Avoiding Destruction and Becoming Trustworthy

Fake news.

There is nothing new in the world. Even the early church struggled to know what to believe and what was true. Jude, the brother of Jesus, had a dramatic transformation from unbelief to becoming a pillar of the early church. Jude’s short letter calls Christians to pay attention, but not just to what is being said. We also need discernment for those who try to tell us the news.

Jude teaches us how to avoid destruction and how to be trustworthy, for the name of Jesus and for our neighbors.

Join us as we work on our discernment.

Transcript

Hey Jude, >> don’t make it bad. >> Take a sad song and make it better. I have a sinus infection. Do you know this Beatles song, everybody? Maybe. Okay, so Hey Jude. Uh, after I preached the first week on the book of Jude, someone says, “We’ve got to sing it.” That was so terrible. I’m so embarrassed at that. I even practiced earlier. John, you were supposed to help me out.

Do you know the history of this song? Much like most of things in history, it’s debatable. But here is one of the prevailing stories. Okay, so John Lennon and Paul McCartney are the Beatles, two of them. John Lennon ends up having an affair with Yoko Ono and decides to get divorced from his first wife. Little five-year-old Julian, John Lennon’s son, and his mom and Paul McCartney were friends. But after the breakup, Paul McCartney found himself like missing them. So, he drove to go visit. And as he drove, he wrote a song for Julian. Hey, Jewels. We now know it as Hey Jude.

This 5-year-old boy had just had his world explode. People he trusted failed him. Have you ever had your world blow up like this? Maybe not so dramatic as your parents getting divorced, but maybe. Or maybe just some people you thought you could trust and then something happened and you realized ah they are not trustworthy. There are many people in our world that we have all followed probably and have found out they’re not perfect to the point where, you know, major failing.

There are people in the church that we are supposed to be trustworthy, supposed to lead certain lives, supposed to live like Jesus, and we find out later, yeah, it’s not just disappointing, it’s heartbreaking. When I read stories, and it’s just happened again this week, of people either Christian authors or Christian pastors who have done something to get them arrested, I need Paul McCartney write me a song. Instead, we have the book of Jude.

This was not a problem uh that the early church was not familiar with. There’s nothing new under the sun. Jude is written by a brother of Jesus, one who grew up with the person that we now call, Messiah and Savior and Lord. Jude is a brother of Jesus. And although growing up or living with Jesus at one point, the New Testament tells us Jude and the brothers thought Jesus had lost his mind, but he had a transformation to the point where now he has written one of the letters in our New Testament.

Jude’s short letter calls Christians to pay attention not to just what’s being said, which we need to pay attention to that, but who is saying it? So, fake news is nothing new. And Jude is raising the red flags 20,000 years ago, and it’s still true today, right? We got to like do our research on who we’re listening to.

So, in verse three, Jude starts off like this. Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write you about the salvation we all share. They’re all believers. They all share in Jesus’s salvation. But now I find I must write about something else. Urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy pe holy people. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into our churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. This is the New Living Translation. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago. For they have denied our only master and lord Jesus Christ.

Jude wanted to write about something else. Perhaps just the good news. Isn’t it so good that God loves us? Isn’t it so great that Jesus has died for our sins? Instead, he gets wind that there are these teachers that have come into this church and they have exchanged Jude said exchanged almost like transferred God’s grace for licentiousness. There’s a good Bible Jesus word for you today. This ungodly behavior. They’ve said, “Oh, I have God’s grace. Whoopee. I’m going to do whatever I want. It’s like a free credit card and we’re going shopping. Jude says, “Watch out for people like that.” And defend the faith. Fight for it. Don’t stand for that type of living.

Verse 5, Jude says, “So I want to remind you though you already know these things that Jesus the Lord first rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt, but later he destroyed those who did not remain faithful. And I remind you of the angels who did not stay within limits of authority God gave them, but left the place they belonged. God has kept them securely chained in prisons of darkness, waiting for the great day of judgment. Aren’t you glad you came to church today? Verse seven, it gets better. And don’t forget Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns, which were filled with immorality and every kind of sexual perversion. Those cities were destroyed by fire and serve as a warning of the eternal fire of God’s judgment.

Anyone want to preach today? John uh worship leader earlier this week said, “Woo, you’ve got a uh you’ve got quite a section of scripture this week, Sandy.” I said, “Yes, pray for your pastor.”

Jude first loves a triad. We talked about this earlier in the book. He calls those who are listening. He says, “You’ve been called, you’ve been loved, and you’ve been kept.” This three um words in a row or phrases in a row, it’s very Old Testament. Think about the father, son, and holy spirit. Okay, Peter denies Jesus three times and then he’s restored three times. There’s something about listening in groups of three. I wonder if it’s because two isn’t enough and four seems like too many. Three feels like just right. All right. Well, it does for me anyway.

The first triad here in this section is Israel in the wilderness, the rebelliousness of angels, and Sodom and Gomorrah. I wish that there was some movie out right now kind of like the three amigos which was a big one back in the day. There isn’t. But like I just think about these are like the three amigos. These are three examples not of like whoopee good things but instead what not to be. This is like the terrible threesome. Okay.

First Israel in the wilderness. If you have ever been to Sunday school or grown up in church, you have probably heard about how the Jews were in the wilderness wandering for 40 years. There’s a whole long story why it turned out that way. But poor Moses was just trying to get those Jews back to the promised land and they would not listen. So much so that the people who had been promised the promised land, they actually no longer received that promise and they died in the wilderness. At one point in Numbers 14:23, God says, “No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.” Although their children one day would end up there, they themselves would not get to live there.

The second story is in Genesis, Genesis 6. It’s literally two or three verses, but it says that the people began to multiply in the earth and people had daughters. The sons of God, meaning women, saw these beautiful women and took any they wanted as wives. So God’s was intention that humans would stay in their lane and the angels would stay in the others. But there were these angels apparently that the ladies were just too tempting and they took them as wives.

The third example. Are you feeling this yet? This is exciting, isn’t it? Again, so glad you came today. The third example is Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 17 and 18. This is after the flood. Okay. The world was so bad that God was like, I need a redo. It was a hard reset on the computer. I don’t do this very often, I realize with my laptop. I just leave it running. I’ll reset programs, but very rarely do I hit the hard reset. Maybe you’re different. But God hit the hard reset button. He unplugged everything and started over.

After that, Sodom and Gomorrah were so bad. God wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. There was injustice. There was pride. There was sexual perversion that God was like, “I just got to be done with this.” Abraham intervened. Said, “God, please don’t.” And God was like, “Okay.” Well, then like two minutes later, never mind. They were so bad. And the story is so bad that I’m not even going to speak of it because we have children in the room. Okay.

Now in the New Testament, the New Testament uses Sodom and Gomorrah as an example, not for a specific sin, everyone, but for the general idea that when you rebel from the Lord, there are consequences. In Luke 10, Jesus sends out 72. He has had his 12 disciples talking about Jesus, talking about the good news, and then he chooses 72. In Luke 10, it says, “The Lord chose 72 other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit. They were going to go kind of as ambassadors to pave the way.”

These were his instructions to them. The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest and ask him to send more workers into the fields. For any of you that have hung out here very long, you might know that at 10:02, a few of our alarms go off. At 10:02 a.m., we uh literally take this verse to heart and obey it. God says, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest for the workers, for the laborers.” And so, we’ve decided at 10:02 based on Luke 10:2, we’re going to pray for more laborers. There are stickers in the seatbacks in front of you if you’d like to grab one or set an alarm on your phone. I won’t be embarrassed if you grab it right now and set an alarm.

Verse eight, Jesus says, “If you enter a town and it welcomes you, eat whatever set before you. Heal the sick and tell them the kingdom of God is near you now. But if a town refuses to welcome you, go out into the streets and say, “Wipe even the dust of your town from our feet to show that we have abandoned you to your fate.” And know this, the kingdom of God is near. I assure you, even wicked Sodom will be better off than such a town on judgment day.” Jesus uses Sodom as an example of a place that is rebellious against the Lord and will incur judgment.

Verse 16, Jesus says to his disciples, “Anyone who accepts your message about the kingdom is accepting me, Jesus, and anyone who rejects you is rejecting me. And anyone who rejects me is rejecting God who sent me.”

When I read this section of Jude, it can feel very disjointed and kind of all over the place. I got to like learn all this stuff in the Old Testament. What’s really happening in Genesis and what’s with the angels? But what I think can try to weave the things together, bring it together in a braid of some sort is rebelliousness. In each of these situations, there were either people groups or individuals who were rebellious. And there was a consequence. Whether it’s verbal scoffing of who God is, sexuality, just disobeying God’s leadership, Jude is firm. Teachers who live that way are not to be listened to. And you are not to live that way either. Whether it’s in Genesis 6, in Jesus’s day, or the early church, or right now, the warning is if you reject Jesus, if you reject the coming kingdom, you are giving yourself to God’s judgment.

Jude continues in this way. He says, “These people who claim authority from their dreams, apparently there were leaders among them said, I have a dream.” And then they said, “This is now how we are to live.” They claim authority from their dreams. They live immoral lives. They defy authority and scoff at supernatural beings. But even Michael, this is a little random everybody, but even Michael, one of the mightiest of the angels, did not dare accuse the devil of blasphemy, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” This took place, you know, when Michael was arguing with the devil about Moses’s body. Um, this is an extra Bible source that Jews at that time would have understood that story. But for us, it’s like when someone tells an inside joke at a party and you’re like, and then you don’t really know what’s going on. That’s sort of what’s happening here.

It’s true. But these people, these leaders who have wormed among you, they scoff at things they don’t understand. Like unthinking animals, they do whatever their instincts tell them. And so, and I want you to hear this, okay, everybody? And so, they bring about their own destruction.

We could have a great conversation today. And I kind of wish in this passage we could. We could have a great conversation today about like, geez, God just seems mean in the Old Testament. Like he brings fire. He’s blowing people away. There’s the flood. What’s going on? And then Jesus comes and Jesus is so nice and Jesus offers forgiveness and it feels like conflicting. I want to say that that is not the good news. That is a confusing understanding of who God is.

In reality, the big story, old and new, and for eternity, is that God created us because God loves us. God created us in God’s image to reflect who he is. And when you exhibit your gifts and your talents and who you are, you are reflecting God to the world. But there are boundaries and there are expectations with our bodies, with our mouths, and with our lives. And when we stray from that, when we rebel from God’s way, we bring destruction on ourselves. And Jesus came in the flesh to live among us as a trustworthy person.

When the whole world blows up and you’re 5-year-old Julian looking around wondering what is going on, Jesus is trustworthy. And people like Jude lived with Jesus. Jude was like a brother. Okay, any of you have a brother? If you’re a twerp, who’s the first person that’s going to call you on it? Your brother. I have three brothers-in-laws. Oh, they’re going to call me on it for sure. And they hardly even are with me every day. There’s just something about a brother, right? Or a sister.

Jude had a transformation where he grew up with Jesus. He knew Jesus, rejected Jesus for a time, and then somehow was transformed by this good news and became a trustworthy voice. And that is the voice teaching us today. Someone who knew Jesus personally, knew the goodness of the salvation, but heard that there were wicked teachers among this church and said, “Red flag, everyone. Stop everything you’re doing and read this letter.”

Jesus sent out the 72 to tell those who would listen that the kingdom was at hand. There’s a new way to live. These stories that Jude brings up, these famous stories about Israel wandering in the desert, the rebellious angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, there are examples to warn us. There is judgment. Next week, we’re going to talk about Jesus coming back and what that’s going to look like. And there’s like there’s going to be a hard stop when Jesus comes back. But until then, we have the ability to choose for ourselves.

Are we going to be the trustworthy ones? Are we going to live a life so that people who are looking from the outside like Julian, like maybe some of your friends and family who would say, “Man, the church is just full of liars, people who commit fraud. They do things to children that are wicked. I have no time for that. Are we going to be the kind of people that say, “You’re right. I don’t have any time for it either. And that’s not what I’m about. And that’s not what my church is about.”

There’s some really good news. You ready for some good news, everyone? Everyone like, “All right.” Okay. This is not easy to preach. I’m sweating, but it’s also warm in here. Everyone online. I ran into some really good news this week. If a church is a smaller community, you have a better chance of your friends and family trusting it. Do you know that mega churches, two thirds of the people who are not involved in church, they don’t trust those mega churches. I am not throwing shade on mega church. Okay, that’s not what this is about. When we are smaller, people who don’t go to church, there are twice as many people that will trust us.

And I think that this is why if you come to a church our size, you have a chance to have a communicate, have a conversation with the people that are on stage. You might even get to know the pastor’s kids. You can have a conversation with someone and join a small group and enter their home and see what they really live like. The only people who are trusted least less than politicians, they’re the worst, by the way. Do you know the second least trusted individual in our country? Celebrity pastors. I do not want to be famous.

None of us should just shrug off anyone who’s committing fraud, sexual sin, or child abuse. All of us should be shocked by a lack. We should not be embarrassed or like try to avoid it. You don’t have to follow Jesus to know that’s wrong. We can agree that that is not right. Jude says, “Defend the faith.” And I don’t think that just means, “Yeah, that’s wrong. I don’t want to be like that.” I think it also means that we live differently. We point the way to the Jesus who lived perfectly. Not because I am going to do it and this church ain’t going to do it. We’re going to fail you. We’re going to forget to call you back. We’re going to not have great juice sometimes. Or your pastor might really struggle to prepare a sermon that includes Sodom and Gomorrah and angels sleeping with humans. But we can point to Jesus who is trustworthy.

Research shows that when people are connected to organizations like churches, they can trust them and they have that trusted relationship. They thrive. Because Community Covenant is not a mega church, and I don’t think we ever will be. We could be just what our friends and family need. The Julians out there whose lives have blown up. Your friends and family who are tired of reading about more celebrity pastors or politicians committing fraud. We can be different. We can be trustworthy. Not because we’re perfect, but because we’re pointing to the one who is. Are you with me?

So, let’s be honest today. This list of rebelliousness, does it bring something up in you? Does it convict you about, gosh, you know what, Lord? I’ve been rebellious in this way. Jesus would say, “Come and repent.” If you’ve never come to Jesus, would today be the day? Would today be the day when you say, “You know what, Jesus? I do need to trust you. I need to trust somebody. And if you are a follower of Jesus, is there an area in your life where you’d say like, “Man, I don’t want to be in that trifecta of a list of someone who’s being rebellious.”

And secondly, would we be fighting for this place to be a trustworthy place? Our small groups, our accountability relationships, our friendships, our youth group. Would we fight for it to be a trust trustworthy place?

I’m gonna invite the worship team to come forward. If you have kids in Sunday school, I’ll invite you to go get them. I was thinking today as we sang um uh Fuego de Dios (Consuming Fire). This passage feels a little bit like a consuming fire to me potentially. But would we trust that God is trustworthy and can handle us whether we’re rebellious or not? And would we trust that God would be a consuming fire in our church burning out whatever needs to be burned out?