Our scripture reading this morning is from second Peter chapter one. I'll remind you that second Peter is Peter's last word to the church, much like second Timothy. These are the last words of an apostle and last words, especially in that context are lasting words. Let us read it with that conviction in mind. Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received the same kind of faith as ours, by the righteousness of God, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the full knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. For by these he has granted to us precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge. And in your knowledge, self-control. And in your self-control, perseverance. And in your perseverance, godliness. And in your godliness, brotherly kindness. And in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these things are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For in whom these things are not present, that one is blind, being nearsighted, having forgotten the purification from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and choosing sure, for in doing these things, you will never stumble. For in this way, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be abundantly supplied to you. Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them and have been strengthened in the truth which is present in you. I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has indicated to me. And I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure, you will be able to call these things to mind. For we did not make known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, following cleverly devised myths, but being eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have as more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place. until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes by one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men, being moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke from God. The Apostle Peter said that the Word of God has more authority than your own personal experience. Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are the God that we come to worship and praise and serve this day. Not the God of man's imagination, not the God of religion, but the God of the scripture that has revealed himself on the pages of scripture and ultimately revealed yourself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ meeting here on this Lord's Day, on his day, bringing our hearts into fellowship with one another and subjection to you and the the authority of your word. We pray that your word will be enthroned in this place, enthroned first in this pulpit and enthroned in the hearts of all that are here, that our Lord Jesus Christ might receive the praise and the glory that he is due by the response to the preaching of the word about him. It is for his glory that we have met and it is in his name that we pray. Amen, you can turn with me to the book of Jude again. And just, we'll go ahead and, oops, we'll go ahead and pray, but we'll open it with a little review. It has been a little while, and it's important to remember the context of where we come from so we can understand fully where we are going. Brother Vince, I don't know why, but it's incredibly difficult for me to not revert back to that accent from VBS for some reason. I don't know why. Yeah, the Irish Jamaican accent. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, Jaquan Holbrook. Yeah. I don't know why. That accent was a lot of fun. But anyway, all that being said, and since I do have a split moment here, thank you all again for those of you who did participate in VBS. That was absolutely a success. I appreciate it. So let's go ahead and pray, and we'll dive into our sermon. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you today seeking what you would have us find, Lord. We want out of this sermon, we want out of this Scripture what you intended, Father, and that is to change life. We want out of this Scripture what you had it written for, Father, and nothing more, nothing less. Father, allow Scripture to speak. not as some sort of display of speaking prowess, Father, but allow scripture to speak because it is the only tool that we have that is going to change lives. Allow it to do what it's supposed to do. Calm our hearts and minds. Allow us to focus in your name. Amen. So when last we were together, Last few times we were together, just kind of backing up and reviewing again, we see this sense of urgency from Jude. We don't see a man who's resting on his laurels. We're not seeing a man who is writing a letter purely because, okay, we have to write this letter, have to get out of this, out of the way. I'm writing this because, you know, it's all sunshine and rainbows. He's writing with this sense of urgency. We've actually seen some militaristic words used. in the opening of Jude to stir the audience, to stir his recipient towards action. He's not simply trying to excite them. He's not simply trying to get them up and bouncing around aimlessly. He's trying to call them to specific action. And we saw that specifically in verse four, why he has to call them to action, why there's this sense of urgency, what is at stake? We studied verse four, it says, for certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. And there are many parts of that verse that should, be our call to action, but there are certain parts of that verse that should absolutely scare us. And I believe on a personal note, and I believe I'm well-founded in saying this, but possibly the most horrific idea in that verse is the idea unnoticed, closely followed by long ago. Okay, there is a sense here in the unnoticed that our churches are their churches, hopefully not ours, but it is necessary to remain on guard. But the idea of unnoticed being you didn't see them come in. The idea of unnoticed being they crept in so well, they got in, they embedded themselves like a splinter and they're just festering now. And we've said it before, but it is much easier to keep them out than to get them out once they are in. And the idea that they are in is why he has to say, listen, it's time to move. That's the sense of urgency. He's not saying, be on your guard, they're coming in. He's saying, get them out, they're already in. And then we move on through verse four, we moved on through verse four rather, and we saw the idea of what exactly they were doing. Once they crept in, once they put on that sheep's clothing and crept in as the wolves they are, well, what did they do? Well, they do a heartbreaking thing. Ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. A group of people, a type of person, a person whose one and only goal is to defame the name of the Lord who sent his son to die on a cross for us. Now that should get us a bit riled up. The idea that there's someone out there taking blessed scripture that is designed to save my soul from damnation is using it for their own profit and their own means and their own motive. That's a problem. That should stir the heart of a Christian. This scripture is sacred to us, and yet we see what they're doing with it. And listen, again, part of the reason we're going through Jude is that this is not a message simply for 2,000 years ago. This is a message that rings louder and louder every day that life goes on. This is Sunday morning. Brother Vince has said many a times he can't imagine being any other place here than here on Sunday mornings. And there are many people that feel that way about their churches around this nation, around this world. We are blessed here that we have so in as far, that is not a word, so far as we can tell, we have denied the infiltration of these people into our midst, but there are many churches, quote unquote churches, around the globe this morning that are meeting, and they are under the sound of a man or a woman or a person in the pulpit who is doing the second part of verse four. And that should grieve us. They keep the word church on the sign. They're nothing more than a club. They're nothing more than a meeting place. They happen to just wear nicer suits. And honestly, that depends on which club you go to. They're just a church in name. Because folks, the moment you depart from using this scripture the way it's supposed to be used and saying what this scripture says, it is no longer a church. It is a building that happens to have people inside of it on a Sunday morning. You're lucky if they're like-minded people. And he says all of this, and he brings this point to our mind because he wants to stir us to action. He wants us, Jude, he wants us to look to the left and the right as we're sitting in our pews, and he wants us to look forward and backward as we're standing in the pulpit. He wants us to examine scripture and look around at what's being taught and say, does it align with scripture? Does it align with what Christ came here to die for? Does it line up with, again, I'll quote the last part of verse four, our master and Lord Jesus Christ? And if it does not, well, it has no business in a pulpit, it has no business in a pew, it has no business in our hearts and no business in our minds. And perhaps then we can fully understand why he uses that strong language, why he uses a military rallying cry. The biblical equivalent of something like, remember the Alamo, effectively. Just go out there and remember what they've taken from us. Go out there and remember what you're fighting for. But all that being said, we saw the idea, partially last time, In verse 4, I'll read it all again. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation. We see that there is going to be a point, we saw starting in verse 4, the idea that the Lord has not This has not been unnoticed by him. It's been unnoticed by humans. It's been unnoticed by the church. It's been unnoticed by maybe the pastor or the lay person or the pew person, whatever the case may be. The Lord did not have this unnoticed under his nose. If you serve a Lord who didn't notice this, you're not serving the Lord. And he starts us off that way in verse four and then continues in verses five, six, and seven, explaining the Lord has missed nothing. There's something for these people. And it's easy to kind of jump on a horse and say, how you gonna get yours? Yeah, there is a bit of you got yours coming, buddy. There is a bit of that, but it should also pain us to know that this is happening. It should pain us to know that our scripture is being misrepresented, but it should also give us great hope in the fact that the Lord's going to right the ship. But then read with me in verse five through seven. We've got some specific examples that we need to look at today. So verse five, six, seven. Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels, who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, as kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge in sexual immorality. You may have a translation of this as gross immorality. and pursued unnatural desires, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet unlike man, these people also rely on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. We see three primary examples. Now, this closely, if you're thinking back or you're thinking towards the second Peter direction, you do have a parallel there. You'll see that often between Jude and Peter. They are riding, fighting the same battle, the idea of the apostates that have gotten into their midst. So if you see some parallel there, it's, you're not mistaken. But all that being said, there's one... In the passage that this parallels, there's a little change up, and we'll get to that in a moment. There's a little bit of detail here that we may not have had in 2 Peter, but I'll cover that in a moment. But look at verse five specifically. Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. So we're all likely familiar with the Exodus story, with what's going on here, but... Just a little review, it always helps. Even the choir has to be preached at every now and then. But a little review of the story. We understand that the Israelites were brought out of Egypt. We understand the story of the plagues. We understand the story of the Passover. We understand God's full power on display. You'd be hard-pressed to find many stories that just prove that God is who he says he is outside of things like the plagues and bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. There's just so much of him on display, right there for all to see. He's revealed himself to his people every way but face-to-face, which they could not handle, by the way. He's revealed himself to them in every way possible. The idea of his presence in a cloud, just guiding them. They have seen this all firsthand. But it's this beautiful story of redemption, mercy, grace, promises, protection, and his power on full display. But it turns into a story of his divine judgment. Rightful judgment, justified judgment. Now, what's interesting here, start off with me, when you look at verse five, it says, now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it. Now. We're speaking to a Jewish audience. So part of the reason he says remind is because he knows that his followers, his readers, know this story. Gives us an idea of who his audience is. They know this story. They know of the scripture. He doesn't have to repeat. He has to only reference. However, it's interesting the way the verbiage here works. I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, there's a verb usage here that we would miss in the English that is very, very important for us to actually catch. I wanna make sure we study that for a moment. What he effectively is saying is this, I know you have the head knowledge of it, but I need you to think of the implication. I know you have a head knowledge of it. I know you grew up listening to grandmother and mother tell you this story, but I need you to not only have it as a historical thing in your mind, audience, I need you to grasp what it means and why it means what it means. I need you to grasp the implications. It'd be the same way you could think of it if you ever taught or led a classroom. of students or of followers and maybe they can regurgitate information but do they truly know it? I can recall several stories on that from personal experience, but the idea that maybe that student can sit there and tell you these complex formulas or regurgitate their charts and graphs, but do they truly know why and how and where? Have they reached, for my teacher friends in the room, have they reached the peak of the pyramid and gotten from knowledge to synthesis? I'll throw that in for you. Have they gotten from knowledge to synthesis? Do they understand and apply? And that's what he's begging of them. You know it, what does it mean? You know it, audience, but what's the implication? You know it, why is it important? You know it, now what are you going to do with it? And in so many cases, we find ourselves in the being reminded Sunday after Sunday, but never in the application phase. And I beg of us I beg of us. We can hear it Sunday in, we can hear it Sunday out, but sooner or later it's got to be applied. Knowing scripture and not having a place to apply it is a problem. Because scripture is completely applicable. There's not an unapplicable verse in these scriptures. Everything's good. So I challenge us to do what Jude is saying here. You know it now, what are you doing with it? You know it now, what's the implication? You know it, now go and do it. Now, Jude is asking them to remember what God had done in times past. Okay, recall the story, but here's the thing, going from recalling to synthesis, going from recalling to using it, He's asking them to remember, this is the God of the past, he's the same God he is today, so how do you think he's going to treat things now? His attitude towards sin and rebellion has not changed. For some reason, a modern church may look at the God of the New Testament and say, well, he's cooled off a lot, that means we can too. He hasn't cooled off, folks, there's just a savior that's come along. The way he looks at sin has not changed, it's been paid for. He still hates it. He still hates rebellion. He still hates everything that he hated in the Old Testament. The standards are the same, but somebody's met the standards for us. We don't need to soften up. Our God has not softened up. He's just sent somebody who can meet the standard that we could not meet. So, Now I want to remind you, this God who had a problem with sin, who had a problem with rebellion, who had a problem with doing something outside the confines of where he said to do it, I'll finish reading the verse, that Jesus who saved a people, his people, out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. I'll actually turn back so you can just kind of get an understanding. It's Numbers chapter 14. And it's a little bit lengthy, you might wanna go back or you may wanna hold your finger, it's up to you. But Numbers chapter 14, I just wanna make sure that we have a clear point of reference here. 14, verse 26 through 38. So numbers 26, excuse me, numbers 14, verses 26 through 38. And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, how long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumbled against me. Say to them, as I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you. Your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, and all of your number listed in the census, from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me. Not one shall come into the land I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb and Joshua the son of none, but your little ones. who you said would become a prey I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in the wilderness, and your children will be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness until the last of your dead bodies falls in the wilderness, according to the number of days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day. And you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure. I, the Lord, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me in the wilderness. They shall come to full end, and there they shall die." Understand the absolute severity that is happening here. The giganticness, if that's another word I'm gonna make up this morning, the giganticness of this situation. These people had seen the full power of God on display and chose to grumble. Again, complained about everything from the food to the direction to the leadership. I cannot emphasize enough, you've seen all but the face of God and you choose to do this. It's a glaring look into the human heart and how deep and how dark it can get. When you wonder, well, how could they do that? Look at that passage of scripture. How could somebody get to this point? How could somebody do this? The human heart is dark. I couldn't imagine, do you understand that at one point they are so blind to the fact that they are following the God of the universe through the wilderness, they're so blind to it. They talk about going back to Egypt. They talk about going back into slavery. And I almost hate to make a VeggieTales reference, but I'm a youth pastor, I get to do that. But in VeggieTales, there's a character that says, oh, we should go back to Egypt. Don't you remember three meals a day, swimming in the Nile? And the other character says, we were in slavery. to which the original character replies, nothing is perfect. Again, I'm a youth pastor, I get to play that card. I get to play VeggieTales. But all that being said, they make light of it, but it really was a silly situation. Why go back to what God has saved you out of? But they're so blinded by the temporary, they're so blinded by how good it used to be, they're so blinded by this plane of existence, they forgot God exists on another one. And he responds thusly, this is not God being overbearing or harsh, this is God punishing the people who knew better, who knew the standard. They had Moses himself leading the way. They knew the God they served. They still grumbled, still complained, still raised false idols. Just watching them in the wilderness and watching their adventures for all those decades, it is just a glaring reminder of where our hearts can end up at if we don't pay attention. Because your heart can always get a little bit darker and a little bit harder. We have to guard that. We have to be careful with that. And a little last note there on that first point in verse five, if we find ourselves grumbling against God and being dissatisfied with where he has us, we're effectively calling God a liar. You are shaking your fist at the God of the universe saying, I know you said this is good, but I don't want this. You are questioning the will of a sovereign God. That is a dangerous place to be, folks. It's a foolish place to be. But even more so, he goes through, again, I'll read verse five into verse six, just because, again, it's good to have that running context. Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. He says, listen, if you think he's missing these apostates, if you think he's missing these false teachers, if you think he has no issue with false doctrine, Hold on. You see what he's done to sin in the past. You see what he's done to rebel in the past. Here's one example. Now here goes example two. We look at verse six. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal change under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. So we move into our second, excuse me. We move into our second bold point here. the apostate angels. Now, a little heads up here, because if we read through this, I almost hesitate to give all three sub points here, but I will. In studying for this, there was a realization that there's actually three schools of thought on this verse, one of which is absolutely out in left field, but I'll mention it just because we need to have our guard up. There's three different incidences that people argue that this verse could be pertaining to, the angels rebelling, and one of them being an unmentioned rebellion that is not mentioned in the Bible. I call it tomfoolery on that one. We're not going to, we're not even going to entertain the idea of something happening outside of the bounds of scripture. But the second one is that maybe these were the angels that were part of the original rebellion, the one third cast out. And then finally, the piece that fits the best, which I will explain and I will back up with scriptural evidence, The final piece, the third piece, is that this is likely the angelic downfall from Genesis chapter 6 verses 1 through 4. the downfall and angels who went beyond and far beyond their relegated place and far beyond where they had been limited to. And they went and knew the daughters of man. And if you remember the story of the Nephilim, if you remember the story of the great men from Genesis chapter six, it's likely referring to that. And the reason that we believe it's that third one is because of the specific mention here of being cast away under eternal chains. It matches up with that specific passage in Genesis chapter six, verses one through four. But no matter which of those final two it may be, our operative issue here is actually at the beginning of verse six, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling. Outright rebellion. They had a place. They forgot it. They chose not to recognize it. They moved outside of their proper place and there were consequences. They're held under chains. They're held under eternal darkness. Don't miss the idea of did not stay within their own position of authority. Do not miss the proper dwelling. These angels had been created with a purpose and a position. They were supposed to be in one place and they chose to be in another. Their offense was leaving their posts and overstepping their boundaries. Oddly, this may be the example wherein we can find, we may find ourselves the easiest, oh, well, I'm not an angel. This doesn't apply to me. Well, hold on. As a believer, you have a post. As a believer, you have a place to be. In the middle of that scripture, in the middle of God's will, when you wander outside of God's will, you are in rebellion. Oh, I've never tried to overthrow the king of heaven. That's only because you've never tried to meet him face to face. The human heart, again, is dark. We have a place, we have an assignment, we have a job. We have a will of God, a God's will imposed upon our lives. And when we step outside of that, we're no better than this. And we see the consequence that comes with it. When we step away from where God puts us and we are outside the boundaries he sets, we are effectively shaking our fist at God, whether we behave as the angels or whether we behave as the Israelites did. Both of these scenarios have us looking back at God and saying, nope, I will not, I don't like it, I don't want it. We must look like we're throwing a temper tantrum before the Lord of the universe when we do that. The same way we look at our children and say, that's silly, why are you rolling around on the ground like that screaming? That must be what we look at when we rebel against God like that. We have a lane, we have a place, we have an assignment. And how do you think the Lord perceives neglecting that assignment and neglecting the place he puts us? Don't miss the fact that even the angels have their day coming. The fallen angels, that is. Nobody escapes this. Again, what Judah's trying to push home is, listen, believer, you may think that God has had this creep in on him unnoticed the same way we did, but he has not. He saw the angels do it, he saw the Israelites do it, he's seen everyone do it, and there's a day coming where they will answer for that. There is a day. Many a false preacher I imagine this morning are smiling from behind the microphone and the pulpit thinking they've got another one over. They did not. They did not. I want you to notice that in the first example when he looks at the Israelites, it is. But the angels, it's a little bit later, whether now or later, the Lord saw it. He'll make, he will fix that. They will answer for that now or later. For the angels, later. For the Hebrews, it was immediate. They can stand in the pulpit behind their fancy suits and their microphones and their however many followers on social media, but the Lord has seen and the Lord is going to hold accountable those who have taken his scripture out of context and twisted it for their own perverse wants and needs. It is not lost on the Lord. Oh, I knew there was one more note I wanted to mention. Perhaps it's tempting to separate ourselves and say, well, listen, this is still, we're still talking angels. I don't, this can't be that near and close to home for me. I'll remind you that what the angels are recorded doing here is how the original problem started when Satan stepped out of line. He had a designated area as well. And he decided, nope, I don't like where you put me, I want yours. That's how all this started. Don't miss the power in that second example here. And Satan's got his day coming. But now we read through verse six, the angels who did not stay within their own lane, who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, left where they were supposed to be, left where God had intended them to be. He has kept an eternal change under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. I want you to notice the word eternal in front of change there. God has not forgotten, God will not forget. That is in the perfect tense, the idea that those chains will not disappear. He has kept an eternal change on the gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge in sexual immorality and pursuit unnatural desire, serve it as the example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Now, this example, perhaps, and certainly to the original audience, they would have, this would have been living color to them. But even in our modern day and age, there are people who've never been inside of a church that know this story. We take modern words from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to describe gross sin. Okay, everybody knows this story. It's a very strong wording. There's very strong wording in verse seven I wanted to mention, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge. Again, ESV uses the word sexual immorality, NASB, and I believe King James all use the word gross in front of it, the gross immorality. The word there is actually porneo. If you listen to the root word in the middle of that, you can see just how serious this word is. Okay, it is an absolute perversion, a complete twisting of God's intents and purposes for human sexuality. A complete twisting. These Gentiles' mind were so warped that they abandoned natural God-given desires. something programmed that God has given us and within our genetics, they absolutely just look past it. If you ever want, again, we are looking at just how dark and just how far from God's will people can go. They'll override natural programming to have what they want. They'll override natural programming to fulfill their fleshful desires. And I say again, please don't look down at your nose at these people. Remember that this could have been us too, but God. Very easy to look down upon noses. I am capable of this too. It is nothing but the breaks that God put himself there in my life that this has happened to any one of us or me. Praise God. But all that being said, they're warped. We have this idea that they desire this strange flesh, the Greek there, if I can remember, is a heterosarcus, the idea of... Until I studied for this, I didn't realize when he, it says they pursued strange flesh in the original story. He's not simply referring to the fact that they were not desiring of a woman, they were desiring of men instead. It's referring specifically to the idea that they even desired the angels that came into the city. They desired something that they didn't even completely comprehend, but they wanted it badly. They were willing to jump head first, feet first, everything first into absolute filth. And the Lord holds them to a punishment because we see at the end of it, after they pursued their unnatural desire, if we look at the second piece of verse seven, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. We know how that ended for them. a wildly large, grandiose picture of just what the Lord thinks about sin. When you look at the complete and total destruction of those cities and the surrounding area, there's indication in the original language, the idea that when he decimated the area, the word there is actually just turned to ash and then layered ash on top of it. just to erase its existence. MacArthur in one of his commentaries says, of all the places that we've found in scripture, we have not found that one. We found other historical sites. We found where certain gardens were, where certain arches were, where certain pools were. We have an idea of where a little bit of everything is, and there is no markers for where Sodom and Gomorrah was. the complete and utter decimation of this area because of the absolute perversity that this city or these city-states lived in. You want a picture of what God thinks about our sin? That's it. And rightfully so, he gave a standard. He programmed, in this case, he programmed a standard into our genetics, programmed a standard into our mind, and they went past it. And we see again, they're a bit like the angels and the Hebrews before them in that there was a natural place to be and they chose not to be there. And now they'll be undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Now again, we have been looking at verses five, six, and seven, and we see just how dark a human mind, or how dark a created mind, in the case of the angels, how dark a created mind could be. We see the slippery slope it is to leave the designated area that God has put us in, the designated way he's told us to use his scripture, to use his pulpit, to use his church. We see the slippery slope that it is. And we can walk ourselves, we can walk ourselves through a little bit of a, a questionnaire, as it were, because we have these three heinous actions in these three verses. Because with the Israelites, we say, well, how much worse could it be that you actually saw God work and saw all but his face, and you saw him free you from slavery, only to forsake him weeks later? Well, the answer follows in the following verse, in verse six, when you have to ask the angels, how much worse could you be than to see the holy God in person and still turn away? And you see the answer in the next verse. Well, how much worse can you be to, How much worse can you be than to override your very programming and the way God naturally designed you? And we answer that with the rest of the book of Jude, and that is to twist and pervert every single thing God has ever said and given us into something that serves us and only us. He's starting off, now keep in mind that we are only through verse seven, and we have to get all the way through verse 24. We still have a plethora of verses left. The vast majority of this book is still left, but he has set us up in such a way that our brain has gone from, oh, perhaps this is not such a large issue, perhaps this is just something we can take care of when it gets here. No, no, no, the battle cry has been sounded, and he's given us the staunchest, the most in-your-face examples he can of just how God feels about people who leave behind their natural position. He's given us exactly what God thinks about sin, so that when we read the rest of this book and study the rest of this book, there is no question of what God thinks about it. We don't get to look at anything else in the rest of this book and say, well, maybe, you know, it's a one-off, maybe it's not as bad as we think. Nope, he starts us off with the standard. Knowing what's coming for these apostates, listen, it's very easy to look at verses four through seven and say, oh, you're gonna get yours, brother, so-and-so on the TV is preaching that false dog, you're gonna get yours. Looking at these verses and looking at how God looks at sin and looking at how God looks at apostasy, it should break our hearts. The idea that somebody's going to take, they're going to have to answer to God for that. You're going to have to stand before the God of the universe one day and explain, I know you had a standard, but I, there's no, but after that, I know you had a standard, but you can just stop. I know you had a standard and now comes the judgment. It may sound a little bit odd, but there should be a soft portion of our heart that weeps for these apostates to come back to true faith. There should be a part of us that weeps for these people and beg of them to come home, to come back into repentance, to come back to the natural place that the Lord has for us. Do we take this as seriously as we need to take it? I cannot imagine stronger evidences than verses 5, 6, 7. I cannot imagine stronger language than verse 4. I cannot imagine more urgent language than verses 1, 2, 3. And somehow, sometimes we just don't see it as serious as it is. Folks, listen, if a church has ceased to preach the gospel, if people like this are inside of our churches, that should alarm us. End of story, there's no way around that. It should alarm us. It should alarm us that even though we have had ourselves protected here at OVC, it should alarm us that this is the kind of thing that is trying to get in. It should alarm us that this is the opposition. that there are dark hearts that know no bounds that would want nothing more than to get inside this church, inside of our children's minds, inside of our Sunday schools, inside of our pulpits, inside of our Bible studies, inside of our heads, inside of our lives. This should alarm us. And he's done everything in his power to make that as forefront and to the center of attention as possible. Now I mentioned, The last time we were together, I was going to try to make this, not that scripture needs any assistance on this, but to make this as practical and as, for lack of a better term, as in our faces as possible. I wanted to bring up after, or for each sermon, for each passage, I wanted to bring up a very practical, real world threat that churches and Christianity are facing from apostates. And last time we were together, what we looked at and what we sounded our own alarm on was this idea of Christo-paganism. that have started to step into our churches. I wanted to bring one during each sermon, just something that we all need to focus on or something that we can be aware of, something that we can sound our own alarm on. And last time we were together, we looked at Christopaganism, the idea that inside of our churches, there is a growing movement that now has a name. It's been around for a very long time, and now it has a name. It has literature. It has followers. It has signs. And Christopaganism studies this idea that you can believe this Bible and you can also study witchcraft. You could also study Wicca. You could bring in elements of voodoo and just have it sit right alongside the Bible. Folks, there are churches out there this morning that are doing this. That should alarm us because it's one or two steps away from being inside OBC. It takes one or two weeks where the guard is down and it's in here. But that's what we looked at last time. I just wanted to review the Christo-paganism movement. But this time, one that perhaps we're a little bit more familiar with that's very much knocking at every church's door, this idea of theistic evolution. And if you can't tell by the title, the theistic evolution, if you can't tell by the title, that is the idea that the Lord himself, that God needed evolution as a way to put us on this planet. If you serve a God who needed anything but himself to put you here, that's not a God. Theistic evolution undermines the entirety of Genesis chapter one, two, three. If you got that wrong, everything else is wrong. If you knock down the foundation, what else happens to the structure? And there are churches, and there are well-known, otherwise straightforward preachers that let that into their churches, and goodness gracious, if there's not some chaos now. I've watched one particular preacher whose name I won't mention, watched one particular preacher over the last 20 or 30 years, this kind of got into his head and his church and even the stuff that he was writing at the time, 20, 30 years ago, all good. And now I wouldn't dare pick up one of his books. Because again, if you question the power of the Lord to have put creation in the place, you question the power of the Lord to save, to redeem, and to keep his promises. That's a problem because if I can question God, everything's fair game. So just another of our own little alerts to put up this Sunday, to know that these are real world threats. These are things that are knocking at our door, waiting to get in. And I think this one scares me a bit because it's already conquered so many places. There's Bible study curriculums. When I study for Bible study to give to the teenagers or Sunday school lessons for the teenagers, a lot of these pre-made programs that you can buy off of Christian websites, this is in there. This is part of Christian curriculum in some circles that the Lord needed millions of years, billions of years to put us here. The Lord spoke and boom. I don't know what's even appealing about a God who needed evolution to put me here. I want a God who said, I'll step off of my soapbox. All that being said, I'm hoping that this morning that the severity of what we face really hits our hearts and mind. I'm hoping that the severity of what Jude is trying to throw at us is really landing where it's supposed to land. I'm hoping that this week we'll be on higher alert for what the world and what Apostates are trying to get into our church. I hope we're more alert this week. I'll ask you to stand. You don't wanna, no standing? Stand, stand. We'll pray and stand, but we do have a baptism today. I'll hand it over to Brother Vince. So we'll just stand up, get a little blood circulating, then you'll sit right back down. All right, I'll go ahead and pray and close us out to the baptism. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you today again, and now at the end of our sermon. Again, hopefully on alert, Father. Hopefully as riled up as Jude was when he wrote this, understanding the sense of urgency of what could indwell within our churches if we let our guard down, and understanding what's already in some churches because guards were let down. Father, you have held the same attitude towards sin for all time. You have held the same attitude toward apostasy and false doctrine and false prophets for all time. That has not gone anywhere, Father. Hold that true in our hearts and minds, lest we fall prey to it. Bless our time as we go our separate ways. Keep us safe, Father. Bring us back to this wondrous place that exists only for your glory next Sunday, Father. In your name, amen.