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Hohenwald SDA Church

Norman McNulty

The Doctrine That Jesus Hates

It's good to have a nice group here still, even though we have pathfinders that are gone, we still have a nice group here today.

So I'm glad that we can worship together as a family.

And before we get into the message for today, I'm going to pray and we will get right into our message.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this Sabbath day that we can worship you.

And I pray that this message will be helpful to each 1 of us.

And surely as we are living soon to the coming of Jesus, as the world is wrapping up, I pray that we would be awake to the challenges that are out there, and that we would follow the Bible and the Bible only as we prepare to meet Jesus in the clouds.

So bless me as I preach now, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

The title for the sermon today is the doctrine that Jesus hates.

You know, it's rather remarkable that when we look at Scripture, Jesus actually identifies something that he hates.

And we are going to look at that as we move along here, but I'm gonna start again with our scripture reading found in the book of Jude, verses 3 and 4.

Now, Jude is believed by scholars to be the stepbrother of Jesus.

He is someone who became a follower of Jesus, even though the brothers of Jesus seemingly gave him trouble in his earthly life, he was 1 of the ones who became a follower of Jesus.

And it's interesting if you pick it up in verse 1, he says, Jude the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called." So he interestingly addresses those who are sanctified.

Mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied.

And then he talks about what he had planned to write about.

2 Peter 1 talks about holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

He actually had in mind that he was going to write an epistle to the believers about the common salvation.

That's where he says, beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you the common salvation." So this was something that he was diligently thinking about.

He was thinking about how he was going to write a letter to the Christian believers about what salvation means.

But the Holy Spirit moved upon him to do something differently.

He says, "...it was needful or necessary for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." You know, in the days that we are living in right now, there are forces at play that remind us that there is a need for champions of truth in this our day.

And as Jude exhorted the Christian believers in the first century, we can come down to the end of time and it could be said to us today as well that we should be earnestly contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.

If we think that Christianity, the pure Christian faith, is going to simply sail through without any attacks from Satan, we're sleeping at the wheel.

We must earnestly contend for the biblical, scriptural faith that was delivered by Christ to the saints while he was here on this earth, and of course there was the pre-incarnate Christ who spoke to those who wrote the Old Testament Scripture.

And he goes on to explain why it's necessary to earnestly contend.

For there are certain men crept in unawares, now that's King James language, unnoticed is the marginal reading, So there's people who have crept into the church unnoticed.

They come right in and they seem as if they should be allowed to to share their faith.

But there is a problem with these who have crept in unnoticed, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation ungodly men, and here is now the problem, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness And denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, lasciviousness is kind of a big word.

If grace is turned into lasciviousness, and this is a warning, then lasciviousness must be bad.

If you have a marginal reading, another meaning for this word is licentiousness, which is filthiness, which is sin.

And there were people who came into the early Christian church and they turned the grace of God into licentiousness.

Now, you can take an isolated phrase from the Apostle Paul, for example, and make it sound completely opposite of what he means.

For example, in Romans 5, Paul says in the second half of verse 20, he said, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

You know what a lot of Christians do with that verse?

That means that the more I sin, the more grace I experience.

Therefore, I should keep sinning because I'll get more grace." Now Paul actually addresses this.

He says where sin abounds, grace did much more abound.

He actually Specifically goes after those who would say such a thing 2 chapters earlier, but people will skip this part of his writing and he says, starting in Romans 3, verse 5, he says, if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God or demonstrate the righteousness of God, What shall we say?

God forbid, for then how shall God judge the world?

Now notice verse 7, he says, for if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto His glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" So in other words, if God's truth is clearer by my life of sin, then why would I have to worry about being judged?

And then he goes on to say, and he makes it very clear, he's like, this is slanderous.

Verse 8, and not rather as we be slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say, so he's like, yeah, there are people who are out there slandering the gospel of Christ and then others will affirm and say oh yeah I heard Paul say that too.

In other words Let's sin so we can receive more grace.

Paul never teaches that grace releases us from living a life of righteousness.

But that's what false teachers in the first century began to teach, especially based upon the writings of Paul.

You know, ever since grace has been introduced, there are those who have turned God's grace into being a license to continue sinning.

And yet the Bible specifically condemns such things.

And that's why the Apostle Jude in his epistle said that we must earnestly, he's like, I'm exhorting you, I am begging with you, I am pleading with you that you would earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.

And he's addressing those who are sanctified by God the Father because it's very clear that those who turn the grace of God into license for sin are not sanctified.

You know, I'm reminded of the passage in Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, where Jesus very clearly says, "...Enter ye in at the straight gate.

For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat, because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Now, when we find Jesus and when we find the power of the gospel, it's not that it should be difficult to enter into heaven, but there are so many deceptions that lead people away from the clear straight Bible truth.

It reminds me as well of what Hebrews chapter 12 verses 25 through 27 say that just as God's voice shook the earth when He spoke from Sinai.

A day is coming that He will shake the heavens as well, so that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, so that that which cannot be shaken may remain.

You know, the famous Christian preacher Charles Spurgeon made this powerful statement.

The church does not determine what the Bible teaches.

The Bible determines what the church must teach.

And we've gotten that flipped around, but the reality is that until Jesus comes, the Bible will determine what the church teaches.

Now there are a lot of churches who don't follow that anymore.

But by the grace of God and the Seventh-day Adventist Church and here in the Hohenwald Seventh-day Adventist Church, we will follow what the Bible teaches by the grace of God.

And we will share it in the love and grace of Jesus, of course.

But what the Bible teaches is what guides our life.

And for those of us who have lived enough years have come to understand if you truly want to be happy and to have joy and peace in your life, you know that true joy and peace comes from following what Jesus says in his word.

But you know, it's hard to hear God's voice when you've already decided what you want Him to say.

How about if we took a step back and allowed God to speak through his word.

Now, 1 time I was at a church and it was a Sabbath school discussion and the discussion ensued as to how God speaks to us.

Now, Ellen White has the statement, I didn't put this in my notes, where Ellen White says that God speaks to us through His Word, through promptings of the Spirit, and through providential leadings.

People will follow impressions and think the Holy Spirit is guiding them, and they'll say, look at how God opened this door for me.

And then you look at the decision they're making, and the decision that they are making is contradictory to the Word of God.

And I have 1 word for you, that is not the Holy Spirit that has given you that prompting.

Any impression in your mind and seeming providence that occurs in your life must be in harmony with what the Word of God says.

I mean, 1 time there was an elder of a church somewhere in America who dumped his wife for another woman and proceeded to tell the church of how God was so good in bringing them together.

I'm sorry, but that's not the leading of the Holy Spirit or of God.

We live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Not our opinions, not our emotions, not our impressions.

Those impressions and providential leadings must be in harmony with what the word of God says.

So the church does not determine what the Bible teaches, the Bible determines what the church must teach.

That's how the Protestant Reformation began, where they spoke up and protested against the church, the mother church, deciding what the Bible actually meant.

Now, I'm gonna talk about something today, and I wanna be very kind and sensitive about this, but it's happening in a way that I feel the time has come to say something about this publicly from the pulpit so that we as a church can be aware of what's happening.

I've been aware of this issue for several months, and as I go around and speak I've seen it in different places.

I was in North Carolina in December and I spoke with 2 of my pastoral friends from 2 of the main churches in the Hendersonville, North Carolina area and they talked about how some of the churches in this area were getting into this ideology.

I was in Hawaii last November and it's spreading in that area.

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The Doctrine That Jesus Hates

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