I want to talk on that book of
Jude this morning, bringing again, after the passing
of some years, a bit of attention to
this little but powerful book.
Now the man Jude, a brother of Christ,
had planned to write an encouraging letter.
Just as you might sit down to write
to your friends a letter of encouragement, he
had planned it, dealing with what he called
our common salvation.
But he said it became necessary, rather, as
he was moved and impressed by the Holy
Ghost, to write something else altogether.
An unpleasant circumstance had risen which forced him
to write quite another kind of letter from
the good encouraging letter that he had planned.
Certain men had crept in unnoticed.
Those men were personally men of evil lives.
They were and had been foreseen and condemned
by the Lord himself when he was with
them, and they taught doctrine that was contrary
to Christian faith.
Now he writes to arouse the victims of
these teachers to contend for the truth.
Now I want to talk just a little,
because I want my emphasis to fall elsewhere,
but a little about this false teaching.
Not naming any false teaching specifically, and I
do not use this because I think there
is any false teaching here.
We have had an amazing success under God
in the last years in keeping from our
fellowship those who would subvert us.
They just don't feel healthy around here, the
atmosphere is not wholesome, and they don't stay
very long.
So this is general rather than specific, but
because it is for the whole church of
Christ, it certainly is also for us.
What do we mean by false teaching?
Well, it means teaching that things are otherwise
than they are.
Things are, both physical things and spiritual things
are.
They are, you can put a period after
that.
When we have discovered or had revealed to
us the facts about them, either things material
or things spiritual, then we are morally required
to acknowledge those facts and to make our
teaching conform to them.
That's also very simple that I almost apologize
for saying it.
But it is the broad framework upon which
everything else must hang, that things are as
they are.
Whether we like them or not, that's the
way they are.
God made things, and things are.
Physical material things are, and spiritual things are.
It is our business to find out how
they are, accept them as they are, and
then make our teaching conform to them as
they are.
That's rather simple, isn't it?
Correct doctrine is of vital importance, because it
is simply the teaching of things as they
are.
There are five there, and I say that's
five.
Ten over there, and I say that's ten.
It is July 3, and I say it's
July 3.
That doesn't take genius.
That's just stating things as they are.
This is Chicago, Illinois, not Memphis, Tennessee.
This is Chicago, Illinois.
This is July, not August.
This is the 3rd, not the 9th.
This is 1955, not 1957.
This country is the United States of America,
not some other country, not England, not the
Scandinavian countries.
And so telling the truth about things is
simply finding out what they are, and then
conforming my statement to their facts.
Now it's the same with spiritual truths.
When a truth has been revealed in the
book of God, our business is to find
out what that truth is, and then in
all of our teaching, conform to that truth.
Not edit it, not change it, but let
it stand just as it is.
It is the truth of God declared as
it is, and don't try to change it.
It would be ridiculous of me to try,
by some twist of logic or sophistry, to
make this to be August when it's July,
to make it to be the 9th when
it's the 3rd, to make this to be
winter when it's summer, to make this country
to be Canada when it's the United States.
Truth is just as it is.
God Almighty has made the world to be
a mathematical universe, and he runs all things
according to mathematical laws.
And he has a moral world which runs
according to moral laws as exact and as
unchanging as mathematical laws.
So non-conformity to the truth anywhere brings
disaster.
Let an engineer be wrong about a position,
and let him build according to that wrong
concept, and his building will collapse around him.
Let a navigator be wrong about something, and
he will run on a rock, and his
old ship will shudder as it runs onto
a sandbar or a rock, and will settle
in the water and sink out of sight,
because a mistake has been made.
The man has not gone according to truth.
Non-conformity always brings disaster wherever it may
be.
And the vastness and hugeness of the disaster
depends upon the high level or low level
of the facts we have before us.
If I started with a compass that was
backwards, we were driving the other day in
Mr. McAfee's car, and we went west all
the time, no matter which way we turned,
the compass said west.
Something wrong with the compass.
Now, that didn't do us great harm, because
there were markers, and we didn't go according
to that.
But if there had been something serious, and
we'd had to know, and our lives depended
upon it, we might have left our bones
someplace because the compass went wrong.
So non-conformity, failure to stay by facts
as they are, will bring disaster if we
depend upon it.
Now, false teaching is the falsifying of data.
It's falsifying of data about God, ourselves, sin,
and Christ.
First of all, any false teaching must begin
with the wrong concept of God.
You can put that down in the back
of your Bible or the back of your
memory.
Any false teaching of any sort must begin
with the wrong concept of God.
It can't be otherwise.
Nobody who holds a right concept of God
can go very far wrong in anything else.
And all the basic great mistakes that have
been made, the great fundamental errors, have all
rested down a wrong concept of God.
Men are not willing to let God be
what he says he is.
They're always trying to change God, and trying
to make him to be other than what
he is.
God is, and we'd better accept him as
he is.
God is, and the angels want him to
be what he is.
God is, and the elders and saints and
heavenly creatures want him to be what he
is.
We'd better want him to be what he
is, too, and conformed of what he is.
Any structure that is crooked, or any foundation
that is crooked, will bring the structure down
in time.
It will either sink, or it will collapse
or lean or fall over, but it will
not stand long.
Or if it does, it will be as
lean as the leaning tower there in Italy.
Now, of all the foundations, God is the
most important, because God is God and made
the great God.
It would be a great error for a
man or woman to go a lifetime thinking
they were talking to the God of heaven
and earth, and find that they were talking
to a God which they had confounded out
of their own imagination.
It would be a tragic calamity to the
human spirit for me to pray a lifetime
and preach a lifetime about a God that
wasn't a true God at all, but some
other God, which was a composite of ideas
drawn from philosophy and psychology and other religions
and superstitions.
No, God is what he is, and we
had better learn what God is and then
conform our teachings to God.
If we take away any of the attributes
of God, we weaken our concept of God.
We do not weaken God, but we weaken
our concept of God.
Christian scientists have taken all the justice and
judgment and hatred of sin out of the
nature of God, and they have nothing but
a soft God left.
And there are those who have taken love
and grace out and have nothing but a
God of judgment left.
And there are those who have taken away
the personality of God and have nothing but
a mathematical God left, the God of the
scientists.
All these are false, inadequate conceptions of God.
While God is a God of justice, he
is a God of grace, and while he
is a God of righteousness, he is a
God of mercy.
While he is a God of mathematical exactness,
he is also a God that could take
babies in his arms and pat their heads
and smile.
He is a God that could forgive and
a God that does forgive.
So we had better make the study of
this Bible of ours the business of our
lives, to find out what God is, and
then conform our views to God, and then
ourselves.
That is the second thing where we make
a mistake in any kind of false teaching,
because any wrong idea of God is bound
to give us a wrong idea of ourselves.
Some people approach God through science, through the
study of anthropology.
But anthropology without theology is bound to arrive
at an error at last, bound to arrive
at a dead-end street.
You and I can only explain ourselves in
the light of the doctrine that God made
us out of the dust of the ground
and blew into our nostrils a breath of
life, and so man became a living soul.
Science has discovered many things about God, but
they have not discovered it in context.
They have not begun with God and reasoned
down to his world, they have begun with
the world and tried to reason up with
God and stopped short of finding God.
And the result is only tragic to everybody.
If a man is wrong about God, he
is bound to be wrong about himself.
If he is wrong about the artist, he
will be wrong about the picture.
If he is wrong about the potter, he
will be wrong about the vessel.
If he is wrong about God, he will
be wrong about the creature.
So, while multiplying scientific facts all around about,
men are wrong because they have let God
out and say in their heart, there is
no God.
Or if there is a God, he is
a God of mathematics and laws, but not
the God that the Bible makes him out
to be.
That is all wrong.
And my friend, you cannot know truth about
yourself unless you first know truth about God.
You came from the hand of God, and
back to God you must go for better,
for worse, for judgment, or for blessing.
And until we take God in and understand
God, and let God be what he claims
to be, and believe about ourselves what God
says about us, we are believing false doctrine.
If you believe you are any better than
God says you are, you are in error.
If you believe you are any different from
what God says you are, you are in
error.
You have falsified the data, or somebody has
falsified the data and made you a victim.
No, no, my brother, believe about yourself what
God says about you.
Believe you are as bad as God says
you are, and believe you are as far
from him as God says you are, and
then believe in Christ, you can come as
near to him as he says you can,
and accept what he says about you as
being truth.
Then there is sin.
Sin cannot be understood until we believe in
God and believe what God has said about
ourselves.
Sin is that intrusive phenomenon, that ever-present,
ubiquitous phenomenon.
There it is, hate and lying and dishonesty
and murder and crime and injustice, and suscitating
law and police and jails and gallowses and
locks and graves.
But there are those who would deny it,
and of course that's falsifying the data.
There are those who would rename it, and
they're falsifying data.
There are those who would treat it as
a disease, and they're falsifying data.
God says that it's a breaking of the
law.
God says it's a rebellion against his will.
God says that it's a nature inherited from
our fathers and mothers.
God says that it's an act against the
faith and love and mercy of God.
God says it's rebellion against the constitutive authority
of the majesty on high.
God says it's uniquely and personally chargeable to
the one who commits it.
God says the soul that sins shall die.
We had better believe about sin, what God
said about sin, or we will be falsifying
the data.
And falsified data in spiritual things is more
terribly wrong and will bring more terrible consequences
than falsifying data in material things.
The doctor who miscounts the number of or
the amount of that which he gives a
patient may kill the patient.
That would be only to destroy a body.
The preacher who misjudges or miscounts the truth
concerning sin and man and God will damn
his heirs, which is infinitely more terrible.
Truth concerning God means that I must accept
God's sovereignty, God's holiness, God's justice, God's grace,
God's love, and all that the Bible says
about God.
Concerning myself, it requires that I must believe
in myself as a fallen image of God,
one who once bore his image with hell.
The fourth is Christ himself.
For if I do not have a right
concept of God and of myself and of
sin, then I will have a twisted and
imperfect concept of Christ.
And I have no hesitation in saying that
it is my honest and charitable conviction that
the Christ of the average religionist today is
not the Christ of the Bible of Paul,
but a manufactured Christ, a Christ painted on
canvas, a Christ drawn from cheap poetry, a
Christ of the liberal and the soft and
attuned person, a Christ that has not in
him the iron, the fury and the anger,
as well as the love and grace and
mercy that he had who walked in yellow.
If I have a low conception of God,
I have a low conception of myself, and
if I have a low conception of myself,
I have a dangerous conception of sin.
And if I have a dangerous conception of
sin, I have a degraded conception of Christ.
So here is the way it works.
God is reduced and man is degraded, and
sin is underestimated and Christ is disparaged.
No wonder Jude said the terrible things that
he said.
And I recommend that some of you that
are so nice, you're no good.
I recommend you read the book of Jude
once.
I recommend you read that book of Jude.
Get your teeth filed and to a sharp
eating edge.
Get your teeth into something, dare to believe
something, and dare to stand for God.
This awful day of so-called tolerance, this
awful day when men are ready to believe
anything.
The newspapers will carry headlines about the tragically
mistaken group they now call, after four or
five changes of name, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Father
Divine, or what have you.
No, my brethren, you and I are not
called to smile and smile and smile.
We are called sometimes to frown and rebuke
with all-along suffering and doctrine.
We must contend, but not be contentious.
We must preserve truth, but injure no man.
We must destroy error, but not harm people.
Where men were wrong in other days, they
contended and in contending became contentious.
They tried to preserve truth, and so to
do it, they destroyed those who held error.
All this is wrong.
Let us preserve truth, but injure no man.
Faith of our fathers, we would love both
friend and foe in all our strife, and
love be true, to preach the truth as
love knows how, to kindly give in virtuous
life.
In closing, here is what he says to
us.
He says in verse 19, These be they.
Let's pity them, let's be sorry, let's pray
for them, let's weep over them, let's turn
away from them.
These be they.
Verse 20, But ye, beloved.
Now he has come to his own, the
true believers in God and Christ.
But ye, beloved.
Then he gives them four or five things
to do.
I'll pass swiftly over them.
Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.
Are you these days building up yourselves?
Have you read a book of the Bible
recently?
Have you done any memorization of scripture, texts
of scripture, these days?
Have you sought to know God, or are
you looking to the radio for your religion?
Or have you a Bible and do your
study?
Build up yourselves on your most holy faith.
That's one.
Praying in the Holy Ghost.
I do not hesitate to say that most
praying is not in the Holy Ghost.
The reason we do not pray in the
Holy Ghost is because we do not have
the Holy Ghost in us.
No man can pray in the Spirit except
his heart is a habitation to the Spirit.
It is only as the Holy Ghost has
unlimited sway within us that we are able
to pray in the Holy Ghost.
I do not hesitate to say that five
minutes of prayer in the Holy Ghost will
be worth more than one year of fit
and miss praying that isn't in the Holy
Ghost.
Third, keep yourselves in the love of God.
Be true to the faith, but be charitable
to those who are in error.
Never feel any contempt for anybody.
No Christian has any right to feel contempt,
for contempt is an emotion that can only
come out of pride.
So let's feel no contempt, let's be charitable
and loving toward all while we keep ourselves
in the love of God.
And then, looking for the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
Of course, that is the second coming of
Jesus.
Looking for Jesus Christ's coming.
The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ that
he is coming.
Wonderful, isn't it, that his mercy will show
itself that he is coming.
Even his mercy will show itself then, as
it did on the cross, as it does
in receiving sinners, as it does in patiently
looking after us.
Christians, then, it will show itself at the
coming of Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
Then verse 22, If some have compassion, making
a difference, and others save with fear, pulling
them out of the fire, hating even the
garments spotted by the flesh, there is a
charge of us that we should win others,
that we should do everything in our power
to bring others to Christ.
Saving them with fear, pulling them out of
the fire.
Wesley all his life referred to himself as
a brand cut from the burning, never called
himself anything else than a brand cut from
the burning.
He knew that he was on fire already
with the hot flames of hell when Jesus
Christ grabbed him out of the fiery pit
and extinguished the fire by his own blood.
Wesley became Wesley.
He never dared to rise and think of
himself as a great Oxford man or a
great genius, always he thought of himself as
a brand cut from the burning.
So now we look forward to Jesus Christ's
coming, looking for the mercy of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Here is what the old silk weavers said
about it.
This is a few short lines from 1
Thessalonians.
There is a balm for every pain, a
medicine for all sorrows.
The eye turned backward to the cross and
forward to the morgue.
That's what Paul said.
If you do show forth the Lord's death,
till what?
Till he comes.
There is a balm for every pain, a
medicine for all sorrows.
Some of the old saints in days gone
by called the communion service the medicine of
immortality.
You couldn't follow them in every one of
their beliefs, but that, I think, they were
right.
The medicine for all sorrows, the eye turned
backward to the cross and forward to the
morgue.
The morgue of the glory and the song,
when he shall come.
The morgue of the harping and the psalm
and the welcome home.
Meantime, in his beloved hands are ways.
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to the heath?
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to the liberals?
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to the dead church?
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to those who have chosen to
walk in the low shadows of Christianity?
Never!
Dare to contend without being contentious.
Dare to preserve truth without hurting people.
Dare to love and be charitable, and dare.
Meantime, in his beloved hands are ways, and
on his heart the wandering heart at rest,
and comfort for the weary one who lays
his head upon his breast.
Thank God for the old silkweave who walked
with these saviors, and was not what God
took.
So let us think of the medicine of
immortality today, and let us, by the grace
of God, with charity for all and hatred
toward none, have a determination to be loyal
to truth.
If it kills us, let us put our
chin a little higher and our knees a
little lower.
Let's look a little further in to the
throne of God, where Jesus Christ sits at
the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
Let us be courageous, attentive, severe, but kind.
Let us pray in the Holy Ghost and
keep ourselves in the love of God and
build ourselves up in the most holy faith
and win all we can, until the day
of the glory and the song.
Amen.