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.
Now, 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's 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.
Now, what do we mean by false teaching?
Well, it means teaching that things are otherwise
than they are.
Now, things are, both physical things and spiritual
things are.
They are, you can put a period after
that.
And 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.
Now, 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.
Now, 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.
Now, that's rather simple, isn't it?
Now, correct doctrine, then, 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 what today, third, and I
say it's July third.
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 third, not the ninth.
This is 1955, not 1957.
This country is the United States of America,
not some other country.
Not England, not any of 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 so 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 ninth when
it's the third, 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 nonconformity 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 it.
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 the
truth.
Nonconformity 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 when our lives depended
upon it, we might have left our bones
someplace, because a compass went wrong.
So, nonconformity, 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.
And 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 with 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.
For if it does, it will be lean,
as the leaning tower there in Italy.
Now, God, of all the foundations, God is
the most important, because God is God, and
made the heaven and earth and all things
that are therein.
And it is a great error, 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.
There are those who have taken love and
grace out and have nothing but a God
of judgment left.
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's
a God of grace, and while he's a
God of righteousness, he's a God of mercy.