False - Christians, Short And Sweet 3 Series

False - Christians

Jude

The year was 2003

“When officials announced the vote tally on June 8, thunderous applause showered the crowd at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Concord, N.H

The occasion: Episcopalians in the diocese of New Hampshire had just elected the first openly homosexual bishop

As joyous clergy and delegates leapt to their feet, the new bishop, Gene Robinson, ambled forward, stood before the altar, and embraced his grown children and his male lover.

On May 23 in Nashville, officials of Glendale Baptist Church met with officials of the Tennessee Baptist Convention

The issue: Glendale had in 2002 hired as its associate

pastor April Baker

A practicing lesbian, a fact the Tenn. Baptist Convention did not learn until January 2003

TBC officials felt Ms. Baler’s sexuality violated Scripture

Glendale Baptist Church officials believed otherwise, and asked the TBC to quietly vote them out

In October, 2002, about 300 Presbyterian Church (USA)

members from Northeastern churches gathered at South

Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

There they nailed to a church door dissents and demands that included calls for the reversal of PCUSA laws against ordaining non-celibate homosexuals and marrying same-sex couples

During an ensuing two-hour worship service

Church members hoisted the door atop sawhorses and converted it into a communion table

Where gay ministers and elders blessed bread and wine, then served it to worshippers

A growing number of churches in some denominations are stepping beyond the acceptance of repenting homosexuals as members

And instead loving both sinner and sin

Denominations that for decades have ordained pastors who reject such essential doctrines of Christianity as

Christ’s deity and His resurrection are now also on the verge of affirming homosexuality as biblical

Conservative Christians who remain in those bodies are fighting for the scriptural view of sexual morality that has stood for millennia.”

Some of the conservative members of the 2.3 million-member denomination known as the ’Anglicans’

worldwide

Will be meeting to decide whether or not to walk

out of the denomination over this issue

One has to ask oneself

Why it took them so long to recognize their own apostasy?

Jude is an amazing little book

Perhaps the least appreciated and most overlooked of all N.T. books

Jude is the only N.T. book devoted exclusively to confronting “apostasy”

Meaning defecting from the true Biblical faith

An apostate is a person who has turned away from God’s truth and embraced a false-teaching

Jude wrote to condemn the apostates

And to urge believers to contend for the faith

He called for discernment on the part of the church

And a rigorous defense of Biblical truth

We are still under the same orders today

We are to contend for the faith, for Biblical truth

The word contend is descriptive of the strain to which a contestant is put

It might be compared to an athletic event when the contestants strain or rise to the challenge of the event

Jude wrote this urgent imperative for Christians to wage war against error in all forms

And fight strenuously for the truth

Like a soldier who has been entrusted with the sacred task of guarding a Holy treasure

We are living in a world full of false-teachers

Preaching and living a counterfeit Gospel

Misleading thousands of people who need to hear the true Gospel

This world is full of false-Christians as well

That claim to know Jesus because they prayed a prayer one time

But are living like the devil

In a sense, these false-converts are really false-teachers

With their horrible testimony

Living like the world

But claiming to be a Christian

We are to be in the world, but not of the world

Are you a false-teacher?

Are you living a life that glorifies God, or glorifies Satan?

Jesus says in Matthew 12:30 He that is not with me is against me

There are only two teams to choose from

Jude 4 says the phrase “ungodly men”

Godless men have slipped into your group, secretly

They are among us

Denying the only Lord God

Maybe not denying him with your mouth

But with your lifestyle

Jude hits hard, calls it like it is

And we are in a time of many false-teachers

Many false-Christians

Jude quickly goes into a history lesson to remind us of how God dealt with false-teachers in the past

First he mentions the rebellion of the Nation of Israel

Although they were delivered from Egypt

They refused to trust God and enter the promise land

Remember out of the estimated 2 million Hebrews that left Egypt only Caleb and Joshua enters the promise land

All the other adults died in the desert

Israel struggled with idol worship in the desert

They struggled with lack of faith in the desert

Sound familiar?

This nation struggles with idol worship

That includes us here, that includes you