Characteristics You Do Not Want

Jude 12-16

Characteristics you do not want

Introduction

A. When’s the last time you killed someone?

B. Have you robbed a bank within the last 10 years?

C. How familiar are you with the County’s bed and breakfast (yes I mean Jail)?

D. Well then we are doing what were suppose to right?

E. Wrong!

F. We unfortunately pick up some bad attitudes along the way.

G. We start showing Characteristics that we do not want to show

H. Today we are going to talk about four of them.

a. Grumblers

b. Fault finders

c. Followers of own desires

d. Braggers and Brownnosers

I. Grumblers

A. Explanation

1. Nobody likes a grumbler. We all have heard grumblers

2. Jude points out one example that the Jews understand all to well

3. This grumbling has been going on for centuries

4. Grumbling here could be translated as murmurings

5. This is what the people of Israel did

6. When they were wondering around the dessert

7. You really don’t think they sat there and said what a fun time this is

8. Walking around in the heat of the dessert, and you thought this week was hot

9. They were sitting there grumbling the whole time

10. This was not a loud up roar of people this was the under the breath type grumbling, (demonstrate)

B. Application

1. Ok so people walking around a desert for forty years were grumbling, that’s nice, what does it have to do with us?

2. Well it does

3. Face it folks we still grumble

4. WE are people that love to grumble

5. WE do not want to actually confront someone and ask them to explain their position we would rather talk about them behind there back

6. WE don’t want to be real loud about it

7. Let me give you so good example off how we grumble

a) The boss, when is the last time he worked, How in the world does he expect me to do something when he doesn’t ever do anything

b) What do we have to sing all these songs in church, why cant we sing a song take an offering and get out of here

c) Just who does he think he is coming here and tell me how to live my life

8. Grumbling is not a part of heaven thank you God

9. Grumbling should not be a part of us

C. Illustration

1. I was counseling with a guy name Jack, he was the biggest grumbler I have ever met. No matter what we did he was always grumbling. We would do the same thing and he would grumble about how boring it was, we would try something new and he would grumble about how dumb it was. No matter what grumble grumble grumble.

2. What if instead of grumbling we were to lift people up and share new ideas

3. What if instead of telling them what they did wrong, accented the positive.

4. I will tell you what would happen. Confidence would go up, performance would go up, love would increase, happiness would be realized, things would get done, and we would have a better concept of how the body of Christ works

5. Stop grumbling already

II. Faultfinders

A. Explanation

1. This is one of my favorites, the all famous faultfinders

2. When Jude wrote this, he was thinking about his Jewish friends

3. The Jews had a unique, un spiritual gift, of finding fault in everything

4. No matter how good of a job they did they would find faults in the work

5. They were people who were impossible to please

6. Everything that was done had faults

7. Could you imagine sitting in a committee with these fault finders

8. It would drive you crazy

9. These Fault finders found fault EVEN in Jesus

B. Application

1. Yes so the Jews found fault with everything, who cares?

2. We should that who cares

3. We can turn into fault finders

4. We love to see something that we could have done better ourselves

5. WE love to say well it was ok but, he should have done this and this

6. Rather then just enjoying what went on

C. Illustration

1. Every once in while, ok more then I would like to admit it, Heather and I will be at something were I will find a fault in whatever they are doing. We went to a really cool multi media laser light show on vacation. Of course being the super genius that I am looked for every mistake they made. I found them. I found times when they could have done something better. No matter what they did it was just not good enough for me. Finally Heather put me in my place and I shut up