When we pray, we pray as though we're standing right in front of the throne of God, and nobody else is really there. We don't pray to teach anybody. We don't pray to, you know, kind of impress them at how spiritual I am.
We pray as though we're talking to God. Oh, great, a teachy prayer. Let me tell, oh, stop. Let me get my pen and pad. I'm going to have to take notes. That's not the way to do it. And what if God is not giving you anything to pray?
Then keep, be quiet. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Jude.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear how you can get more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will continue in the Book of Jude Chapter 1 and his message called Personal Love. The last days that both Peter and Jude refer to are, it 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 lust? 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 warned. 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. 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, 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. And 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 lusts, 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, and 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 the 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 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. It's, ooh.
You get a leak in a ship or a radiator, 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. 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, altars fires going. Later on, in chapter 9, he then says, he 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. And 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 you walk, if your Christian perspective is, I don't have to do anything but just be saved, you're not going to be, 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, 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. A lot of people think it's fine to dramatize their prayers.
They are a nuisance. It's 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 play, a theatrical event. The Lord, their voice is trembling.
Well, 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. When we pray, we pray as though we're standing right in front of the throne of God, and nobody else is really there. We don't pray to teach anybody. We don't pray to, you know, kind of impress them at how spiritual I am. We pray as though we're talking to God. Oh, great, a teachy prayer. Let me tell, oh, stop, let me get my pen and pad.
I'm going to have to take notes. That's not the way to do it. And what if God is not giving you anything to pray? Then be quiet. It's a good system.
It works very nicely. A lot of prayers would be a lot shorter, and we would all get home a lot earlier. Well, not really, because we don't, but those are some rules for corporate prayer. Now, if I've offended you, I've got the scripture on my side. All right, verse 21, just getting ready, because I have not accused anyone here of long preachy prayers. But I sort of feel like 30 years of ministry is surging up in me, and I really got to talk about this.
I'm kidding. Verse 21, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. You got to love Jude. He just said, keep yourselves in the love. You've got responsibilities. Keep in the word.
Build up in the prayer. Keep yourselves. He's not an exhaustive statement.
It's a shared responsibility. Look back at verse 1 of Jude, and there he says, I'll just read the, well, I'll take the whole verse. Jude, a bondservant, a willing slave of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are called, and then he says, and then he says, sanctified. Those are separated by God the Father and preserved in Christ, or kept in Christ. God preserves all who want to be preserved, and those who want to be preserved will be working on being preserved. It is a system. There's a rhythm that belongs to it.
It's a good rhythm. In verse 6, he talks about those who did not keep their first estate, the unfallen angels. They did not keep. Here he says, keep yourselves. In verse 1, he says that we are preserved. We're kept by Christ.
It is a good system. Again, it is a good rhythm that goes along with our walk in Christ, and I think once we sober up, if we've not been sober in this area, we get more strength. If we're always praying for God to do the things that we're supposed to be involved with too, nothing much gets done. John's Gospel 17, I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours. You gave them to me, and they have kept your word. And so again, where he says, keep yourselves in the love of God.
Keep the word. Would any Christian find any fault with that? Those who damage or destroy their faith in Christ do so by making room for things outside of what the Scripture teaches us, or contrary to what the Scripture teaches us.
It is the first giant step away from Christ. That's how you are no longer kept, by going to things that are going against the Scripture, because Christianity declares that other gods are not God at all, but the product of hell's story that is to be told to men. It does not come from heaven.
It comes from beneath, and we do not share other gods. We condemn them, and we are condemned for doing so. Well, you can understand someone condemning us if that's all they know. But if we begin to lay out the truth, that's where converts are made. Some will still condemn.
Well, that's on them. But others, others will begin to understand. Saving souls. Why should God use me to save souls? And I won't pray, and I won't spend time in the Word. Why would God send anybody to me to hear about Jesus Christ? See, they go together. It's hard work.
It means we have to do less of other things and more of these things. Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's that undeserved forgiveness, that word mercy. That is being received by God and not deserving to be received by God. The greatest expression of mercy that we know is the cross of Christ. 1 John 3 16. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. Why?
Why did He do that? Love. Love that shows mercy. Because if there was no mercy, then we would have gotten what we deserved, and that would be judgment. Romans 9 16. So then, it is not in Him who wills, nor of Him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. How can you not love these things?
How can you not hear? If you are an unbeliever and you come in touch with this, then it is not up to Him who wills, nor Him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. How can you not say, I want that mercy? Unto eternal life. That is forever. Psalm 18. The psalmist says, and this is the psalm, you know, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, and it's a very, you know, anyway, for I have kept the ways of Yahweh and have not wickedly departed from my God. Kept. Looking for the mercy of the Lord. John 10, and I, Jesus speaking, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. How can you not be attracted to that?
What is the alternative to this? Well, the world says, well, he's not who he says he was, so I don't have to listen. You don't have any facts behind that. We've got facts you don't. We've got facts you don't have them.
We've got prophecy you don't have it. Sometimes childishness works. Anyway, you're driving home, you'll be singing that jingle, maybe I better repent. Verse 22, and on some have compassion, making a distinction. Well, he has shown little to no compassion in this letter towards those troubling the house of God, but then he hits the brake light a little bit, but before we talk about the brake light, the fact that he hasn't shown any compassion is on behalf of those who would listen, and so it is a form of passion, but Korah, when he talked about Cain, Korah and Balaam, sapphire and Ananias.
The judgments are very serious in the scripture, and here he comes and taps the brake lights. He says, but there are exceptions to all of this. It is as if he is saying, if you discern that the person in front of you is misguided, yet you have an opportunity to be part of the solution in their eternal state, then take the softer approach.
That's what he is telling them. He is saying there are victims, and there are villains, and we don't always know who is who. Sometimes we may think a person is just a full-blown villain, but then we all of a sudden gain some discernment in spiritual insight in the matter, and we realize this person is more of a victim, and maybe they are reachable. James puts it this way. He says, brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, the one that stopped to turn him back discerned. Instead of saying, you know what, you are an apostate, and get away from me. Instead of doing that, and James' verse in his section here, he says, if anyone of you wanders from the truth, which means a Christian was moving from the truth, and if someone didn't get in there, they would continue to move from the truth. But James says, and turns him back.
Then he continues, James does, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. Whose? Whose sins? Mine's or his?
Both. Because love is in operation, and love covers a multitude of sins, and it starts with the love of Christ, which was the sinless, the sinless Son of God, dying for sinners. Galatians, Paul says it this way to the church. He says, brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Preaching cannot always have time to slow down and start, you know, putting a disclaimer on everything it says, and turn changing its voice. That's not preaching. Preaching has to stay focused on the facts as best it can, and let it out. But you take the preacher, and you put him in front of a human being, and all of a sudden things change. The demeanor changes, the approach to the content does not.
This is, I don't know of a way around this. You can preach hard words, and people come to Christ. You can preach soft words, and they come to Christ. The work is of God.
I'm not talking about intention. I think when the preacher preaches, he wants to stick with the truth. When he feels led to hammer something, he hammers it. You know, the Ecclesiastes speaks about the well-driven nails of the scholar. You know, you drive your points home, and you let the Lord sort it out.
But always there is this desire for compassion. Now, I don't think any pastor, true pastor, steps into the pulpit wanting to hammer anybody. He may want to hammer points and error, but he doesn't want to hammer a person unless it gets them into the kingdom. Jesus, you know, he preached pretty hard sometimes. Woe to you Pharisees. Woe to you scribes.
When they said, hey, you insult us. He says, woe to you. He went right at them, too, because they were guilty, and they knew it, and he exposed them. And so here, Jude, he's dealt with these false teachers. He's not taking a word of it back, but then he taps to break lights to the believer, and he says, but you, beloved of God, in dealing with people, don't go without discernment. And that's why he says, making a distinction there in verse 22. Christ made a distinction on the cross between the two outlaws.
We're running out of time, so I have to speed up through this. Leviticus 11 47, the Jews were told to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. Exodus 8 23, I will make a difference between my people and your people.
We have to make distinctions. We have to slow down and not become stereotypical Christians when it comes to sinners. Verse 23, but others, save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled in the flesh. So our subject, again, has been the deliberate corruptors in the church, and Jude says that when encountering the victims of error, be careful in reaching out to them. Make this distinction, but be careful because, you know, you don't want to be the life God that gets pulled down with the person you went to rescue. And so you watch your back, Jack, when you are sharing the faith, when you are ministering, understanding that the enemy is there and active, and don't think that you are invincible. So be very careful. More than once, someone has come to me and they have felt beaten up by someone who they weren't ready for to engage with the faith. So, but others, save with fear. That fear is that sobriety.
When you make the distinction, you stay sober, pulling them out of the fire, because that's what they are in. Probably a reference to Amos and Zechariah, who use such analogies in their preaching. The word for pulling is herpazo, to snatch. So we use it for the rapture. The Latin word is raptus, for translating the Greek word herpazo. So when the Jehovah Witness says that the word rapture is not in the Bible, you say you're wrong, you don't know your language. When Jerome translated the Bible from the Greek into the Latin, and he came across that word herpazo, to snatch away, he chose the word raptus, where we get our English word rapture. And so yes, the word rapture is in the Bible. We are not to be passive about rebuking falsehood when the Lord has engaged us, allowed us to engage in the saving of souls.
His entire letter has not been passive. He says, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. Those without Christ are covered with sin. Their garments are defiled.
They are contaminated with error. And he is warning them that we are not to salvage that which is wrong. We're not to hold on to those filthy garments.
We're to take them off. Again, Zechariah chapter 3 is an illustration. Take the filthy garments on off of him when Satan was accusing the high priest. So I want to disclose with this verse. I'll close with the book of Leviticus, chapter 1. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things become new.
And that is fresh. 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. Just 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. Tune in next time to continue learning more from this series, Truth, Love, and Testimony, here on Cross Reference Radio.
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