Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You take your Bibles and turn to the Book of Jude, please. The Book of Jude.
[00:00:05] It's the next to the last book in the Bible. So if you find the Book of the Revelation, you can make a left turn, and there it is. You'll bump right into it.
[00:00:16] Our total for this week. We've passed out or witnessed 361 times this week, for a total of 7453 for the year. Very grateful for that. And you all keep up the good work of getting the gospel seed out, and we'll pray that it'll continue to land on good soil. I was sent a picture last night, I think it was by Brother Sandy in the Philippines. Him holding my knowing I'm saved and leaving Egypt book. And I was grateful to see that they made it over there safely. I'd been told they had, but it was good to see it with my own eyes. So I'm grateful. This morning, before we get started here, we have a presentation to make.
[00:01:05] Let me see here.
[00:01:07] A little while back, the Garrett's had. And I appreciate Brother Garrett so much filling in Brother Shepard this morning. He's a gifted teacher. And what a blessing it was to have him filling Brother Shepard, who, God willing, will be back Sunday morning all healthy and everything.
[00:01:27] But a little while back, the Garrett's donated some Bibles to the church. And I made a challenge. Any child wanted to memorize some scripture and receive a very nice leather Bible. Children's Bible, could get one. And Leah has been working on this. Not the Leah and Crockett. The Leah down here. Leah has been working on this for quite some time now. And she memorized Ephesians six, verses one through three.
[00:02:02] And she read it to me the other day, and I got to listen to it confirm she had it memorized. Aliyah, would you step up here? Pleased?
[00:02:15] Come on up here. And I want to present to you your very own big picture interactive Bible for children. Congratulations. Good job.
[00:02:27] All right, you can sit down now with your mom. All right, those are open to any child that wants to memorize some scripture and get a Bible, all right? If you take God's word, speaking of Bibles, take God's word, and God willing, we'll be expounding Jude, verse one.
[00:02:51] Jude, verse one. This morning, we've been studying big doctrines in the smallest books of the Bible. We didn't do that intentionally. That's just how it worked out. And Brother Doug said, well, why don't you do Jude? It's small one, too. We'll do it. It just made sense. Here we are.
[00:03:13] Last week, we finished our study in the Epistles of John. So beginning a brand new study in this book this morning, and Jude, again, is an easy book to find. It's right next to the Book of Revelation.
[00:03:26] And the first question you may be having this morning is, who is Jude? Who is Jude? I mean, we're all familiar with Paul and Peter and John and Matthew and Mark and Luke and all them, but Jude is not mentioned very much in the Bible.
[00:03:46] And even if he is mentioned, you may not know who it's speaking about when it mentions him in the Bible. And so, to many people, the man Jude is unknown.
[00:03:58] Jude was not a big person who made a big splash in Bible history.
[00:04:04] Jude wasn't the kind of man that you'd be seeing on television today as far as notoriety is concerned. Jude was not the man standing out in the crowd and getting all the attention.
[00:04:19] And because of this, I believe Jude is an example of the type of person today who may have a lot to offer the Church, but due to a lack of notoriety, can be overlooked by Christians who are seeking to be part of what's popular in Christian circles at the time, rather than seeking to what God's word has to offer. So who was Jude? Well, let's look in verse one now, and let's see how Jude described himself.
[00:04:51] He said, look in verse one. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your precious word. And I pray, Father, that all eyes will be on you today, and you'll fill with your Holy Spirit and those who are here today. And, Father, you'll feed your flock from your precious word. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:05:18] Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ.
[00:05:23] Before anything else, Jude identified himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. And interestingly, we'Ve been studying the book of Philemon on Wednesday nights. And that involves the story of a runaway slave named Onesimus. And the same Greek word that the Apostle Paul used to describe the earthly relationship that Onesimus had with Philemon is the same word that Jude chose to use to describe the relationship that he had with Jesus Christ as a man. The Greek word translated servant. Here, it comes from a Greek root word that means to bind. To bind. Jude was bound to the service of Jesus Christ. Jude was bound to give up his own will and to surrender to the will of his Lord.
[00:06:20] And being bound to serve the Lord Jesus is not something that belonged only to Jude or to Bible preachers or to special Christians. No, every Christian is a bond slave to Jesus Christ. As the Bible says, if you're taking notes. In one Corinthians 620, the Bible says, for ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are gods. As a believer in Christ, Jude acknowledged that he was bought with a price by God.
[00:06:59] He was like a slave that was bought with the price by his master and Jesus. When he died on the cross, he paid the ultimate price for our sins by paying his own life, that he might deliver us from the death that we justly deserve.
[00:07:19] In Peter one, Peter 118 through 19, the apostle Peter said, forasmuch as ye know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, Jude, like us, was owned by someone else. He did not belong to himself, and we did not belong to ourselves. And the sooner we learn this truth as Christians, the better off we will be. In one Corinthians chapter six, verse 19, Paul said, what know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own Christian, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, you are not your own.
[00:08:19] The first man, Adam, was formed by God from the dust of the earth. The BiblE says, God formed man from the dust of the earth, breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and man became a living soul.
[00:08:32] Who made that dirt?
[00:08:34] God made that dirt. If you're here for Sunday school this morning, you know that God made that dirt. Heard a story once where a bunch of proud scientists thought that life, if they had enough equipment, life could somehow be created in a laboratory. They thought, that's all this Bible stuff. It's not that big of a deal. So to teach them a lesson, God gave them the finest laboratory known to man, and he challenged those scientists to make some form, even the most simplest form of a living creature, in that lab. And the scientists said, we'll accept that, challenge God. We don't need God to have life. We have science. So the scientists went outside. They got the most richest, fertile organic soil that they could find. They brought it back to the lab. But as soon as they walked in the lab to put it underneath their microscopes, God stopped them and said, no, that's cheating. You need to get your own dirt. I made that.
[00:09:38] And, of course, there is no other dirt to get.
[00:09:42] Everything in this world was already here before the scientists were born. The truth is, man has never created anything of his own. He has only dabbled in the creation that God has put him in, the first man Adam, was formed by God from the dust of the earth that God made. And then God breathed his breath into Adam and gave him his life. So the body Adam had didn't belong to him, and the breath Adam had didn't belong to him. It all belonged to God. And everything about us belongs to God as well.
[00:10:22] It was God that brought man out of the dust of the earth. It was God that brought us out of the damnation of our sin. So whether it's by God creating us or by God redeeming us, we belong to God. Jude was a servant of Jesus Christ. That's who Jude was. That's what Jude was born to do. And you will never know the everlasting meaning, joy and fulfillment of the life that God has given you until you, like Jude, embrace your Place of service in Christ's kingdom.
[00:11:03] That's who Jude was, a child of God. Now let's see who Jude was as a child of man.
[00:11:10] Jude said he was a servant of Jesus Christ. Look back in your text and brother of James, and this lets us know where Jude fits into the picture. I mean, who is Jude anyway that we should be listening to him?
[00:11:25] Well, Jude was one of Jesus twelve apostles.
[00:11:30] Jude went by several names in the Bible, but one of the names he was known by was the name Judas.
[00:11:37] Judas. You're thinking, oh, Brother Richard, Judas, we don't want to learn from Judas.
[00:11:46] The only problem with having the name Judas was the possibility of getting confused with that other fellow named Judas. That also was an apostle that betrayed Jesus.
[00:11:58] So to differentiate these two men, these two Judas's, who both were the apostles of Christ. The evangelist, Luke told us in Luke six, verse 15 through 16, that the apostles were. He names the apostles off. And I'm going to pick up kind of in the middle of his list. He says they were Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotus, and Judas the brother of James, and Judas Ascariot, which also was the traitor. So you see how Luke bunched up those two Judas's at the end, he said, well, you got Matthew, you've got Thomas, he said, you've got James. He goes on down, he says, you got Judas, he's the brother of James, and you've got Judas Ascariot, who was the one who betrayed Jesus. So you got Judas the brother of James and Judas the betrayer. That's basically what Luke was saying. So these two men, fascinatingly with the same name, come into the same incredible circumstances in life. Two, Judas's both called Jesus Christ to be his apostle. Amazing.
[00:13:24] So two men with the same name, in the same circumstances, given the same opportunity. One man chose to serve Jesus, the other chose to betray him.
[00:13:37] And the man we are listening to today is the man who chose to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. And this shows us that man's relationship with God is not determined by the opportunities that he is Given in life, but by the choices he makes in the environment he is in.
[00:13:57] Both Judas's were given the same training, the same opportunities, the same godly environment. But one, Judas went to heaven and the other went to hell.
[00:14:09] Every man has the same chance to know God, the same chance to serve God. But every man also has the same chance to choose or reject God. Don't ever think that someone. I used to have people all the time. Well, you think everyone has to trust in Jesus to go to heaven? I said, I sure do.
[00:14:28] You don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are not going to heaven. Well, what about those people in Africa? Listen, they always ask me stuff like that. Don't ever think that someone would have chosen God if only they would have been born in America.
[00:14:43] That's the devil's lie. Look around you. Look at our country today. People reject God in America every single day. And people are coming to God outside of America every single day.
[00:14:58] And don't think that somebody would have only chosen God if only they'd been raised in the right family, if only they would have had the right environment. Judas Iscariot had the right environment. That's the devil's lie. As it is written. Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. Jacob and Esau.
[00:15:19] Jude and Jude, two brothers, Jacob and Esau, raised in the same house with the same parents. But they each made a different choice in regards to their walk with God. Likewise, two apostles of Jesus Christ, Judas Ascariot and Judas, the brother of James. One chose to serve Jesus, the other chose to reject him. Listen, if you're struggling through life today, stop blaming your parents, stop blaming your environment. Stop blaming other people and start taking personal responsibility for the life that God gave you. Make the right choice in the environment that you are in.
[00:16:00] The Judas we're reading from today made the right choice for his life. He chose to live his life for Jesus Christ. What choice will you make now? After identifying himself, the apostle Jude now identifies the people he's writing to. He says, jude, the servant of God, the brother of James. Now, look here. Back in your text, he says to them, that are sanctified by God the Father. In fact, Jude goes into greater detail identifying his audience than he did identifying himself.
[00:16:39] And the reason Jude is doing this is on account of the heavy and burdensome doctrine that he's about to reveal in this little book. This is a heavy book, Folks. It's a kind of scary book in a way. And you see, Jude is identifying the people he's writing to in order to distinguish them from the people he's writing about. That makes sense.
[00:17:05] Jude is about to warn us of counterfeit Christians. He's about to warn us about these scoundrels that sneak into the Church, about the type of Judas's that betray Christ rather than serve him.
[00:17:23] Jude is about to pull the COVID off these hypocrites and expose them for what they really are.
[00:17:30] He is going to pull off their sheep's clothing and expose so called Christians, so called preachers of God's word, as the Filthy, lying, and thieving wolves that they are. But before Jude condemns the wolves on the outside of the sheepfold, he is going to corral Jesus'sheep on the inside of the sheepfold, lest any of Jesus'Sheep reading his letter mistake what he is talking about and think Jude is condemning them.
[00:18:06] And I believe this may be why Jesus chose two men named Judas to be his apostles.
[00:18:15] I think he may have chosen these men, both having the same names, that he might take these two men in these very similar circumstances. One Judas here, one Judas here. Both Following Jesus, both one of the Twelve. And then distinguish those Two Judas's, as grain is distinguished from the Chaff as wheat, and is distinguished from the Chaff or tears from the wheat.
[00:18:43] Now, to make this distinguishment, Jude starts describing the wheat.
[00:18:49] He starts describing the people that he's writing to with a threefold description. Take your pins, please, and first underline the word sanctified.
[00:19:04] Sanctified.
[00:19:08] Now go down a little bit further and underscore the word preserved.
[00:19:15] Preserved. Boy, that's good in it, Brother Doug. My goodness. I tell you what, man, when I was a kid, they'd give me fruit striped gum. Any of you all ever had fruit stripe gum? I'd put that gum in my mouth, it tasted so good, in about 30 seconds, all the flavor was gone.
[00:19:33] But, buddy, we got some fruitstripe gum right here. You put these words in your spiritual mouth, you can chew on these three words all day long. It'll never lose its sweetness, never. Sanctified. Underscore. Preserved. Go on down. Underscore the word called. Those are the three adjectives that Jude is using.
[00:19:55] Jude is writing to people who are sanctified. He's writing to people who are preserved. He's writing to people who are called. Ecclesiastes 412 says a three four cord is not quickly broken. And Jude is revealing to the believers in Jesus Christ a threefold cord that binds us safely to God. And the first chord being the fact that we are sanctified by God the Father.
[00:20:26] Now, to be sanctified means that God the Father has made you holy.
[00:20:33] Now, that word sanctified and holy, those are kind of theological words. They're kind of words we don't use in our everyday life. And they may just kind of go right over your head, but they don't have to go over your head. They're really not that complicated of words.
[00:20:48] It simply means that God the Father has separated you. It means he has distinguished you from the rest of the world, as a farmer would distinguish. And we don't grow a lot of wheat around here, but we do have corn around here and some other things. I'm going to kind of use some more East Texas terms here to help you out, rather than the Middle Eastern terms here, but it means God has distinguished you from the rest of the world. As a farmer would distinguish a kernel of corn from the rest of the stalk, he distinguished the kernel of corn from the silk, from the cob, from the shuck, as that part of the plant that is worth saving and the rest is plowed back under into the field. Makes sense. Yesterday, it was good to have my mother and father in law down with us from the God blessed state of Indiana. Not as blessed as Texas, but it's blessed.
[00:21:55] And he walked past my garden yesterday, and as he did, he grabbed an okra, an okra pod. He snapped that okra off and popped into his mouth and ate it.
[00:22:08] And when he did this, when he grabbed that okra pod, he was sanctifying that pod from the rest of the plants. That make sense. I mean, he didn't walk by and say, well, pull off an okra stem and start gnawing on it, right? He didn't pull off the okra flowers because there were some blossoms on there. He didn't pull off the leaves from that okra plant. He chose the pod because he distinguished that pod from the rest of the plant to be suitable for saving, and the rest he left behind.
[00:22:42] A farmer doesn't destroy his precious kernels of corn. A gardener doesn't destroy his okra pods. And God the Father doesn't destroy his children, who've been born to him. Through faith in his son, God may plow the rest of the unbelieving world under. He may leave the rest of the world behind. But through the Gospel covenant, God distinguishes those who trust in Jesus Christ from the rest of the world, deeming them to be the ones that's worthy to save. He picks them as he picked the okra, as one would separate and save corn from the shuck. So God separates and saves believers from the world. Therefore, we are sanctified.
[00:23:35] Look back in your text, our next part of the cord, and preserved in Jesus Christ.
[00:23:44] I'm going to stick with our agricultural examples here.
[00:23:50] This summer, I took some corn that I grew from my garden, that corn. I let that corn dry so I could have some seeds for next spring.
[00:23:59] When I took that corn, I brought that corn inside, and I took me a cookie sheet laid out there.
[00:24:10] I grabbed that corn, and I wrung that corn in my hands. Anyone else ever done that before? Yeah, that's kind of fun, isn't it? Yeah. Just rung that corn in my hands, and those kernels separated from that cob, and all those kernels of corn fell out in that cookie sheet. I took that cob, any little silk or whatever's left over, pulled all of it out, threw it away, and I saved those little corn kernels, and I put them in a paper envelope, sealed it up, and I think I put corn 2021, something like that on there. And I preserved them, you see? And I put the rest back out in the compost pile so it could be plowed under and used again as fertilizer. Fertilizer, just like dung. Just reject it and send it on back out there. I preserved those kernels. I discarded the rest so I could till it back in the ground. In the same way God the Father listen through the Gospel message. When God has his preachers preaching the gospel, you know what God is doing? He is taking the people of the world into his hands. And through the Gospel message, he's ringing them. He's separating those who believe from the rest of mankind. And then he puts those he believes in a safe place. Just like I put my kernels in a safe place in the envelope, he puts them in Jesus Christ, and he preserves them. That is, he saves them for the new season when Jesus comes again.
[00:25:51] Jude is about to write to us about people who we are very close to.
[00:25:56] You think about corn. You think about how those kernels sit down into that cob, butted up right next to that cob, and the same way you've got unbelievers. You've got people like the two Judas'they. Slept in the same circle around Jesus. They walk down the same path, and we've got Judas's that betray Christ and Judas's that serve Christ. They'll be butted up shoulder to shoulder in the same pews in the same churches throughout the world as the silk, the shuck, the stalk. The cob are in close proximity to those colonels. So these hypocrites are in close proximity to the saints. They grow in the same religious garden with us, that religious Christian world. They share the same roots with us, our heritage in Adam, and they religiously attach themselves to us as corn is attached to that cob. But though they may preach in our churches, they are not the part of the corn plant that God saves. They are the part that he discards. They are the Part that gets plowed under, or rather, that gets cast into the fire.
[00:27:05] So God not only distinguishes Christians from the rest of the unbelieving world, but God appoints us to a different outcome.
[00:27:17] The believer is plowed under, so to speak.
[00:27:22] I'm sorry. The unbeliever is plowed under, so to speak. But the believer is preserved for the new season to come.
[00:27:33] When I wrung my hands to separate the corn from that cob, I did so purposefully. I did so with a full, ordained purpose, that those kernels would be preserved for the next season. I didn't just go there and say, well, you know what? This looks fun. It's not like I had bubble wrap.
[00:27:57] I'm not just. Look here, Tammy. No, I had a purpose behind it.
[00:28:04] And when God, through the preaching of the gospel message, when God wrings his hands in this world and separates the believers from this world, he does so with a full, ordained purpose, that those Christians will be preserved. That is, they'll be saved for the next season, when God shall wipe away all tears and make everything new through Christ his son. The corn has been called out of the Cob for the new spring, and the Christian has been called out of the world for the new kingdom.
[00:28:40] Jude says, we have been sanctified by God the Father. We have been preserved in Jesus Christ. We've been put into that paper envelope like those seeds preserved in Jesus Christ. Look back in your text set with me two words and called.
[00:29:02] We've been called to inherit the eternal life that Jesus promised to all who believe in him as their Savior.
[00:29:10] We've been called to overcome sin, Satan and death. We've been called to fulfill the eternal purpose for which God created us, we've been called.
[00:29:23] The unbelieving world has been called.
[00:29:28] Jude said, we are preserved. That is, we are saved in Christ Jesus. If you want to underscore that phrase in your text that's what makes the difference between us and the rest of the world. What makes the difference between the silk, the shuck and the stalk and those kernels? The kernels are in the envelope.
[00:29:55] What makes the difference between us and the rest of the world?
[00:29:59] Not because we're better, but because we're in Jesus Christ. That's the only thing that makes the difference.
[00:30:07] We're in Christ.
[00:30:09] Speaking of the Apostles, Jesus said in John, 1712 he tells the Father, while I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me I have kept. I've preserved them. I've saved them and none of them is lost. He said, but the son of perdition, that's talking about Judas Iscariot that the Scripture might be fulfilled. So Jesus is saying, Father, one Judas was shelled from the cob and saved in a paper envelope and called to the next season.
[00:30:45] The other Judas was separated from the kernel, not saved an envelope and tossed back into the field.
[00:30:53] What was the difference between the two Judas's?
[00:30:56] One, Judas was in Jesus Christ.
[00:31:00] The other Judas was out to get Jesus Christ.
[00:31:04] One believed in Jesus as the Savior.
[00:31:09] The other believed in Jesus as the silver that he wanted to get. That's the difference, you see the difference now between Judas the believer and Judas the traitor.
[00:31:21] Jude says, here's God's three fold cord of the believer's assurance.
[00:31:28] You've been sanctified by God the Father. You've been preserved in Jesus Christ, you've been called. It is set apart and saved until the new season. I want you to pretend for a moment with all that in mind right now, that envelope and with that corn still sitting in my office right now at home.
[00:31:52] It's going to sit there preserved. Not going to do anything with it. I'm just going to make sure nothing happens to that corn because I know a new season is coming.
[00:32:02] When that new season is coming. I'm going to take that corn out of that envelope and plant it into the New World. You see?
[00:32:11] That's what God's going to do with us. I want you to pretend like you are a kernel of corn in my paper envelope this morning. You pretend that I tell you what she can pretend. Anything.
[00:32:24] But I want you to pretend like you're a colonel of corn in my paper envelope this morning.
[00:32:30] If you are in my paper envelope, then that means I have rung you from the cob in the past. Correct?
[00:32:40] That's the only way you got in that paper envelope, is I rung. Cob won't fit in there. Stock won't fit in there. The only way you got that paper envelope is if I rung you from the cob in the past.
[00:32:54] Likewise, if you are in my paper envelope, that also means that you are saved for the future.
[00:33:02] You are predestined to go into the new season, and in the same way, if you are in Jesus Christ, meaning, if your faith is in Jesus Christ as your Savior, as the one who died for your sin, that means God has sanctified you in the past.
[00:33:25] In the same way, if you are in Jesus Christ, then God has saved you for the future.
[00:33:32] You are not the unbelieving cob that Jude is about to describe.
[00:33:39] You are the colonel predestined to go into the new kingdom of God. And with that, we'll close and, Lord willing, will take back up. In the Book of Jude, next Lord's day, you are sanctified, shelled from the corn.
[00:33:58] You are preserved, put in Jesus Christ, God's holy envelope of the Gospel. You are called to enter into the New world. When Jesus comes again, what's the difference if your faith is in Jesus Christ?
