Text: Jude 12-15, Title: Damaged Goods, Date/Place: LSCC, 9/17/06, AM
A. Opening illustration: I hope that there are no postal employees here this morning. As you may guess, living 1300 miles away from family with little children, we send and receive a lot of packages in the mail. And there for a while, it seemed like everything coming our way was destroyed by the time it got here. And of course on the package it is marked “Damaged when Received” in a lame attempt to excuse the Sebago PO for giving us a box that looks like it has been used for target practice. And most of these gifts are not monetarily worth much, so no insurance, but sentimentally they are valuable to us. And many of the items inside look very similar to the box on the outside, destroyed. So they go from the box to the trash can. What a waste!
B. Background to passage: Jude uses some natural illustrations to describe these apostates further. And knowing that false teaching is a danger to the church, we can deduce the effects of their apostasy on the church. This again stress how destructive and dangerous false teaching is to the Church of Jesus Christ. In the five illustrations, the last four form two similar sets of teaching, so we will deal with them together.
C. Main thought: In our text we will see three effects that false teacher/ings can have on the church.
A. An Impure Church (v. 12)
1. First Jude says that these false teachers are blemishes or spots on their love feasts. This word that is used is the same word used to describe coral reefs that lie beneath the surface of the water that cause damage to passing ships. Explain the love feasts—a meal alongside the worship service and the Lord’s Supper. These impure men taking of the Supper unworthily, and making a mockery of communal fellowship, constituted a stain or blemish upon the purity of the church. Purity of the church as a whole is very important to Christ. And this impurity leads to selfishness, and lack of concern for others.
2. 2 Pet 2:13, Eph 5:27, Rev 21:2,
3. Illustration: the opening lines of I kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris, a suit of clothes hanging on a rack by a window. A sign on it read: “Slightly Soiled—Greatly Reduced in Price.” As a result, we go down in spiritual defeat because we have been careless about little sins. After a violent storm one night, a large tree, which over the years had become a stately giant, was found lying across the pathway in a park. Nothing but a splintered stump was left. Closer examination showed that is was rotten at the core because thousands of tiny insects had eaten away at its heart. The weakness of that tree was not brought on by the sudden storm; it began the very moment the first insect nested within its bark
4. This is a reminder to believers that the purity of the church is important, and a responsibility of the entire congregation to maintain. There is a sense of congregational accountability to Christ. Your sin doesn’t just affect you, it affects others around you, and it affects your church. Your sin may cause the blessing of God to be withheld from LSCC. This is why revivals happen when individuals from within a group begin to confess their sin before God. This is not just the responsibility of the leadership to assess or promote, but of everyone. Many times you will notice small faults and inconsistencies in the people that you are closest to at LSCC before I will. This is also a reminder of the seriousness of sin. Consequences of sin vary, but the heinousness of sin is always that it is infinitely offensive to God. This is why the Lord’s Supper is usually preceded with a time of self-examination. And you are really expected to look through your life and take stock, and ask God to cleanse you afresh as you repent from sin. This is also why we take care of church discipline concerns at the Supper.
B. An Impoverished Church (v. 12)
1. The next two examples Jude gives are clouds with no water and trees with no fruit. Especially in arid climates with dry and wet seasons like the Middle East, rain and water always symbolizes life. And fruit trees again indicate a promise of a harvest of life-sustaining food. But Jude describes these apostates as full of much promise, but lacking in delivery. These false teachers will actually block the living water, and spiritual food from a church, thus starving it to death. Blocking sun for warmth, and giving shelter to snakes, rats, and other such hindrances to health and life
2. 1 John 2:26, Amos 2:4, Pro 28:10, Matt 18:6,
3. Illustration: In 1991, US News and World Report did an article on world hunger, and they reported, that 11 million people starve to death each year, but think of how many people in a country that has abundant spiritual food starve to death spiritually, and the reason is leadership and membership who are not committed to Christ, bearing fruit, and teach that it is perfectly normal to be that way, someone asked me about a particular preacher the other day that tends to preach a gospel of self-esteem and pop psychology, this man and men like him teach a false gospel because it comforts people in their sin
4. These impoverished teachers produce shallow, weak, anemic “believers” or church goers that don’t care much for doctrine, biblical exposition, sacrifice, missions, or God. Teachers, disciples, church members: you should see rivers of living water flowing out of your life. You should see lives changed by virtue of knowing you. You should be constantly opening the lifegate for others as you point them to Christ. People should be growing in their knowledge of Christ, and the depth of their walk because of you. Husbands, are your wives growing? Parents, are your children growing based on your example. Empty, hollow, hypocritical lives will foster empty, hollow, hypocritical lives, because you are hindering the working of God through you, and harboring deadly poison that will sicken the spiritual existence of all around you. We must ask the question in our churches, are we being fed. Not just are we feeling better about ourselves, but are we bearing spiritual fruit, more content, more willing to sacrifice, more loving of God and His law?
C. An Indiscriminant Church (v. 13)
1. The last two illustrations that Jude gives are of destructive waves of the sea being tossed about and stars wandering across the sky. The sea is used by the apostle Paul and James to indicate instability—doctrinal, theological, ideological, emotional, and mental instability. These men followed religious fads without asking critical questions. They probably adapted their faith to whatever environment that they were in. If they are with conservatives, then they are conservative, etc. The wandering stars comment is because the ancients were confused by planets that had orbits instead of staying in place like the stars themselves. Like them, these men had no foundations, no convictions, and no discernment.
2. Eph 4:14, James 1:6, Heb 13:9, 2 Tim 4:3,
3. Illustration: I like men like MacArthur that are sometimes wrong, but never in doubt. He wrote a book one time about common religious book fads like Purpose Driven Life, Prayer of Jabez, Wild At Heart. And He is constantly pointing out the errors of fads like the seeker movement. And He is constantly pointing people back to an orthodox teaching of salvation. Hank Hennegraff is another that is always confronting error with biblical and doctrinal affirmations. The commentary I was reading the other day had some really good things to say about this passage, but then he went off on a weird tangent about the figurativeness of the language about Hell, and how it really wasn’t that way, Beach trip to Panama City Beach with a Christian group from UT and they began preaching about a second blessing, baptism of the Spirit where a Christian doesn’t have all of the Spirit, and he must go and beg God to baptize him/her with the gift of the Spirit so that you can live a superior Christian life…and I went down and lined things up.
4. As we read, watch TV, listen to preaching, we must discriminate between that which is good, and that which is junk. Don’t just take what I say, or James McDonald, David Jeremiah, or John MacArthur says without thinking about it. Good, well-intentioned biblical scholars can be wrong. And Satan has evil men, thinly veneered in Christianity that can lead to error purposefully. We must constantly line things up with scripture to see if they are correct, good, and wholesome. We need to have a critical thinking part of our minds that works constantly, else we are drawn into error. This doesn’t mean be hyper-critical, impossible to please, but simply discerning. Enjoy a good religious debate regularly with other believers.
A. Closing illustration: the current medical profession branded Dr Ignaz Semmelweis as a heretic who prescribed hand washing before all surgical treatments. Even though during trial runs hospitals reduced their mortality rates in infants and mothers from about 14% to less than 1%. He was fired from his hospital and hated in Vienna where he practiced by the entire medical community. Their good intentions however, were killing lots of people. What a waste?
B. Recap
C. Invitation to commitment
