Ron Dunn Podcast - Dangers Of The Christian Life

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

Ron Dunn begins a new sermon series "Fighting For Faith"

I'd like for you to open your Bibles this morning to the next, to the last book in the Bible, the little book of Jude. in many ways, a strange letter with some unusual phrases and strange wordings in it, a book that probably we're not as familiar with as we are with some of the others. But it is a book that I have especially in this past week been drawn to in studying, and there is a very tremendous message that the Epistle of Jude has for us. It is a timely message.

The more I read that little letter, the more I realize how relevant and timely it is. So I want us to begin reading this morning with the first verse, and we'll read through verse 13. I'm reading, by the way, out of the New American Standard Version, so some of you won't get lost and will know what's up. But in this particular passage, as a matter of fact, in this particular letter, the New American Standard is so much more clear than is the King James. And this little book is hard enough to understand as it is. And so I want to read out of this translation this morning.

Jude, verses 1 through 13. Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out

for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now, I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe and angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh are exhibited

as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Yet in the same manner these men also by dreaming defile the flesh and reject authority and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. But these men revile the things which they do not understand, and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feast when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, carried about by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

Now let's go back and read verses 3 and 4. Jude says, Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, that means he was wanting to write a joyful treatise on a theological subject. While I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you instead appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. This is the reason for his urgency in writing, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness and deny our only

Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. It's not easy in the Christian life, living in the world, to always maintain our spiritual poise and balance. It seems that the enemy is always trying to knock us off our feet, knock us off our feet, knock us off balance. And if there's nothing else that a man discovers about the Christian life, he discovers that the Christian life is not unopposed, but that there are spiritual attacks,

and there is a warfare, and there is the hassling from the devil. There is a grand strategy that seems to be plotted against him to knock him off his feet. And one of the most difficult things for us in living the Christian life in this day and age, as it was, I suppose, in any day and age, is to maintain our spiritual balance, to maintain our poise. As a matter of fact, I have an idea that I'm speaking to some here this morning who last Sunday left the services resolved, this week I'm going to make it. This week I'm not going to fall. This week I'm going to stay on my This week I'm not going to fall. This week I'm going to stay on my feet.

I'm going to stay on top of it. And you're back this morning hoping that maybe you can make the resolve again and this time it'll work. Because, you see, you and I live in a world that is not a friend to God. This world is still at enmity with God, and the prince of this world and the God of this world, the Bible declares, is Satan. And there is the old hymn that Isaac Watts wrote, Is this vile world a friend of grace to help me on to God? And of course the answer is no. This world in no way helps us to grow,

and this world is not geared to making it easy for a Christian to live as God wants him to live. As a matter of fact, the world system in which you and I live really ministers to the lower nature of man, and everything that you and I are bombarded with through the week is geared to appeal to the lower and baser nature of a man. And so this is the reason it is difficult in the Christian life to always maintain that spiritual equilibrium and never to falter and never to fail and to live a consistent

Christian life. And this is why Jude is writing, because there are dangers that face the Christian life. And any person that is not aware of these dangers and is not looking for them and is not armed against them is never going to be able to live a consistent Christian life. And so Jude is saying, I wanted to write to you about a good subject, about a pleasant subject. I wanted to write to you about our common salvation. I wanted to delve in all the glories and joys and ecstasies

of what it means to be saved. But he said, I had necessity laid upon me. There was an urgency for me to lay aside that and to write to you about another matter. It's not something that Jude wanted to write about, and I'll be honest with you, this is not something that I wanted to preach about. I identify with Brother Jude this morning. I had originally this week planned to preach this morning on our common salvation, but as I studied this book and studied it, it got hold of me, and he says, there's an urgency, there's a necessity that I write to you, and I admonish you to contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints.

Why? Because there are certain persons who have infiltrated your ranks and they are the pawns of the enemy and they are trying to knock you off your spiritual balance. And so Jude writes for two purposes, and I'm going to deal with one purpose this morning and the second purpose tonight. The first purpose of this letter is to inform believers

of the dangers that face the Christian life. The second purpose is to instruct believers in how to defend against these dangers. Now, I'm going to be dealing with that tonight, and the message this morning is very negative, and I don't like to preach negative messages, but I thought if it's good enough for Jude, it's good enough for me. Now, Jude says there is a very real danger, and to us there is a very real danger. We are surrounded by forces, philosophies, mores, customs that contradict everything you and I believe

and everything that you and I want to behave. And so there is a necessity for us to be informed as to the dangers that face us in our Christian life. Now, as you read this, you discover that he's not talking about the dangers out there in the big old bad world. He's talking about the dangers that infiltrate the church. You see, if I were to meet a fellow out here on the street who was obviously ungodly, who was obviously anti-Christ, who had

never identified himself with the church and never identified himself with God's people, and he began to try to deceive me and lead me astray. All I had to do was just look at his credentials and know that he was the devil's instrument, and I could just, you know, pass it off. But here is a fellow who's one of us. I mean, he's a part of our fellowship. He professes to believe what we believe.

And so it's a very subtle danger. Notice what he says in verse 4. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. That word means to come in by the side. He came in the side door. It was used of a criminal who secretly slipped back into a country from which he had been expelled. And he says there are certain men

who have crept in unnoticed. They have become a part of your fellowship. They claim to be Christians. They claim to believe what you believe. But he says, look in verse 12, he says these men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feast. Now, the love feast there refers to when the early church would get together and they would celebrate the Lord's Supper and commemorate his death. And he says,

these fellows even come and they set in on your communion and on your love feast, but he said they are hidden reefs. Now, a reef, of course, is very dangerous to a sailing ship, but he said these are hidden reefs. You can't see them. They're in disguise, and it's a very subtle danger. And so he says you as a Christian living in the world as you live in the world must be alert to the dangers, the subtle dangers that are attempting to knock you off your feet and destroy your Christian consistency. I want to just take this fourth verse and some of the other verses in this 13 verses

and share with you what are the dangers that Jude is revealing to us. There are three, and they're all found in verse 4. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now, he is not talking about false teachers in the church. It's not an apostasy of belief.

It's an apostasy of behavior. He's not talking about somebody coming into our church and standing up and denying the truth of the Word of God because that way he couldn't come in unnoticed. That way he wouldn't be a hidden reef. We would know what he was. No, he's not talking about a false teacher, but he's talking about men and women who in their living,

in their philosophy, in their lifestyle are false. And they present three dangers. The first danger of the Christian life that faces us, that is trying to draw us in, is the danger of irreverence. The danger of irreverence. In verse 4, he defines these fellows as ungodly men. These are ungodly men. The word ungodly simply means irreverence. It means a lack of respect and reverence for God.

It means withholding from God true worship. Now, it's possible, you see, for a person to come and go through the rigmarole of a worship service, stand up when the bulletin says to stand up and sing when he's supposed to sing and give his offering when he's supposed to give his offering. That's not worship. That's religious activity. That is not worship. An irreverent man, an ungodly man, is a man who comes into the fellowship of the church and goes through all the ceremonies and rituals and activities, but he withholds from God in the midst of that the honor, the reverence, the worship that is due God.

He is an irreverent person. He doesn't take God seriously. Now, I want to say that this is the first crack in the dam in the Christian life. This is the germ out of which everything else spreads. And one of the greatest tendencies of our day is the tendency towards irreverence. Irreverence. You see it in some of our music. Sad to say, you see it in the behavior of preachers in the pulpit.

You see it in the attitude of people as they talk about the things of God. You don't have to watch very much television to see that tube actually immersed in irreverence, a lack of respect and reverence for God. He goes on down to say that these men, in verse 8, they revile angelic majesties. And he says, you know, when Michael the archangel had a dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, and don't ask me what all that means, I don't know,

but somehow or another, I think Michael was guarding the body of Moses because God wanted to resurrect it so he could appear with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. And since death is the devil's domain, I have an idea the devil didn't want Moses to appear on the Mount of Transfiguration, and Michael the archangel, who is the protector of God's people,

was there to keep him from keeping him in the grave. Well, anyway, he says that when he had a dispute with the devil, that Michael the archangel, now listen carefully, had so much respect, even for a fallen angel, he would not pronounce a railing accusation against him. He simply said, the Lord rebuke you. But he said, these men, these men today, they don't think anything about treating with irreverence and disrespect the things of God.

Even an archangel would be, I sometimes think I've been in services, if an archangel were to attend one of our services, he would be shamed and blushed. He would never even speak to the devil the way some of us speak of God. The irreverence. And this is a very subtle and creeping danger. Irreverence. And this is a very subtle and creeping danger, irreverence. Now, there are two kinds of irreverence.

If you'll study this book, you'll find there's that irreverence, that lack of respect towards God, that lack of respect towards God. I don't know of anything that the modern church needs today any more than a good old baptism of the fear of God. I'm appalled at the way we talk of God. I'm appalled at the way I so easily fall into irreverence.

I was in a meeting a few weeks ago, and they were singing some little old sugar and peanut butter song that was just lack of reverence, lack of respect, which is a trademark of American Christianity. I was standing next to an Englishman, a professor in one of our seminaries, who had just recently in the last year has come over here from England. And as they were singing that song, I leaned over to him and I said, Doctor, do you miss those great

old hymns that you sung in England? He looked at me and said, Yes, I do. And that was all that needed to be said. There is a growing tendency for us to think of God as the man upstairs and good old God and the pal, and there is a lack of reverence and respect for God, and that is the first step in your being knocked off your feet spiritually. But not only does it mean and refer to a lack of respect for God, it also refers to a lack of respect for man. You notice he uses an illustration down in verse 11 of Cain. He says, they have gone the way of Cain.

Now, that corresponds with the fact that they are ungodly men. Now, what was Cain's sin? Irreverence and lack of respect and reverence for human life. You say, now, wait just a minute, Pastor. There are no canes here. I've never murdered my brother. I've never murdered anybody. I've never done anything like that.

Well, do you remember the Word of God that says that a man that hates his brother is a murderer already? You know what the word hate means? It means to cherish ill will. Did you know that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 that to criticize, to defame a person's character, to slander is murder? The first danger facing the Christian life is the danger of irreverence

irreverence you know what I'm praying for and I'm not certain I'll like it when it's answered but I'm praying that God will do such a work in the lives of his people right here at MacArthur

my house, my heart that he will bring us back to a point of absolute reverence and awe of God. Second danger facing the Christian in the world is not only the danger of irreverence, but the danger of immorality, the danger of immorality. In verse 4, again, he says these are ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness. They turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. Now, the word lasciviousness means blatant immorality. It means a total disregard for standards. It means absolutely no restraint.

It was best expressed by a car I followed Friday from downtown Dallas, and on the bumper of that car it said, if it feels good, do it. I'm going to get me an old plunker, and I'm going to get behind one of those cars, and when that car stops at a stop sign, I'm going to run into it. And when the fellow gets out angry, I'm going to say, you told me to do it. You said if it feels good, do it. And it felt good. But that's lasciviousness. And it has about it a certain arrogance, a certain arrogance. It means to disregard the moral laws of God arrogantly, openly. He says in verse 13, they are like wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam, just like the waves will cast up their foam.

He says these people, these men, the philosophy of this world, the lifestyle of the world is such that it takes its immorality, it takes its flagrant opposition to the moral law of God and just throws it in your face, just throws it in your face. And I don't have to labor the point that that's what's going on today more than ever before and there is a danger of a believer being sucked into that. Now, notice he says they have turned the grace of God

into lasciviousness. Folks, immorality is bad enough but immorality justified is even worse. And when the justification is the grace of God, that's even worse still. He's saying they have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness. Now, the word turn means to transpose, to put one thing in the place of another. Here's what they've done. They have defined grace.

Man, they've been saved by grace. They believe or they profess. They believe in the grace of God. They say God is the God of grace. Well, define grace. What is your definition of grace? And they have defined grace as license. Do anything you want to.

Don't get overly wrought up about sin. After all, where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. I'll tell you, the Christian is in danger of being sucked into this lifestyle. How many of you, danger of being sucked into this lifestyle. How many of you, how many of you have traded on God's mercy and traded on God's forgiveness? How many of you have deliberately and willfully and knowingly gone against that which was obviously the will of God, but all the time in the back of your mind, you did not vocalize it, you would not articulate it,

but all the time in the back of your mind there was this thought, God will forgive me. That's his trade. That's what he's in business for. After all, doesn't the Bible say if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so there is a gradual lessening of moral standards within the fellowship of God's people.

I'm appalled at some of the moral standards that I see in God's people. I see people who carry Soul Winners New Testaments in their pocket and who wear things around their neck and have bumper stickers on their car that say one way, and yet I see the laxness of morality in their life, and they seem to see no inconsistency with it. And this is the great danger, is that in our modern church today, immorality in their life, and they seem to see no inconsistency with it. And this is the great danger, is that in our modern church today, we are failing to see the inconsistency of immorality with being a Christian. And we're trading on the grace of God.

We're saying, I'm saved by grace, I can't lose my salvation. And after all, the body is weak. Why fight it? Why worry about it? Now, we do not get overly concerned about sin. I suppose there's a thousand people here this morning. There is somebody here, some husband, some wife, that is involved in immorality. You say, Who are they? I don't know. There just is. You'd think, well, when you get all of God's people together.

But folks, I want you to know that danger has crept in. I was in Sacramento a few weeks ago and a pastor came up to me after the service. He said, I want you to help me. He said, I'm counseling now with five preachers who are involved in immorality. Now, I go to a lot of different places. I meet a lot of pastors. And in the past year, do you know what the pastors have told me is their number one crisis? Infidelity in the marriages of their members. That's their number one crisis. Most pastors could win the world to Jesus if they didn't have to spend all their time counseling with unfaithful marriage partners.

You see, whether we want to admit it or not we're being gradually brainwashed by the devil it's the old story you can put a frog in water and gradually turn up the fire bit by bit and you can boil him and he'll never know it

and what the devil is doing to the church of Jesus Christ today is he's gradually boiling us without ever knowing it. And there is a danger of immorality. There is a danger of immorality. But last, there is the danger of insubordination. Look at the last phrase in verse 4. They deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

In verse 8 it says they reject authority. I think the King James has a good phrase. They despise dominion. They're insubordinate, rebellious. They despise dominion. It says they deny our only Master and Lord. Now, that does not mean they deny Him with their teaching. That means they deny him with their living. The word master is a very interesting word. That means a man who has absolute ownership and absolute control. And there is a danger facing every Christian of becoming insubordinate

and saying we'll not have this man to rule over us. We'll do our own thing. We'll run our own show. We want to live our own life. Now, this insubordination involves two things, and I want you to listen very carefully. First of all, it involves rebelling against the person in authority. Rebelling against the person in authority.

They deny Jesus as Lord and Master. They do not deny him as Savior. They do not deny him as a historical person. They deny him as Master and Lord. And Jude says this is a very real danger, that Christians are apt to fall into that lifestyle and enthrone themselves in their hearts and not subordinate themselves to the mastery and lordship of Jesus. First of all, it means rebelling against the person in authority who is Jesus. But the second thing, and this is what I want you to see, this

insubordination that Christians are in danger of being sucked into is not only rebelling against the person in authority, but it is rebelling against the place of our appointment. It is rebelling against our appointed place.

Now, I want you to see something. Look in verse 6. You see, Jude is giving illustrations of verse 4. First illustration is Israel and Egypt. Now, second illustration is verse 4. First illustration is Israel and Egypt. Now, second illustration is verse 6. And angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds

under darkness for the judgment of that great day. Angels illustrate this insubordination. Those angels who were not willing to stay in their appointed position, but they abandoned, they abandoned their divinely ordered place. Look at verse 13, the latter phrase. He describes them as wandering stars, stars that have rebelled against their orbit, stars who said, I don't want to be in this orbit any longer. Stars who have left their own orbit and they are just wondering stars. They have abandoned their divinely appointed place and notice, for whom the black darkness

has been reserved forever. These are like stars that have left their orbit and are burning themselves up because they've left their orbit. I said, as I started this morning, that this little book of Jude to me is one of the most relevant and timely things I've read in a long time. The number one problem today in our country, I'm convinced, is right here at this point.

Rebelling against our appointed place. It started with the devil. Isaiah tells us that he didn't want to stay where God made him. He said, I will lift myself up. I will ascend. And God cast him out of heaven because he was not willing to stand in his appointed place. The temptation of Eve, the devil came to Eve and said, if you'll do what I tell you, you shall become as what?

As gods. God had not made them to become as gods. God had made them as preachers. And Eve, the original sin, the thing, folks, that got us in all this mess is the fact that there was a man and woman way back down at the fountain of human history that was not willing to stay in their appointed position. Over a million kids every year run away from home in our country. Over a million. Did you know that most of them are from middle income and upper middle income? That most of them come from very religious families? And that most of them come from very religious families and that most of them leave home because they are not content to be a child.

They want to be an adult. They are not willing to stay in their divinely appointed position. Rebellion against authority today their divinely appointed position. Rebellion against authority today is simply traced back to this. We are not willing to stay in our divinely appointed position, and so we'll break out of it, and we'll rebel against all authority. Of course, the obvious illustration of this is women's lives. I was preaching up in Denver some time ago, and along this line,

a woman sitting out there in congregation said, he's just like my husband. He's a male chauvinist pig. Well, I've been called several things, but that was a new one. Now, let me just say at this point that I'm for equal rights for women. I believe that a woman ought to get paid equally. I believe that there ought to be no discrimination in jobs such as this. But I want to tell you something.

The mistake that they're making is thinking that equality is sameness. And equality is not sameness. Equality is the right to develop and exercise to the fullest your God-given potential. It is not sameness. And the extreme, the thing that is diabolical and devilish and hellish is this movement where women do not even want to be designated as women. Don't call me a female. There is a commercial that comes on television. If I could find out who produces that and who does that, I'd write them. I think it is one of the most hideous and hateful things.

It shows a little baby walking around, and a voice comes on and says, This baby was born handicapped. It's a girl. I doubt seriously if our country will ever survive the tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. And, you know, they call that the battle of the sexes. No, it wasn't.

It was the battle of the ages. The only thing that tennis match proved was that a 30-year-old tennis player can outlast a 50-year-old tennis player. I'm still waiting for Billy Jean King to match You know what? God has a position for every person. God has a plan for every life. I'm glad I just wasn't thrust into this world to wander aimlessly like a star out of orbit. I have an orbit. I have a divinely appointed orbit.

You have a divinely appointed orbit. God has a beautiful, infinite, glorious plan for your life. And the secret of all success in life is finding my orbit and getting in it and staying in it for the glory of God and the good of that man. If this earth, if it were possible for this earth to leave its orbit, if it were possible for a planet, if it were possible for a star to leave its orbit, there would be chaos and disaster. Life is an organized experience. This is an ordered universe.

God is like a giant watchmaker who has infinitely and majestically ordered everything in this life. And when a person gets out of that ordered position, he throws the whole mechanism of living in a mess, and it will not operate. And if you're finding that your life just isn't functioning and nothing seems to work right, nothing seems to go right, you might check up and see if you have left your orbit. And of course, the key to the whole thing is for us to come back and not deny, but acclaim Jesus as our master and our Lord and fit into that orbit

that he has in eternity planned for us. The Ron Dunn Podcast is available only for personal edification, not to be duplicated, uploaded to the web, or resold without prior written consent. It is managed and operated by Sherwood Baptist Church. If you would like to listen to additional Ron Dunn messages, visit sherwoodbaptist.net slash bookstore and search Ron Dunn. For more Ron Dunn materials, including sermon outlines, devotions, and scanned pages from a study Bible, please visit rondunn.com.