Alright. Yeah. Cool, man. Cool. Hey, so check out. That was probably a 20-minute interview that we did. You can check that out on YouTube. We'll post it and all that stuff.
So, if you're interested in those things. I do think it leads into our message for today because we are going to be talking about some ancient manuscripts and things like that today. So, if you have a copy of Scripture, you can take it out and turn with me to the book of Jude. And as you guys are finding the book of Jude, let me say two things quickly here. How awesome was our Easter services last week at all of our locations, guys?
Praise God. Unbelievable amount of baptisms. It was, you know, a historic day for our, in the life of our church when it comes to baptisms and attendance and everything else.
So, that was just incredible. I want to say two things about it. The first thing is if you give to Mercy Hill, and man, it's something that is part of your life. I want to tell you thank you for that.
And here's what I want to tell you. Things like our Easter service, certainly things like commissioning Greenhouse Church, they don't happen without the regular routine, mundane sometimes, month in, month out, people who give faithfully to this church. We all love the big exciting day of launching a new church plan. I mean, we do this once a year. And it's just one of the greatest things that we get a chance to be a part of.
Y'all, that don't happen without years and years of the mundane, blocking and tackling, faithful, up the middle, sort of just, you know, month in, month out giving. It's not the most exciting thing in the world, but it produces the disciples that end up going to do awesome things. I mean, what you saw on the stage today was people who've been discipled in our student ministry, college ministry. Man, you know, money, it takes money to keep the lights on.
So, they hear sermons. I mean, it's just kind of normal stuff over a long time that ends up producing what we're able to see on an exciting day like this. So, take joy in that if you're giving. If you're not, maybe you could jump in. We had set a goal to see 200 first time giving families by the end of April.
We are at 175, but April is not over. Okay. So, we have a little bit of time left.
The time is short, alright? Let me say one more thing. I've gotta say this. God blessed our church incredibly last week with a special story. Y'all, all of our children are special. All the baptisms are special, but there are some kids at this church that they're just special and they're special, I think, to Jesus even in a different way.
Number one is if they're chosen to be here, so they're adopted or fostered. Number two is we have a lot of kids in this church with special needs, and we had an opportunity last week. There's a church named Ansley, and Ansley is what they call nonverbal. She's not able to speak, but she can communicate some through sign language and some through a communication device. Man, she began to indicate that she wanted to be baptized because she loves and trusts Jesus. Our kids director had the chance to sit down with Ansley. Through sign language and through her device, Ansley gave her life to Christ, and we had a chance to baptize her this week. I just want to praise God for that.
They're all special, but man, God just does special grace sometimes, and I wanted to bring that up to you guys. All right, let's dive in, man. It's a hard-hitting book. It's a fast book. Here's the point of our sermon today. False teachers are fake.
That's gonna be the point. That's who they are. False teachers are fake, and they are pretenders. They look powerful, but they are only pretending. Here is the message today. It's very simple, actually.
It has some twists and turns, but there is simplicity to it. Today, we are going to paint the portrait of a pretender. I want to show you the photo of a faker. I want to make sure that we're able to see it for what it is so that, number one, we can be on guard against it. Number two, we can see the tendencies in our lives to sort of become that pretender or faker, and we can fight against those things and repent of those things. The Bible tells us today that the false teachers that Jude is contending against are like a waterless cloud. They're like a fruitless tree. Okay, they look like they've got power, but they don't.
Here's why. Because the power, the Bible says, is in the Gospel message itself. Romans 1.16, not ashamed of the Gospel message. All right, it is the power of God unto salvation, and if you distort that, you may look the part. You may even gain a following, but you do not actually look the part.
You don't actually have the ammunition for true life change because you have distorted the Gospel message. I told you, sometimes I like to go play pickup basketball a couple days a week, and I'm telling you, if you go play pickup basketball, and a guy comes out there, and it looks like he has got everything matching. Okay, he has figured out how to match his socks with his headband. Okay, he's got the brand new sneakers on. If he looks like he spent an hour primping himself to get ready to go play pickup basketball, do not pick that dude. Okay, and I'm gonna tell you why. He is trying to look like something that he is not, and most of the time, the guy you want to pick is a little bit older dude wearing a hoodie and sweatpants.
Okay, that's probably the guy you want. He's not trying to fake anything. He just is the real deal. The fakers, they look the part. They're able to lure people away with teaching that sounds good to itching ears, but at the end of the day, they pervert the Gospel, and there's no power in it, and they'll lead a lot of people astray. They creep in.
They don't burst in. We need to recognize them for what they are. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna walk through 8 through 16.
Listen, there are a lot of twists and turns in this, but in the end, photo of a faker, portrait of a pretender. That's what we're gonna build out today. Okay, and hopefully we'll be able to see it for what it is. Look at verse 8. Yet in like manner, these people also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. Let's go back through this and just go back to verse 8. Let's go back to verse 8. Camp on verse 8 for a second. Yet in like manner. Now, what does that mean?
In like manner? Well, if you were here last week, I ended the sermon last week talking about the judgment of three things. Remember the children of Israel who died in the wilderness, the angels who fell from heaven, and Sodom and Gomorrah, where hell rained down from heaven onto the earth.
Here's what he's saying. Verse eight. Yet in like manner, like those who rebelled in the wilderness in heaven and in Sodom and Gomorrah, like these three things, okay?
Now, you're gonna find this to be true if you read the book of Jude much. It's always a triplet, okay? It's always three things, alright?
He's like the original Baptist preacher, okay? It's always three things. Defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. Now, here's the, here's the thing. Why do they do these three things?
Look at verse eight. Why do they do it? They do it because they are relying on their dreams.
Now, that's important. They're relying on their dreams because they're rooted in Jesus and the apostles. They're not relying on the Bible. They're relying on their own dreams.
You could say it like this. What is the first error of of of a false teacher? These teachers trust self over scripture. They have put what they think about things, their spiritual journey, the dreams that they have, the feelings that they feel. They have put those things on par and even above what we have in the scripture. Remember, the faith that we are contending for was given by Jesus, translated to us through the apostles, written down in the New Testament, and that's what we have today, okay? These people are not going to that as their spiritual source of capital T Truth. They are going to their own dreams, their own, their own feelings, the way that they kind of see the world, and here's the thing, y'all.
They're not the only generation that does that. I mean, we live in a situation where for the last hundred years, modern western philosophy has pointed to the world that we live in now, which says, truth is yours. It's your truth.
You've heard people say that. I'm living my truth. It's like, man, I kind of thought truth stood outside of us. I thought truth was something that can, that we conform to. Instead, what we live in now is a situation where we all believe, hey, you know, truth is whatever I want it to be. We can construct truth just because we want to. You know, what is the greatest example of this?
The greatest example, how do you get in a culture where state after state is now enshrining in their law to let men play in women's sporting events? This is where we live. How do you get there? You get there by a hundred years of philosophy that tells you the truth is inside and the truth is whatever you want it to be, and I want to tell you, we are not the only generation that face that. That's what's going on here.
Bible, not source of authority, my dreams, myself, what I think about things, that is going to be put on par with the Bible, and that's going to be the source of authority. Now, here's what's funny. What's funny is many of us I'm talking to right now are like, yeah, well, we don't do that. Even in politics, many of us are like, no, no, we want reality. We don't live in Neverland. You can't just make it however you want it to be.
You know, you can't just dream it up and decide you're going to be this or you're going to be that. What's funny is many of you, a lot of you guys probably agree with that. You're like, man, you can't just make it out to be whatever you want it to be and then inside the church, we will say things like, well, I'm going to get a divorce because certainly God just wants me to be happy.
You understand? On one hand, we're like, no, there's a reality. You can't just make it whatever you want and then the next breath is, well, I know I'm not supposed to be unequally yoked to an unbeliever, but I'm going to date this guy anyway. I'm going to make the truth whatever we want it to be instead of the authority of scripture. Now, look what it says in verse eight.
And blaspheme the glorious ones. Now, I want to talk about this rejection of authority because that's what it all comes down to. The photo of a faker is somebody who has decided I am going to be my own source of truth.
Self over the scripture. They are rejecting authority and this is important. Some of you guys are what we call seeking. You know, you're not a believer yet. You're trying to figure it out. You're getting swept up in this kind of age of spiritualism that we are in. And by the way, we are in one right now. Okay, a lot of the country is waking up. Okay, it just means that we're becoming more spiritual.
Maybe that's where you are today. Here's what you need to understand. Alright, what Christians follow is something that we would call authoritative. It comes from Jesus, who we believe is the son of God, translates through the apostles into writings that were like the book of Jude already being written down by the 60s AD. This is 2000 years old. This was not 500 years ago somebody came up with something. Okay, this is in real time with the real people who lived with the real Jesus and they're writing things down.
And this is why it's important for us to know. By the 60s AD, people were already viewing norms in the Christian doctrine and teaching that were coming out of the apostles lives and written down in scripture. So what they're saying here is all the way from this all the way in the 60s AD, Jude is able to say, hey, those people over there, they're rejecting the authority that has been given from Jesus and the apostles in these authoritative writings that we have. This is what false teachers do. False teachers speak contrary to the Bible. That's what it means to reject authority.
When they are rejecting authority, they are going against the teachings of Jesus, the apostles, and the Bible. And I just want to tell you that what they're doing is they're not rejecting it and moving to an outright atheism. Y'all, the new atheism movement of 20 years ago Richard Dawkins and all that stuff, that stuff is kind of gone. That's not where, people are, it's not that combative anymore. What it is is sort of a live and let live. What's taking its place is that among the younger generation, there is a real openness to spiritual things.
It is everywhere. You track Joe Rogan, you track Tim Ferriss, you track their podcast, Not Finding Jesus, but way open to spirituality. What are you seeing in big business right now? Well, you see Amazon pouring millions and millions and millions of dollars into more Christian content, things like Chosen or things like the House of David. Bible sales are up for the first time in generations. It seems like, you know, some different, you know, stats are coming out where it seems like people that are not sort of identifying as Christians, that that has kind of bottomed in our country and now is sort of on the uptick, which is massive because that hasn't happened. Here's the thing.
It's not all Jesus and Bible though. It's just sort of spiritual. What is the fascination with UFOs? What is the fascination with ayahuasca or something like my, you know, what's the big thing?
Micro dosing, different psychedelics now to get over past traumas and all this kind of stuff. What are people trying to do? They're trying to get in touch with something that is very spiritual because we're open to that right now.
But here's what we got to understand. Not all spirituality is of God. I have had a couple, but I want you to understand, it took me years to realize having a supernatural dream doesn't mean that it came from God. And there was a time in my life when we planted this church.
I'm not going into the specifics of it. There are a few people who know, but there was a lie that was sown into my life when we planted this church through a supernatural dream that I mistook thinking it was from the Lord only to realize, wait a minute, that's kind of contrary to scripture. What was told to me in this dream is different than what I see in the Bible.
And it had a grip on my life for years until it was finally broken because I could see that it wasn't truth. I want to tell you, not everything that spiritual is of God. And that's very important here because the portrait of a faker, the portrait of a pretender, it's very spiritual. I mean, it's very spiritual. What we're going to see is highly spiritual, highly charismatic. I want to tell you about the text, verse nine and 10. Let me prep you for it. What it's going to say is these people are so overtly spiritual.
They make a big show of everything. They're willing to rebuke demons, to talk about things with certainty in a way that not even in his story, the archangel Michael would do. Look at verse nine.
All right, let's just keep going here. But when the archangel Michael contending with the devil was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment but said, the Lord rebuke you. He didn't. He's saying he didn't take it into himself to become all big and bad when he's dueling with Satan.
Instead, he took a humble posture and said, man, it's all in God's hands. The Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand.
And they are destroyed by all that way. Like unreasoning animals understanding instinctively. Okay, now, what do you say? What are you saying is this? This is kind of a little bit odd, but we got to deal with it.
Okay. A couple of times in the book of Jude, Jude references literature that is not Bible. That's what he's doing here. He's referencing something ancient, ancient document, the testament of Moses, he'll he'll eventually reference a book called First Enoch later, these are not Bible, but they're things that were in the culture at the time, it would be akin to me grabbing illustration from something that we see in culture. If I grab something out of a spiritual magazine, or I grab something out of a screw tape letters from CS Lewis or something, okay, if I just grab something, it's not Bible, it's just something that everybody would kind of know, because it's in the culture. It's an illustration. That's what he's saying. Here's what here's the story was, the story was, and this is what people would have, they would have known that this story was in the testament of Moses, that the devil comes and bar and tries to fight with Michael, the angel over the body of Moses, because he said Moses was a murderer, which we all know, because we were studying that right.
And within the last couple of months, okay, so that that's the story. And now the story is that Michael doesn't get all high and mighty, and to rain down judgment upon Satan instead, in a humble posture, he says the Lord rebuke you. Now, here's the point that he's making.
In the story, which is not in the Bible, I almost had everybody say, hey, do you guys remember that time when the archangel was arguing with Satan over the body, Moses, see who would raise their hand, but I decided not to do that, right, because it's not actually in the Bible. So what, but here's what he's saying, Michael could he, you can say like this, Michael didn't need to show restraint, but he did. These false teachers need to show restraint.
And they don't. Instead, they're loudmouth boasters, is what he's going to call it in a few minutes. Loudmouth, man, I want everybody to see me, they're probably really making a big show of the demonic realm.
You guys ever seen that? You've seen that on YouTube, or you've seen that in different type of traditions where people were rebuking Satan that people are falling all over the place. And there, maybe it's some kind of spiritualism that's happening a little bit like that. But here's the deal, we should not take that type of posture when we are dealing with the absolute realities of the demonic realm.
We don't live in fear, but we understand it is the Lord who has the power in these different situations. You can say it like this, false teachers are breathtakingly presumptuous. They are assuming they know things that they don't know. They're assuming they have power in areas that they don't have power. And their ultimate motivation is God is not God's glory.
It is their own. And what did he say? He said they are like unreasoning animals. Well, that's, that's something to say about somebody, right?
But here's what he says. They do whatever is instinctive to them. You know what an animal does? Whatever it wants all the time.
That's it. What's your dog doing right now? Whatever he wants to do. What's he going to do this afternoon? Whatever he wants.
Like that's it. Whatever his urge and instinct is. Now I'm not saying you can't train them. You can teach them. But what you're teaching them is to still want this more than that. Like all they're doing is whatever it is that they have an urge to do. Here's the problem with the false teachers in Jude. They're teaching something, two big words here.
Do not get scared of them. I'm going to explain. All they mean is that you have fire insurance in heaven, so live how you want to on earth.
The two words, licentiousness, antinomianism. Okay, all it means is no laws, no rules. God has been, you said the magic prayer at a youth camp. Jesus saved me, whatever. Okay, you're good. Go live however you want.
Jesus has to save you now, so just go live like hell on earth. That's what they're doing. That's what they're teaching. And the problem with teaching that they have nothing in them that wants to see the fruit of the Spirit grow in their life and begin to conform to something that is different than an urge or an instinct.
They're just like, hey, our citizenship is secure in heaven because we said the magic means prayer. Do whatever you want now. Live like an animal. Have the urge. You have an urge, do it. You have this urge, do it.
Whatever you want to do. And he is saying, man, that is exactly what, you know, that is exactly the opposite of what the gospel is supposed to do with us. The gospel is supposed to do in us this great rewiring where we are growing and being conformed away from just the animal instinct of doing whatever you want to do. I don't know if you guys ever seen it, but one of my favorite movies is The Sandlot.
I know that shows my age and my generation probably. You guys have seen The Sandlot. The Sandlot comes down to one epic moment where Benny the Jet Rodriguez is going to pickle the beast. Okay, and what that means is he's got to go and get a baseball that was signed by Babe Ruth out of this background.
The backyard where this dog is a huge dog and he's a man eating dog and all that, and he's finally decided, ma'am, I'm putting my tennis shoes on and I'm hopping that fence and I'm just going to run and go get the ball. Well, the night before he decides to pickle the beast, he ends up having a dream and the great Bambino himself comes walking in, the babe, and he's sitting there with Babe Ruth. He's smoking a cigar, sitting there talking to him, and he makes the greatest line of the movie, the famous line of the movie.
He goes and says, heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid. You'll never go wrong.
I'm going to tell you something. It's a great movie, but that is horrible life advice. I can't think of worse life advice than follow your heart. You know why? Because that heart will carry you right off a cliff, man.
It will take you right off a cliff. Why? Because the heart is deceitfully wicked. That is the one thing we know for sure about the heart is that it is deceitfully wicked.
Who can even know it? Man, this idea of just following it blindly, it's exactly what our culture wants us to do. It's exactly what these false teachers are doing, but it's nothing more than what an animal does.
Just follow my urges, my instinct, instead of submitting those things to the Lord and having God change the fruit of the Spirit popping out all over my life. Look what he says. He says, woe to them, for they walked in the way of Cain, abounded themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's heir and perished in Korah's rebellion.
I told you it's always a triplet. Don't have time to go through these stories, but I'm going to summarize kind of the point of them. Now, here's what he says. These are hidden reefs at your love feast. Love feast is when we take communion together as a church. As they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by the wind, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted wild waves of the sea, casting up their foam.
You see, what is he getting at? There's no power. No, it's a cloud, no rain. It's a wave, no power.
It's just foam. It's a tree without fruit, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. Now, Cain, Balaam, and Korah are three stories in the Old Testament. I'm not going to go into all of them. Here's what I'm going to urge you to do. If you're like, well, I don't know the stories and they move too fast, hey, have some responsibility and go chase it down. You can chase it down.
There's this thing called Chat GPT now. Hey, tell me that, you know, where is the scripture reference or whatever, okay? Go, go find them.
Read them. Here's the point of Cain, Balaam, and Korah. They all, for selfish reasons and selfish gain, decided to rebel against God and go against his design. But they did it for themselves.
And that's what false teachers are doing. Man, they're just following that heart right off a cliff. And just like Cain and just like Balaam and just like Korah, man, they're grasping for something that isn't theirs. You could say it like this.
They would rebel against God's design and seek a way they think is better for them. Don't you see what it all comes down to? If you want to paint a portrait of a pretender, you reject scripture and you decide to put self in place. I think this is better. God thinks that's better. Well, I'm going to choose this. And because of that, they end up being a people who don't have any power.
They look right, but they don't have the power to actually preach a message that changes people's lives. Why? They're like a hidden reef. What does that mean? You look out on the water, it looks calm, it'll sink your ship.
That's what a hidden reef is. They have no shame. Man, they sit and take communion with everybody, no pangs of their conscience. What's a shepherd supposed to do? Look out for the sheep? What are they doing? They're looking out for themselves. Man, they're waterless clouds, fruitless trees, foaming waves. It says they're like stars who lead people astray.
One commentator said this. If you weren't sure, you're looking at something you think is a star, you're trying to orient yourself, what if it was actually a planet and that planet had been moving? And now you're getting led astray because you thought it was one thing and actually it's another. And that is what is going on with these teachers. They don't have power because they have perverted the gospel message, but they look right. You can say it like this. Man, they got the headband and the armband and the sneakers, okay?
But they can't play. We see this truck and the truck is like, it's all like, it's a squat. It's jacked up and then squatted and this crazy exhaust.
It's got lights on it and all this stuff. And she uses this phrase that I've never heard. She said, well, that's country with a K. I was like, what does that mean?
Country with a K. Country with a K apparently means, and it is funny, it means the person is trying to look like they're real country, rural, that kind of. But reality is they're not. They just want to kind of look like that.
They got the look, but they don't have the goods. I thought that's really smart. You know what you want to do? You want to walk up to that dude with the squatty jacked up lights truck and all that and say, hey man, can you back a 30-foot trailer with that truck? That's how we're going to know if this is country with a K or this is country with a C, all right?
Country with a K looks right. Man, it ain't right. It's the same thing as these false teachers. False teachers look powerful, but they lack power because they pervert the gospel message. And Romans 1 16, I should have had it on the screen, but I don't.
You need to write it down. Romans 1 16, where is the power? The power is not in a charismatic personality. The power is not in a big building. The power is not spreading out all over Greensboro with campuses. The power is not even in church planting.
The power is not in how many followers you have on Instagram. The power is in a simple gospel message that the Holy Spirit breathes upon. That is what takes people from death to life. And if you pervert that gospel message like these people have, you can look right, you can get followers, you can build things, and at the end of the day, there's no lasting chains. You're charming people, but you're not having the power in the gospel message to change them.
That's what we've got to look out for. Now, what do these heresies look like? They look like, I'm going to tell you in this one, I think it looks like this lawlessness stuff, but in our day looks like different things. There are entire streams of churches that you wouldn't know this because they don't wear it on their sleeve, but their doctrine is actually oneness, which means they don't believe in the Trinity. It's an old, it's a new form of an old old heresy. And then when you take away the deity of Christ and you take away the personhood of the Trinity, man, it's you start.
Where is the power? It's all it's Hey, how many of us have grown up in southern fried religion, man? You know what that is? That is look, go to church, don't drink, cuss, smoke or chew or date girls who do. And you're fine.
Okay. You're going to get to heaven. You know, it's like, Hey man, I ain't trying to win any awards, but I was a pretty good dude. And God, Peter is going to let me in the pearly gates. It's southern fried religion. No power in that. There's no power in it. There's no life change. There's no you're dead and gone and buried and resurrected in Christ. You know, it's just, it's just behavior modification.
How about this? We see in our culture all the time, the gospel is a way to get rich. The gospel is a way to become prosperous. The gospel is a way to make sure that you're here. That you're healed of all of your diseases and that God if you have enough faith will do all of these things in your life and it's a dangerous heresy.
You know why it's so dangerous? Because it sets up Jesus to be the means of the true treasure instead of being the treasure. And he is the treasure. Certainly you got people in our country right now that have bought wholesale into politics is now the gospel on both sides. It's like man, the gospel is how woke you can be or Jesus is Trump.
I mean, you got people on both sides of this and equally no power in either one of these things. That's not the gospel. This is something wholly different that that creates a whole brand new society of which we are to be a part of. We are part of the church probably though more part more to Jude.
Okay is this idea said it earlier. It's anti that if you truly are saved, God's going to change what you want. He's going to change how you live and how you want to live. And yes, we're going to deal with sin and we're going to have a hard time. But man, we live a life continually of repentance and wanting to conform in greater ways to the actual desires of our heart. You know, there's 1000 locations of a new heresy that are coming out of South Korea, 90 countries, including the United States. It's called the good news mission.
You know, they preach perfectionism. And the good news is that in Christ, you literally can no longer sin. So there's no point of being there's no point of repentance or anything like that.
You just because the blood of Christ covers you, you go live however you want to live for the rest of your life. It's the same thing in our day. And you know, it's the same thing in our day as they were seeing 2000 years ago and we need to watch out for but here's what the Bible says, man, it's not going to be forever. Now, what what I said, Paul, what does Paul say about this text? Another analogy or illustration. Here's what he says about first Enoch.
It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied saying, behold, the lord comes with 10 thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against them. These are the grumblers, the ungodly mouth boasters showing favoritism to gain advantage. Now, we've talked a lot about these these false teachers.
We're painting the picture so that we can see who they are and we see how our heart can't even be drawn to these things but here's what you need to understand. They will not operate forever. That's what he's saying. This has been he's saying this has been prophesied. It's it's an extra biblical work. He's trying to bring up something that they would all understand but he's basically saying there is coming a time where false teachers will not operate forever. Doctrines that we find contrary to scripture will will at some point be exposed for what they are and at some point, there will be you know, a reckoning and a judgment and what he's saying is very simple. He's saying, hey, there is a warning here that you need to take and I would call you guys take that warning.
The warning is there for a reason. It was a state tournament out in the mountains and we were driving and Google had taken us man this crazy back road. Wait, you guys know the weather and the roads out there are still just it's so devastating in western North Carolina and we're we're driving along and all of a sudden there's a generator operated stoplight on the middle of this country road in the slot middle of the mountains.
No towns anything. It's just a big red light and I've never seen. I mean just right in the middle of a road. I mean it's just like well and uh man we're sitting there talking about it and uh we're kind of voting on what to do here and I'm kind of thinking a little bit. I'm kind of thinking we just drive right around it and see what happens.
Okay. That that was probably a bad idea and it ended up being a bad idea because when the thing finally turned green, you realize there's another red light two miles down the road that way and they're they're letting cars go one at a time and you needed to you know why because about half a mile in the whole road have been washed out and you gotta drive about you know, there's eight feet worth of a lane and a 200 foot drop down to a rocky bottom and if two cars tried to go at the same time, one of them is a warning. There's a big blinking light. You know heed the warning lest you fall off the cliff and my point for us today is some of us need to take what Jude is saying as the warning that it is intended for if we continue to follow that road.
Man we got we're going to end up going off the cliff. Here's the application for this weekend and we're going to wrap up recognize and reject false teachers. Recognize and reject false teachers. You know I think about a Western movie. Okay. I love Western movies and what what's every good Western movie has. It has a wanted poster right every good Western movie. What is the wanted poster of a false teacher? It's something like this. The poster says they trust self over scripture breathtakingly presumptuous look the part but aren't and distort and pervert the Gospel message.
That is the portrait of a pretender a photo of a faker. Now here's what we gotta do wrestle with two things will be done. Alright.
The first thing is this. How many of us have tendencies of hearts that end up kind of grabbing on or have actually walked in some of the ways of a false teacher. I know I have at different times in my life. You think you think I've never felt the pull to be a pretender in a different area of my life. You think I've never felt the pull of being presumptuous at different things like that we all have.
It's not just me. Every one of us have and we need to deal with that today. What areas of your heart are you're like dude you're painting this picture of a pretender but when I look at it, it looks like a mirror.
It looks like me. Well, that's gonna be true of all of us in some areas at some points in our life. What do we do? We trust the Gospel and we repent. Here's the thing. If you've never trusted the Gospel for the first time, you need to do that because that portrait is you. It's a mirror and for what you have done for those things you deserve judgment, but Jesus Christ stepped in on your behalf. He took all of the judgment that was meant for you.
I mean look at what we have talked about. The wilderness, the angels that fell from heaven, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain, Balaam, Korah, judgment. This is, it's what we deserve for our sin, for being a faker, for being a pretender, and even for leading others astray with our lives. That's what we deserve, but Jesus stepped in and took judgment for us.
And you know why he did it? Because he has taken that picture of us and he's erasing it and he's drawing a brand new picture in his place. And he is putting us in the best light possible because he is giving us his righteousness. When God looks upon us, if we have admitted our sin and believed in what he has done and confessed him as the Lord of our life, then when God looks upon that picture of us, he sees the perfection of his son. And here's what happens in the Christian life. Knowing that that's the picture that he sees when he looks at us, we want to live into that. I know man, I am profoundly changed. I want to be that in reality every day of my life.
I want to live into that. When Jesus saves you, you don't get over it. Listen, you and I were the loudmouth boaster. Jesus Christ went to the cross and Isaiah 53 tells us he was silent like a lamb before its shearers.
He did that for us. And so I pray that you'll trust that for the first time today. Maybe you'll trust it for the thousandth time. You trust that one time you become a Christian for the rest of your life. But over and over and over in our life, we go back to that truth. And man, it helps change us.
And so I pray that will be you today. But the second group of people that we need to talk to and we're done is just this. Listen, are you potentially following false teaching? Are you being taken in? Man, it's somebody with a lot of charisma and a lot of assurance and boasting. But man, they're a waterless cloud.
And how do you stay away from that? We don't try to do Christianity alone. We have groups that are launching. We do this three times a year. And our groups are launching here in just a couple of weeks. Our session is from April 27 through June 19. Here's the thing you got to know about groups.
It's a sprint, not a marathon. We jump in, we go fast, we go hard, and then it's over for the summer. Okay. And so here's what I want you to know. When you get in group, the on ramp is important, but there also is an off ramp. I don't want you to think I don't want to be in a group. This is what we used to do in groups.
Used to get in a group at Mercy Hill and the only way to get out was to quit or die. Okay. And we don't do that anymore. All right. Hey, jump in, jump in and hit it for a semester.
Why is that so important? You know what the Bible says about Satan? He's like a roaring lion seeking the one he may devour. I'm gonna tell you something.
I've never seen a lion like out in the wild, but I've watched a lot of documentaries. Okay, here's what I know. They don't go after the ones that are all tight, strong, in the herd, tight. They don't do that. They go after the one that's out on his own. Young, maybe limping a little bit, can't keep up.
He's out on his own and he don't have no protection. That's the one they target. False teachers are the same way. You know, sometimes smaller churches are very in danger of false teachers. They come in and they see and they think there's weakness there. They have smaller groups, similar things. They come in, they see, they think that's what they're looking for.
It's like a lion that's looking for that one to pick off. We don't wanna be that, right? So let's get in group together.
Let's stay tight as a herd, all right? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this day. God, we thank you for your teaching in the book of Jude. Lord, I pray that you would keep us. Father, I pray today that many of us would have repentant hearts and moments of repentance based on what we see in that portrait. If our hearts are being carried away in a false teaching, God, I pray it would stop today. We thank you for the baptisms that we're about to see. In Christ's name, amen.
