Personal Love (Part B)

There's the fifth of these in verse 19 where he says these are sensual. That word sensual in the Greek is translated elsewhere in most Bibles as natural. You could say carnal. Or when James writes, he says this wisdom does not descend from above but it is sensual demonic. That's the word sensual that he uses there. The same idea.

It's a natural feeling. It means not spiritual. They're not born again is not touched from God or by God. Led again by emotions not the spirit and therefore divisive. James chapter 5, do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. And then he says this, behold, and that whenever that word shows up, dramatic music goes with it. Behold, the judge is standing at the door.

Christ is watching. That's what James is saying. It's hard not to grumble. We want to overrule what we don't like with our opinion. It takes a discipline to get it right. Now there is an exception when you're driving because it's impossible to not do it.

You walk on water before you can drive without complaining. But anyway, these grumblers instead of going away, they stayed and they pecked. At any one they could. Others. Complainers he says. He is escalating his charge against them. These are fault finders. These are critics.

Again, the social media world loaded with the grumblers and the complainers. And this Greek word is interesting because it means you're not happy with your lot. With your allotment. We've been talking about that since the days of Joshua when the tribes were assigned their lot. They were to live with that, to conquer this territory. We'll get it Wednesday because the tribe of Dan could not drive out the enemy from their territory because they weren't holy, they weren't righteous.

So they moved elsewhere, a portion of them. But anyway, that word means that you're expressing your discontentment and pointing blame. It also means that in the Greek.

You say, well, of what value is that to us? Well, when you come to church and we hear the word, it is always this process of correction taking place. Philippians chapter 2. Paul writing his letter from jail to the church at Philippi.

It is one of the great letters. Great in the sense that there's very little correction, direct correction in the Philippian letter. All the Bible is corrected. When Jesus says, love your neighbor, it corrects because it makes you say, I don't want to.

That's why I don't live with him. But it does. When Paul says in Corinthians, but I'm going to get it back because I've got the Bible right here, that I may know him.

Powers of resurrection, a fellowship of his suffering, being conformed to his death. That's corrective because I listen to that as I want to be that and I'm not. But it's positive correction.

The Philippian letter excels there. So anyway, he says this, Paul, he says, do all things without complaining and disputing. I don't believe in luck, but good luck with that. It's not easy. That's my point. He says that you may become blameless and harmless.

That's the opposite of what these complainers are doing. Blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Among whom you shine as lights in the world. So much for Christian hermit philosophies. You know, let's just move to a Christian compound.

Let's not be around those people. That's not what the Bible preaches. The Bible says, get out there. Go into all the world and preach the gospel. Shine as lights in the world. Then he says, holding fast the word of life, that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.

So Paul says, let's not make this for nothing, lads. Let's get in there and be the Christians we're supposed to be without complaining and disputing. He says, walk in according to their own lusts. Well, they're not subject to the spirit of God.

That's why. That's why when Paul writes to the Galatians, he says this, I say, walk in the spirit that you may not fulfill the lust of the flesh. And so where now, he says, they walk according to their own lusts, they're saying we do not want the Lord to lord over us.

He has no right to be our Lord. And then he says, they mouth great swelling words. Well, they complain and grumble about what they don't like, but they also have these big fat mouths. That refuse truth and come up with these long words that even they can't spell. And they don't mind unleashing them on people to impress and to deceive so that they can take over. But they disagree with God. That's the problem right there. Fine, you want to use all big words and things like that. That's your prerogative. But agree with God if you're going to do that.

These did not. He says, flattering people to gain advantage. Manipulators and opportunists are these.

And they want something. 2 Samuel tells a story of Absalom, who was that handsome son of David that was really a creep. And we pastors have a name for someone who tries to sneak into a church and steal people to their Bible study or whatever they're doing. They're called Absalom's at the gate. Because that's what Absalom did.

2 Samuel chapter 15 verse 2. Now Absalom would rise early and stand beside the way of the gate. And he would intercept people that were coming into his father's court. And he would say, oh, too bad I'm not listening to your case.

I would certainly do this for you. And he was stealing the nation. And the Bible says he stole the hearts of the people. Absalom was a creep within his own kingdom against his own father. And the story just got worse for him until finally he's skewed by Joab the chainsaw. And he's left dangling by his long luxurious hair.

Between heaven and earth, the Bible said. So that fallen nature that does so much damage, if not addressed, there are those with this fallen nature in some. They just love a lie. They love it. And they'll follow a lie. And they'll follow the person telling the lie. No matter where it goes.

What is wrong? This is what cults are packed with, these type of folk. Peter addresses them in his second letter that Jude quotes so often. He says, but there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.

Then he says this. And many will follow their destructive ways. How prophetic. Peter says there, these guys are going to come in, they're going to cause all this problem in the church.

You're going to have people supporting them. And he says, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. And now, you see, you know, again, there are movements around that are just completely unscriptural in Jesus' name. And worldlings look at that and they blaspheme Christ. They think that this is, you know, this is Christianity, I want all parts of it. Well, it's really not Christianity. But no one can point that out to them, it seems.

Not easily. And so now we come to verse 17, where he makes this distinction. He's finished now talking about those who have infiltrated the church, and he's talking now to those who love the church. He says, but you beloved. It's two, in this verse, it's two Greek words.

When we get to it in verse 21, I think it's 21, it will be three Greek words, and I'll point that out when we get down further. But he says, but you beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a glorious thing. It is but you, but you.

You're not these. You're the believers. Who's beloved? Are they beloved by Jude?

Yes, but more so by God himself, personally. And that's how he means it. But you, the beloved of Christ, confident of Christ's love. John the apostle would refer to himself in his gospel as the disciple whom Jesus loved. It's what Christ wants. He wants his people to say, yeah, God loves me. I am the disciple that Jesus loves. John never said, I am the only disciple that Jesus loves.

He said, he loved me. Elijah the prophet, when he saw just how awful Jerusalem had become under Jezebel's influences, he said to God, I'm the only one. Everybody else has forsaken you. It's the Tigger mentality, you know. I'm the only one.

The wonderful thing about Tiggers is, anyway. And so, this John says, the Lord loves me. I am one of the beloved. He goes on here in verse 17, he says, remember the words, and he's talking about what we call scripture, the Bible, New Testament. And he says, remember the words. We have a responsibility to remember scripture. We have a responsibility to memorize scripture. Back to Richard Wambrun, who was persecuted for Christ, tortured for Christ. He said in those prison cells he had nothing to read, so he had to draw from whatever verses he had memorized, and he would repeat them. And you know something interesting that he did in prison that I would never have thought of this?

You neither. He said he continued to write and preach sermons without a pen. He continued to preach the word.

Nobody was there, he said, but the angels were there. The Lord was there. And so, when Jude says, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord, which we now call, not in an exhaustive sense, because they were words we don't have in print that they preached and spoke, but we have a lot of their words that the Spirit felt we needed to have, we have this responsibility to know and then to draw from it. Why know the Bible if you can't preach it to anyone?

Why? What's the purpose if it goes no further than you? So here's Richard in prison and went no further than him for that time, but God freed him from that jail, and he did preach. Jeremiah 16, a familiar verse, Thus says Yahweh, Stand in the way and see, and ask for the old paths.

Where is the good way, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. He's talking about the scripture. He's telling the Jews, stand in the scripture.

Of course, a portion of them said we will not, but others did. Here in verse 17, Jude continues, he says, which were spoken by the apostles of our Lord, implying that his audience heard the apostles or at the very least read what they had to say. And of course, there was much scripture, New Testament scripture, in circulation by this time, whereas in the early stages of the church, the Old Testament was their only Bible, and the New Testament was developed because the heresies started creeping in, the wrong things about Christ. And so the apostles took to pen and paper, as we would say, and began to refute all of these tales that were surfacing about Christ. And then, of course, the apostles needed to correct much of the church behavior through writing. Luke's gospel, he starts off this way, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us.

So Luke goes back and he says, those apostles, those who walked with Christ, they have preached the word to us, and as he's writing to Theophilus, someone named Theophilus, very likely, he says to him, I'm giving you what is now our tradition from Christ to the apostles and the disciples. For the New Testament, for the writings we have, the documents in the New Testament, the 27 articles that we have of books and letters, they're not all books, and they're not all letters. Jude's writing is a letter. It's not a book. And Acts is a book and not a letter, although it's addressed to Theophilus.

I shouldn't have picked that one. I should have went with Mark's gospel. Well, anyhow, for them to qualify, the early church fathers required that the documents be written by apostles or someone closely associated with the apostles, and that is the case. Jude and James, of course, were not apostles of Jesus Christ, but they were certainly sent. They were apostles in that sense, and they walked with Christ, and they were plugged in with Peter and the other 11 with Peter. Paul, of course, was handpicked by the Lord. Mark's gospel, Mark was a disciple of both Paul and Peter and time with Barnabas. And so there is a criteria of how we got our New Testament, and what really makes the Christian the Christian is that the New Testament sets the pace, not the Old Testament, but we don't go without the Old Testament.

They are both 100 percent God's word, but the New Testament is the one that teaches us how to receive the Old Testament. Otherwise, we'd still be bringing sheep to some temple if we could build one, and that's not necessary. Anyway, verse 18 now. Verse 18, how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts.

And so he says, well, we have this on record. The apostles warned of this. The time is here. He's summarizing for sure the teachings of Peter and some of Paul's, 2 Peter 3, knowing first that scoffers will come in the last days walking according to their own lusts. The last days that both Peter and Jude refer to began with the coming of Christ, and it will end with the second coming of Christ in that sense. We believe, or I believe, we're in the last of the last days.

It's winding down. It's too much evidence to fulfill Scripture, and it appears to not be sustainable as the Tower of Babel has been rebuilt. Humanity is getting on the same page against God, and I think we're getting close.

Well, of course, the way time works, you have to be getting closer all the time, but we may even see it happen in our day. Anyway, he says, who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. Again, they don't want God to tell them how to live. That's why they walk according to their own way. You remember that foolish song, I did it my way?

It's a nice song, perhaps, but it's wrong, and I give it an F. And you should too. That doesn't mean you can't listen to it, but just say to yourself as you hear it, it's wrong. Verse 19, these are sensual persons who cause divisions not having the Spirit. These are the ones that they warn. The apostles said, listen, these people that go naturally, go according to their gut feeling, their instincts, or whatever emotions they have, that's how those boys roll.

That's not us. Yes, we use our emotions, we worship the Lord, and adoration is a place for our emotions, but that does not dictate policy for us. There's the fifth of these in verse 19 where he says these are sensual. That word sensual in the Greek is translated elsewhere in most Bibles as natural. You could say carnal. When James writes, he says this wisdom does not descend from above, but it is sensual, demonic. That's the word sensual that he uses there. The same idea.

It's a natural feeling. It means not spiritual. They're not born again.

It's not touched from God or by God. Led again by emotions, not the Spirit, and therefore divisive. When Paul says the carnal mind, or the natural man, cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, that's the same word.

So Jude is saying these are natural people, they're not born again. And because they're natural, not led by the Holy Spirit, they go with their instincts. They go with their feelings. They go with what they see. They have a lower faculty when it comes to going through life.

We are supposed to have a higher one. It is the spiritual man. He says these cause divisions not having the Spirit, which is the natural outcome of remaining natural after hearing spiritual truth.

You sin. If you hear the Gospel and you reject it, you eventually are turned over to your own lust. That powerful first chapter of the Roman letter where it reads as though Paul is looking out his window at Corinth and he's telling the Romans, this is what I see about natural people, about people who don't have the Spirit. Paul then goes on later and says, as a matter of fact, I was so natural, I was out trying to persecute Christians. And the spiritual man, of course, comes out of that. These are troublemakers because they do what they feel like.

Again, Absalom was one of those people. In verse 20, he says, there's a second, but you beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. I wonder as I'm talking about this love of Christ, is a congregation more interested in a pastor attacking the wrongs as we've been doing through Jude? Or is a congregation just as interested in being reminded of the great love of Christ in spite of your unworthiness, your sin, your failures, your shortcomings, your blunders? The love of God just beats that stuff right away. The judgment that would come upon you is not going to come upon you because the blood of Christ has washed it away.

And so this big news, you say, you know, the newspapers don't report, oh, the airplane landed safely. Why not? Why not give us more positive statistics? Because it's better to anyway. I'm not going to go there.

I'm not doing it. So this, but you beloved, singles me out. He is talking to me. And it is more emphatic here because in verse 17, two Greek words, but, but beloved is how it would read here. It is the pronoun, but you, beloved.

It both are accurately translated because the tense and context of the first one is directed to you, beloved. But here it is written in print by Jude. And it is that emphasis that interests me.

It's personal. Do you see it? That's what it's saying to me. God's great love. It never fails. It's not supposed to fail in us. First Corinthians 13, eight, love never fails.

If it fails, it ain't love. It's something else. It's like, you know, if butter gets mold on it, it ain't butter. It's margarine. If you get a leak in a ship or radiate it, plug it with margarine. That stuff is, anyway, maybe, I'm sorry, because, you know, there are food fighters in, in churches.

And if you don't like their food, they can get nasty. So I better go on. Building yourselves up. We have a major role in developing as Christians. It's not all Christ's work. You know, Christ doing all the dying.

I do all of the rejoicing. That, that's not right. Nor is the building part. We have to be involved. And construction involves many materials and people and plans and hard work and danger. You want to build something.

If you want to construct something, those are ingredients. We are responsible to keeping the altar lit. Largely, it is our responsibility. The Lord ignites our hearts. We have work to do to keep the fire burning.

Sometimes we don't feel like doing it, but we must. Leviticus 6, verse 12. And the fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it.

It shall not be put out. And the priest shall burn wood on it every morning and lay the burnt offerings in order on it. Moses lays out this requirement of the priest, the role of the priest in keeping the altar's fires going. Later on, in chapter 9, he then tells us that the altar was first kindled by God. He ignited the altar.

But he already gave instructions. After that altar is lit, you have to keep it going. God will work with us, of course, on that.

He will provide the resources, both internally and externally. And I think that once we accept that, if your Christian perspective is, I don't have to do anything but just be saved, you're not going to develop as a Christian. And if you understand that I have my responsibilities to know the Scripture, to understand God's love for me, and to stand up against those who are trying to corrupt the things of Christ, and also I have a role in my own personal construction, then we get to work.

We get busy. But if we stand there waiting for something that's not going to come, it doesn't happen. He says, on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. Praying within the Holy Spirit as opposed to praying without Him. People think it's fine to dramatize their prayers. They are a nuisance.

They're just like, stop doing that. Why are you talking that way? God does not need us to soup up our prayers. He just needs us to pray in the Spirit.

And to know how to do that, you have to have familiarity with His Word. Ephesians 6, verse 18, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. Because the alternative is, you pray in your own strength, you pray according to your own understanding, your own instincts, you're natural in your prayer. When I pray, if I'm in a group, especially, and I feel that, okay, these are now my words, I just abruptly stop praying. But when I sense the Lord is giving me something to pray, I pray it.

And I remember being at a funeral. What a place to be dramatic, right? And the person wanted to read the 23rd Psalm, and boy, they must have thought it was a play, a theatrical event. The Lord, their voice is trembling.

When now would be a good time to have a cream pie. I find it disrespectful. It's just teaching people that God's Word has to be dramatized.

We don't pray to impress people. Thanks for listening to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you're interested in more information about this ministry, you can visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find more of Pastor Rick's teachings available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll become aware of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. First, search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Join us next time to continue learning more from this series, Truth, Love, and Testimony, here on Cross Reference Radio.