INVINCIBLE CHURCH 12-10-23

Invincible Church Sermon Notes
12/10/2023
The Power of Faith
Jude 1:17-25
This year God’s been sending us messages about His truth and power! Last week we talked about the power of the Bible… It’s the Word of God. It’s the only perfect thing on earth! It’s the Book God wrote by using the power of the Holy Spirit through human men to write His perfect book!
It’s unlike any other religious writing because it’s fully the truth of God! It’s God’s prophecy and revelation to His creation! It’s a living, breathing document that announces, prefigures and reveals actual future events that He’s specifically designed for the earth.
It proves that God knows the future and oversees everything that we’re dealing with, so God’s in control… and it’s only God who knows exactly what He’s doing… praise Jesus! Now, as far as prophecies go, there are about 2500 prophecies in the Bible!
About 2000 of them have been exactly fulfilled! Roughly 500 of them remain to be fulfilled. Most of the first prophecies were about the first coming of Jesus… that He would be born of a virgin, in the town of Bethlehem… that He'd live without sinning… that He’d die on a cross…
… that He’d be buried in a “rich man’s tomb” … that He’d rise up from the dead. That He’d perform miracles… that He’d ascend into heaven… that He’d be the savior of the world… and the Bible accurately told us all of this thousands of years in advance!
The rest of the prophecies are about the second coming and millennial reign of Jesus! It describes what that world’s going to be like before Jesus returns to judge and set the world right! So, we’re waiting for the rest of the roughly 500 remaining prophecies to be fulfilled!
Jesus has a little brother named Jude! He worships his brother Jesus and he understands the power of faith! He sees that the faith of the church has become “lukewarm” and he’s very frustrated by it! So, he writes a letter to them and a big part of his letter is reminding them about the power of faith in Jesus.
Jude 1:17-25 NIV - 17 But, dear friends, remember what The Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have The Spirit. 20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your Most Holy Faith and praying in The Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for The Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. 22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear … hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. 24 To Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before His Glorious Presence without fault and with great joy … 25 to The Only God our Savior be Glory, Majesty, Power and Authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen! … GOD knows The END of HUMAN HISTORY! ... à
As a follower of Jesus, this ought to give us incredible courage, confidence and peace… because we know everything is going to “Go” to Jesus! Our faith in Him has His power! He loves us and He’s going to deal with everything and everybody as He sees fit! The good news is we’re in God’s hands, so we know our future is in the best hands!
And Jude is telling us about the last days! He says there will be some specific things happening. He says remember the prophecies and warnings of the Apostles who were chosen by Jesus to carry on His ministry after He died and ascended to heaven until He returns for His followers!
What he’s talking about here is the “end of time” and the “last days” of the church age. He reminds us what will be happening before the return of Jesus! So, this is Jude talking about his brother Jesus and he’s telling us that in the last days there’s…
5 Signs for The Need of The Power of Faith in Jesus
1) There Will be Scoffers!
(vs 17-19) … 17 But, dear friends, remember what The Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow Mere Natural Instincts and do not have The Spirit.
Sound familiar? We need to know if we’re really a follower of Jesus, our faith will be mocked! We’ll be opposed by the world! The mainstream media will never be for us. The agendas and platforms will always be against us and computer algorithms will never favor true Christianity!
The world will mock us, scoff at us, lie about us and oppose us! But it shouldn’t discourage us because it prepares us to deal with reality! We need to know that every day when we wake up, we’re going to be hated by the corrupt world, social media, mainstream news media, entertainment, the government and wicked people in general!
Jesus told us that the world hated Him and if we love Him, the world is going to hate us too! We just need to accept and endure it, just like He did. And we CAN through the power of faith in Him!
2) People Will Have Ungodly Passions!
When we get close to the last days, we won’t only have to deal with scoffing, but we’ll also have to deal with an increase in the temptation to sin! It will be a lot easier to do the wrong thing and try to falsely justify it as the right thing!
We won’t have to put a lot of effort into sinning, which means if we’re striving for holiness, we’re going to have a fight on our hands! Everything in the world and our culture is making sin more readily available! Technology has absolutely helped to fulfill this prophecy!
If a person wants to lie, they can do it bigger and quicker than ever before! If a person wants to slander, gossip, steal, lust, attack somebody or do whatever evil comes to mind, they can do it instantly, globally and permanently.
It’s easy for followers of Jesus to see that the moral condition of the world is crashing faster than ever, but it’s still kind of shocking! Now we’re seeing the things that a few people used to do in the dark seem to be the things that a lot of people do in the light. The shame is gone for the most part, while sin and evil are rampant!
3) There Will be Division Among The People!
People’s faith will be hot or cold. There will be those who are for Jesus and those who are opposed to Jesus! And division literally means two visions! It means we don’t see a few things different, we see everything different!
Christians and non-Christians don’t agree on most things. We come from God, not evolution! We’re under God’s authority… we’re not independent of authority. We’re sinners… we’re not “good people”. We can’t fix our spiritual problem because we ARE the problem!
We’re not the hope of the world... and the world is not blessed to have us! We disagree on gender, bathrooms and which pronouns to use! Rejecting Jesus causes division. The point of it is, we have to make a decision who we’re going to follow… Jesus or the world!
There’s conflict between God and the world, so if a person choosing to follow the world, they’re going to have conflict with God! If a person chooses to follow Jesus, they’re going to have conflict with the world. In other words, we have to choose the right kind of conflict to be in!
4) People Will Love The Corrupted World!
These are worldly people who are ok with a corrupted world! There was a recent study that’s amazing! A political party was polled and the majority of the people polled in that political party felt like America was currently a nation of high moral values! People in the other political party know the truth!
The alarming part of all this is there are so many people who are observing and living in what’s going on in our nation now and they still say, “This is going great!... This is going in the right direction!” These are lost and worldly people!
If a person can look at the world today and honestly say they think things are good, then they are worldly! That’s how we can delineate followers of Jesus from lost people! It means we’re an outlier, outcast, minority and weridos to the world!
But the good news is we’re the remnant of people that Jesus talks about in the Bible who have powerful faith! So, we need to keep working in the process of following Jesus being humble and patient while we embrace and endure it!
Sadly, a lot of people in the world seem to like the way things are going right now! We see it in the way they’re raising their children… the way they conduct their sexuality, approach politics and government, the strategy they have for economics and the way they pursue spirituality!
It all really fits for them, so it feels like home to them, which means it’s not home to us! The closer we get to the end, the less this feels like home and the more we want to be in our real home, which is with Jesus in heaven. The last sign Jude gives in this passage is…
5) Most People Do Not Have The Holy Spirit!
That’s a massive statement at the end of (vs 19)! There are those who are true followers of Jesus and have the Holy Spirit (the true Christians)! And there are those who don’t follow Jesus and they’re called non-Christians! They don’t have the power of the Holy Spirit through the power of faith in Jesus!
So, if we live by the power of the Holy Spirit through the power of faith in Jesus Christ, then we’ll manifest the character of Jesus Christ in our life!
Which Galatians says is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control! If a person doesn’t have the Holy Spirit, they can’t live by the power of the Holy Spirit, so they’re not a follower of Jesus and they won’t experience the power of faith!
This is why non-Christians don’t understand followers of Jesus at all! Once a person truly receives the Holy Spirit, they love Jesus and they want to learn the Bible! They want to sing praise to Jesus and raise their hands to God… they want to pray… they want to serve the Lord and speak His truth!
When a person has the Holy Spirit, they start to think different! Their hear changes and they feel different! They get a new identity in Jesus! They start to see themselves different! They have different desires! This is the secret of following Jesus!
That’s the way following Jesus ought to be for us! We should want to read the Bible every day. We should like reading it. I just don’t read the Bible so I can preach. I preach because I like reading the Bible. For me, I like Jesus… I like prayer… I like singing praise to God… I like the Bible!
I like to live in God’s will. I like to talk to people about Jesus. And it’s not because I feel like I have to. It’s because I want to. And Jesus put the spirit in my soul, which is the way that I “get to”! That’s why I like following Jesus in the Christian life. Back to the passage…
Jesus didn’t approve of weak faith then and he doesn’t approve of weak faith now! It’s false faith and it’s called cultural Christianity! There’s no supernatural power in cultural Christianity!
The sad thing is it’s become kind of prevalent in the United States of American for a few hundred years. The majority of people said that they were Christians but they didn’t live like Christians.
It was sort of the thing to do to go to some sort of church or pretend to have some sort of faith. A lot of people grow up in homes like this. Their parents have them baptized when they’re a baby, but they never take them back to church and they didn’t read the Bible and they didn’t pray in the house.
They were just hoping that having a little ceremony would fix them. Some of them only worship God to make grandma happy! They have their wedding in the church! They have funerals in the church. (Just in case!) They usually have no intention of coming back and it was just a one-time event for God!
This cultural Christianity has dominated our nation… and a lot of church goers that are lukewarm… those of us who love Jesus are fired up for God and are described as hot! People who couldn’t care less about God are called ice cold! The lukewarm are the ones that are the most confusing because they say they love God but the don’t live for God!
It’s actually what’s happening right now in our nation and the western church. A lot of different surveys back it up! Over the past few years, the latest data from the general social survey done by the University of Chicago shows signs that would lead to Jesus spitting “lukewarm” people and churches out of his mouth!
Less than 50% of Americans now have no doubt that God exists… less than 50%! This isn’t even talking about Jesus! This is just the general notion of God. In addition, 34% never go to church. On top of that, 15% of children have no religious upbringing of any kind.
What it means is nobody’s ever prayed for them, with them or over them… never! That’s sad! No one has read them a Bible verse. No one has ever brought them to a church! Zero church experience! Not even the Easter and Christmas time of year where people give their obligatory visit to God’s house… nothing!
Then lastly, survey’s show that mainline protests, which is were most of the lukewarm Christians have gathered on Sundays over the last few hundred years, is now down from 33% of the population attending church in the 1970’s to 10% today!
These are the churches that are in decline. They are weak because they are woke! There’s no power in their faith because there’s no presence of the power of the Holy Spirit! God’s not going to show up at a church where the power of Jesus… the power of the Holy Spirit… the power of the Bible… and His Biblical principles aren’t preached and taught!
That’s why we’re seeing Jesus literally spitting entire churches and denominations out of his mouth! Jesus is saying He’s tired of churches being lukewarm instead of hot! So, in a lot of places, we’re seeing fewer people attending church, online viewership is down… true church ministry is down… giving is down…
A lot of pastors and professing Christians are bothered by it! But in some ways, we can be grateful for it because now we can better identify the “hot or cold” people … and we’re not as easily confused by the lukewarm “Christians”! And praise Jesus…
What we’re seeing here at God’s Invincible church is we are spiritually hot! The Holy Spirit is working here in mighty ways… both physically and spiritually! We’re still going out around the world online, despite the algorithms that are in place trying to stop Biblical messages from God!
The hearts of people who’re truly following Jesus are getting hotter for Jesus, so their light is shining brighter as the world is getting darker. It’s becoming really clear who identifies with Jesus and who doesn’t!
The Bible tells us that this is what will happen as we enter into the end times of the last days! The closer we get to the second coming of Jesus and the end of human history, there will be separation and division! The lukewarm will be spit out. The cold will be indifferent. And the hot will grow brighter!
The Bible uses different wording for this period: last time, last days, end times… and it reminds us that our hope is in Jesus Christ, and His second coming is the only hope for the people on planet earth. The theme of Jude is about the last days of the end times!
It’s the last days… the last time… or the end times! He came the first time to die… He comes the second time to judge! He came the first time to forgive… He comes the last time to condemn or bless, depending on whether you’re for Him or against Him!
When the spirit is in you, things can get better in you… even as things get worse around you! It’s what the Bible teaches! Here’s how Jude says it in (vs 20-21) …
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most Holy Faith and praying in The Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for The Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
He’s saying, even when things are getting worse around us, the power of faith can get stronger in us! And it starts with our identity in Jesus. It’s why we’re having cultural head on collision over identity. Who we are determines what we do! That’s why Satan wants to confuse a person about their identity in any regards to anything other than a relationship with Jesus.
Our primary identity is not our sexuality… it’s our spirituality. It’s not our body… it’s our soul! And what He says is our identity is as a dear friend to Jesus… and fellow believer with Jude! That’s our identity. We work because we have it… not because we’re trying to gain it. It’s grace based… not performance based! It’s at the starting line… not the finish line.
We may be having a bad day in the world, but in Jesus, we’re always having a good day! Even though we’re not very lovable, He’s still going to love us! We start with that… and that’s why we can experience the power faith in Jesus!