The Biggest Threats to the Church Today

We know when we read the Apostle Paul's letters, that we're reading the letters mainly to specific churches, specific congregations. You know, if you were in Ephesus and you got what we call 1 Corinthians, because the letters were passed around, they did, you know, it would take a long time for a letter to get from one place to another. We're so used to a postal service, we think it's so inefficient. Well, you might send a letter, Paul might send a letter, and it may not appear where it's supposed to be for three months.

And then if they send it out to other places, maybe if you get Paul's letter to the Ephesians and you live in Italy, you might get it a year later, two years later. Who knows when you would get it? So it was very difficult to get these letters around.

And if you would have been in Ephesus and you would have got what we call 1 Corinthians, you would have said, wow, that's a weird church, right? That is a weird church. And if you were in Philadelphia and you got the church or the letter written to the Colossians, there's probably a few places in there you would have said, what in the world is he talking about?

Because the issues are very specific. That's what part of the problem we have today. We'll be reading something along in Paul's letters and say, what does that mean? I always find it interesting. I read one time in translated in English, Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians. And the book of Galatians, according to Martin Luther, is all about the Catholic church. Of course, the Catholic church didn't exist when he wrote it, right?

But he was fighting the Catholic church. So he wrote a book and he said, see, this is all about the Catholic church. This is what Paul meant. Well, he draw a few conclusions there that Paul would not have meant. Oh, he can do that too. It's easy sometimes to read into something. And you always hear me talk about, find out what the scripture meant to the person who first read it, then understand and ask God to help us understand what it means.

Because we read everything in the Bible as Paul's epistles to America. But you know, Paul never wrote specifically to America. What he did was write what God inspired him to write that could be used thousands of years later. But it was written that there's all kinds of personal things in there that we miss because we're forgetting what was it the people were dealing with when he wrote to them. You know, there's a set of epistles, letters in the Bible, known as the general epistles. James versus 2 Peter versus 2 John and Jude. Now, what's interesting about these letters is they weren't written to specific churches.

They were written to all the churches. And it taken forever for Jude to get, you know, his letter to get around. I say forever, but a long, exaggerating, but a long time for Jude's letter to get all to all the churches. It probably didn't get to even all of them.

Who knows? We do know that all the churches in the first century were in cities and towns. There were no country churches. The gospel didn't get outside the country as far as, or into the country as far as we know. There's no record of a country church. There's no records of city churches because they would go there and they'd preach. Well, if you live 20 miles outside the city, you may have not have heard the gospel preached by Paul in Paul's lifetime.

It just didn't get that far out. But these letters could get from city to city, from church to church. It would take a long time. So the general epistles, they sent these out, probably multiple copies, trying to get them to all the churches. Now, what I want to look at today is that both 2 Peter and Jude talk about something that's happening in the church in the 60s.

Jude was written around 65 AD and in 2 Peter around 67. So it's about a two-year period here. And you have a letter that these two men are sending out. It's not a coordinated event. It's not a coordinated event. They're just two men sending out these letters. And they're dealing with something that's happened in the church. Something dramatic and hurtful and was fragmenting the church.

Now, as we go through this, I want to look at what they were experiencing. And then I want you to ask yourself, is there some kind of similar threat that we suffer? Not from within, but from without. They were experiencing it from within. But is there a threat to the church of God? They were facing a threat. And Jude and Peter are very upset over it. In fact, some of the most condemning language in the entire New Testament is in Jude and 2 Peter.

I mean, it's worse than some of the prophets said to Israel. And there's a reason why, which I'll show you. So let's start in Jude. And we're going to look at what's happening. So this is in the mid-sixties. And Jude writes, starting in verse three here, he says, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. In other words, he says something's changing. There's a new teaching. There's a new way of looking at the Bible. There's something new that's come along. I say the Bible. They had the Old Testament and they had bits and pieces of the New Testament this time, depending on which group, which church you happen to be in at the time. It hadn't been totally brought together yet. Revelation hadn't been written. And so he says, we got to go, we got to understand there's something happening that's taking us away from what was first delivered to us by Jesus and those earliest apostles. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of our God into lewdness and denied the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. So he says this is happening in the church. And we'll even see where he talks about they're in the church and they're leaving the church. Peter talks about the same thing. What they were creating was a new kind of Christianity. They were actually leaving the true church to create a new kind of Christianity. Now that's not happening here. That's not happening in the churches of God for the most part. What you do have, though, is an outside new Christianity that's trying to get in.

Okay? They're dealing with it starting there because there is no other Christianity but them. You know, we live in a world where there's all these different Christianities, right? But there's a new Christianity forming out there.

They had it formed within the original group and broke out of it.

We're trying our best to become like that original group and there's a new Christianity trying to break into it. So what they went through, what they were told, and that's what we're going to look at, is what they were dealing with. And as we do, I want you to think about the postmodern, new-age, humanistic Christianity we're living in today. Okay? So we'll just think about that and then think about what they were going through as this was forming and breaking out of the church and what they were experiencing.

So then Jude, in order to make his point, because he says it's—and there's two things here that are real important. He says that it is turning the grace of God into lewdness. Lude- lewdness, the Greek just means to turn yourself over to every base, human desires and thoughts and actions. No, you just turn yourself over into anything, okay? I will do anything that I think will make me happy or anything I feel like I want to do in the moment.

So it's just turning yourself over into—and it can mean sexual, but it means beyond that. It would be like drunkenness and it'd just be letting yourself do whatever you want. It doesn't necessarily mean killing people, okay? So, but it means in this physical desires, you just let yourself do whatever you want. So the grace of God—this is at the core of this heresy—the favor, the mercy, the love of God is being turned into, I can do whatever I want. And the result was, he said, is they absolutely deny God and Jesus Christ. They hadn't given up their worship of God and Jesus Christ, but they denied them. They still were a form of Christianity, but they denied God and Jesus Christ in their actions.

And so this is real important to understand these two issues.

He would go on and condemn them and talk about what they taught and talk about how they were—they shouldn't be in the church. He actually tells them, these are like people are doing terrible things in your church. Churches, because this is sent to all the churches.

And then he says in verse 11, he uses three examples, and this gives us some insight into how Jude was defining this heresy. Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the air of Balaam, for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. He uses three examples. Three examples.

Back in, I think it was August, I covered a little bit about Cain in a sermon, but I looked at Cain in a different way than I'm going to look at him here today. So you think, how many examples can you use with Cain? Well, there's a number of lessons from the life of Cain and the little bit we have about him in the scripture. So he uses Cain. So let's start there. Let's go to Genesis 4.

Now, remember, he's taking this example of this man and using it to say that this represented a problem in the church in 65 AD, that there were people coming into the church, and they were destroying the grace of God, denying God and Jesus Christ in their actions, by promoting this idea that God frees you to do whatever you want. So we're going to find certain words that appear both here and in 2 Peter about the heresy that was happening inside the Church of God.

So we know the story in chapter 4 of Genesis. Adam and Nui's wife Eve, she conceived Cain. Verse 2, that she had Abel, and Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So one was a farmer, and one was a sheep herder. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. And Abel also brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fat, and the Lord respected Abel and his offering. But he did not respect Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. So the issue here has to do with the personal worship of God. Now, we don't know what instructions God had given them, but from what God is going to tell Cain in a moment, there had to be instructions. Because if there were no instructions, what he tells him makes no sense. So he had to have given them instructions. We know when the Levitical priesthood was set up, even when Abraham, long before Levitical priesthood, that you were to approach God, God required to be approached with a blood sacrifice, a substitute for your sins to come before a righteous God, and that he accepted you with the New Testament justification. He accepted you to come into his presence. You are now, you can come before me. You have brought a substitute for what you deserve for your sins. The important thing here, too, is Cain did not bring the blood sacrifice, but he's angry. I have worshiped God in a way that's meaningful to me. I grew this food. I harvested this food. I brought it in a basket or whatever. I brought it before God. All this food. Why won't God accept that? He's angry. Now, he's angry at God, but he won't tell God I'm angry at you.

So the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your countenance fallen? Now, this is why he had to have instructions. If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. He says you need to control this or you're going to sin. You could rule over sin by thinking about this. Simply do what your instructions were. In other words, God says I will be worshiped how I say I will be worshiped. Worship isn't just for the worshippers experience. It is an expression of the worshipper to the one being worshiped. Who is worthy of worship, therefore he can determine how he's going to be worshiped. You know, the concept of worship is so mixed up in Christianity today. Worship is for the benefit of those who are worshiping, and it is not. It is an expression of what they're doing. Now, there's a benefit to it, obviously. I'm not saying that, but it is for the purpose of expressing something to God. Pain is, hey, I gave, that's good stuff I gave.

And God, you know, this just isn't fair. I don't have a lot of sheep like he does. I don't know what's going through his head. I mean, he can come up with a hundred things. I only have a few sheep. Man, I mean, for me to give up one of my sheep is a big deal. Whatever he's thinking, he thinks he brought what God should accept. Worship was determined by him. He determined how God would be worshiped because he's the worshipper. I'm bringing what I think will make you happy. I'm bringing what is good for you. I guess it's no, I determine.

Now Cain talked with his brother, and it came to pass when they were in his field. The Cain rose up against Abel and killed him.

He could not carry out his anger against God, so he carried out against his brother. You know, I wonder how many times when you strip away our anger sometimes that we have towards other people, that our real anger is towards God. My life is not fair to me. It's just not fair. It's just not right that this should happen to me. All of us had times where we think, wow, why is this happening to me? Right? And then we get to the place where we get angry. But you know, we can't be angry at God, right? So we take it out on somebody else. You know, Abel, the guy who thinks he's so righteous, God, man, picks him over me. I'm the firstborn. What's the problem here? And he kills him. God comes to Abel or Cain, and he confronts him. And he tells him, because of this, you're going to be cast out of your family. Now, there's not too many people on the earth at the time. Just to be cast out of your family is you're basically, like he said, you're a vagabond on the earth. And Cain didn't say—now, this shows he's an attitude—he didn't say, I repent. He didn't say, you're right. I shouldn't have done this. I mean, no human being had ever died before on the earth. Now, they had killed animals, so they knew what that was like. But he had bashed in his head or hit him somehow. He bled out. He watched his brother die. He knew he wasn't coming back. He was dead. How horrible that is. The first murder. And all he can say to God is, my punishment is greater than I can bear.

We have something very interesting in here.

As self-will, I determine how God will be worshiped. I determine how God will be worshiped. And then, when life doesn't turn out the way I want it, God is unfair. God is unfair because I determine this. I determine what's a good gift to God because I'm giving it from my heart. I'm giving it because I'm good. I'm giving what's God's problem. So God's unfair to me. Now, isn't that strange? The Jude says this is part of their core problem, but see, it's not the only thing. And you put all this together. You put all this together. Now, let me ask you this. How many people have you talked to? I've seen read articles. I've talked to people that say, oh, I know Christmas isn't in the Bible. And yes, I know Christmas, the date and all the tree, everything comes from paganism, but it's how I choose to worship Jesus. You ever hear that?

You ever hear that? So we know why he uses Cain here because part of their argument is, I choose how to worship God my way, my culture, what I feel I should do. Now, there are things that are personal between us and God. How you pray between you and God is personal, right? I mean, there are certain things that are very personal between you and God. You're talking here about public worship and public offerings, but even private. Even privately, we have to be careful that we don't disregard some of God's instructions. The second thing that he mentions is the error of Balaam. Now, that's an interesting story. I'll just recap it for you. The Midianites, you know, the Israelites are on the move and they're coming into the land of the Midianites. This is when they came out of Egypt and the Midianites are afraid. They look out over this hoard of people, you know, moving across the land and they say they'll come through and eat everything we have. It's like locusts. Now, they weren't going to do that. They were going to pass through, but they decided, hey, they're a threat to our nation. So they went and got, now this is very important, a prophet of Yahweh, a prophet of God. They got a prophet of the God of Israel, but he wasn't an Israelite. He's called a prophet of God in the Bible. They kept this prophet of God. They said, well, you know, God talks to you. Their God talks to you. We want you to curse them and we're going to make you a very rich man. And Balaam said, he won't let me do that. So he goes to God and goes, God says, no, you can't do that. He goes back and says, I can't do it. Then he offered again. And then he thinks about it. He's got to find a way to follow God and be his prophet with all of its power and glory and, you know, importance. I mean, the King comes to you, the King of an entire nation says, you're the man that can call on God and stop this horde of people. My army can't do it, but you can.

He liked that. Besides, I mean, he didn't have the Bible. When he says God talked to him, it was literally either God or an angel to talk to.

Right? Because it says he would talk to him. In one place, remember the angel approached him, the angel of the Lord, and actually appeared to him after he talked to him through a donkey. The man was so dense. If a donkey talked to you, would you not be more attentive? Either that or you're just insane one or the other, right?

So, over and over again, he tries to do it. Over and over again, God stops him.

Okay, I'm not going to curse them. Let me just go see what maybe they'll give me. And finally, he stands out, looks over all the nation of Israel and says, and gives them a blessing. I mean, there's a prophecy in the Bible given by Balaam, a prophecy from God about how great they're going to be.

The king of Midian is like, I'm not paying you for that. I asked you to curse them and you give them a blessing. So I can only tell you what God tells me to tell. Well, we know what happens next.

Well, they didn't get cursed, but the Midianites hatch a plan.

The Midianites, and I've described this before I know what a sermon, but I just, I can't imagine this. There's millions of people. And over, you know, sort of through the desert comes thousands of thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. They're all dressed up. They have their jewelry on, their best clothes. They're carrying food and lots of wine.

And you have maybe the biggest party in the history of humanity. The Midianites come out, you know, they're on their camels and horses and they come and they get among the Israelites. They didn't come to fight. We came to party. And it goes on for days. And they're drinking, and pretty soon everybody's sort of shacking up with everybody. And pretty soon, Midianite gods are being worshipped along with the God of Israel because, you know, all things being equal when you're drunk. And they're just doing all this stuff. And they found out, okay, God won't curse them. We can't beat them with our army. We'll just make them drinking buddies. We'll just make them party animals. You know, we'll see you next Saturday. Yeah, we're moving this next one, the Saturday. Is that okay? I know what you're saying. Oh yeah, this was so much fun. Come back Saturday, right? Well, they wouldn't call it Saturday, but... And God started to kill off Israelites. And they finally realized they woke up. God was punishing them.

The Midianites went home. What's Balaam's problem here? Sure, I'm a follower of God, except when it comes to business practices, or except when it comes to paying taxes, or except, you know, I always have to... I find a way, always, sort of to be a Christian and not to be a Christian when there's money involved, or what I want involved. Let's go to Numbers 31. Numbers 31. You say, okay, this is interesting, but what's it have to do with me today? As we go through all this, and we summarize it in the end, I want you to see what's being described by both Jude and Peter. Numbers 31. Let's look in verse... Let's see, verse 3.

So Moses spoke to the people, saying, arm some of yourselves for war, and let them go against the Midianites to take vengeance for the Lord on Midian. Now let's skip down to verse 8. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of those who were killed. Evi, Rechim, Zor, Hor, Rebah, the five kings of Midian, Balaam the son of Beor, they also killed with the sword. I mean, this is a prophet of God, and they killed him. But he had refused to curse Israel. He refused all the money that was being offered to him that he wanted. Verse 16. Because here's now what happens next. The Israelite soldiers come back and say, should we kill the women too? And the answer is, well, they are the ones who came in and seduced all of you. They were used to come in and seduce you sexually in this big orgy, and then have you worship the Midianite gods. He says, look, these women caused the children of Israel through the council of Balaam to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and they were a plague among the congregation of the Lord under the council of Balaam.

Balaam didn't curse them. Balaam pronounced the prophecy that God had given him to pronounce, but he wanted the money so much. He wanted to be part of the world, the wealth of it, the prestige of it.

They said, we can fix this. Let's have a party. The Israelites are real stick in the mud, but, you know, we'll just get them going. They'll come along after a while. It was his idea to do it. It was his idea, knowing the laws of God, to break it down into lewdness, to get the Israelites just to do whatever seemed and felt good at the time.

The third thing he uses is the rebellion of Korah. So let's look at this one, because there's a point here that's easily overlooked. Number 16. Number 16.

I've seen this sometimes misused to make a point out of.

But I want you to really think about this. Verse 1, Korah, the son of Ishar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathim and Abiram, the sons of Eliyeb, and the sons of Pilath, sons of Reuben took men. And they rose up before Moses with some of the children of Israel, 250 leaders of the congregation, representatives of the congregation, men of renown. They gathered together against Moses and Aaron and said to them, You take too much upon yourselves, for all the congregation is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why did you exalt yourself above the assembly of the Lord? Now, obviously here the issue is an issue of authority. But I want to make a point here. No place in the Bible is authority, absolute authority, given to a human being. No place.

It always has parameters. You know, I am a husband. There's parameters given to me in the Bible. I'm supposed to be the leader of my family, but there's parameters to that. As a parent, there's parameters. I'm not... the Bible won't let me just beat my children, not that I ever wanted to. But you know what I mean? I just can't take them out and beat them up. It doesn't let me do that. All authority has parameters in the Scripture. As a pastor, I have parameters. These are things I can and cannot do in the law of God. There's things I can do in your lives, and there's things I cannot do in your lives. And I try to live that balance all the time. Because God takes it very serious. Moses had been given authority, more authority than most men ever get, you know, throughout history. But the issue here isn't that just that the sons of Corinth wants to... well, I want to say, you're taking too much on yourself. It's... what we have to do with this is we have to give the power to the people, because they're all holy.

Do you think Korah was really... I mean, I'm making an assumption here. You think Korah is really interested in setting up a democracy? Of course, there is no such thing as a democracy at this time in history. No. It's let's move those who teach the people of God to another group of teachers who have a different way. They weren't interested in shifting, you know, the authority to the people. They were interested in shifting it to themselves, which is an interesting thing. Don't you know everybody's holy? So who do you think you are?

This is how revolutions start all over the place, right? We're going to free you from the oppressor, and then when you rise up and have the revolution and get rid of the oppressor, who becomes the oppressors? The leaders of the revolution. Happens over and over again. This is let's shift power to the people, and in doing so, it's actually an attempt to seize power themselves. It's a very dangerous thing. We see it in human politics, and of course, and here it was very dangerous because it was against Moses. So the rebellion of Quora. So we get these three things, Cain and Balaam and Quora, and these three examples. Okay, we're going to have to put this together here in a minute, but I want to go to Peter before we do that. Second Peter, too. Because here's Peter's explanation of this heresy, and Jude is very graphic in his condemnation of them, as is Peter, and there's a reason why here. I want you to remember these aren't people that haven't been called by God. These aren't pagans.

He's dealing with people who've come into the church, confessed that they believed in God, followed God, confessed in Jesus Christ, and now are taking people out who confess the same thing. In other words, they're openly trying to destroy the church with false teachings.

And so his condemnation on them is some of the strongest in the Bible, both from Peter and Jude. Stronger than ancient, you know, ancient Israel, what was their condemnation? I am going to let you go into captivity, and then I will bring you back, and in the end time, I will resurrect you, and I will give you a chance to know the Messiah. I mean, that's over and over and over. You see that. That's not what's told these people, and this is why this is important. This isn't in the church quite yet, but we're going to be facing this, and we're going to have to make sure it doesn't come into the church. A new Christianity that's morphing all... Christianity has been morphing for 2,000 years, but it's morphing into something so dramatically different. But do you realize, just in the last two weeks, there was a survey done, major survey, in England, and for the first time in history, less than half the people in England said they were Christians.

Now, out of that less than half, few of them believe in the Christianity of 40 years ago.

Same thing in the U.S. Less than less people... They don't believe what was taught 40 years ago, or 50 years ago. So if there was a flawed Christianity in the United States 50 years ago, flawed because they didn't understand the Sabbath and Holy Days, and didn't understand... They kept Christmas these years, flawed in certain ways, that Christianity is considered way too biblical in the new Christianity.

So the world has changed. Most of the time we're not answering questions anymore about, so why shouldn't we eat pork? There are a whole new set of questions, right?

If you really did in the world, in your job, where you work, a fair few people come up and ask you too much anymore, so you don't keep Christmas? How come? Don't you believe in Christ? They don't care if you keep Christmas or not. But if they find out you don't support LGBTQ, you've got a real problem. Or if they find out you don't support abortion, you know there was an entire website. I think it was a website. I know there was an article. I started to read it and I never clicked on the link, but dedicated this Thanksgiving to the greatest thing we should be thankful for. You know what it was? Abortion. We need to celebrate Thanksgiving to celebrate abortion. See what I'm saying? Forty years ago, no one can even conceive of that.

So Christianity is going through another morphing, which has done dozens of times over the last two thousand years, changed and changed and changed. It's going through an enormous change, and it's very similar to what these people were facing then out of the pagan world.

They were being influenced by paganism in an enormous way. It had come into the church, and in the sixties was blowing apart the church. You want to see how tough Peter is on him?

Well, let's look at verse one here. But there were also false prophets among the people. That's not about ancient Israel. Even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves with destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covenants they will exploit you with deceptive words. For a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slander. So he's telling them. And if you go through here, it's basically the same thing Jude is saying, but it's just in the way Peter would say things. He's saying it's happening, folks. These people are coming into the church. Oh, man, look at verse 12. It's hard to find anything like this even in the Old Testament. We think how harsh the prophets were in the Old Testament. But these like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed speak evil of the things they do not understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption. Wow! I can't imagine, you know, getting on beyond today and saying, you know, these people are just like wild animals. Yeah, that really worked. Peter said it. Peter wrote it. Now, remember, this is in the church. This isn't being preached to the world. This is what Peter said to the church.

Now, none of us, I don't have the right to get up and call another human being a wild animal. Okay, I just don't. God doesn't give me that right. I can say they're wrong. I can also read what Peter says about them. Okay, I'm okay doing that. As Peter's words, not mine.

We all have to understand the limits of what God gives us a license to do. Okay. And Peter could say that. And then he says in verse 18, for when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, it sounds good. They allure through the lust of the flesh through lewdness. Oh, we're back into what you talked about. The ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. He says, they're using this new teaching to take away those who escaped Satan's world.

That's why he's so hard on these people.

These are pagans who don't know any better. These people are coming into the church and creating a new Christianity because their own lust, because their own corruption, because their own greed. While they promise them liberty, that's really important. Freedom is part of this concept. It's why, by the way, you'll never be able to win a political argument in the United States about God's way.

Liberty and freedom for all. And if I want to marry my horse, it's my desire to do it. And who can you tell me what to do? Liberty and freedom without law is anarchy. That's what it is. Liberty without law is anarchy.

My wife and I just watched. We'd seen it back in 2008 when it came out, but we just rewatched on HBO, the six-part miniseries they did on John Adams. I had read the 800-page book by David McCullough that they used for that. David McCullough was one of the great American historians. He died a couple years ago. And she's reading it now. And it was amazing, because they had to take all these events and bring them down into six one-hour programs. So they had to take entire conversations and bring them down into little conversations. But the conversations between him and Thomas Jefferson were fascinating, because John Adams believed you have to have rule of law. You have to have rule of law. Therefore, you have to have a strong constitution and a strong presidency and a strong legislature, and they have to make laws. And Thomas Jefferson was always arguing, well, you know what? Each generation is going to have a different set of values, so they should be able to create a new constitution every generation. Two different viewpoints. You know, liberty, what grandparents think is good law, grandchildren may not. So they should be able to change the constitution, which is basically what's happening today.

It was an argument that went on and on at the time. How strict do we make things and have liberty? What is freedom? Well, these men promise freedom, these teachers.

So while they promised them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. And it would have been better that they had never known the way of righteousness.

He said, what these teachers are doing are taking people who are saved by God and their end result will be so horrible it'll be better that they had never known righteousness. That's a frightening statement. This is why 2 Peter, you very seldom hear it quoted anywhere. You don't hear Jude quoted anywhere either. I mean, they're just not, that's not two places. Even in the church, we don't quote them much because there's such a punch, but they're supposed to be a punch. They're supposed to be, you can't let this happen in the church. It's happening then. And they're saying, stop this from happening. Keep it from destroying the church. We can't let the new Christianity destroy the church of God. And you know who this is the hardest on? All you people are under the age of 40. That's who is hardest on because the people you work with, the colleges you go to, the friends you have, this is where it's going to be the hardest.

And yet you're going to have to do that.

Okay, so what are the elements then? So let's just now quickly summarize the elements of what we've covered. Cain, the self-willed religion that believes he can choose how to worship God. And God will accept it because God loves him and God, you know, God likes whatever he brings, no matter what. He gets to choose how God will be worshiped. In other words, there's not a respect for God as the sovereign king. There's not a respect for God as the ultimate goodness. There's just, there's not that respect there. I will determine how God will be worshiped.

And there could be a lot in this, in this kind of approach, there could be a lot of soothing teachings about love because there's a lot of belief that I've been abused, I've been mishandled, my life's not fair to me, you know, therefore we just have to love each other. And there could be lots of music, lots of good Christian living principles even.

There could be a lot of good mixed into this self-will. But in the end, in the end, it doesn't change the person just like Cain wasn't changed. You have Balaam, who wants a relationship with God, wants sort of all this, you know, feeling of specialness because he has a special relationship with God, but will do any, any compromise to make some money, any compromise to get ahead, any compromise to get what he wants out of life.

And then you have Korah, who basically, you know what, we're all holy, we could all believe what we all want to believe. I've heard that too.

Now we all have difference of opinions. Most of those different opinions are little things, and you're never going to have a hundred people together that agree on all the little things. You can't get five pastors together. You know, if you have five pastors and some of these little things, you have six, six opinions because somebody has two opinions on it. But on the big things, we agree. You have to agree on the big things, right? We have to.

Korah is like, nah, we all can decide what we want on the big things. But that's not what Korah really wanted. What Korah really wanted was he wanted to be the one I decided. He wanted to be the great teacher, him and his 250 leaders. They already had authority. They already had power, but it didn't matter. That's a problem with authority. And real authority, there's not a lot of power that goes with it, not the kind of power people want. There just isn't. There's some. I mean, you know, authority has some power, but it's not the power people. Because it's not personal. It's not personal power. It's only some authority God gives you in your limited realm, in your limited realm, and whatever it is.

You have freedom, which Peter talks about. This is where they're going to teach, yes, we believe in obedience to God. We believe in the law of Christ, which is love.

And yes, you know, it's true that people should, we should not have same-sex marriage. But you know, as long as we love them and accept them, we're doing the law of Christ. So, therefore, it's wrong. But you know, we don't live by the law anymore. Understand what that means.

What it really means is people should not sin. Yeah, people should do that. But, you know, we still have to love them, accept them, and have them as part of our congregation, and baptize them. And, you know, adultery is bad, but you would never ask somebody not to come to church until they stop committing adultery. You know, we know that selling, being a drug dealer is bad, but we still want him to come to church. Maybe it will become converted.

Well, you don't mind your kids being around a drug dealer? I want him converted, too. I'll go visit him. When he stops doing it, I'll invite him to church. If he goes back to it, I'll ask him to leave. That's a little bit of authority I have. It's not much. Right? Why will I do that? Because we can't let him hurt us and hurt our children. That's why. It has nothing to do with loving him. I worked with people for years after they stopped coming to church, until they committed suicide, until they just ended up in insane asylums trying to help them through. Because I still love them, but they couldn't come to church. Bottom line is, people who should not sin, but we're going to do away with God's definition of sin, is a dumb-mindedness that is absolutely ludicrous. People should not sin, but we're doing away with the law. But according to the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says, I would not have known sin except by the law. And John says, the sin is defined by the law. So we do away with the law, but you shouldn't sin. Well, how do I even know what sin is? By the definition of the New Testament, that is double-mindedness. That's part of this lawlessness. That's part of this philosophy, religious philosophy.

Now, I want to read one more scripture. I'm going to go a little, just a little over time, but we started just a few minutes late. So, 2 Thessalonians, I'm jumping back. I'm jumping back probably, wow, close to 13 years before Jude wrote, okay, before Jude wrote in 2 Thessalonians.

Paul writes, and I'm not going to go through this whole thing. It's actually pretty much a prophecy, but I want to show one statement he makes that is very important in understanding how this all fits together. 2 Thessalonians and let's look at 2, starting in verse 1. Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to be soon shaken of mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter as from us, as though the day of Christ had come. So, you see what's happening here. He's saying there's some people that have come along with a whole new explanation about the return of Jesus Christ, and they're telling people Jesus Christ had already returned. And they're suddenly doing it—well, some of it's not so subtle—they're publishing letters and writing Paul's name to it. So, if you get a letter that says, Jesus has already come and my name's on it, it's not for me. That's what Paul's saying here.

So, you go through and he explains what's going to happen. There's going to be the temple, because the temple hadn't been destroyed quite yet, but it would not long after this. So, this man of sin is going to sit in the temple before Christ returns and deceive the whole world. But in the middle of this prophecy, there's this statement, verse 7, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

Yes, this is about a prophecy of a great lawless one who's going to sit in the temple and deceive the world right before the return of Jesus Christ, but he tells them it's already begun.

It's already begun. There's a new Christianity formed, and that new Christianity would morph, and morph, and morph, and morph, and it's morphing again. There hasn't been this level of change in Christianity, man, for a long, long time. It's taken a hundred years to get there. Okay, it didn't happen overnight, but it's going to be going on a hundred years, but now it's reaching its apex. This change in Christianity. It's happened before, but it is the mystery of lawlessness, the mystery of lawlessness. All through the ages, except through the Gnostics, I mean, there's a couple times in the second, third century, there's a few times the Catholic Church was absolutely lawless, but they've tried to have some rules. We're reaching a point where there's going to be lawless, and it's going to be a Christian lawlessness. It's why in Revelation 13, the great beast at the end, there's two parts. One is secular, and one is religious. One is religious, and there's going to be this new Christianity who speaks like the devil, but looks like a lamb.

Speaks like the dragon, but looks like a lamb. Looks like Christ. Looks like his Christian.

That's what's coming. The heresies we're looking at today aren't in the church yet, except in little bits and pieces, but we're going to be attacked by it.

We're going to have to become prepared. It's this postmodern, new age, humanist Christianity in which everything is being defined, including the nature of Jesus Christ. Everything's being redefined. So here's the questions we all face. How much have we allowed the spirit of lawlessness to come into our thinking? How much religious pluralism have we accepted? All roads, all good people get to go to God. Whether a person is good or not isn't the issue. Whether they have God's spirit is the issue. That's the issue. That's the issue. Whether they're being converted is the issue.

So we're not talking about, there's lots of nice, good people.

There's lots of nice, good people that go to church.

You know, some of the most in just coming from the northeast, some of the most religious people, people knew about, usually at least the legends were, were the mafiosos. I mean, they went to church every Sunday.

But their fruits weren't Christian, right? You wouldn't call the heads of the mafia Christians, yet they went to church every Sunday.

And they seem nice if you met them, you know, in a public setting, not in a nice way. But in a non-public setting. Then a third is, how much sin have we slipped into our lives because we're abusing grace? Now, let me say this. All of us will fight sin till the point we die.

So it's like, oh, I'm not perfect. Well, welcome to the club. Every one of us will fight different kinds of sin till the day we die. And the moment you think you have all conquered, just pray about it and God will show you a sin you didn't even know you had. So, I'm not saying that you're going to reach perfection. I'm saying you just won't give up because the grace of God keeps forgiving you. Because the grace of God keeps drawing you back. Because the grace of God keeps saying, no, you have value to me. Let's conquer this. But when you get to the point where you say, you know what? So what? The grace of God forgives me. And, you know, it's Saturday night and it's time for another good drunk, like I do every other Saturday night. And it's okay because of the grace of God. Now we've slipped into this when we start excusing sin with the grace of God. The grace of God keeps pulling us back to overcome. He's pulling us back to forgiveness. He keeps pulling us back to knowing where God's taking us. To abuse the grace of God like lawlessness does. Oh, I know it's wrong, but God understands me. God made me this way. So it's okay.

How many times have you ever heard Christians say, but God made people that way? You know, they'll use that all the time for other things. I don't know why they don't use it for alcoholics. There are a lot of alcoholics that have a genetic predisposition. You give them just a little bit of alcohol and they turn into alcoholics. It's a very specific gene. They have actually been able to nail it down. So why aren't they excused? I can't forget that one out.

Oh, well, they were just made that way. God made them that way. So they can drive drunk and run over my child any day. It's okay because God made them that way. We would never say that, but we'll say it about other things. Oh, God made them that way. No, we all have genetic flaws, every single one of us. We live in a world that was kicked out of Eden and even genetically we're messed up. That doesn't justify sin. There's going to be a great religious revival on this earth and it's going to make people believe they can have a mystical relationship with Jesus Christ and they will promise love and freedom. And it's going to produce the opposite. But that's what it'll promise. That's why you and I have to humbly go before God all the time and ask for His guidance. Humbly say, I will submit to you, but you must show me. You must guide me. You must help me. It means we've got to stay in here. We have to stay in here.

Because if not, they're going to come up with arguments that if you don't know this, seem to make sense. This was sort of a downer of a sermon in some ways. I've been trying to give sort of a sermon on hope. But you know the bottom line is we've got to do this too. We have to understand the world we live in and what we're susceptible to.

We have to understand what we really believe, what we really believe, not what we think we believe, think we believe, not what we say we believe, but what we really believe, that we've proven between us and God.

You know, it's not this is the matter of people say, well the church says, okay, let's, it's not what the church says in the end. It's not what I say in the end, it's what God says in the end that matters. That's what matters, right? So you have to know what God wants of you, what God expects of you, why God has called you, what is it God has given to you, and you have to understand the enormity of the grace that he's given to you, the enormity of the grace he's given to you, and that the price he paid to give it to you.

Do we understand the price Jesus Christ and God the Father paid to give us grace? Because if he did, we could never use it as a freedom to sin, and we could never fall into the mystery of lawlessness.