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False - Christians, Short And Sweet 3 Series
Contributed by Brian Harvison on Sep 30, 2008 (message contributor)
Summary: This can be a dangerous sermon to preach. It calls sin, sin and challenges Christians to examine their relationship with Jesus. Does Jesus know you?!?
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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