet they'll quote him. If you went to the promise keepers this weekend in Dallas, you would hear

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Spurgeon quoted. Maybe. I don't know if they're still into scripture that much, but I imagine you would, but what they won't tell you is that Spurgeon did not agree with fellowshipping with Mormons and Catholics and even people who didn't believe in the sovereignty of God.

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He wouldn't treat them ugly if they were Arminians, but he did not encourage them to come join his church because he felt that there were certain doctrines that if we're not in agreement on we're just going to bicker over them, and he said that's not what church is all about.

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Besides that, he said they're wrong, and he was right, but they were also wrong when they felt that they could speak under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit. If you could do that, ladies and gentlemen, you'd all have to bring a pad and a pencil and write down everything I say when

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I'm up here and just glue it into the back of your Bible because inspired words means it's

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God -breathed and it's scripture, and that's a lie because the scriptures are finished.

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They have been once delivered to the saints. Now, if you remember by way of review in Psalm 119, verse 89, just to support this verse in Jude, it says, forever,

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O Lord, thy word is settled. That means is already settled in heaven.

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The word forever in the Hebrew is olam, which means to the vanishing point, time out of mind.

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So, the word of God comes to us from a place that's beyond where we can even think about, and forever means that, and settled means appointed, established, presented, reared up, or set to stand.

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So, the word of God comes from a place that is out of our mind as far as going back beyond before time began, and in that place, it was set and established as it will always be.

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And then, you come into the New Testament. In 1 Peter 1, verse 23, it says, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible.

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This word incorruptible, authortos, means undecaying, immortal.

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It cannot, nothing can happen to it. You can't change it. It's an eternal word of God.

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The scriptures are eternal. Miss Charlotte, did you put that check back there? Good girl. For the chicken.

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Got it cut. June, that's one of the things June whispered to me right before I left. She said, don't forget the check for the chicken, and she told me the exact amount, which

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I can't remember. I just wrote it for $34. I think it's $33 .95 or something. She had her duties, and she took them very seriously.

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And now, we see what's going on. Why? We can't get them all done, so. But this word incorruptible, it cannot decay, it cannot change, it is immortal, it's immutable because it's eternal.

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And it goes on in the scriptures, it says, incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth. This word of God is zelzato.

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You like that word? How about put it in English, it's quick.

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It's alive. I told you about Doug Neville, how when we used to go out witnessing, he'd put a little

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New Testament under a hat, and he'd get around, and a bunch of teenagers would come up, and he'd look at it and say, it's alive, it's alive, and they'd think there was something under that hat.

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And he'd say that for about five minutes. He'd walk around, and man, it's alive. And he'd get a big crowd, and then he'd go jerk that hat off, and they'd see that little

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Bible, and he'd say, it's the word of God, and it's alive. And then he'd witness to them. Most of them ran away, though, because Doug was scary.

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Boy, he was not bashful at all in his witnessing. But it is alive, and this word means it liveth, it is alive, zao, to live, to be quick, to be lively.

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It is incorruptible, it is lively, it abideth forever. Forever, it means it stays in the same state.

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That's what the Greek word here means, meno, it stays in the same state forever.

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And then let's look at the word forever. Now, it's different than the Hebrew word found in the other verse we looked at in this

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New Testament verse, where it says, it abideth forever, and look down at verse 25, it says, and the word of the

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Lord endureth forever, and this is the word which by the gospel is preached to you, that shows it's the

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New Testament, the gospel of the New Testament is part of this word that he's talking about, it is forever.

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It's the word ahion, and we think of it as the word age, and many times when you see in the

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New Testament where it says, unto the end of the world, it's this word, it really means to the end of this age, the church age.

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And so it says very clearly that this word of God cannot be changed, it's incorruptible, it's alive, it abides in the same state until the end of this age.

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That's what the Greek says. Now, if that's true, you can't add to it. You can't take away from it.

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You can't have these little counterfeit prophets going around the country today saying,

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God told me to tell you this, this is what God told me, I heard it in the voice. Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 3 says, no you didn't, unless you lived in the

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Old Testament days. Because in the Old Testament days he spoke to us, past tense, by the prophets, by visions and all these things.

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But in these last days he hath spoken, which means it's finished. He has already spoken to us by Jesus Christ his son.

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And Jesus came back and told us very clearly the exact method he would use to accomplish that. He told his twelve, he told the twelve, the apostles and the sons of the

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New Testament prophets and the New Testament prophets. He said, when I go, the Holy Spirit will come and will bring to your remembrance the words

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I want you to write down. Right now, he said, you can't even understand all I have for you. So until I go,

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I'm not going to give you all of it. He gave them some of it. Some of, a good deal of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was recorded about things they heard that he taught them during his physical life on this earth.

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But much of what they wrote, including most of what Paul, all of what Paul wrote, was what Jesus taught them after he went to heaven through the

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Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit inspired them. And God breathed the words, exact words, these eternal words that were from outside of mind in the past and brought in and put down into time through these men, these special men.

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There are no more apostles, by the way. You'll hear us say, oh, we believe there's still apostles. There are no more apostles.

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Now, I understand the Greek word for apostle can mean a servant and an ambassador. And yes, some of you could be called apostles if you want to use the word in that way.

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But the way that it meant where it talked about the holy apostles, there are 12. And they happen to be the original 12 minus Judas plus Paul.

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And they're going to be pillars forever. Book of Revelation talks about them. So there are not going to be any more of them. And these men plus the

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New Testament prophets and the sons of the prophets are the only ones that God used to give us the scripture.

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And it says he hath now spoken, hath already spoken that to us. Just so we have it. It's right here.

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You don't have to worry about it. It's right here, front cover, back cover, finished until the end of this age.

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That's what the Bible teaches us in First Peter chapter one, verses 23 through 25, incorruptible.

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It liveth, it abideth, it can't change. It's immutable because it's from eternity.

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It's an eternal book. Picture it this way. It came from the heavens and was dropped in right on the earth.

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It dropped it right into your lap and it's going to come out and go right into eternity future in the same state.

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It's perfect. It's not going to change. It's until the end of the age. So when we see this verse in Jude where it says that the faith was once delivered, it means once and for all conclusively abiding in a given state until the end of this age.

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And so what does Jude say then in verse three? We are exhorted to contend for this once delivered faith earnestly.

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Earnestly in the Greek means to struggle for something.

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So for the rest of your lives on this earth, with the charismatic movement in full swing, it's in fifth gear now, moving on out, you are going to have a struggle in your life for the once delivered faith.

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Others don't believe this anymore. As I said in one of the earlier sermons, what is happening is history is coming full circle.

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The same thing that happened to the Roman church as it became the Roman Catholic church, the way that happened was they began to say that the

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Pope could speak by the inspiration of God. So as he spoke, they then had to write it down.

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If you go to seminary as a Roman Catholic, you'll study a thousand books bigger than this book that's teaching you all the doctrines they believe.

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Where did that extra scripture come? They don't necessarily call it scripture, but where did those rules come from that they say are from God that you have to keep, such as the priest can't be married?

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That's not in this book. In fact, this Bible tells me that in the end times there will be apostates who teach that men are not to marry.

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And it also says call no man father. So where did they get these ideas?

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Somebody said this is from God, write it down. And they believed it because they were gullible, they didn't have the word of God available in their own language, they couldn't read it and study it.

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They burned at the stake everyone who tried to put it in their language. So they just accepted that the stuff added was just part of what

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God had. Gone full circle. Now the Protestant church is going that exact way through the charismatic movement.

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And let me make this clear since we are on tape. When I say charismatic movement, I'm kind of like Spurgeon was when he said, if you're not

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Calvinistic, don't come here. He said, I hate to use that word because I'm not trying to put a label, but I don't know any other way to express it as quickly.

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And when I say charismatic, it doesn't mean I don't believe there are good, sweet people who are saved, born again, in the charismatic movement.

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Even some of them, their doctrine is probably just like ours, but I'm using it as a generic term to describe that movement which began and was made popular by Amy Sample MacPherson and the modern tongue speaking of the gibberish that is not the languages as it was in the book of Acts.

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The modern tongue speaking, the modern faith healing. Don't say for a minute I don't believe God can heal because I do believe

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God can heal. I just don't believe the guy in the skinny alligator shoes can heal. I don't believe that.

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It was never done that way in the Bible. I don't believe any of that. And I think that this movement, and this is, so I am stereotyping, but I don't believe all of them believe that way, so I want you to know that.

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I've met a few that don't, and I was surprised that they were straight on their doctrine. But why they go with that crowd,

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I don't know. See they're not like Spurgeon. Spurgeon wouldn't have gone with the crowd. He would have said, well, I love you, but I can't,

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I'm not going to go to church with you because we're in disagreement on major issues such as whether people can still add to this book or not.

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Now ladies and gentlemen, I guess in a way I'm drawing a line this morning. If people believe that prophets today and apostles who are alive today can add to this book,

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I can love them, I can, you know, if they're born again I can walk around the block with them once maybe, but I don't think

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I'll be going to church with them because they don't, they're not going to go here. They wouldn't endear this sermon, for example, they couldn't, but it's the truth, and Jude says it's a struggle.

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Why would he say it's a struggle if it's easy for us to deal with these matters? It's not. It is a struggle to contend, to fight for the faith as it was once delivered to the early church.

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Early church doctrines, early church methods, that's what we want in this church. Very simple, very simple, you study the word together, you pray together, you break bread together, you witness together, you assemble together, and then you come back and do that again, that's it.

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Anything beyond that is what we call modern in the bad sense of that word, and by that it just means it goes beyond biblical methods.

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So we see here in just these first three verses, the lordship of Christ taught, we see the sanctification taught, the sovereignty of God taught, the eternal security of the believer.

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This is what the early church Christians believed. These were their symptoms. These are the fruits that they had.

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They believed in being in Christ, the true baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is taught falsely throughout this country through the

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Charismatic Movement, the Pentecostal, they taught, have you had the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Well if you hadn't, you're not saved yet.

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But they misused the terminology from the biblical terminology, and what they're really talking about perhaps is the filling,

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I don't know what they're talking about. The filling can happen again and again, it must happen, you're commanded to be filled, but the baptism happens once.

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At the moment of salvation, you are placed into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. This is

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Holy Spirit baptism. They believed in the true sense of that, and they believed in the once delivered faith, the once delivered faith, that the word of God is eternal and abides and never changes, can't be added to or taken away from.

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All of the great early reformers believed this. All of the reformers, without exception, the great reformers you'll read of in Christian history said that this book is

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God -breathed and it is the total authority on rule for belief, doctrine, and practice in the church.

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Not any man, but this book is the authority. That is going down the tubes today in the modern church.

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This is no longer the authority, the preacher becomes the authority, the prophet becomes the authority, and they rule that church with their own will, and they say,

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I dreamed this and I dreamed that. Well, Jude calls that a filthy dreamer, you remember that? He calls them filthy dreamers because they're saying

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God said this and God said, but I didn't say that. I said this. You see?

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It's all right there. It's amazing. Written almost 2 ,000 years ago and it fits today's church probably better than it fit the church

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Jude was talking about. The once delivered faith, the mercy of God, the reconciliation of the

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Christian to the Lord, the eternal love of God, and then drop down to verse 20, skips all that part about the false apostate teachers and ends up talking about more symptoms of the truth, but ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith.

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See? See there again. It's obviously a faith that has been delivered because they know what they're talking about. Here it is.

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We're talking about the Christian faith. We have everything that we need to operate it now. It's been given to us, the most holy faith, praying in the

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Holy Ghost. Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

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So this faith was a faith of believing, I'm sorry, of building each other, not of tearing each other down.

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It was a faith of saying encouraging, edifying words, not of critical words, but it was also a faith that loved the truth, so sometimes a rebuke or an admonishment was in order.

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But the predominant mindset was to build yourselves up in the most holy faith.

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That doesn't mean just saying sweet things to everybody all the time. What it means is in the faith to build each other up by discussing this awesome truth that we have in the scriptures together, discussing it, studying it together.

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That's what builds us up in the faith. And it speaks of praying in the Holy Ghost.

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You see there's far too much praying in the flesh nowadays. Praying for the genie in the bottle to come out and give us what we want.

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Remember I told you about Ray that works for me, saying that he just left a huge church in Dallas because the pastor got up in front of everybody at Christmas time this past year and he said, come down and prophesy what

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God's going to give you this year. He might as well have said what the genie in the bottle is going to give you this year.

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They weren't praying in the Holy Ghost and yet they criticized the Baptists saying we're dead.

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We don't have the special blessing of the Holy Spirit. They don't even know the Holy Spirit if that's what they think he's saying, do you see?

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Now let me remind you, I'm not talking about all of them, but I'm certainly talking about that pastor that said that to Ray Marchant, my friend who quoted him and had to leave and take his wife out of that church because he said that is heresy, he said that's not in the

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Bible. No it's not, it's an apostate, but you know what, if you went and heard him preach today you'd think it sounded awesome, for a while.

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You would think it was maybe the most incredible message you have heard in a long time if you weren't heard that man, got 5 ,000 people in each service listening to him.

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He is a good speaker. He is there unawares. No one's aware that he's false, except as the

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Holy Spirit opens eyes like my friend Ray's. So we're to pray in the Holy Ghost, not just to ask for the genie in the bottle.

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And then it is a faith of agape love, unconditional love for one another.

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Verse 22 says, and have compassion making a difference in others saved with fear pulling them out of the fire hating even the garments spotted by flesh.

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This once delivered faith was a faith of compassionate witnessing coupled with hatred for sin.

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Being more soul conscious, being very aware when it's time to say a word to someone about the scriptures or when it's not time to.

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That's only by the Holy Spirit. But yet this agape love, this compassion, saving some with compassion, others saved with fear pulling them out of the fire, in other words, tell them a little bit about where they're headed sometimes is appropriate.

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You can only know that by the Holy Spirit. Some people you don't tell them, you know you're on the way to hell, you don't walk up to them and tell them that.

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Some of those people you have compassion, which makes a difference it says. Now notice that it doesn't say that they got down on their knees, prayed and said, dear

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Jesus come to my heart and save me, amen, right at that moment. That's not what witnessing is. It says just have compassion on this person, show the agape love and it will make a difference as the

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Holy Spirit works on their inside with the word of God. Others saved with fear pulling them out of the fire, that means there is an appropriate time when you tell somebody, you know you're headed down the broad path, which ends up in hell.

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Have you ever thought of that? There is an appropriate time to tell someone that, but only by the

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Holy Spirit can you know when it's the appropriate time. Hating even the garment spotted by flesh, you don't let them know that you agree with them.

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I mean you let them know you don't agree with them, I didn't say that right. You make sure they know that you're not in agreement with their lifestyle sometimes.

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All of this is a part of the early church's method of witnessing and begin with, it's interesting that this whole book, verses 1 through 3 began talking about the sovereignty of God and eternal security, it ends with the same, look at verses 24 and 25.

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Now woe unto him, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to get some reading glasses pretty quickly.

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The word woe is not in that verse. Now, unto him that is able to keep you from falling, eternal security, and the sovereignty of God all in one phrase, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise

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God, the sovereignty of God, our Savior, be glory and majesty and dominion and power both now and forever, amen.

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The early church was a church that focused on the person of God. They were true theologians, theology means the study of God.

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They were unlike the modern preaching about how to be successful men. If you want to preach about that, fine, the way to be successful men is to study

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God. Know God better, know God more.

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So we see about 15 things listed in this book, which is predominantly a book about false prophets and apostates.

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We see 15 traits of the true teacher, the true Christian, the true believer, the true child of God and what he's like.

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And Jesus says, you know them by their fruit. Let's stand and have prayer together.

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Father, we thank you for your word. It takes us beyond the trials and cares of this world and the heartaches, takes us into the heavenlies where there is not any heartache, takes us way above all these things into the very place where we are seated in Christ in the heavenlies at the right hand of God.

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Thank you for the few moments that you give us each week to be transported into that place together corporately.

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Thank you for the private moments that you give us in our own Bible study time and prayer time when we're transported into that same place.

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Thank you for the energy and strength that you give us from that place. And Lord, we thank you that you have told us, you've called us to be with you where you are, and that's where we are headed.

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Lord, we know we don't have a lot of knowledge about the place itself, but we know that it's with you because you said, where I am, may they be also.

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So may we just think of it as your presence, your eternal, forever presence.

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And Father, we thank you for the words you've given us, the revelation of yourself, of the heavenlies, of the fact that we're just passing through this place and being trained and being molded into the very image of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we're taught in the scriptures that others prayed, come quickly,

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Lord Jesus. That is our prayer today as well. Would you bless our meal together and our fellowship time and our