It's more important to spend 15 minutes a day with the Lord than an hour once a month. Dr. Tony Evans says engaging with the truth starts by meeting with God consistently, not occasionally. Don't visit God.
Make it a regular relationship meeting. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. When life pulls us in 100 different directions, it's easy to lose our spiritual footing. But today, Dr. Evans shows us how to stay grounded by building our lives on God's unchanging Word. Let's join him in the book of Jude for a challenge to grow strong in faith and stand firm in truth. When it comes to being led spiritually, you want to make sure that you are on the right track.
Now the question is, how do you do that? How do you make sure that you, we, are headed in the right direction in terms of our spiritual lives, particularly in an environment where there's so much falseness surrounding us? So in verse 17 now, he comes and he speaks to Christians. He says, But you, beloved, ought to remember words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, Remember apostolic teaching. The apostles were those who were designated to write Scripture. So when he says what was spoken by the prophets, he's talking about Scripture, because Jesus left the apostles, what was spoken by the apostles, those who were uniquely identified and sent in order to communicate the Word of God to the church. So it's a reference to the Word of God.
In other words, you legitimize or illegitimize something based on the Word as your final authority. The Bible has the final say-so. Once you leave that, then everything else is up for grabs.
You will go with what is popular at the moment because you're not anchored anywhere. Your anchor must be, he tells them, what the apostles spoke. That is the Word of God. You must be anchored there if you're going to stand the test of all the voices that are around.
And that has a voice for everything. There used to be a time when the Bible held sway as a standard and as the most influential standard in the culture. For example, influencing morality, what was right, what was wrong. So even if you did wrong, you knew it was wrong. But now in school, your children are learning what they call values clarification. Values clarification means what's right and wrong is now up for grabs. So you'll hear people saying things like, I know my truth. I know my truth. So what they've done is made truth what I think it is at this given time, what I feel it is at this moment, because the value system has been nullified.
There are no absolutes anymore. It's what I feel, what I think at any given moment, which could change tomorrow. And so he says, remember the apostolic word that is, that came from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now he gets more specific here. He says that they were saying to you, so they wrote it, they spoke it, wrote it for us. In the last times, there will be mockers following after their own ungodly lust.
He says, we've already talked to you about it. I'm just repeating, Jude says, what has already been spoken about the apostles, that you're going to be faced with folks who make a joke out of your faith for their own purposes. These are the one who cause divisions, worldly minded, they're secular in their orientation and devoid of the spirit. They don't look at things spiritually. They look at things secularly and carnally, but they may sprinkle a verse on top of it to make it look spiritually, okay? So he says that they are devoid of the spirit. They are worldly minded. They do not start with God's perspective.
They start with man's perspective. And this thing of causing division, Paul said, he said, mark those who cause division among you. Now, there's certain things you divide over. What you divide over is truth versus a lie.
You can divide over that. Satan's goal is to deceive in order to divide. Now, why does Satan want to divide?
Divide families, divide churches, divide, why does he want to divide? Because there's a principle about God you need to know and that is God retracts from disunity and he engages unity. So if the evil one can get you fighting, he can create disunity because he knows God will not engage disunity.
That's why John 17 says that they might be one so that they can see your glory. Unity is critical to the devil's plan of being able to enter into a situation and keep God out of it. That's why Ephesians 4 says, maintain the unity of the faith. It doesn't mean you always agree.
Unity doesn't mean that there are no disagreements. It means oneness of purpose, is that our purpose is the same and even though we got to work some things out on our way, we're on our way to that agreed upon goal. But you, beloved—verse 20, he's talking to Christians—but you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith. Okay, now, he tells you to do a couple of things here. Build up yourself. Build up yourself. Grow your faith.
Don't be satisfied to stay where you are. Suppose your child graduates from the sixth grade, comes to you and says, Mom, I'm finished. Dad, I'm done. I have successfully finished the sixth grade.
I know you're proud of me. I'm proud of me, and I think I'm through with school. You would probably say you have lost your mind. You have lost your mind if you think that you're going to stop your academic development in the sixth grade.
Because no matter what they have learned up through the sixth grade, it is insufficient to carry them where they need to go in the world in which they live. Once you stop trying to grow, you will regress. You are never static. Even in your physical life, if you stop growing, somebody else is going to pass you by who is growing.
So it is. In your spiritual lives, you are to build yourself up. You build yourself up by learning what God says and then acting on it. When you learn it and don't act on it, there will be no growth. It's like studying something in class that you never use. You may have taken geometry.
You may have taken it because you had to. But if you never had to use it, and we brought out an equation right now, everybody would be looking at you and you would be looking at them. Not because you didn't take the class, it's just that you never had use for the subject. And because you never had use for the subject, you have regressed in it. You have regressed in it. Same thing spiritually.
Information that is not acted upon stays dormant and becomes regressive. Information that's acted on, it has life because you're now operating on your faith. Secondly, it says praying in the Holy Spirit. Praying in the Holy Spirit. To pray in the Spirit is to pray in concert with God's desires and God's design. In other words, you are thinking spiritually as you pray. I know some people say, well, this must be speaking in tongues.
No. Praying in the Spirit has nothing to do with speaking a language. It has to do with a spiritual mindset. If you look at Romans chapter 8, this whole chapter is basically about the Holy Spirit. Verse 9, However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of God, he does not belong to him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, which dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, but if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Spirit you're living, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. So he spends this whole chapter talking about the leading, guiding of the Spirit. So you pray when you talk to God, you want to be talking to God from a spiritual point of view, not from a worldly or fleshly point of view. You don't want to come before God with an ungodly point of view, because you're not praying according to the Spirit, you're praying according to the flesh or the world or that which is against God. You can't pray against God and then request from God as a contradiction. So to pray spiritually is to pray, to pray in the Spirit is to pray from God's point of view or from a spiritual mindset, okay? That is, you are thinking God's thoughts as you communicate with God about your life and about whatever the content of your prayer happens to be. Dr. Evans will show how a focus on eternity and God's perspective can keep us spiritually grounded when he continues our message in just a moment.
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Explore the kingdom anytime, anywhere. Well, today is the third and final installment from Tony's compelling series called Jude Delivered from Deception. It's a timely look at how believers can recognize false teaching, stay grounded in God's truth, and stand firm with boldness and integrity in an age of spiritual compromise. If you've missed any part of the series or want to revisit the messages in full, you can request the complete set on a digital download as well as on CD or USB thumb drive. It's our gift to you when you support the ministry of the alternative, helping us share God's Word on this station and around the world. To get your copy, just visit tonyevans.org and look for the featured offer on the homepage.
Or speak with a member of our resource team anytime at 1-800-800-3222. Right now, let's get back to Dr. Evans as he continues today's message. Keep yourselves in the love of God. What does it mean to keep yourself in the love of God? You keep yourself in the love of God when you keep an eternal perspective, okay? You're living on earth from the perspective of heaven.
The Bible says we've been seated with Christ in heavenly places. So you are to live on earth while thinking from heaven. And he says that will keep you in the love of God. That will keep you in close proximity or close relationship to God.
So now, he's talking to you about you. You build yourself up in the faith. Don't get spiritually lazy. Carve out that time in the morning where you spend time undistracted with God, even if it's 15 minutes. It's more important to spend 15 minutes a day with the Lord than an hour once a month. Because what that does is it keeps your perspective regularly as a part of your operation, okay?
Your perspective. And a good place to do that, the Bible says to take up your cross daily. That idea is be identified with Jesus Christ as a daily way of life. Don't visit God. Don't make it a visitation meeting.
Make it a regular relationship meeting. So that's what he wants to build yourself up in the faith. But now, he wants you to talk to you about the rest of the family of God in verse 22. And have mercy on some.
Have mercy on some. That is, be a compassionate believer who are doubting. He says, have compassion on some who are doubting. Save others, snatching them out of the fire. Now, what is the fire? The fire is not, he's not talking about hell because right now, he's talking about believers. Believers don't go to hell. He's talking about when you get too close to a flame and you get ready to get burned by it, and if you saw a child coming close to the fire, what would you do?
You would go grab the child and save them from being burned by the stove, okay? All of us have seen believers marching in the wrong direction. And we know if we don't get them, they get ready to fall off this cliff.
You don't stand back and say, well, boy, I hope he gets to, I hope he comes to his senses here quick because he getting ready, he getting ready to be roasted. So have compassion on people who are struggling, but some people you have to grab because they get ready to fall into the flame, the flame of a negative reality. Some of us have had to be pulled out of bad relationships. Some people have had to be pulled out of certain environments.
We do that, we do that with our children regularly. We snatch them out of a situation because if they keep going like they're going, they're going to be burnt up by those relationships, by that situation, by that environment. So some people, you work with them because they're struggling with doubt.
Other people, you go get them, okay? If the church is about anything, it's about people getting other people who are about to enter into the flame of a negative hell-bent situation that is going to burn them up in terms of their day-to-day Christian life. So he says, proceed wisely. In other words, distinguish between the sin and the sinner. Reject the sin, don't reject the sinner, okay, because a lot of time we want to throw the baby out with the bath.
If we see the clothes defiled, we want to get rid of the one wearing them and the clothes. And he says, make the distinction between the sinner and the sin, the clothes they're wearing and the one wearing the clothes, okay? Reject the sin, not the sinner. Then he comes to his concluding two verses, a benediction, if you will. Now to him who's able to keep you from stumbling, okay, for keep you from being trapped and tricked, duped, to him who's able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy. In other words, I don't care how bad it gets, God can get you through this, okay? That's good news.
That's a great benediction. I don't care how bad it looks, feels, whatever you're dealing with is just messing you up, messing you over. It seems like you're going to make it. The oppression feels too great. The burden feels too great.
The trials last too long. God is able, okay? That's why you've got to keep your eye on God no matter what the difficulty is you're struggling with because God is able. What is he able to do? He says God is able to keep you from stumbling or from being tripped up.
He can do it, but you've got to be working consistently with him as you trust him to do it. He can make you stand in his presence of his glory, blameless. Now nobody is sinless, watch this, nobody is sinless because we all sin, but he says he can work it out so that when you stand before him, you are blameless. This doesn't mean you're sinless. Blameless means that whatever your failures are, they have been sufficiently covered over that when you stand before him, he's going to say, you look just right.
You've been covered over in spite of the fact that none of us is perfect. So blamelessness is not sinlessness, but he can help you get there. So from this point on, you should say, okay, I know I will never be sinless, but I want to now stop being blameless because I now want to build up myself in the faith, grow deeper in that, keep my perspective heavenly while I walk practically on earth, make you stand in his presence and have great joy, great joy. And then he gives this closing word to benediction to the only God, our savior.
So he's talking about a problem because he's talking about the false teachers and being tricked, being duped, all that. He's talking about a problem, but he ends with a praise. Now to the only God, our savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, he's the means of our salvation. Okay, here's the praise. Be glory. Glory refers to the display of God's attributes. In other words, the characteristics of God make up his glory. The glory of God is the manifestation of his attributes.
So you can appeal to what God is like in the midst of living your life. Be glory, majesty. Majesty speaks of his reign as ruler. He makes the final call and has the ultimate say-so about where things will wind up. So you never limit yourself to only what you can see because he is the majesty.
That is the one sitting on the throne. Dominion, dominion means rule. Dominion means rule. So give him glory because he sits in the Oval Office and he has the deciding vote. Dominion, ultimate rule and authority. The Greek word authority here is the word that means legitimate right to make the decision. And Satan is always making decisions about you in order to hurt you.
But authority, he says, belongs to God, which means the legitimate right. Let me confess something today. Today I got a ticket. Yeah, I got a ticket today.
I've got a ticket in years and years. I got a ticket today, 40 and a 30, and whoever hurt anybody, given anybody, 40 and a 30, okay? It wasn't a school zone.
It was 40 and a 30, all right? But I got a ticket for going 40 and a 30, and so he pulled me over and he gives me a ticket because he had the right to. He had the right to do that because he had legitimate authority.
Now if somebody else just roll up behind me, putting their lights on, saying, pull over, I wouldn't feel obligated to do it because even though that may be a request, it's not a request with legitimate authority. But he had a legitimate authority. The reason why you want to know this about God, all these words run together. He's glorious. He's got the attributes. He's majestic. He's got the position. And not only that, dominion, so he can oversee the whole realm, he has authority, the legitimate right, before all time and now and forevermore, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
He got this whole bottle of wax. So in whatever you're dealing with, get your praise on, because he's saying God is able to get you through it, and you don't have to be duped to go another way from God to get what God already has for you. Amen? Dr. Tony Evans, wrapping up the third and final message in his powerful series on the book of Jude, focusing on the power, majesty, and authority of our great God. Now if you missed any part of this important series, you can catch up by requesting the full-length versions of all three messages from this study. They'll help equip you to stand firm in biblical truth, recognize spiritual deception, and live with confidence in a culture of compromise. Jude, Delivered from Deception, is available as our gift to you when you support the ongoing outreach of the alternative. Just visit tonyevans.org to make your donation and request the series. And while you're there, take a moment to explore our wide range of faith-building resources for all ages, including books, Bibles, study guides, and audio and video content. Again that's tonyevans.org, or give us a call at 1-800-800-3222 any time of the day or night. Again that's 1-800-800-3222. The Bible has been called a book of wisdom, a life manual, even a philosophical guide. But Dr. Evans says it's much more than that. Tomorrow he'll show why Scripture stands in a category all its own as he begins a powerful new series called The Glory of God's Word. I hope you'll join us for that.
