Henrich, Stuart: Ministry From Jude 07 ~ Jude

We'll start with verse fourteen. And E- Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to vin- convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. But beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves essentially, having not the Spirit. But ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments bought up by the flesh. Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. Let us pray. Father, once again, we just thank thee for thy word, and we thank thee for all the import of it and the truth of it, and we ask thee that thou will profit us this evening as thy Holy Spirit leads us in our thinking in regard to this particular passage. Just guide us we, as we contemplate this, this truth, and we would ask thee that it might have a very, very practical application in our own lives, to the end that we might be more devoted to this great God, thyself, and to thy son, and to yieldedness to thy holy Spirit. We just ask thee that thou will help us, each one. Bless each one. Let us know our needs spiritually. Let us know exactly where we are in relationship to thee. And so we ask thee that thou will just fit a word for our particular needs. Bless the children as they listen too. We just seek this of thee in our Lord Jesus Christ's name. Amen. The passage, of course, that we had last time was in regard to the Lord coming with the ten thousands of his saints, and we spoke about Enoch, the son from heaven, Adam, having prophesied that this would take place. And when the Lord comes, he's going to come to execute judgment, and he's going to convince the ungodly of their deeds. Now, it's amusing to me, uh, how men speak, in a sense, and we catch it in the secular field as well as in the spiritual field, and men somehow have a hard time accepting God's diagnosis of them. Uh, remember how hard it was for you, or it was for me, to realize that I was unacceptable to God, even the very best that I could offer. About, I don't know how many years ago, maybe fifteen years ago, I copied this out of the automo- motive retailer, and this would interest Roy if he were here because he was an insurance man on automobile insurance, and these were some of the, the notes that people sent in as excuses for their accidents. Now, when you, uh, listen to these, um, don't laugh, all right? Now, the reason I say that, listen to this. This is what they had on the accident form. I knocked over a man. He admitted it was his fault as he had been run over before. Now that's logical. I collided with a stationary bus coming the other way. To avoid a collision, I ran into the other car. The car had turned sharper than was necessary, owing to an invisible truck. I collided with a stationary tree. The other man altered his mind, so I had to run over him. I told the other idiot what he was and went on. I can give no details of the accident as I was somewhat concussed at that time. Whatever con- concussed is, concussion, I guess. Uh, a pedestrian hit me and went under my car. I blew my horn, but it wouldn't work. It was stolen. I misjudged the lady crossing the street. Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided a tree that I didn't have. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention. I left my car unattended for a minute, when by accident or design, it ran away. Now, the thrust of it, of course, is always that it's not the fault of the one who actually was involved in the accident. And of course, that's typical. There's a fellow that I know of who constantly has said that I have, I sin, and I have a tendency to sin because God made me that way, and so thus he excuses himself. But it's interesting to see God's answers to things like this. Would you turn to Ecclesiastes, please, the seventh chapter, and notice a verse that really refutes all of this, this idea that we are so innocent, you know. Ecclesiastes seven, and look at verse twenty nine. Though lo, this only I have found, that God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions. Now, as far as God is concerned, Adam was made, as you know, perfectly upright, and he had that holiness that was his, not as something that was acquired, but rather something he was simply because he was innocent. His environment was perfect, and yet he chose to sin and chose it deliberately. God made man upright. But of course, since then, men have sought all kinds of inventions to do evil. And the in- inventions, of course, are of our own creation. We choose to do it, and we can't lay it to God's charge to say that God made me that way. God did not make man that way. We have our own personal responsibility when we realize that what we do, we do out of the volition of our own will. Whatever we do, we do because we want to do. There's nothing that we don't do that we don't want to do. And when I say that, I'm talking about the sense of choice that we have. And no matter what it is, if you think about it, the reason that we do it, whether it be what we call good or evil, we do it because we want to do it. When we don't do evil, we don't do evil because there's a penalty to it, and when we do good, there's a profit to it, so we do it. We choose what we choose to do. And God doesn't coerce us into evil, and he doesn't make us evil. He rather commands us to be good and to do what is right. And because men choose to do wrong, we have verse fifteen. and if you'll go back to Jude, and notice what God says. He's going to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Now, when he comes at this time, of course, this time is particularly speaking of that day in which he comes to judge with his saints. The end of that matter, of course, will be the reign of Christ. He'll execute the judgment in coming from heaven with ten thousand of the saints to bring the world of the Antichrist to an end. He will cast the false prophet and false beast alive into the lake of fire, it says, and then he will set up his kingdom, and this is the beginning of his reign that ends with the millennial, not ends the reign with the millennial reign, but ends that time when he will deal with the human race as it functions now. And when I say that, I simply mean this, that God is going to give man one more glorious opportunity to respond to a perfect reign. Now, there has been no perfect reign of men. There have been good kings and there have been evil kings, but there has been no perfect ruler. I often long, you know, for a, a correct judgment. I think of the, the last, the last ball games that we had, the Cardinals and the Royals. And, you know, it's, it's something to see these men strive for the protection, for the pro- uh, perfection that they attain to in their, in their skills, and there's no doubt about it that they're skilled in what they're doing. And these two teams competed, of course, with others, and came out as the two top teams of the nation. One of them lost. Not because they were not good players, not because they were not highly skilled, but they lost because there was somebody better than they. Now, in a sense, this is an unfair judgment. Now, the reason I say that is not because the games weren't fair or anything like that, but those men who lost no doubt strove as hard as those who won. And maybe some of them were more skilled than those who won, but they lost, and they lost out in the end of a great sum of money, and then the popularity they would have and position that they would attain to. But when it comes to God's judgment, there's no such thing as this. We can all be winners, you see, because God is going to judge us on an individual basis as Christians and say, you did what I asked you to do. And it may be a person who was placed in a body that was crippled, that didn't have the opportunities that other people had, and yet that individual strove, and he lived for God, and he did the will of God. And God's not going to say to him, well, this man was better than you because he had a better body and better brain. He's going to say, I understand what you did, and I'm going to reward you accordingly. And there will be absolute fair judgment so that we can all be winners. Now, this is a wonderful thing. We can't lose. If we do what God wants us to do, we can't lose. Here, however, he's speaking about judgment, and man has been under good and evil governments, but there's always a certain detriment to men living as they should because of the inability of our governments. However, when Christ comes, there's going to be an absolute just reign. The ladies will be able to walk down the street at two in the morning in what we would call the worst neighborhood and never fear to be touched. Business deals will be absolutely honest in their execution, or this judge will bring them to judgment. It will be a perfect reign, and you would think that men would be happy to be in such an environment and have such a glorious reign as Christ, but as we know, at the end of such a reign, they will rebel. God takes the whole, then, of time and man's experience in time, and those who have said, I do not want Jesus Christ to be my Lord, my Savior, my King, are going to appear before him in the judgment of the great white throne. And though this particular one be the one at the end of the tribulation, the one in which there will be the full true fulfillment of this will be when men stand before him to be convinced of all their ungodly deeds. Now, the thing that is true is that the convincing here is in the Greek convicting. Now, we can be convinced of sin. I suppose that there's no man, very few men that would say, well, I have never sinned. And they, they can be convinced of sin, convinced of sin, excuse me, and they might even go so far as to be persuaded that they ought to pay some kind of a penalty, and yet never have that conviction that brings them to the place where they say, I deserve it. I deserve whatever God has before me as punishment for my sin, and yet this is the word that is had here. It's to convict, and that's bring to bring to judgment in such a way that the one who is convicted of it will admit his guilt before God and that he deserves punishment, and that will be the way it will be. Men, says God, will have their mouths stopped, and what it is saying that they will not be able to say to God, I have an excuse. They will have no excuse, and they will see themselves as God sees them. And that is why in the book of Revelation, when they just catch a glimpse of the throne of God and of the Lamb, that they say to the mountains as they crawl into crave- caves, fall on us and hide us from the eyes of him who sitteth on the throne. Men can talk now, you know, and we can be very brave when we're not faced with the situation, but when we are, it's a different matter. There was a fellow who was in my department when I was drawing in the, in the, uh, army, and he came in and applied for a job. He was very healthy looking fellow. His name was Sir Paulus. He was a Greek boy, an American Greek. And he had a father who had been in World War I, and his dad had spoken about his fighting in the second division. I even remember how he talked about it in World War I, and it appeared so glamorous to this fellow that he got into the army and asked to be put into the combat forces and work, of course, in North Africa, I suppose, but in Italy, he couldn't take it any longer. Now, when he was dealing with this thing vicariously and said, I think of myself as being in my father's shoes, he could accept all the bombing that his dad talked about, all the shelling that his dad talked about, all the fighting. But when he moved into the experience of the thing, his nerves broke down. And one time after this, when we were riding up to Rome, we came to those areas where the, all the buildings were pockmarked with shells. He went into, I don't know what you'd call it, he just broke down. He just broke down. He just started to shake and cry because of what he saw. They call it in the First World War shell shock. Now, the point is that when we speak about eternal things and eternity and judgment, the best we can do is conjure something in our minds, and there may be a lack of concern about it, but the reality of the thing is what is going to shake men. Judgment may seem a far off thing, but judgment is not necessarily a far off thing, because what happens is that the moment we cross the line from life into death, where there is no reversal of what will take place. So the judgment is imminent, and it's understood as being that, and the full force of the thing will come upon an individual, and he will be in absolute terror before the judgment even takes place. Because the reality of what God speaks about judgment and convincing or convicting persons of their ungodly deeds will come to them with full force, and they'll see there is no hope. Vicariously thinking about things is not the real thing. God must convince us even now and convicts us, and if we can get conviction in our lives as to the import of sin and judgment, then we flee to Christ, and we say, I don't want to go to hell. Now, you know, I don't know, there are some people that, uh, that are appealed to by the love of God, and I think that has a tremendous appeal. But usually it only comes after there's a conviction of sin and a fear of judgment. I don't know how you were, but I didn't come to God with any sense of love toward God. I was glad that he loved me, but the thing that drove me to God was, first of all, the terror of a hell that lay before me. And I wasn't kidding myself in saying, well, I'm not bad enough to go there. I knew that that was my Jew because I was a sinner. And may God give us each one a sense of this, the conviction of sin now that doesn't have to wait for a judgment in which God can has to convince men or convict them of their sin. May God give us that spirit of repentance because he's going to do it. He's going to convince men. Now, their ungodly deeds, of course, and their hard speeches, which they speak against them, are things are that are spoken about these individuals who are apostate in the book of Jude. And they're murmurs, and they're complainers, and they walk after their own lusts. Now, it's quite evident that there are such men in our world today of whom God warns us. For instance, ungodliness in the Bible, ungodly, the word here, has the connotation of, of being without any reverence for God. Now, reverence for God is not simply, as it were, bowing before him and groveling in the dust, but a reverence for God respects what he says. It respects his desires. And men break that second or third commandment, thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord, the Lord thy God, in vain. Not in simply saying his name in a cuss word or something like this, but taking his name in vain would be to say, I am a Christian, and not live the life. I'm a Christian, and we don't live the life. That's taking his name in vain. And the Lord says, I know those that are, the Lord knows those that are his, but let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Taking his name in vain can be used that way. The Lord Jesus spoke about taking God's name in vain and the throne of God and in in oath. By God, I will do it, or something like this. I've heard Christian use the Lord's name in vain, and they say, Lordy this or Lordy that. And one man, I said to him, I said, you know what you're doing? I said, you're taking God's name in vain. He said, well, I didn't mean it that way, but it reminds me of a a soldier. He'd always say, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, this and that. And I said to him, you know what you're saying? You're saying, my God, this and my God, that. This is in vain. And men can do this. They're ungodly deeds which they commit against God. Those things that are committed against him can be not only against his name, but in what they say. Ungodly committed of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. I have here a quotation from a man whom Newsweek magazine selected as one of the ten most influential ministers in America. His name was Dr. Niels Solomon Frederick Byrd. He says in his book on page thirty nine in Sun and the Umbrella, the use of the Bible as the final authority for Christian truth is idolatry. The Christian church has no significant future until it puts away traditional orthodoxy. Now the Lord says that his word is settled forever in the heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ said of God's word, thy word is truth. In Isaiah eight twenty, it says, if they speak not according to this law, it is because there is no light in them. Tremendous words. And yet a man whom Newsweek holds up as one of the ten most influential masters says a thing like that. Not only that, these sinners speak against him. You see, it says, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Doctor Henry, uh, Hen- Harry Emerson Fosbeck, who is now dead and knows the truth of this, was one of the instigators of the Federation of Council, which was the forerunner of the National Council of Churches, which is, of course, is in existence today and prac- practicing their evil practices, but... in his book, The Christian Understanding of God, on page one hundred nineteen, says Mary, Mary, referring to the Virgin Mary, we remember, was found pregnant before her engagement to mild Joseph. Nazareth was harred by a Roman garrison where the soldiers were go- were German mercenaries. Jesus is also reported throughout a long continuous part of the history of art, which is stupid, excuse me, as having been blonde because the artists only did what they thought he looked like. Obviously, no one ever made a picture of him, but this is the argument uses. This is supposedly an unnatural thing for the Mediterranean countries, where there this same tradition was started and continued. Hence, Jesus must have been the child of a blonde German soldier. Such an interpretation has been made, has been made of his life, and who can deny that any such conjecture is not true? Now, here again is a man who is supposed to be a man of God. This is what God is talking about when he talks about apostates. But lest we enter into anything like this, even in our thought, God would have us turn again and again to his word. Dr. Frewer, the one I quoted before, said, he is at best a very vague figure. Jesus never was nor ever became God. Now, what, what lies, what untruths, what things that hard sayings that sinners have spoken against him, when God says, unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And we revert back to the word, and we observe what is said here and see the tendency of men, men in their thinking, and even those who are religious leaders, and we can see why God would bring them to such judgment. But they're murmurers, they talk against the things of God, they complain about the Lord, they walk after their own lusts. Now, the negative side of this, of course, is to warn us against it. When you come to Ephesians's second chapter and the third verse, it speaks about men walking in the flesh, and he speaks about two things in relationship to it. One is the lust of the flesh, and the other is the lust of the mind. Now, I don't know what these men, how they conduct themselves morally as far as, uh, things that are sexual or dishonest in, in the realm of human honesty. I don't know what their conduct was, but they certainly were acting in the flesh in the mental realm, and they fulfilled the lusts of their mind saying, I think this, and I think that, and I don't think that Jesus was the Son of God, and I don't think that the Bible is worth considering as the ultimate authority, et cetera, et cetera. And so they follow the lust of their own mind, which God says is an action of the flesh. And that's why God is going to bring such men who walk- are walking after their own lust to judgment. Now, there's a more or less degree amongst all men to do this. We say, well, all men wouldn't say a thing like this, and yet if we do not submit ourselves to Jesus Christ, if men say, I believe in Jesus, and never receive him as Savior, they are not showing the reverence that God is speaking about. They are not being reverent. They are being ungodly. Now, this is a hard saying, but nevertheless, it's true, because you see, any lack of submission on the part of an individual to God is an ungodly act. It's not showing reverence. And this is, though it be in a lesser degree than these of which the apo- Jude speaks here, yet nevertheless, it is true in degree to all men who have not Christ. These men go on, and because they will not accept Christ as God, then they will have men's persons in admiration because of some advantage to themselves. But now the whole tenor of Jude's passage changes, and he says, but beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before the by the of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he refers to something specific, but nevertheless, what is the antidote to conduct conduct like this? He's saying it's the words that were spoken before the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we could sum the whole thing up and say that's the antidote, but then he says that these have warned how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. And the horror of our day is that there is not a knowledge of the word of God that is respected. Fifty years ago, if you said to a person that the Bible says, though they would not like it, and though they might not agree with it, they would accept it as an authority that they would at least consider. Today, if you said, this is what the Bible says, the majority of men would think, so what? It would make absolutely no impression on them. And that's what has happened because of the riku- ridicule that is made of the God and his word, and there no longer lies authority in it as it did in that day. This, however, does not annul the fact that we should use it and let it govern our lives and minister that word to others because it happens to be the living word of God. And regardless of men's inability to, to give it reverence because of having been taught this in their youth, or having been taught a disrespect for it, yet that power that lies in that word is not annulled by the fact that they disregard it. Because the word of God is alive, and it is powerful, and it is sharper than any two-edged sword. And when God takes up that word and he wants to apply it, it's going to be applied. Now this encourages me. This comforts me, and this encourages me to speak the word to men who have no regard for it, because God can make that word to speak, and he does. They said that there would be men like this, and of course we have more men like this than we've ever had before. It is introduced not only by the religious circles of our society, but bringing in gurus. Do you know that the Hindu religion, in part, teaches that their God made redemption for one woman in the whole world? Now, I have this at home in writing. I speak it to you. One woman in the whole world, because the Hindus so disregard women. And yet, when this is introduced into the United States, many, many women will pick, pick up this cult, whatever it be, what branch of Hinduism, it doesn't matter, and they will actually bow before a guru and adore him as a holy man and disregard Jesus Christ, who lifted up men, women to a place that they never had before. Why is this? Because there are men, as Paul says, who crept in unawares. There are men, there are people, as Peter says, who are false prophets, will be raised up even among you. And so here we have what Jude is warning against. But what then keeps us? The word of God, one. Then in verse nineteen it says, these be they who separate themselves sensually, having not the spirit. And the idea here is fleshly. Now, I'm going to give you an example, and I don't want you to take this all away because I don't think it's true. I had a man come into my office one time, and he asked me to do a drawing for him, and I asked him if he's born again, and he said yes, and he asked me if I were. And I said yes, and he said to me, do you speak in tongues? And I said no, and he said, you are not spiritual. All right, now, what was he thinking? He was thinking in his, in his mind, I speak in tongues. I have felt that urge. I have experienced this thing that this poor fellow over here has not experienced. Now, he said, in view of the fact, in his own thinking, that he hasn't done that, then he is not spiritual. Now, he has separated himself from me sensually, in a fleshly way, because he felt something. He did something with his mouth that was beyond his control. It was a sensual thing, and in a sense, this is what he's speaking about. Now, don't take it all away, because there are men who speak in tongues who are truly of this, born of the Spirit of God, though they are doing it sensually. But the, the extreme here, of course, is they have not the Spirit, and who have, whoever has not the Spirit, these type of persons, they know not God. For if many men have not the Spirit of Christ, he is not of his. All right? But I don't take it all the way with that, but I do say that they separate themselves sensually and say, if you have not experienced this, you're not spiritual, might not even be born again if you haven't had the experience. That's something that is hinted at here, and we can all take it. But once again, that warmth of the beloved, and I like this, but ye beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, two things. And what I like about this is this, that he's drawing us back to the word of God again. And here's something for us, if we get nothing else out of this word tonight, than this, that we build ourselves up in our most holy faith. How do we do it? Every day, we should get into this precious word of God at some time in the quietness of God's presence, consciously seeking him and saying, Lord, just give me something from your word. Now, to do this, now I know the pressures of life, and I know what we're up against, but if we can do this, how do we build up faith? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. How do we build up ourselves? How do we edify ourselves? By getting into the word and saying, Lord, say something to me. And don't leave his presence until he says something to you from his word. Now, the thing that will hinder us is unconfessed sin, but if we will judge ourselves and confess our sin and say, Lord, just speak to me, he's more than ready to take that word and give us some little sustenance, something that will refresh us for the day and build us up. And the other thing is praying in the Holy. To be so yielded to him at that time as to be able to kneel down. Now, this is, this is the more difficult thing for me. It's much more easily for me to study and to my apply myself in this area than it is to kneel and to pray. But it's absolutely necessary that we do this, to be in touch with him, to have that unction that he gives, that guidance that we need so much in our lives. We have to pray, and it's in the Holy Ghost, to be led of him, to so wait on him. Remember, I had a grand aunt. Now, this was when I was just a boy, and she said that she had some catastrophe come into her life, and she said, I burst into the presence of God, and he wasn't listening. Now, I've never forgotten that because there's significance to that. We don't burst into the presence of God. We come into the reverence of God in the quietness of a moment, and we wait, knowing he hears. And when we have his ear, then we can pray in the Holy Spirit, and this is what God wants. And the way for us to be overcomers of all that is tossed at us, and I'm sure that more and more this is going to creep into that which is called the church. The false doctrines, the disregard for Christ, the disregard for God, the disregard for his word. As that creeps in, may God keep us. And how are we to be kept? Building ourselves up in our most holy faith and praying in the Holy Ghost. Let us pray. Father, once again, we thank thee for this thy word, and we ask thee that these two tremendously important things will become a practice in our lives that continues day by day, without interruption, that we might really grow and go on for thee, and have the ministry of thy spirit to us, of the true things of thyself, of the greatness of thy wonderful son, of the truth of his Godhead, of his place even now at thy right hand, of a conscious fellowship with thee and with him, of being able to be so led by thy Holy Spirit that we will pray in thy spirit. We just seek these things of thee as thy people, that we might go on and that we might be so led that we will be a tremendous force in a world that is given over to Satan and evil. Might we indeed be the salt? Why- might we let our light shine? Might we be ambassadors that are unashamed of our great king? Enable us thus to grow in grace, we pray. Bless us now as we face a new week. Give us that necessary for quiet time before thee day by day, and so lay it upon our hearts that we'll seek it, even though it steal, as it were, from what we might like to do in other ways. But do enable us, by thy grace, to do this very thing. And then we know that thou will give us ear, that thou wilt open thy word, and that we will be blessed as thy people. Use us too for thy glory in a world that needs thee so very much. Give us to be led to s- to men and women or boys and girls that need to know thy son, and give us a word for them. We pray in Jesus Christ's name, amen.