Hey, Jude!

Okay, if you've got your Bibles this morning, and I hope that you do, I want you to open them to the book of Jude, if you have not done so already. Jude, short little letter, it's only one chapter long, is toward the very end of your Bibles. It is just before the book of Revelation, so if you've got a Bible, look toward the very end of it. If you encounter a set of maps that look like they are chronicling the journeys of Odysseus, then you have gone too far. But it is right before the book of Revelation. How many of you have had the rather unpleasant experience of discovering termites in your home? Raise your hand. The problem with termites is that by the time you notice the sagging floor, bubbling paint, or a door that just won't close right, the damage is done, and the wood underneath those things is nothing more often than a hollowed out shell. And some of you know this from painful firsthand experience. Most homeowner's policies exclude termite damage because it is considered preventable through regular inspection. And I notice some of you right now are making a note, check on termite inspection. That's probably a good idea. Jude writes this letter in your Bible because he is concerned about a similar phenomenon happening in his church. Jude's letter just might be the most neglected part

of our entire Bible, including neglected by me. In 25 years here as your pastor, I've never one time preached on it. So today we are gonna give Jude some attention. So everybody look at your Bibles right now and say, hey Jude, hey Jude. All right, I'm gonna be walking through the opening and the conclusion of this letter, and I'm gonna leave the really difficult middle part for our teaching team next weekend. Let's look together right now, if we could, at verse one. Jude, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. Now, Jude's name would have been pronounced Judas in Greek. Jude was not a name back then, but our English Bible translators just a few years ago decided they were gonna shorten Judas's name to Jude so that the author of this book would not be confused with Judas the betrayer. Jude was one of Jesus's four half brothers who we see mentioned in both Matthew and Mark. Some of you say Jesus had brothers. Yes, scripture makes clear that Jesus had four half brothers and I say half brothers, of course, because none of Jesus's brothers had the same father that Jesus did since Jesus was, of course, born of a virgin, but Mary had other children through Joseph after she had conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit,

and those were Jesus's half brothers. The gospel writers make clear that none of Jesus's brothers, at first, none of them believed Jesus was the Messiah, including Jude. It was only after that Jude and these other guys had seen Jesus resurrected that they came to believe. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that Jesus appeared specifically to some of Jesus's brothers and that all of his brothers came to believe. In fact, three of Jesus's half brothers became recognized leaders in the early church, and two of Jesus's brothers even wrote Bible books, Jude and James, which, by the way, when you think about it, it's a pretty strong argument for the resurrection, right? I mean, just think of it this way. Raise your hand if you have an older brother. Raise your hand. What would it take you, what would it take to convince you to start worshiping your older brother as God? You say, ha, son of God, hardly. Son of the devil, maybe, okay? What was it that convinced James and Jude that Jesus, this brother whom they'd grown up with, who'd slept in the bed next to them, convinced them that he was God in the flesh and the only savior of the world? Y'all, there's only one thing that could do that,

and that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I want you to notice that Jude calls himself, in these opening verses, he calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ. The word that Jude uses for servant is doulos, which is the lowest kind of servant. Think bond servant or slave. Jude could have used the much more respectable diakonos, which means household servant, assistant to the regional manager. But instead, Jude goes right for the bottom, putting himself squarely at the feet of Jesus. Jude never even mentions, by the way, in this letter that Jesus was his half-brother, which, to be honest, if I were the biological half-brother of Jesus, any letter I wrote would open with JD, who, just to remind you, is related to Jesus. Yet Jude never mentions his biological connection to Jesus, not even one time, and that, of course, speaks to his humility. He just says, hey, like all of you, I'm just the slave. I'm the bond servant of Jesus. To those, he says, who are called. who are called, beloved in God, the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. One of the things you'll notice in Jude is that Jude does everything in threes. And this is the first set of those threes. Believers are called, beloved, and kept.

Those are not three random words that Jude just pulled out of the air either. Called, beloved, and kept are the three words that the prophet Isaiah repeatedly ascribes to the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah 40 through 55, which is Isaiah's famous prophecy about the coming Messiah. Jude now takes those three words and says, these apply not just to Jesus, they apply to you, his followers, the church. So let's take a minute and let's think about what those words mean because they're gonna serve as a kind of anchor point for the warnings that Jude is gonna give throughout the rest of his letter. First, he says, you are called, you are called, God called you out to be his own, which is a pretty amazing thought. The initiative for salvation didn't come from you, it came from God. That's a very important part of your self-understanding. It's a very important part of your confidence. It's a very important part of your hope. Some of you college football fans might know the famous story of how Texas Tech was really struggling one season in the early 2000s, struggling specifically with their kicking game. And during one of those between-quarter audience participation games, a random student fan from Texas Tech got selected to try and kick a field goal.

And the deal was, if he made the field goal, he would get free room and board for a year. Well, the guy they randomly chose out of 50,000 fans in the audience that day, the guy they randomly chose was Matt Williams, who was a freshman who had played soccer in high school, and he went out and blasted a field goal for the uprights. The place went nuts and coach Mike Leach sent an assistant coach to find out who this kid was and invited him on the spot to play on the team. This kid single-handedly turned around their kicking game that season. Y'all, I love it. Out of 50,000 fans, this one kid, Matt, got called out. That is what happened to us in the church, Jude says, though some of the details of our story are quite different. God's choice of us was not random at all, and God did not call us out because of our great abilities. In fact, we were utterly unable when he called us. He did not call us out because we were able. He made us able after he called us. And that brings us to the next word in our little triad, and that is the word beloved. We are not just called, we are beloved. God chose to set his love on us, not because of some worthy thing we had done, but simply because he loved us. It's like adoption. You just choose to set your love on that son or daughter, and that love became the source of our worthiness.

In fact, I love how Martin Luther always said it. He said, God's love does not find in us, but creates in us that which he finds lovely. Y'all, I remember years ago hearing the story about a couple who was about to adopt a child, but they found out just before the child was born that she was gonna be born with a pretty severe case of spina bifida. The adoption agency said, hey, we'll understand if you guys wanna back out because for the rest of this child's life, she's gonna have significant challenges. The couple was really struggling with the decision, but one night, the wife said she had a dream, and in this dream, she was in a gigantic stadium, like a football stadium, where all these beautiful babies were being brought up on the stage for adoption, and as each baby was brought forward, the host would look at this big audience, and he would say, who wants this one? Various parents in the stands would volunteer to take the particular child that the host was holding up, but then the host brought forward one child who was disfigured and diseased and maimed and ugly, and the host child said, who wants this one? And the crowd in this woman's dream, she said, it just went deathly silence. Nobody stepped forward to take the baby for several long moments.

Finally, she said, somebody in the crowd stood up and said, I'll take that one. She said, I looked, and in my dream, the man walking forward was Jesus. He walked forward to take that child. Now, at that point in the story, I interrupted, and I said, whoa, that is so powerful. She said, oh, I'm not done yet, right? Just be quiet. In my dream, when Jesus went down to get that baby, she said, I got a glimpse of that baby's face, this baby that was all marred and disfigured, she said, and I saw that it was my face. The truth is that Jesus adopted me when I was disfigured and wrecked by sin, and now I know he wants me and my husband to take in this child as he took in us. Now, please hear me. I am not saying there's never a time for an adopting parent to choose not to go forward. Those are very difficult and complex decisions, and you should always do them with a lot of counsel, and there's a lot of times it's wiser to not go forward. I'm just saying it is very true. that when you and I were at our lowest, Jesus loved us and took us in. And Jude says, you were beloved, not because of your worthiness, but because he sets his love on you. And that brings us to our last word, kept.

We are kept for Jesus Christ. The other day, I was looking through some old pictures. I was getting ready for my dad's 80th birthday party. And for about half an hour, I got sucked down memory lane. You know how that works, right? You're looking at old pictures. The next thing you know, it's an hour later. And I love seeing old pictures where I'm holding one of my kids in the pool. I'm standing there with them in my arms in water that is way above their heads. And they're holding onto me for dear life. If I dropped them, they would drown. But they look so happy and so peaceful because they're holding on to me. Or we're wading out into the waves at the beach and they're holding onto one of my hands for all their worth so that the waves don't sweep them away. Now you parents understand the truth is, of course, in both of those situations, they're secure not because they're holding on to me. They're secure because I'm holding on to them. It is the strength of my grip, not the strength of theirs that is keeping them safe. Jude says, church, this is you. In the midst of all these attacks you're going through, I want you to remember you're chosen. You are beloved and you are kept by Jesus. It's his initiative, not yours. And at the end of the day, it's his strength, not yours,

that is gonna keep you from going astray. That is the anchor point of your salvation. It is the anchor point Jude is going to come back to at the end of all of his warnings. It is his reason for hope. Beloved, he says, verse three, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, alas, I found it necessary to write instead, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, for certain people have crept in unnoticed like termites who long ago were designated for condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Jude was like, listen, y'all, I had every intention of writing you this amazing, encouraging letter with all these amazing quotable lines that for the next 2000 years, Christians are gonna put up on their Instagram stories with a picture of a deer drinking beside a brook and a sappy worship song playing in the background. That was what I was gonna write. It was gonna be awesome. I was gonna be popular. But instead, you people have forced me into writing a salty letter that people are basically going to ignore for the next 2000 years because it is so unpleasant.

But see, hear me. See, sometimes that's what it means to be a Christian leader. You gotta move beyond the warm fuzzies and you gotta say hard things. It's not just the role of a leader. It's just the role of a faithful friend and witness is to do this. Religion is not a palliative for the masses. It is a spiritual battle, Jude says, a battle against forces of evil, a battle against false teachers who like termites have infiltrated the church. That's no surprise, Jude says, because that's exactly what Jesus and the apostles predicted was gonna happen in the church. This is not like something's gone wrong and Jesus has lost control. Check out verse 17. "'You must remember, beloved,' he says, "'you must remember the predictions of the apostles "'of our Lord Jesus Christ. "'Yeah, they very clearly said to you and me "'in the last times, there are gonna be scoffers "'following their own ungodly passions.'" So while this is disturbing and alarming, Jude says, it's not surprising. And so verse three, "'I found it necessary to write appealing to you too,' say this word with me, contend for the faith.

That word contend in Greek is epagonizo from which we get our word agonize, agonize. Epagonizo is a word literally taken from the world of wrestling back then. Jude says, we've got to wrestle. We gotta jujitsu. We gotta fight for the faith. Listen, y'all, the church should be a place of warmth. It should be a place of acceptance. It should be a place of grace. That is the number one thing you should feel walking in here. But Christian leadership is more than simply providing a nice guy, touchy-feely, shoulder to cry on presence in somebody's life. Sometimes Christian leadership means standing up for, fighting for, agonizedly contending for the integrity of the faith. That means speaking out against error. It means making enemies. It means getting savage on social media. And that is because the Christian faith is worth protecting. The Christian faith is the most precious gift in all the world. If you walk into an art museum and there are no guards and there's no kind of security system, you're gonna probably conclude that this isn't very valuable art. If you don't have any stomach for controversy, the question I would ask is whether you see the faith

as something so valuable that it's worth fighting for. Or how about this? If you hear your friends say wrong things and you just don't care enough to correct them, you're like, well, to each his own. You don't correct them because you think it might be awkward. Do you really understand how precious this faith is? Specifically, Jude says, still in verse three, we are fighting to preserve the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That is a very interesting phrase. Some of you are gonna wonder for about 30 seconds, what in the world, where is he going with this? And then I'm gonna turn it and you'll be like, oh, there's where he's going, okay? There's one central basic message given to us by Jesus through the earliest apostles once for all that needed to be safeguarded down through the centuries. I want you to look at the exact wording. A faith delivered once for all to the saints, not a faith delivered piece by piece over the centuries. You see, some of our Roman Catholic friends say that the way God preserves the integrity of his church is through a succession of popes to whom he gives his authority to establish the word of God as we go along. But that is not how God promised to preserve his truth in his church. He said there was a faith delivered once for all to the saints.

That is a clear reference to the Bible. Jesus promised John 14 to establish through the apostles his message and they wrote it down once for all in a book. We are to measure every new idea. We are to measure every new question by this faith. This is our rule. It's why we call it the canon because it's the rule of our faith. It was delivered once for all. Sometimes Roman Catholic friends will say to me, well, you wouldn't have a Bible unless early Catholic authorities decided what got put into it. To which I always say, yeah, but the early church fathers did not make anything the word of God as in it wasn't the word of God until they declared it to be so. Rather, the early church fathers simply recognized the books that had been authored by the Holy Spirit through the apostles. They knew Jesus's promise in John 14 that he would deliver the faith once for all to the saints through the apostles. And so they recognized which books had been written by the apostolic community and they recognized that as the fulfillment of Jesus's promises. Thus all future iterations of the church

were to go back and compare what they believed with what the apostles recorded here. You're not checking with me on what you believe. We're not checking with somebody in Rome. We're going here. So at this church, the final and ultimate authority for what we believe is what is recorded here. This faith delivered once for all to the saints. Yes, okay. We are informed and influenced by traditions. Of course we are. Traditions are important. They're great starting points, but our final authority is these scriptures delivered once for all to the saints. It's why, by the way, we quote the apostles' creed here. I know that's a bold, that what I'm about to say is a bold claim, but at this church, we basically believe essentially the same thing that believers in those first centuries, in the first churches in the first century believed. It's basically the same. And the reason for that is because we base our beliefs on theirs and we correct our beliefs by theirs because this is a faith delivered once for all to the saints. This is also, by the way, why we do not accept later revelations by supposed prophets

who attempt to add something to the scriptures like Muhammad of the Muslims or Joseph Smith of the Mormons. We reject that because this was a faith delivered once for all to the saints, not a faith delivered in installments over the years. Plus, a lot of what those guys attempted to add flatly contradicts what was written in this book. This was a faith delivered correctly once for all to the saints, not a faith that needed to be improved upon later. So that's a small little phrase there in Jude, y'all, but it's crucially important. And then from there, Jude goes on to build out his claim that there are termites and there are gonna be termites in every generation seeking to eat away at this foundation. Again, verse four, look at it. For certain people have crept in unnoticed like termites, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Notice, he says, these false teachers do two primary things. See it? First, they pervert the grace of God into sensuality, characteristic number one. In other words, they take God's grace, which was meant to produce holiness and a love for God, and they instead twist it

into something that serves fleshly desires. Second, he says, they deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, they stop submitting to Jesus's authority as expressed in his Bible, and they become their own authority. In Jude's day, stay with me, this looked like two things. This is totally irrelevant to you because we don't live in Jude's day, but just hang with me because that's going to be important for what's going to come next. Two things, we know from historians that some were saying that God's forgiveness of our sins and the fact that he had freed us from the Old Testament law, there were people in Jude's day saying that means Christians who've been saved are now free to engage in sexual immorality on their own terms. All the rules are off, they said. Love is love. Maybe it is more relevant to this age than I'm thinking, but love is love. And thus, all kinds of sexual variations are permissible. We also know, number two, that from Paul's letters, we know that there were a lot of Jewish believers at the time saying that to be faithful to God meant embracing Jewish culture as the foundation of the church, and that a key component of the mission of God was working to establish a global Jewish kingdom on earth. So to be a Christian, you weren't just spreading the gospel, you were spreading Jewishness. That was then, 2,000 years ago. Much more important is for us to ask where we see these two things happening in the church now. Because Jesus predicted that this kind of corruption would happen in every generation. So, yeah, we can learn about what was happening in Jude's day as a matter

of interest, but what we should really be asking is, where do we see these same two things happening today? In other words, how do we keep our termite inspection up to date? Didn't matter that you didn't have termites when you bought the house. The question is, do you have now? Where do we see paint bubbling and the floor sagging now? Follow this? Honestly, I'm a little nervous about what's about to come next because it might get a little offensive, but I care about you. And like Jude says, Christian leadership means sometimes calling these things out. So I say all this because I love you, okay? I really do. But here we go. Corruption number one, therapeutic Christianity. In therapeutic Christianity, personal flourishing becomes the main point of the gospel. Christianity becomes primarily about achieving happier, healthier, more successful, and more emotionally fulfilled lives. To be clear, I am not against therapy. Therapy can be really helpful. God really does want us to flourish. Doing things God's way always leads you to flourish. But when you primarily see Jesus as a means to becoming happier and healthier, rather than seeing him as a treasure greater than anything else in your life and worth laying your life down for, then you have done what Jude warned against. You have swapped out a heavenly agenda for an earthly one. The cross, you see, is not primarily a tool for self-fulfillment. The cross was a sacrifice that reconciled you to God, a cross you were supposed to pick up and carry to the world.

In therapeutic Christianity, grace gets perverted. Instead of God accepts me by his grace and then works to make me holy, grace gets perverted to say, God accepts me exactly as I am and celebrates me that way. In therapeutic Christianity, you won't find a lot of talk about sin or repentance or laying your life down for the cause of the gospel. Rather, you'll find a lot of talk about a happier, healthier you. Finding healing to your brokenness, finding balance, achieving the good life, discovering the beautiful you, you snowflake, you unique color in God's rainbow, you one-of-a-kind Skittle in God's great candy jar. I've noticed that in a lot of the big college and young adult Christian conferences, this is how termites work, right? Doesn't start with a creedal change. I've just noticed that a lot of the young adult Christian conferences, college conferences around the country, the talks used to be about the urgency of the Great Commission and why you should lay your life down so that people around the world could hear the gospel. Now, the bulk of the talks are about your brokenness and why you're beautiful and how God makes you whole. And hear me, that is an important part of our message. I try to regularly preach on that. But therapeutic Christianity can very quickly become a counterfeit for real discipleship because it switches out Jesus's primary agenda for an earthly one. Number two, Build-A-Bear Christianity. Anybody remember the whole Build-A-Bear thing when you were a kid? Remember that? They don't even have that anymore. Is that a thing or is that just... Okay, so back in the day, back in the day, maybe today, I don't know, you'd take your kid to the Build-A-Bear store in the mall, and there they would build the bear that they wanted to snuggle with at night.

They got to choose the size, they got to choose the color, the features. You want a bear with two different color eyes? Fine. You want a bear with both eyes on the left side of his face? Go ahead, Picasso, you do you. And I guess that's fine when it comes to assembling a fake bear to cuddle with at night, but that is not how we approach God. And yet, and that is exactly what people attempt to do with Jesus. They learn about Jesus and they're like, ooh, I like this. And ooh, I like that. And ooh, I don't like this. But y'all, the Bible is not a salad. bar where you take the ingredients you like and leave the ones you don't. This is not Burger King where you can have your Jesus your way. I remember being on a college campus one time talking to a young lady about Jesus and I'd show her something in the Bible and she would say, well, my Jesus wouldn't say that. And then she'd go, my Jesus wouldn't think that. And eventually I told her, you don't get your own personal Jesus. There's one Jesus and you either submit to his lordship or you reject him. This is what Jude was talking about. People who deny the lordship of Christ. By the way, the place Build-A-Bear theology shows up most often, both in Jude's day and in our day, is in regard to sexual issues. It's the main thing Jude's going to bring up in his letter. Listen to me, sexual perversions are the enemy's prime battleground in every generation. And just like in Jude's day, we're told by many today, oh yeah, the Christian way is not about adhering to archaic sexual mores. Those people are primitive. They were doing the best they could, but we're advanced. No, Jesus, living for Jesus is about discovering and living in love and acceptance and hey, love is love. Do it your way. And so we see a lot of sectors of the church where homosexuality is affirmed. They've literally called themselves affirming churches because they proudly and brazenly affirm what Christ and his apostles forbid. Or churches who feel free to redefine marriage differently than God's prescription, which is one man with one woman for life. Or churches where transitioning gender is affirmed and celebrated as if gender were a choice and not something God wrote into our very DNA.

Churches where pornography is treated casually or as a part of self-expression. And by the way, maybe some of you say, well, I don't look at porn. Yeah, but I know Christians who seem incredibly unbothered watching shows with graphic and sinful sex scenes. Hello, Game of Thrones fans. And I hesitate naming shows like that because I don't want you to feel judged. I just feel like the Holy Spirit is really grieved by what some of us watch and fill our minds with. And Christians talk about these shows without even the slightest flush of embarrassment. Or churches where cohabitation before marriage is just accepted as a reality of our culture, even though God calls it sin. Churches where adultery is justified in some situations as a quest to find true happiness. In churches like these, these kinds of things are embraced in the name of love and acceptance and grace, but these things pervert the grace of God into sensuality and they deny the Lordship of Christ just like Jude said. Number three, prosperity theology. Prosperity theology. Again, this is another one Jude mentioned specifically in verses 11, 12, and 16. I won't read those verses because we'll get to them next week. But Jude talks about people who use the gospel for personal wealthy gain. In prosperity theology, the core message becomes Jesus exists to make you rich rather than Jesus is your riches and is worth leaving the whole world behind for. Interestingly, in verse 12, Jude talks about churches like this who are led by shepherds who feed themselves rather than the flock. When you look into prosperity gospel churches, this is often exactly what you'll find. Leaders living at extravagant levels, manipulating congregants to give them money so they can live exorbitantly. In fact, I once got to know a pastor in this tradition and I went to his office to have lunch with him. And in his parking lot was a 40 foot stretch limo. So I asked, is somebody famous here? Like, did Matt Damon swing by for a visit? He's like, no, it's just how we show God's prophets, you know, the church's pastors. This is how we show them honor. I went into his bathroom. He had all these exotic colognes from around the world. Y'all, I'm not a fragrance guy. I couldn't even pronounce the words on most of the bottles, but I recognize money when I see it. And here's the thing, their church was not even that big. I thought, man, this congregation is way smaller than ours. And he seems to have way more money than we do. So I just asked him, I was like, hey, do you like have a bunch of millionaires in your church? He was like, no. But then he explained that basically the whole offering of their church went to him personally to spend as

he saw fit. And what's more, whenever their church planted a church, which to their credit, they were doing a lot of, they taught this new church that this new church was under his spiritual covering. And so they therefore needed to honor him by tithing 10% of their church budget back to him personally throughout the rest of their existence. And I thought, man, am I doing this all wrong? I mean, I'm always like, if we have more money, I'd plant more churches. This guy's like, mama wants a new Cadillac. I'll go plant some more churches. Of course, I'm joking. Y'all, when I say that, I know we're not doing it wrong. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of leaders who turn the church into their own personal piggy bank. We've never wanted to be that here. That's why...it's a group of lay people, not other staff, not of the pastor, a group of lay people that set my salary. It's why we're very fastidious on all the accounting. It's just we know that we don't exist to be enriched off of the church. We exist to lead the church to pour its life out for the world. It's why my wife and I have always striven to be exemplary, beyond exemplary in our giving. I want to be one of the lead givers in the church, not just in amount, but in percentage, because I want to model for you, this is what it looks like to give your life away for the gospel. Like Jude explains, bad doctrine leads to sinful living. Let me just say, I know there are scandals in the church everywhere, I get that. Including churches that believe just like us. Wherever you got humans and money, you're going to have corruption and scandal. But still, scandal seems to be particularly bad in prosperity theology churches. And that is because doctrinal and moral corruption often go together. Bad doctrine leads to sinful living. Number four, earthly kingdom Christianity is your fourth corruption. That's where we replace a focus on building Christ's spiritual heavenly kingdom, with a focus on building an earthly political one.

Now, I'll be super careful here, right? So, if you're going to clip this online, start here, okay? Because Christians are supposed to be involved in politics. It's part of how we love our neighbor. It's part of how we publicly witness to our community. And when a nation's constitution, and when its moral framework are built on God's created order, the nation flourishes. So, we should vote for candidates whom we believe will rule and establish laws according to God's vision for the world. And if neither one of the candidates does it perfectly, you need to vote for the one that is closest. At the same time, Jesus's agenda until he returns, his agenda is not to establish a political reign on earth. The apostles asked Jesus this very question specifically just before he ascended, Acts 1.6, as he was leaving. They were like, hey, so are you going to have us build your kingdom on earth now? And Jesus said, your responsibility right now is not that, it is instead, Acts 1.8, to be my witnesses and to take this gospel to all the nations on the earth, meaning our primary responsibility is the proclamation of the gospel to every person in every nation on earth, full stop, hard period. I love how theologian Michael Horton explains it. We are not to yield to Caesar a single jewel from Christ's crown. Identifying Christ with any nation today risks blasphemy. Christ identifies himself only with the holy nation of the church, which is comprised of peoples from every nation. Trying to build a theocratic Christian kingdom on earth swaps Jesus's agenda for a fleshly one, just like Jude warned against. Anytime we begin to believe that the primary mission of the church is winning elections, defeating progressives, defeating conservative extremism, saving Western civilization, taking America back, that is exactly what we've done.

Again, it's not that we shouldn't want to see Christian values influence our laws. It's not that we shouldn't want to see society become more just. But ideologies like critical theory and cultural Marxism or theocratic Christian nationalism subtly redefine the mission of the church. Mark my words, when somebody starts to preach politics from the pulpit, they will almost always very soon stop preaching the gospel because they begin to assume that the preservation of their nation is more important than the salvation of souls in that nation. Y'all hear me. Listen, I love America. I own more things with stars and stripes on them than any human should. My Spotify algorithm thinks every other song should involve a pickup truck or freedom or both, okay? And I want to see America renewed and reformed. But as a pastor, Jesus did not make my first assignment saving America, but calling Americans to salvation, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, progressive or conservative, black or white, or rich or poor. That is what we do, okay? Earthly kingdom Christianity swaps out Christ's mission for an earthly one. Last one, number five, consumer Christianity. In consumer Christianity, Christians treat the church like it primarily exists to meet their preferences. So they approach their local church with the attitude, I'll stay here as long as I like the music. I worship pastor, don't talk too long. The people are cool and fun. My kids are entertained, and the sermons inspire me, and the programs serve me, and nobody annoys me, as long as people anticipate my needs and they meet them, as long as the pastor never offends me or talks about money. I get it.

Some of these things are part of why you choose the church. You like the church and it worked for your family. Nothing wrong with that. But in consumer Christianity, these things remain central in your relationship with the church. So you've been here two, three years, and you're still asking how's the church meeting my needs rather than how am I supposed to be laying down my life for the church? I mentioned the other night, we celebrated my dad's 80th birthday. We did it with a small group of family and friends. And there was a point where a few of us said some, you know, grateful words about my dad and one of the things I said was that I'm so grateful now what I learned from him, watching him and my mom growing up, because he basically lived out for me the opposite of consumer Christianity. He and my mom were members of the same church in Winston-Salem for 41 years. Until they moved to become members here, since the only reason he did that is because he figured he had a really good in with the pastor here, okay? That church they were part of for 41 years in Winston-Salem went through cycles, like every church does, seasons of decline, hard times, boring spells, bad sermon series,

bad leadership, and yet my mom and dad stayed through all of it, because that's what you do when you're committed to something. Hear me, I'm not saying there's never a time to leave a church and find a new one. I'm not saying that, there is. But I also know that our generation operates in all spheres of our lives with a deep consumer mentality. And I guess that's fine if we're talking about fast food. If my burger doesn't taste that good or my fries are not hot enough or the customer service is bad, then I'm out of here. But that is not how you're supposed to treat a marriage or a family. I sincerely hope none of you parents ever say to your kids, you know, conversation around the dinner table is a little flat right now. You kids are really starting to annoy me, always asking me for money, so I'm gonna go out and try a different family for a few weeks just to see if something fits better. That's not how you're supposed to be with the family of God either. So from my dad, I learned that you stay, you stay during the hard times, you stay during the boring times, you stay through the problems, you stay through the challenges because that's what Jesus did for the church.

You love people through the problems. That's the opposite of consumer Christianity, which builds faith around catering to the desires of the flesh. So there you go. Giving you five ways Jude's warning about termites in the church manifests today. Therapeutic Christianity, Build-A-Bear Christianity, Prosperity Theology, Earthly Kingdom Christianity, and Consumer Christianity. I'm sure there are more. The point is in every age, we have bad leaders reshaping Jesus's message around fleshly desires, swapping out Christ's agenda for theirs and perverting grace. By the way, I think that phrase in verse four is super important. These termites pervert the grace of God. They don't deny it, they just redefine it. They're like, grace means you don't have to repent. Grace means God affirms you as you are. Grace means God's highest priority is making you comfortable and rich. And so when their hands are up and they're singing about amazing grace, they're thinking about something different. Grace means God exists to fulfill your dreams. Grace means God wants your tribe to thrive and your culture to prosper. And Jude says, no, grace brings you to God.

Grace doesn't feed your flesh. Grace teaches you to deny it. Grace doesn't diminish Jesus's lordship. Grace establishes it. Grace doesn't fulfill your agenda. Grace teaches you to surrender your agenda to his. Grace is not about pampering your flesh. Grace is about restoring you to the greatest reality in the universe, fellowship with God. Y'all, the genius of false teaching, the reason it creeps in unnoticed, like termites, is that it almost never asks you to reject Jesus. It simply asks you to attach a different agenda to Jesus. Sexual freedom, politics, money, comfort, power, identity, therapy, success, false teaching doesn't remove Jesus. It just rearranges him. It makes Jesus a useful means to an end rather than the beautiful end in himself. And whenever that happens, y'all, termites are in the walls. Church, we gotta be clear. We gotta be clear above all things on what the true gospel is. What is the essence of that faith delivered once for all of the saints? So let me close by defining the gospel for you. And I'm gonna use the words of the apostle Paul where Paul said, I'm gonna do it. This, by the way, is what Jude said he wanted to write about but the church wouldn't let him,

so he had to write this other letter. So we're gonna pull this in from Paul. Paul says, I delivered unto you as of first importance that which I also received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scripture. This is the faith that I received once for all of the saints. This is the most important thing about it. The first important thing. Christ died for sin, just like the Bible always said he would. Next verse. He was buried that he was raised on the third day. In accordance with the scriptures, the gospel is the good news that God sent his son to suffer for your sin and my sin in our place so that we could be reconciled to God and thereafter live holy lives in fellowship with him. The gospel is that we could not save ourselves. So God did not give us a rescue plan that we could execute by ourselves. He did it. He gave us a plan that he did all by himself that you could only receive as a gift and in response to that gift you owe him everything. When you embrace this and then you focus your whole life on proclaiming it, that's what it looks like to be called loved and kept. The thought of his beloved church losing that is what provoked Jude to write this letter so that he might contend for that faith delivered once for all of the saints. So here's the obvious question this morning. Have you received this gospel personally? See, it's an individual offer made to you personally. This is what Jude's so fired up about. You've got to receive it personally and there's no other message that I ever want to get in the way of this one. So this whole thing is about you receive this gospel and you join this church. You can become a part of the family of God committed to spreading this gospel. You can receive that offer of salvation. You can do it today, right now, if you never have. See, if that's you, if you've never received Jesus personally, never received the gospel personally, you're not sure that you have. You got questions. Here's my invitation to you. I want you to take your phone out. I want you to text the word READY to 33933. Somebody will follow up with you. We'll start to explore those questions. By the way, I met somebody at our church who

got saved, got baptized here, who got a tattoo and they had 3393 in the tattoo. And I was like, what is that? Because that's how I started the conversation about salvation is I texted this number. That's my salvation number, right? You don't have to get a tattoo to you, but it can be your salvation number. It's where you can start, okay? It's where you can start this conversation. Just do it right now. Hey, maybe even better. Come to our Explore the Summit, which happens the first Sunday of each month, which is this Sunday. In fact, it's happening at many campuses today. You can ask questions about the church or Christianity in a non-threatening environment. You should do that. And if it's, you know, again, after some of our services, there will still be one. I want you to act in that way or just talk to the person who brought you and say, show me more about this. I'm interested in Jesus. Father, I pray that you would teach us deep in our souls about the value of the gospel. God, let us think it's worth fighting for, contending for. Give us supernatural understanding, and it may, whether it's from the pulpit or God in cubicles and coffee shops all around the triangle, let us speak it accurately so that we can be faithful to our generation of what the gospel really is. I pray and ask that in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, Summit Church, let's stand at all of our campuses together. Worship teams, you're going to come. We're going to sing, oh praise the name of our great God and Savior Jesus, who's given us this message and promises to preserve and keep us as we look to Him. I want you to take a moment, prepare your heart, think about what the Holy Spirit is saying to you, and in just a moment they will come and they'll lead you.