Hi, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the lead pastor of Church of the Messiah. It is wonderful
that you would like to check out some of the sermons done by Church of the Messiah, either
by myself or some of the others. Listen, just a couple of things. First of all, would you pray
for us that we will open God's Word well to His glory and for the good of people like yourself?
The second thing is, if you aren't connected to a church and if you are a Christian, we really,
I would really like to encourage you to find a good local church where they believe the Bible,
they preach the gospel, and if you have some trouble finding that, send us an email. We will
do what we can to help connect you with a good local church wherever you are. And if you're a
non-Christian checking us out, we're really, really, really glad you're doing that. Don't
hesitate to send us questions. It helps me actually to know, as I'm preaching, how to deal with the
types of things that you're really struggling with. So God bless.
And let's bow our heads in prayer.
Father, we like being reminded about the promises in your Word for your people and
we like asking you that you would help us to believe the promises. And Father,
most of the time we like learning truth from your Word that we might know it.
And Father, we don't always like some of the commands that you give us, but you do give us
commands and we ask that you would help us to obey them. But Father, we often really don't like
hearing your warnings to us. And so Father, we ask that you would help us to hear your warnings
and to heed them, knowing, Father, who you are, that you are our Father in heaven who loves us.
And we ask these things in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen.
Please be seated.
So, this is a sobering sermon today. The book of Jude is a sobering book. And I hope it'll be
obvious by the end of the sermon. But I am going to have to refer to such things as same-sex marriage,
the pride movement in general, and euthanasia and abortion. And I think you'll see by the end of
the sermon why it is that I need to say some things about this. And the things I'm going to say,
of course, go against the grain of what Canadian culture says. In fact, at the end of the eight
o'clock service, somebody said to me, don't worry, George, we'll bail you out of jail after the sermon.
There's a, you might have noticed it in my prayer, there's a very old-fashioned way to help people
with their personal Bible study, or if you're in Bible study groups, it's to ask four questions of
every text. One question to ask of the text is, is there a promise in this text that I should believe?
Good question to ask. Look for it, see if there's any promises. A second very good question is to ask,
is there some truth that God is revealing here that he wants me to know? That's, once again,
a very good question to ask while you're looking at a Bible text, trying to understand it.
A third question to ask is, is there a command in the text that I am to obey? Once again,
that's a very good thing to notice. Are there some imperatives, some commands that God is asking
you to obey? And the fourth question is the one that we're really looking at today, primarily. Is
there a warning in the text that God would want you to pay attention to and to heed? So today there is
the end of two sermons, but there's a very profound warning for us. So I invite you to turn with me in your
Bibles to the book of Jude. It's the second to last book in the Bible. It's just 25 verses,
so it's very short. So if you go to the book of Revelation and just sort of flip towards the other
side, you'll come across this, the book of Jude, which often just fits in one page of a Bible like
mine. It fits in one page. And we've been going through this. We preach through books of the Bible.
Bible. And the way that the book is sort of structured is there's a very hopeful greeting,
which describes the great promise of being a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then there's
a very simple thing where he's setting forth why he's writing the letter, which is that ungodly
influencers have come into the church, and we need to contend for the faith. And then from verses 5 to
19, what Jude is doing primarily is selling the problem. And I shared two weeks ago when I last
preached on the first part of the selling the problem, how occasionally I have to go to the
council, back to the council after they've shot down a proposal of mine. And I only go back if I
afterwards think that I made a big strategic mistake with them, and I assumed they saw the problem,
but they hadn't seen the problem, and I'd failed to sell the problem to them. Sell the problem doesn't
mean inventing a problem. It's just helping them to see that there's a problem. And usually, when I've
gone back and done that, I haven't done it for quite a few years, after I sell the problem, they go,
oh, that's why you made that proposal. They might say, well, it's still a dumb, some way of solving the
problem, which is fair enough, because sometimes I'm dumb. But now that they see that there's a
problem, then they come up with a way to try to solve the problem. And really, one of the ways to
understand then verses 5 to 19 is that Jude is trying to sell the problem to believing Christians
about a problem in the church. And the way he does that is by he gives a series primarily of little
keywords to point you back to biblical stories. He also uses a couple of things from nature, and he uses a
cultural story that was common in their day. And he just gives a little snippet so that you can go
back and think about the story and get the shape of the problem, the contour of the problem, the
identity of the problem. And these verses today that we're going to look at, 14 to 19, is the second
part of trying to understand what the problem is. So that in the next two sermons, we'll look at,
in a sense, the shape of how we respond to the problem and the hope we have in responding
to the problem. So let's just look. It's verse 14. And well, let's look. It's just verse 14. And what
he's doing here is he's quoting in verse 14 from a story common to the Jewish culture at the time.
It would sort of be as if I was to go to a Christian homeschooling convention for kids who were
12 to 14. And I want to discuss Jesus and his death upon the cross. I might refer to the Narnia
Chronicles and Aslan dying on behalf of one of the children, right? So I know I might give a Bible
passage, tell them about that Narnia story, maybe tell them another Bible passage. And Jude is doing
something similar. He's using a story and a part of the story which really captures what's going on.
In fact, actually, if one of the commentators gave a whole list of all the little allusions
and references to the Old Testament contained within the text. But here's what he says.
It was also about these, that's these ungodly influencers, that Enoch, the seventh from Adam,
prophesied, saying,
Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict
all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and
of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Now that's a mouthful.
And if you go back and you look, one of the things, last time I preached on this, I used the NIV
because it helped with one of the problem translation bits. But here, the ESV has kept
something which is very intentional. Four times he uses the word all, and four times he uses the word
ungodly. And if you read other very good translations like the NIV or the NLT, they haven't preserved the
four alls and the four ungodlies. But he's trying to communicate something very clearly about what
the ungodly are like. And at the heart of it, what he's really trying to say is that what they do is
ungodly. Why they do it is ungodly. What they're aiming for is ungodly. And then he ends with this
little bit at the end of 15, of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against
him. In some other translations, trying to capture this harsh is defiant. So harsh, defiant things that
ungodly sinners have spoken against God. Now, I mean, that actually sounds to the Canadian ears,
that's a very harsh thing to say, isn't it? Actually, sort of ironic. But it's actually,
on one level, it's very clear. But on the other hand, it's a bit confusing. Like, who exactly are
the ungodly? What are the ungodly? Like, how is it that they're actually saying, like, that sounds
really strong, defiant and harsh things against God. And this is things going on in the church.
And that's something I forgot to mention just a bit earlier. This whole letter is addressed an issue
in the church. It's not addressing issues in our culture at large. Although when I get to the
specifics, you're going to see that it's making a comment about issues in the culture at large.
But it's referring to issues going on in the church. And it's a bit confusing, but I'd like to
go through the rest of the text. And then we'll come back to verses 14 and 15. And I'll explain
how it is that you can recognize harsh and defiant speech against God and what the word ungodly means.
Now, this next bit, this next verse is something that the average Canadian would agree with
fundamentally most of it. They'd think these are things that we generally don't like.
But once again, unless you understand what ungodly is, you might not recognize it when you see it.
You might not actually be catching what Jude is talking about. So in other words, it looks like
something you agree with, but you might not agree with it if you understand what he's trying to get
at. Let's look at verse 16. It says this. They're talking about the ungodly influencers.
They are grumblers, malcontents. Another word for malcontent is fault finders. And we all know people
who find fault, and there's no fault they don't find. And there's no fault they don't ride to death.
And so generally, Canadians don't like being around people like that, fault finders. Just like we don't
really like people being around, you know, grumblers. I mean, you know, you have some people over and you
make, you go to a lot of bother to give them a really nice meal, and then they grumble about it and
say, I don't know, it's a bit too spicy, not spicy enough, too much salt, not enough salt. They don't like
the way, you know, you think, really? I put one to all this work to feed you a meal, and you're
grumbling about it, right? So, you know, and then that goes on. They're doing this grumbling and
malcontents, verse 16, following their own sinful desires. In other words, what's emerging from is a
desire which is against God. And then this next bit, they are loudmouth boasters showing favoritism
to gain advantage. This would be a whole wonderful sermon. And if you go back and look at some other
translations, they translate it as slightly different. But what the fundamental idea is
that they're getting at here is that these are people who inflate themselves and others with
emptiness and vanity. So whether you're looking at, some of the texts talk about people who flatter a
lot. Some of it says this loudmouth boasting. Some of it talks about bombastic speech. Different
translations are trying to get at this idea. But the heart of all of it at the end of this
is people who inflate themselves and others with emptiness and vanity. Another way to understand
it is they have a perception of the sins and the delusions and illusions that a person believes.
And they have a sense of what that, you know, you think of, you know, you look at Bob and you have a sense
of the type of delusions and illusions and sin that Bob sort of actually thinks that they're true and you tell
them they are true. And that's what it's trying to get at. Things which are ultimately empty and vain means
you're not going to accomplish what you want. And it's self-seeking. So once again, these are things that Canadians can
say, I can understand that these are problems. But we don't actually get what he's trying to get at as a problem
within the church. So the next thing that Jude does is after this cultural story, he brings the selling the
problem to an end by giving a short little phrase where he just summarizes in a sense what the New Testament
teaches. Look at what he says in verse 17. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of
our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own
ungodly passions. And just pause here for a second. The Bible has an overarching story. And in this
overarching story, we right now are living in the last days. God begins when Jesus dies upon the cross
and rises from the dead, the last days begin. And those last days will end when Jesus returns.
As Enoch was talking about, he'll return with tens and tens of thousands of angels. And there will be a
judging of the living and the dead. And then there will be the new heaven and the new earth. So we live in
that in-between time between these things. And just go back to verse 18 again. They said to you,
in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passion. And just what is a scoffer?
Actually, a lot of discourse on Twitter and a lot of what we call commentary in our newspapers,
even elite newspapers, is actually just scoffing. And it's another version of mocking. And the Bible
says it's a way that will never lead you to wisdom. It will never lead you to truth. And what scoffing
does is scoffing never gives reason and evidence, or rarely gives reason or evidence. What scoffing does
is demean, demean, diminish, disdain, and deride. It just basically tries to belittle you. And you use
your tongue to intimidate and belittle somebody who holds a different position than you. And you just
do it by, whether you're conscious or unconsciously, just calling them names. There's a columnist in The
Citizen that I read regularly, because basically I think she's wrong about everything. I actually
think that if she said it was going to be a sunny day tomorrow, I would bring an umbrella. Like,
she's just so consistently wrong. And one of the things which is just fascinating about reading her
is she's just filled constantly with scoffing. She's always calling people names, like constantly,
just putting people down and calling them names. And then after she'd been doing that for a month,
she wrote a column on how we have to have more civil discourse. And I go, really? That's what I
think. But all you do is call people names. I'm not going to tell you the person's name. But the
problem is, that's what scoffers do. And obviously, we can be prone to it as well. We can just, you know,
use our tongue to diminish people. We don't give actually any evidence or any reason for what we
believe. We just try to intimidate people with our tongue. And that's what scoffing is. And so once again,
Canadians might look at that and say, you know, that's actually, we agree with that. But the
problem is, do we agree with it in the places where Jude means? That's really the fundamental.
You'll see why I mean it's a bit of a problem in a second. So go back to verse 18. They said to you,
this is all of the, basically, the New Testament. In the last time, there will be scoffers following
their own ungodly passions. And once again, you get that word ungodly. When Jude gives you
this thing, there are ungodly people in the church, you need to contend for the faith.
And now towards the end of his selling the problem, he gives you these four words of ungodly.
And then here, just before he finishes selling the problem, he uses ungodly again.
And then finally, it is these who cause divisions. And now here it says worldly people devoid of the
spirit. Now, if we have anybody online watching who's come from an Islamic background, and not just
Islamic backgrounds, maybe Hindu backgrounds or Buddhist backgrounds, one of the things that's
very hard for people, especially coming from outside of Canada, is that many people from a Muslim
or Hindu or Buddhist background think that Canada is Christian. Now, it is, in fact, case that Canada
has a Christendom heritage and was formed by Christendom. But in fact, what this text is saying
here is that there's, first of all, as you know, the majority of Christians never go to, the Canadians
never go to church at all. They might put on the census that they're Christians. And so they call
themselves Christians. But what this text is showing is that there's lots of people, even in churches,
that call themselves Christians. But in fact, when it says here that they're worldly people and devoid
of the Holy Spirit, it means that what they really are is from the world, not from Christ. And when it
says they're devoid of the Spirit, it means they aren't Christians. Because when you give your life to
Christ, when you call out to him that he will be your Savior and your Lord, the Holy Spirit, not only are
your sins forgiven, not only are you made right with God, but the Holy Spirit is given to you and
indwells you. And now you're his. Like, if you go back and look at the very, very beginning,
and it's not going to be there, you just have to listen. Or if you have your own Bible,
the second part of verse 1, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus
Christ. There's this idea that once you give your life to Christ, you're enwrapped in the love of God,
you're kept for Jesus, and implied later on as well, is that the Holy Spirit actually indwells you.
So what's going on here in the text? I have a very good friend who was a minister for a long time,
and he was a very, very, very, very fine man. And we used to have coffee together regularly.
And one of the things he would tell me, he was very gentle, and very soft-spoken, and very caring.
And sometimes those things got in his way when he had to tell somebody off.
Maybe there was somebody in a small group that were acting rudely, or somebody causing trouble
in the church, and it came time for him to tell them off. And because he was so consistently gentle,
and caring, and soft-spoken, he would come afterwards to me and say, you know, George,
I realized after I was driving home, I don't think they realized I was telling them off.
I think they thought I was talking about somebody else, or maybe even affirming them.
And he'd have to talk to them again. Sometimes he'd have to talk to them more than once,
for him finally to overcome his natural tendencies to be gentle and soft-spoken, and actually say,
actually, you're being a jerk, and you have to stop a little bit with the book of Jude.
Lots of people could read it. Many people could even think they agree with big parts of it.
But we're actually not really getting what's going on. So here's the first problem,
why it's hard for Canadians maybe to recognize what Jude is talking about.
If you go back and you look at, earlier on, six of the Old Testament examples that he gave.
Well, if you look at them, and you look at them from a Canadian's eyes,
so the Bible actually uses all of these six things as a way to understand what the problem is.
But you go back and you look at what happens to the Israelites after they are delivered from Egypt by God
and enter into the Promised Land.
Well, the problem they have, from God's point of view,
is they don't believe what he tells them, and then they worship idols.
Well, just think about it for a second here.
How do we as Canadians look at that?
What we actually see here is that they're very spiritual.
And they're very open-minded.
And they're very diverse.
And they're equitable.
And they're learning to think for themselves.
Well, that's actually not what Jude's trying to communicate.
And then if you look at the next story about angels who've become demons,
well, I mean, the problem is that these angelic beings see God perfectly.
And you could say, well, isn't that what you want to have is to see God perfectly?
And isn't it not, like, isn't, for our point of view, from a Canadian point of view,
a good thing to sort of ask some questions?
Okay, well, that's not what Jude's trying to get at in this story.
And then you look at the next story, which is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And for the average Canadian, you'd want to say, well, actually, isn't the goal for people
to be able to choose their own sexualities and their own identity and to be sexually liberated
and free, to be their authentic sexual self and live that out, not only in private but in public?
Like, isn't that a good thing?
Well, okay, that's not exactly the point of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Or these aren't good examples.
They're supposed to be bad examples.
And then you go on and you use the example of Cain, which Jude does.
But once again, if you go and look at the story from a Canadian perspective and Canadian eyes,
Cain is a person who worships God.
He sacrificially gives of the fruit of the earth to worship God.
But then when God says that that's not the way to worship me, Cain gets mad.
But from a Canadian point of view, isn't that like a reasonable thing?
Like, here we are.
Like, don't you want to be spiritual?
Don't you want to worship?
Like, really?
You think it's all right just to be narrow-minded and say that your way of worshiping isn't right?
Like, we sort of sympathize with Cain.
Well, once again, that's not what Jude intended by using the story.
Very, very good example is Balaam.
Like, Balaam is like the Canadian.
If he was living today, he would have millions and millions and millions of followers.
He is like exactly what Canadians want to be like, many of them.
Because Balaam was a non-judgmental expert in many spiritualities.
That's what he was.
He was a guy you'd go to because he could navigate.
Okay, you have your system of understanding gods and goddesses and everything like that.
Like, I'm with you.
I'm with you, friend.
And you're having a problem.
And I can help you navigate what's going on with that system.
And then he meets another person.
And he has a different system of gods and goddesses and spells and spiritualities.
He says, I'm with you, friend.
And here's how you navigate those things to get what you want.
And then he meets another person with different sets of spells and spiritualities and idols and gods and goddesses.
And he says, I'm with you, friend.
And this is how you navigate all of these types of things.
And it doesn't even hurt that at the end of the day it's a ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Because what isn't more popular to Canadians than be open-minded, spiritual, and make a whole pile of dough?
We've just described the Canadian spirit.
Well, once again, that's not actually why Jude uses it.
It's supposed to be a bad example, not a good example.
And then you look at the very, very final example.
And the final example he uses from the Old Testament is the example of Korah.
Well, okay, George, what's the problem with that?
Good grief.
He's Jewish.
He's a Levite.
He's involved with temple worship.
Like, aren't those good things from the Old Testament's point of view?
Like being an expert in his own tradition?
I don't understand why God got mad at him.
Okay, well, one moment.
You sort of missed the point.
Jude's not trying to make those types of points.
There's another problem.
And I can illustrate this.
If I was to hand out, we were all to turn this into a bit of a retreat day,
and I was to hand out a piece of paper,
and I said, just take 10 minutes, just 10 minutes of quiet,
and I want you to write down, don't show anybody else,
just show down, write down some of the things that you've done wrong
since last Sunday.
Okay.
And then maybe, you know, one of the people talks to me,
he said, well, actually, George,
I couldn't think of anything to put down on the paper.
But when we think of that person, we'd say, come on, really?
In fact, I could just imagine if I did that,
and Louise said, listen, I can put five things on,
write easily without even thinking about it.
And any one of your kids or your neighbors
could put down a couple of things, right?
We wouldn't believe that, that there's nothing from last week.
So here's the other problem.
When we hear this word of ungodly,
one of the problems is that people who are godly,
and I'm going to define what godly means in a moment,
every single person who's godly
lives an imperfect Christian life.
And if you are that one
that you don't think you could put a single thing down
that you've done wrong,
or a good that you failed to do from last week,
in fact, we would probably wonder
whether you're in fact a Christian,
or if you're just a raging narcissist
who likes to use Christian language.
So the problem is, there's a second problem,
is it's hard to look at these examples,
and even thinking of what scoffing means,
and all of that type of stuff,
and how to recognize it.
And the worry is that we think
it's talking about us in some ways,
because, you know, one of the things
the Holy Spirit does is not only
start to move you to believe the promises of God,
and have the gospel become more real to your heart,
but also to convict you of sin.
And so you're aware of your imperfections,
your lack of following Christ.
So, what is he saying about the ungodly?
And what does he mean by talking about,
if you go back to verses 14 and 15,
15 in particular,
about them talking harshly,
or defiantly,
and what does scoffing,
and all of those things mean?
Well, here's what ungodly means,
and I should have put it down as a point,
I apologize for not doing that.
The ungodly lead you away
from the person, presence, power,
words, and finished work of Christ.
The ungodly are leading you away,
influencing you away
from the person of Jesus,
Jesus' presence,
Jesus' power,
Jesus' words,
and Jesus' finished work upon the cross.
That's what the ungodly influencers do.
And they can do it
with profound mystical experiences,
with profound,
with what we think of superficially
as profound insights from depth psychology,
with being able to articulate
the wisdom of the world
in the Canadian cultural story
with great persuasiveness.
But at the end of the day,
what's happening is
you're less concerned with who Jesus is,
you're less concerned
with his presence in your life,
you're less concerned
with his power,
his grace,
his power in your life,
you're less concerned
with his actual words that he said,
and you're actually less concerned
with his finished work
upon the cross.
So what is the godly?
What's implied then?
If that's what the ungodly influences are,
then who are the godly?
What is the godly?
The godly are pressing into
and becoming grounded in
and being drawn to
and being led into
the person,
presence,
power,
words,
and finished work of Christ.
By Jude's definition,
I am godly.
And it's not a contradiction
for me to say,
in Jude's definition here,
I am trying to be a godly pastor.
And I'm also here to tell you,
I'm not going to tell you
what they are,
but when it comes time
in the service
to confess my sins,
I have things to confess.
That I have to take
the top three.
The top three
that hit my conscience.
Right?
The godly,
contending for the faith,
is going to be,
in fact,
that's what you're going to see
when you look at the end
when he talks about
the shape of responding
to the problem
and the promise of responding
to the problem,
is that you understand
that you're pressing into
and you're becoming
grounded in
and you're becoming
drawn by
and you're being led
into
who Jesus is,
his presence,
his power,
his words,
and his finished work.
So here, friends,
are where I have to say
some sobering words.
Now, just before I read
this list of four things,
I want to especially
assure those
who are watching online
that my things
I'm about to say
are not political points.
and they're definitely
not an us for them,
us versus them points,
which I'll explain
why in a moment.
So here's what
I want to tell you.
A church
which does
same-sex marriages
or flies pride flags
or describes themselves
as gay positive
or walks in prayer
in pride parades
are ungodly influencers.
influencers.
A church
which celebrates
trans
gender
movement
and changes
are ungodly
influencers.
A church
which supports
abortion on demand
are ungodly
influencers.
A church
which supports
medically assisted
dying
or euthanasia.
They are
ungodly
influencers.
That's
what Jude
is getting at.
I could give
other examples.
I'll pick
the four
biggest ones
which are relevant
for Ottawa
in 2024.
Why is this
not an us
versus them
thing?
I'm not saying
necessarily
every single
part,
but you
think of
our church
and the
people
who have
been part
of our
church
over the
years.
There have
been people
who are
same-sex
attracted.
There are
people who
are same-sex
attracted.
And there are
people in our
congregation
who have had
abortions or
supported abortions
and probably
have been
supportive of
euthanasia.
and our
people who
struggle with
thinking that
they are in
the wrong
body.
That's why
it's not an
us versus
them issue.
It's not a
political issue.
Jude's not
talking politics.
Why are
these ungodly
influencers?
It's because of
the clarity of
the Bible.
the Bible is
very clear in
its teaching
that God is
the creator of
human beings
and he created
human beings as
biological males
and biological
females.
And part of
our very design
and part of
the very
structure of
reality is
that some
who are
biologically male
and some
who are
biologically female
would enter
into holy
matrimony.
and that
sexual knowing
and sexual
stimulation is
reserved for
a biological
male married
to a
biological female.
And we
believe as a
freeing truth.
I am not
embarrassed about
this.
I'll tell you
more about it
in a second.
But because
God has
designed us
and created
us to either
be biologically
male or
biologically female,
he's also
made biological
males to
learn to be
men and
biological females
to learn to be
women.
And there is
no lasting
peace for
those who
have a hard
time fitting
into the
cultural stereotypes
of man and
woman in
Canada.
That's not
always a bad
thing.
There can be
very disordered
ways of
understanding
those things.
But there is
no peace for
any person who
doesn't feel at
home in their
body unless
that peace is
moving towards
being at
peace, at
peace and
at home with
the body
that you
have.
And the
Bible is
very clear
that you
do not
take innocent
human life.
And we
can't give
up on this
because, you
see, God
designed us
for this.
It is our
destiny.
It is all
part of us
appreciating that
we are creatures
who are made to
know our
creator.
And the same
things which you
use to support
these teachings
are the same
basis for
human rights
and human
integrity and
human glory.
Science and
the world and
evolution does
not teach you
that human
beings are
equal, does
not teach you
that human
beings have a
particular glory.
Those are
theological ideas
and they're
completely
interwoven with
what I just
said.
And you
cannot give
those things
up about the
sexuality issues
and about the
protection and
the dignity of
human life
without also
undermining human
rights and human
dignity and the
glory of what it
can mean to be a
human being.
And so we need
to take a stand
on these types of
things.
And for a
church, a
church to
deny these
things is a
church, they
might be way
nicer than us.
they might seem
to be way more
gentle, but
they are a
church which is
defying God and
speaking harshly
against him.
You see,
brothers and
sisters, you
see my friends,
a Christian
church cannot
bless what God
calls sin.
A Christian
church cannot
bless what God
calls sin.
you cannot
have a
blessed
euthanasia.
We are
called to
humbly
proclaim, you
know, Spurgeon
wonderfully said
about the
gospel, but it's
true of these
truths as well,
that all we
are is one
beggar telling
another beggar
where to find
bread and where
to find life.
God
is our
vocation in
Canada.
And if you
cannot bless
what God
calls sin,
then why is
Jude trying to
sell the problem
to us?
The problem is
for we as
Canadians, we
want to say,
well, you
know, just
want to get
along and
shrug our
shoulders and
you know, to
each their
own and we
don't want to
be divisive and
we don't want to
do all of those
types of things.
We don't want to
be sort of like
St. Albans,
I mean, about
a church like
us that was
very, very
divisive.
You know, you
left the Anglican
Church of Canada
and all of those
types of things
in George, like,
you shouldn't be
talking about
other people, you
should be talking
about yourself,
you're very, very
divisive.
No, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no,
no, no.
If God
pronounces woe,
which he does
just before this,
the part we read
today, you cannot
shrug your
shoulders.
If God, just
as you can't
bless what God
calls sin, if
God pronounces
woe, you
cannot shrug your
shoulders, you
cannot say it's
not important, you
need to act.
Just to be
clear, we are
not divisive.
Very simple
analogy.
If you have a
close friend and
she's married to
her husband and
she finds out that
the husband has
been sleeping
around with many
different women,
and if she
divorces him, who
broke the
marriage?
not the
woman who
called for the
divorce, but
for the man
who had the
affairs.
And if the
Anglican Church
of Canada wanted
to defy God,
bless what he
said was sin,
they divided
the church,
but we had to
take action.
But here's the
thing which this
opens up the
door to the
godly, about
what it means to
be godly, and
just the
wonderful, why
why we, the
gospel humbles
us, doesn't make
us proud, and we
need to deal with
these things, but
here's what is so
implicit in all of
this, and it's
going to be made
clear when we go
to the, how to
begin to deal with
the problem in
the next sermon,
and then the
hope of dealing
with the problem
in the final
sermon, which
I'll have to do
after Easter.
Becoming godly is
not my
accomplishment.
Becoming godly is
not my
accomplishment, and
it's not yours.
From first to
last, it's an
accomplishment by
God.
God died for the
ungodly, that he
might godly make
us be.
Sort of
paraphrasing an
old hymn.
God himself died
for the ungodly,
that you and I,
that sort of he
might godly make
us be.
The creator died
for his fallen
creation, that we
might be reconciled
to our creator, and
to begin to be at
home in the real
creation.
The images of the
gospel of Jesus
being a ransom for
us is an image of
Jesus doing something
for us and
transferring us from
slavery to freedom
in his kingdom.
If you go back and
you read Ephesians
chapter 2, there's
the image of you
put your faith and
trust in Jesus, and
he transfers you from
the kingdom of
darkness, the kingdom
of the ungodly, and
transfers you into his
kingdom of light and of
godliness, he does
that work.
He does that work, and
only he can do it.
And every single human
being needs to hear this
profound, liberating
truth.
And we don't, we
shouldn't be, the world
will want us to be
embarrassed and ashamed
about it.
brothers and sisters,
this gospel is the
hope of the world.
It is the hope of the
world.
Christ is your hope for
glory.
There is no other hope.
His finished work is
your only hope.
If you hope in your
own finished work, there
is no hope.
In a couple of weeks,
we're going to have the
seven last words from the
cross, and I'll say this
in closing.
And in John's second
to last word, Jesus
pronounces, it is
finished.
And as you probably
know, that can also be
translated as, it is
accomplished.
And I take hold of
that.
I invite you to stand.
Victor is going to, in a
moment, lead us in
intercession.
I think Victor is the
one to be doing that.
And as he makes his way
up here, let's just bow
our heads in prayer.
Father,
it can be hard for us to
recognize what the book
of Jude is talking
about.
We can go to a church
and a minister.
He doesn't seem like he's
a scoffer or a grumbler
until we realize that he's
scoffing at your word.
He's grumbling against
your word.
He is to find your word.
And it can be hard to see
and hard to recognize.
And Father, we ask that you
help us to take these
warnings of Jude to heart.
And help us to hunger,
Father, to hear what he
says next, your word says
next about the shape of our
dealing with those, Father,
who are ungodly influencers
in the church.
And the hope of dealing
with them and the hope of
being in your church, Father.
Father, just Father, we ask
that you would so ground us in
who Jesus is and so draw us by
who he is and that we would so
stand in this and be so open
to the Holy Spirit that we
might bring you glory.
We might be unashamed of the
gospel.
We can speak winsomely and
clearly and when necessary,
take courageous stands.
But Father, we ask that you would
help these words to deeply form
us.
And we ask these things in the
name of Jesus, your Son and our
Savior.
Amen.