Dealing with Doubters, Deconstructors, and the DEceived

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, turn to the book of Jude, where we will be
again this morning.
Some of you know the name Michael Gungor. I say that name, and some of you go, I know who that is.
Others of you go, that sounds like a character in a video game, right? But Michael Gungor,
he's a musician. He lives in LA. He's a preacher's kid. He and his wife started a church when they
were in Denver back in 2007. It was a church called Bloom.
Several years later, Michael and Lisa, his wife, walked away from the church, walked away from
their faith, and began to publicly deconstruct what they had said they believed for a long time.
You know that term deconstructing? It's kind of a popular term being used now by people who grew up
in churches and have begun now to rethink, to reexamine what they believed.
They no longer believe some of the things that they once believed.
And Michael Gungor is somebody who has done that and done it very publicly. He has a popular
podcast where he kind of walks everybody through what he's thinking about what he now believes that
he didn't used to believe. And that's why a few months ago when he posted a video online,
people who have been following him for a long time, and there are a lot of them, they were
surprised and began to wonder what might be going on. with Michael Gungor. So I want you to watch
the video he posted online. I think this is very interesting. Watch this. Okay, so here's a video I
didn't ever expect to make. I am church shopping. For those of you who just have followed me
recently or maybe you haven't known my whole story, here's a quick recap. I was raised a pastor's
kid, worship leader. I began to tour the world as a worship leader, got awards and...
recognition for that and then I very publicly sort of deconstructed my faith, my beliefs anyway,
and became a bit of a black sheep in that music industry. For a long time I stayed away from all
things Christian and then I began to, after a lot of searching through different religions and
traditions and practices, began to rediscover aspects of my own upbringing that I loved.
And now I've kind of come full circle where I actually find a lot of beauty. in a tradition that
surrenders oneself to God. And I'm looking for a group of people that have enough spaciousness to
allow someone like me, who doesn't necessarily believe in the exclusivity of any one religion, but
is open to God everywhere. Ideally, I'd love to find a place where I can not just go,
but get involved in some way, musically or, I don't know. But I live in Pasadena,
so if you know anywhere that might be open to heretics like me, let me know.
It's pretty interesting, right? I wanted to show you that video not just to focus on Michael
Gungor, but because he is representative of a whole lot of public deconstructors,
one of tens of thousands of Gen X and millennials who are... going through the same journey he's
going through, some of them high profile, people like Joshua Harris, Kevin Max from DC Talk,
Aaron Rodgers, all have kind of publicly deconstructed the faith they grew up in. But here he says,
I'm church shopping again. And the idea that somebody who publicly renounced what he once believed
and left the church and says, you know what, I missed some of these things, maybe I'm interested
again, it gets your attention, right? So on one hand, I'm thinking, well, maybe the Lord's at work.
Maybe God's stirring in his heart. Maybe he's drawing him back and he's softening.
Maybe this is like the prodigal son waking up to, what have I done? But then he says, but I'm
looking for a particular kind of church. I'm looking for a church that believes the new stuff that
I believe. Like they don't believe in the exclusivity of Jesus. They're going to be welcoming to
heretics like me. And by the way, if you're one of those churches, I might want to get involved in
your music. I'm a world-known worship leader. Would you like a guy like me to come and help with
your music program? So if Michael showed up here this morning and said,
I want to check this out, see if this might be a place where I could come to worship, what should
our response be to somebody who shows up like that? Do you say, come on in? Do you say, wait, tell
us more? Do you say, I need to check your ID? I mean, if somebody shows up, and has been publicly
renouncing their faith and says, I want to come be a part of the church. They've rejected the
biblical idea that Jesus is the only way to God. Do you let him in the door?
Do you post guards at the door? What do you do? Well, actually, Jude tells us.
what to do in the passage we're going to be looking at this morning in the portion of Jude's
letter. I've titled the message this morning, dealing with doubters, deconstructors,
and the deceived. Some rules of engagement. And we're told in Jude that we are to contend for the
faith. So there's to be engagement. We're to be publicly contending for what we believe.
The word contend is epigonissomai. When you start a Greek word with epi,
it means really, really do it. So it's contend earnestly, contend fervently for the faith.
But this is important. When you are contending for the faith, there are rules of engagement.
It's not just a... defend to the death. No, you have to follow the rules.
I mean, here's what I mean by that. If you are contending for the faith and you are not
simultaneously manifesting the fruit of the Spirit as you contend for the faith, you're not
contending for the faith well.
You follow that? If you are not full of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and
goodness, and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control,
while you are contending for the faith, you are not contending for the faith in the power of the
Holy Spirit. So while you are to take a firm, unflagging,
unwavering stand for the biblical gospel and contend for the teaching of the apostles that the
Bible has handed down to us, you have to stand firm and contend, full of love and peace and joy and
patience and kindness and gentleness, self-control, all of it.
When two nations go to war, we're seeing this now in the fight between Israel and Hamas,
there are rules of engagement. Some people play by the rules. They fight by the rules. Others
don't. But the international community is governing how you're supposed to fight a war.
When there's a boxing match between two people who are opposing one another, there's a referee that
says, you can't hit there. You can't do that. There's a football game. There are people on the
sidelines calling a timeout when somebody's not... fighting by the rules. In the same way, Jude
says when it comes to contending for the faith, there are rules of engagement that need to be
followed. There are ways you should be interacting with those who are the false teachers and those
who are the deceived who have been following the false teachers. In fact, in this letter,
as we've seen, Jude has clearly mapped out the two opposing sides. There are the faithful,
who he addresses at the beginning. They are called. They are beloved. They are kept.
They are to build themselves up, keep themselves in the love of God, build up their faith, pray in
the Holy Spirit. They're to wait expectantly for the second coming of Christ. We see all of that
mapped out. This is how the... believers should act. And then the ungodly,
the unbelievers, the false teachers, are self-absorbed. They're grumblers. They're malcontents.
They're prone to sensuality, sexual sin. There's a whole list of descriptions for the false
teachers. And when you get to verses 22 and 23, which we're going to be looking at this morning,
Jude is telling us how the faithful followers should be interacting with the unfaithful.
How do you interact with Michael Gungor? or anyone else who's a doubter or a deconstructor or
someone who is deceived and been carried away from the faith altogether. We're going to look at
what Jude tells us about that this morning, but let's pray as we go to God's word.
Father, we need your spirit to be our teacher this morning, and we need our own hearts and minds to
be open to the teaching of your word. Lord, I pray that I would be faithful to represent you,
in this time, and Lord, I pray that each of us would have ears to hear and hearts to obey.
I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
In Jude, beginning at verse 17, I'll read verse 17 through 23. You follow along as I read this
morning. Jude writes, But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord
Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last times there will be scoffers following their own
ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the Spirit.
But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit.
Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to
eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt.
Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others,
show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
Amen. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of
God will last forever. So let me set a context for these verses we're going to look at this
morning. Here's the overview of Jude that we've seen. In verse 1, he says, Jude says,
here's who I am. In verse 2, he says, here's who you are. Verse 2, he says,
this is my prayer for you. And then in verses 3 and 4, here's the purpose for this letter.
And then this long section, 5 through 16, where he says, I'm going to describe for you the false
teachers. Here's what they've looked like in the past. Here's what they look like today. Here's how
you can recognize them. Which gets us to verse 17 where he says, here's how you respond to the
false teachers. Last time he said, here are things you need to do before you respond. You need to
be ready to respond. Keep yourself in the love of God. Build yourself up in your faith.
Pray in the Holy Spirit. And wait expectantly. for the day when you will be the beneficiaries of
his abundant mercy on that day when he returns. And now in verses 22 and 23, he says,
and here's how you interact with the false teachers. And I see three groups of people,
three distinct groups in these two verses. There are the doubters. That's who he talks to first.
Those who doubt have mercy. There are the others. I'm calling these the deconstructors.
And we'll explain what that means. And he says, snatch them out of the fire.
And then the last group, still others who have been deceived and they have been stained in the
process and you're to show them mercy with fear. That's what we're going to look at this morning.
The three groups of people and how do we respond to each of them. Let's talk first about the
doubters. There are people who, as you know, will hear the message of the gospel and go,
yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, really, some of this is hard to believe.
Can we just start by acknowledging that some of what we proclaim and believe as Christians is hard
to believe? Starting with the fact that we say that a crucified man was buried and then three days
later walked out of the grave alive again. It would be normal for someone to hear your report of
that if I came back to you and said, hey, I was in Pine Bluff this weekend. Guess what happened?
This guy who died three days ago got up and rose again. You would go, what? You'd check my
temperature. You'd think that doesn't sound right to me. It's not unusual for us to doubt a report
like that.
And then when I said, and by the way, the Arkansas River parted and all of the people passed
through it, you know, you would go, what?
Or we were all out to lunch and all we had was one basket and it multiplied and we fed the whole
group. Huh? I mean, the things we say we believe, can we just acknowledge?
This is not normal stuff. This is not stuff that you look at and go, well, sure, that just makes
perfect sense. It's normal to have skepticism about the miraculous.
For that matter, it's normal to wonder about the existence of God.
We haven't seen God at any time. So to have doubts,
we have to believe it by faith. Anyone here ever been a doubter?
Yeah, me. There are doubting days for all of us. Doubting,
listen to me, doubting is not a sin. Unbelief is a sin.
There's a difference in the same way that temptation is not necessarily a sin. but acting on
temptation is. Doubting is not necessarily a sin, but acting on it and moving toward unbelief,
that's when you step into the realm of sin.
The question is not, do you doubt? It's what do you do with your doubts when they come? And if you
have doubts like I do, here's the good news. You are in great company,
not because you're in company with me. but because according to the Bible, the greatest man other
than Jesus, the greatest man born of a woman before Jesus came, was a doubter. John the Baptist was
a doubter. You ever thought about this? When John first saw Jesus, he was out at the Jordan River,
he's baptizing people, he looks up, Jesus is coming. What does John say? Behold, the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world. He declares, this is the Messiah who's coming.
That's his first thing. And then Jesus comes to him and says, I want you to baptize me. He says, I
can't baptize. No, do it now. And he baptizes Jesus. And what happens? A voice from heaven says,
this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.
Now, if you'd had that experience, if that was you, you'd been there, you'd done that,
you'd seen all of that, do you think you would ever doubt again? for the rest of your life, that
Jesus was the Messiah? John did. You know how we know that?
Because in Matthew 11, when John is in prison, about to be beheaded,
he calls his disciples, this is Matthew 11 too, when John heard in prison about the deeds of the
Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the one who is to come or should we
look for another?
Didn't you say he was the one who is to come? Didn't you hear a voice from heaven? And now you're
doubting?
Well, things are not going the way John thought they were going to go.
He's in prison. He's about to be beheaded. It's not looking good for him.
And isn't it the case that doubts are more likely to come into your life in times of adversity?
When the sun is shining and life is good, you probably don't spend a whole lot of time with angst
about whether there's really a God and whether he really loves you. But hit some dark days,
and those doubts can come.
In this context, right here, when John sends the disciples, Jesus declares to the disciples who
come that John is the greatest among those born of a woman.
Jude, back in verse 22, is telling us that when people around us find themselves doubting what the
Bible says is true about God's goodness, about his love, about his very existence,
our response should be a response of mercy. Have mercy on those who are doubting.
Judge them. Don't condemn them. Don't get panicked and think I've got to talk you back into
believing. Don't be harsh with them. Be merciful.
Let me talk for just a minute about what you should do if you're the doubter. Before we talk about
how we should respond to doubters, let's talk about what we should do when we are doubters. What we
learn from John the Baptist, when he had doubts, where did he take his doubts?
To Jesus.
When you have doubts, that's where you go with them. When you find yourself facing a trial,
wondering if it makes sense, it's reasonable to believe that, you're thinking,
is it reasonable to believe that God is good in that moment? Right there, you're at a crossroads.
Where are you going to go with that thought? Do you lean in the direction of your doubts, or do you
remind yourself of the things that you know are true? It's up to you. If you linger with your
doubts,
it will take you in one direction. If you anchor yourself in what you know is true, it will take
you in a different direction.
Some circles in the church today, doubt has been celebrated. It's almost seen as a virtue.
There are some who say, in order to have real faith, you have to start with doubts. In fact,
you're not really an intelligent or sophisticated person. If you don't have doubts, you're
gullible, you're simple-minded, it's good to doubt. In fact, it's good to pressure test what we
believe. But I came across a website as I was studying this passage where the writer said,
doubt is healthy. Doubt is a virtue. Doubt is necessary to test your faith and make it stronger.
There's no confidence without doubt. Then he says this, cultivate doubt in your life.
Always be unsure. Doubt makes you smarter. It makes you more resilient. Now,
if what he's saying is don't just be a lemming and go along with what the crowd's doing without
thinking about it, I'm all in for that. But the Bible does not say cultivate doubt and always be
unsure. In fact, it says just the opposite. It says you're to move from doubt to faith.
This author seems to have a lot of faith in the power of doubt, right?
And as I've said, doubt's not a sin, but there's nowhere in the Bible where doubt is commended.
There's nowhere. You don't see Jesus saying, I'm so proud of you disciples for your doubts. No,
what does he say? Oh, you of little faith.
He's pointing them away from doubt. He says, why do you doubt?
He wants them to think, what's behind your doubts? Understand that and move back toward faith. St.
Anselm in the Middle Ages famously called us to have fides quarens intellectium.
That's Latin for faith-seeking understanding.
He said, I do not seek to understand in order that I might believe. I rather believe in order that
I may understand.
You start with faith and it moves you. to understanding rather than saying, I can't believe until I
fully understand. If you can't believe in God until you fully understand, you'll never believe in
God because you'll never fully understand. But if you start by saying,
I believe these things and you anchor yourself on those,
that will move you in the direction of belief and understanding. I've shared this quote with you
many times. It's a quote from a guy named Tom Skinner. Tom Skinner was the chaplain for the
Washington Redskins back in the, I think in the 70s. He grew up in Harlem. He got saved listening
to the radio. He was in a gang when he grew up in Harlem and he had to go back to the gang members
and say he was leaving the gang, which often meant getting pummeled or killed. God protected him
through that. He became an evangelist. In fact, Dwayne heard him speak when he came to the
University of Arkansas back in the 70s. And when he spoke back there, he started and ended each of
the messages he did with the quote I'm going to read to you. And I think this is so helpful as we
think about doubts. Tom Skinner said, I spent a long time trying to come to grips with my doubts.
And suddenly I realized I'd better come to grips with what I believe. I have since moved from the
agony of questions I cannot answer to the reality of answers I cannot escape. And it's a great
relief.
We'll all have doubts. When you have doubts, anchor yourself in what you believe is true,
what you know is true. Move in the direction of faith, not in the direction of doubts.
When you find yourself at this intersection, which way do you decide to go? Doubt or believe?
That will make the difference. If you follow... it will take you away from God.
If you follow belief, it will keep you close to God.
That's why it's called faith.
And Jude is telling us in this passage that when you come across doubters, when you come across
people who are sincerely wrestling with what the Bible teaches, with what is true about God,
about Jesus in the Bible, acknowledge that those doubts are real and valid.
Don't bring shame to that. Don't try to dismiss that person or their doubts.
Invite that person to take their doubts to Jesus, like John the Baptist did, like Doubting Thomas
did. When those doubts came to Jesus, did he shame anybody? Did he scorn anybody?
No. He pointed them toward truth. And here's what you need to know.
When you go to Jesus, He may not resolve your doubts. He may not answer everything for you. It's
not like you go and go, oh, I understand it now. He's God. There's plenty in this life you won't
understand because you're not God. When your four-year-old comes to you and says,
I want to understand this, and you say, you're not big enough to understand this.
They don't like it, but it's true. Well, we're less than four-year-olds.
The gulf between God's understanding and ours is bigger than a four-year-old and a grown-up. So
when we come and we say, God, I don't understand this, sometimes we just have to be satisfied with,
that's right, you don't. I'm God. Stay with me.
I know what I'm doing.
Jesus is not put off by doubters. He welcomes them. Bring your questions and your doubts. And we
are to be merciful with doubters. When you have a doubter come to you,
welcome that. Invite them in and point them to Jesus and move them toward faith in that direction.
And let the Holy Spirit be at work there. That's the first group, the doubters. The second group
that Jude addresses, I'm calling them the deconstructors. These are people whose doubts have
started leading them to a place where they're starting to deconstruct. They're starting to take
apart their faith. They're moving in the direction of doubt instead of of faith, and they're
starting to jettison things that they used to believe about God.
and how he should be acting. This is what Michael Gungor has been doing publicly. Now, I know verse
23 doesn't give us a whole lot of detail about this second group, those who are to be snatched from
the fire. But here's what that verse tells me. These are people who have, they're closer to the
fire than the doubters were. And in fact, they're close enough to the fire that they're in real
danger. They need to be snatched out because they're in a place of... and destruction.
The only other reference to fire in Jude goes back to verse 7,
and that's Sodom and Gomorrah, where the people in Sodom and Gomorrah were facing eternal fire,
God's judgment, his punishment for their sexual sin. So if that's the context here,
when he says snatch them from the fire, I believe he's saying snatch them because they're getting
close to eternal judgment. They're in danger of eternal judgment in the direction that they're
going. They have moved from doubt to rejection of some elements of Christianity that don't suit
them. In the case of the guy we just watched, it's clear that he can't get past the idea that Jesus
said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. In fact,
this is interesting. A few weeks after he posted the videos that said, I'm looking for a church. He
posted another video where he talked about why he doesn't believe in the exclusivity of Jesus.
So I want you to watch a second video from him. I'd like to talk about exclusivity of religion and
specifically idolatry for a second. I was raised as evangelical Christian. And what I was taught
was that you weren't supposed to have other gods before me. That's what God said. And then you had
Jesus say, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. And
what I thought that meant was that there was like a bunch of options, right? Like a grab bag.
We're going to have a bunch of these bottles of water, okay? And you had to make sure you had the
right one. So all these different kinds of bottles, possibly Buddha or Muhammad or Krishna or
whatever. You had all these different kinds of options. There was one bottle in particular that
was the right one. Through time, though, I discovered that that view had some limitations to it.
There were some issues that came up. For instance, if my God was just one bottle among lots of
bottles, one God amongst lots of gods, isn't that kind of a small God? I thought God was supposed
to be infinite. Secondly, what about the people who accidentally picked the wrong bottle? Are they
really deserving of hell because they tried to find water somewhere else? If we think of this water
bottle as Jesus, and we hear it saying, I am the water that will quench your thirst, the one water.
Well, what if we mistook the bottle for the water? What if that's what idolatry is? What if in this
bottle the water was speaking?
Now, we could spend a lot of time with that.
I mean, his premise is that each one of these bottles all has the same thing in it,
that it doesn't matter what the label says. It's all the same. It's all water. It doesn't matter
what label you put on it. It's all the same stuff. Ignore the labels. Just be refreshed. It doesn't
matter which bottle you pick. Except there's a reason they put labels on bottles to tell you what's
in the bottle. And when there are different labels on the bottles, it means there are different
things in the bottles. And one of them could be poison and won't refresh you.
In fact, it could be salt water that will not... solve your thirst will make you thirstier and will
kill you if you drink too much of it.
You pick the Buddha bottle or the Krishna bottle or the Islam bottle, they're not all the same.
And that's the fallacy. But my point here is not to get sidetracked on this issue of exclusivity.
That's another sermon. My point is a lot of Michael Gungers who have moved away from what the Bible
clearly teaches and have gotten closer to the fire as a result.
They are closer to eternal judgment because they don't like the implications of what the Bible
teaches. They're rejecting God and his word.
If it's idolatry to say that there is one God who is the most high God and that all the other gods
are idols, Yahweh is the only true God, then the Old Testament is full of that message.
Over and over again, God calls people away from other water bottles. Jesus says,
if any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink, not just go find any bottle.
Deconstructors are people who have concluded that there are elements of the Bible that either need
to be discarded or reinterpreted. They don't fit my experience. They don't fit into the culture.
We need to adjust these things. And I would suggest to you, I think there are three main areas that
are tripping up. modern doubters that are leading them to deconstruct.
This is one of them, the issue of exclusivity. There are a lot of people who just can't get past
this issue that Jesus says, I'm the only way. They can't make sense of the idea that a nice,
sincere person who has not heard of Jesus is still in his heart a rebel against God and the
revelation of God and is deserving of eternal punishment. They can't get themselves to that.
Second group of deconstructors are getting there because they look at the Bible itself and say this
is an untrustworthy book. And they try to point you to all of the reasons why it's an untrustworthy
book, why you can't have confidence in this. They think that their analysis of this is deeper and
more profound than the men and women throughout history who have... studied,
tested, written on, explored this book, and have come to a different conclusion. We're all
confused. They have been enlightened. And then the third thing that is tripping up people and
leading them to deconstruct is what the Bible teaches about gender and sexuality, as we've already
talked about. Jude alludes to that in this book when he talks about the propensity toward
sensuality, the exclusivity of God, the reliability of the Bible. And the biblical teaching on
gender and sexuality, it's those three things that are causing most people today to move toward
deconstruction if they're moving in that direction. And when they move in that direction,
they are playing with fire. That's what Jude's saying. They need to be snatched away from that
fire, warned about what they're playing with, warned about the destruction that will come if
they... in that direction. If they don't get out from where they are, it's going to be for them
like it was for you. and Gomorrah. Destruction is coming. I'm guessing just about everybody here
knows a deconstructor. You can think of people in your life,
in your family, in your workplace, people who used to be walking with the Lord who are not now
walking with the Lord. Anywhere I go and speak these days, parents are coming up to me,
grandparents coming up to me, they are heartsick about children or grandchildren who grew up in the
church, and are now walking with the Lord. This weekend, I was with parents, and we were catching
up. We hadn't seen each other for a long time. I said, tell me about your kids. Where are they? I
said, so they're there. Where are they going to church? Well, they're not going to church right
now. Pray for them. I hear this over and over again. It makes parents heart sick.
Michael Gunger's dad's a pastor. I don't know how that's going for him. But these people who have
quit going to church or they're now looking for a very different church than the one they grew up
in, it is heartbreaking. I know it is. And these parents would love to figure out,
what can I do to snatch my kids, my grandkids away from the fire and rescue them?
What does that mean? How do you snatch somebody who is deconstructing away from the fire? You can't
just go up to them and grab them and go, come on with me.
Well, let me ask you. And I got two thoughts here. You were once near the fire,
right? You were once facing destruction, rejecting God and his ways,
going your own way. That's everybody's story. What did God do in your life that snatched you away
from the fire? And how did he do it? Here's what I think happened.
God sent somebody into your life who loved you. and who kept putting the gospel in front of you and
god used their love and the message of the gospel to soften that person's heart and snatch love you
put the gospel in front of you used it in your life to snatch you away from the fire and bring you
to faith even when you said to your friend yeah yeah yeah i'm not interested and you kept pushing
them away they kept gently nudging you while they kept on loving you that's what i think we do with
those who are Deconstructing. We find that while we are loving them aggressively,
winsome ways that we can represent the message of the gospel, the reality of our own depravity,
our rebellious nature, our rejection of God and His ways, and at the same time, His love, His
grace, His mercy, His kindness, His goodness, we keep finding ways to put that message in front of
the deconstructing because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
that's what you put in front of the deconstructors. That's what will ultimately snatch them from
the fire.
Not your harshness, not your arguing, not your love,
your kindness, your mercy. This passage is all about mercy. And keep putting the gospel in front of
them to snatch them from the fire. Now look, this can be tricky because we know that in some cases,
if you're not careful, you can push people toward the fire. by putting the gospel in front of them.
There are some people who will, they're just going to go, they're going to harden up. So you have
to be prayerful. You have to be careful. You have to love more than you nudge. They have to know
your love is greater than your nudging. If they think you're just here to sell me something,
you don't really care about me. You're not going to listen to that. But if they know this person
loves me, I can't get past that.
You keep putting the gospel in front of them. Ultimately, the only thing that will rescue a
deconstructor from the fire is for them to hear, believe, repent, return to the gospel.
For the deconstructors I know, I pray God will bring circumstances and people into their lives who
will cause them to wake up and think, what am I doing here? Like what happened to the prodigal son
in Luke 15? And that brings me to the second thought here. It's helpful to remember with the
prodigal son what the father did in that parable. What did the father do? When his son went to a
far country, he watched, kept watching, kept praying for him, and then he ran toward him when he
saw his son coming.
Keep loving, keep praying, keep gently nudging, and know that things might have to get really bad
for your child or for your friend before they're ultimately snatched from the fire.
The doubters, the deconstructors, I want to get the third group here that I see in verse 23. I'm
calling them the deceived. These are those who have been stained by the flesh.
Judah's referencing, when he talks about being stained by the flesh, he's referencing a passage in
Zechariah 3 that we'll look at in a few minutes. But in this passage, there's a priest whose name
is Joshua. that Joshua, but this is the high priest in Israel at the time of Zechariah.
His name is Joshua. And he is in this passage, he is clothed in filthy garments,
Zechariah says. And in fact, the language both in Zechariah 3 and here in Jude 23,
alluding to the filthy garments is a language that talks about the garment having been soiled with
excrement.
In other words, those who have followed the false teachers have really made a mess of their lives.
And it's come from them. Their garments have been stained by the flesh.
Their garments have been stained because they have followed fleshly impulses and fleshly desires.
They have followed their own appetites, desires, and not followed Jesus.
They have gone on sinning openly and unashamedly. regardless of what the Bible says and what they
claim about God, and it has left them stained with their sin. If you go all the way back to the
beginning of Jude in verse 4, these false teachers are described as those who have traded the grace
of God for sensuality and are living lives that deny the lordship of Christ. They have said,
I'm not interested in God's grace. I'm interested in the flesh. I'm going to pursue that.
And they deny the lordship of Christ. Jude says, what should we do with these people? Have mercy on
them.
Does that surprise you? That people who have wandered off and are living lives of open rebellion
against the things of God, that we should show them mercy?
I think maybe the culture we're in today with cable news and talk radio and Twitter has led us to
think, no, you're to own those people. You're to say things that show them just how wrong they are.
You're to win every argument.
Jude says, no, show mercy.
But he says, notice here, he says, show mercy. With this group, show mercy, but with fear. Why does
he throw that in? Well, he throws that in because of what the Bible talks about over in Galatians
chapter 6, verse 1. There it says, brothers, if anyone is caught in a transgression,
these are people who are stuck in their sin, the flesh. You who are spiritual,
you're prayed up, you're in right relationship with God, you should restore him, that is, you
should seek to bring him out of that with a spirit of gentleness, meekness,
mercy, love. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
You're going to go near these people who are trapped in sin? Better be careful, because that could
happen to you.
You know, if you came to me and you said, you know, I just have such a burden. I used to be an
alcoholic, and I just have such a burden for the people who are in the bars that I feel like I need
to go back to the bars and just witness to people. I would say, be careful.
Remember that environment.
In my notes, it's always dangerous when I'm going to say something that's not in my notes, but I
was talking to Tim this morning, and Tim just got a new job. He's going to be working in the
restaurant business, and he's been in the restaurant business, and I said to him,
Tim, Be careful. Because the restaurant business is not known as a place filled with righteousness.
It's filled with drug abuse and easy sex. That's true in that industry.
You're heading back in there as a new creature in Christ. Be careful. That doesn't mean don't go
there. It means go, show mercy with fear.
You go in there going, Lord, I know I could be tempted back into this. Lord, keep me.
Lead me not into temptation, deliver me from evil. That's the prayer.
I think we have to recognize Jude has spent most of this letter using strong language to describe
these false teachers. He has not used kind language. He's called them scoffers, blasphemers,
malcontent, grumblers, devoid of the spirit. There's a whole long list in here. And now he says,
show them mercy. And you might think, well, wait, doesn't sound like you were showing them a whole
lot of mercy. I think it depends on how you read that characterization. I wish we had the tone of
it. You can read these things with a tone of disgust, or you can read these things with a tone of
compassion.
You can say, these are scoffers. Or you can say, they're scoffers.
They grumble.
They're ungodly, with a broken heart rather than with a proud heart.
You can still have mercy while you accurately describe what's true about the false teachers.
I think... a reason why he says, show them mercy, and this gets to the heart of all of this,
takes us back to Zechariah 3. You're to show them mercy, and you can do it uniquely. Why? Because
you have received mercy yourself.
You can uniquely put the mercy of God on display for somebody else because you are a recipient of
God's mercy, and you've been transformed by it. Here's where I want you to turn with me to
Zechariah. chapter 3. It's in the Old Testament, near the end of the Old Testament. Just get to
Malachi and go back a few verses, or get to Psalms and go the other direction. Just look for
Zechariah chapter 3.
In Zechariah 3, in verse 3, here's the scene that's being set up. Joshua,
the high priest, was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments,
and the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him.
And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you. I will clothe you with pure
vestments. What a picture. Joshua the high priest standing clothed with soiled garments and a
messenger from God comes and says, We're going to take the garments of sin away and we're going to
put a robe of righteousness on you. pure robes.
I thought about this passage this week, and I found myself freshly encouraged that even those who
have wandered far off, who are in open rebellion against God and his ways, Jude wants us to know
that they have not gone beyond God's mercy.
I thought about a pastor who I met more than a decade ago. He's a past president of the Southern
Baptist Convention. 20 years ago, he was president of the SBC. His name is James Merritt. He's the
pastor at Crosspoint Church in Duluth, Georgia. And he has a son, Jonathan Merritt.
And Jonathan is a religion writer and a journalist who is openly gay and who sees nothing wrong
with being gay. Jonathan has moved a long way away from what his dad taught him growing up.
in the church, and in their home. And back in September, Jonathan posted a picture of himself with
his dad, both of them speaking to a group of pastors openly about the challenges that the two of
them have in their relationship. And I want to show you that picture. So this is Jonathan and his
dad, James. And here's what Jonathan, you can't read the fine print. Let me read it to you.
Jonathan writes, people often ask how in the world I maintain a close relationship with my dad. I'm
a progressive gay man. And as many of you know, he's a Southern Baptist preacher who describes
himself as to the right of Ronald Reagan. These days, you can score a lot of likes on social media
by posting about the people you have bravely severed from your life. Problematic parents,
snarky siblings, catty childhood friends. In severe cases, this may be a necessary step,
he says. But in the age of going no contact, my dad and I have chosen another harder path.
We've chosen to stay and stick it out and to learn to love across difference. Yes,
we still establish healthy boundaries, but we are more focused on how we can build bridges to each
other than barriers from each other. The truth is this has not been easy. It's been one of the
toughest things. I cannot emphasize this enough. One of the toughest things I've done in four
decades of living. We disagree on a lot politically and theologically. A lot.
We often joke that some of our disagreements could peel paint off the walls. But working to stay in
relationship has taught us so many wonderful truths. We have learned that it's impossible to love
someone when you're constantly trying to change who they are, and that works both ways. He says
we've learned that the people who will cry at your funeral matter and the critics on social media
feeds do not. We've learned that while we may sometimes fight with each other in private,
we can still fight for each other in public. And most of all, we've learned that loving across
differences is messy and difficult, but in this case, it's worth it. He says, if more people were
willing to learn the spiritual practices of loving across differences, I think our coarse-edged
world might become gentler, kinder, more hospitable place for all of us. Now, I read that,
and I thought about James Merritt deciding he would show mercy to his sinful son.
He would say that his son has been deceived and that his son is deceiving others.
but he would also say the story's not over, and he's going to show mercy to his son that keeps a
door open for Jonathan to come back home.
Pray for him. Pray for both of them. Pray for the dad and the son,
and pray for those you know who have got situations like this in their own family.
I read this post, and I thought about Isaiah 59, which begins with these words, Behold, the Lord's
hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. or his ear dull that it cannot hear.
There is no one out of reach of God's grace and mercy. This chapter, Isaiah 59,
goes on to talk about the rebellion of God's people and about the consequences they faced as a
result. But even as Isaiah catalogs the rebellion... starts by reminding us, yes,
these people are rebellious. They're not beyond the arm of the Lord. God will still hear their cry
if they will cry out to him. It's an old gospel song. It says,
are you washed in the blood? Did you grow up singing? Are you washed in the blood, in the soul
-cleansing blood of the Lamb? The last verse says, lay aside those garments that are stained with
sin. and be washed in the blood of the Lamb. There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean.
Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb. Are you washed in the blood, the soul cleansing blood of
the Lamb? Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the
Lamb? Are you?
Whoever you are, whatever your background, however far you have strayed, there's mercy.
There's pardon. There's cleansing. You can turn to God. You can cry out to him.
There is forgiveness for anything you've done. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to
forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Can I get a hallelujah for that?
Yeah.
And God will show you mercy because not only does he forgive our sins, he takes those sins and puts
them on himself. He bears our sins.
He takes them to the cross and puts to death the penalty, the power,
and one day the presence of sin as well.
This is what we remember when we come to the Lord's table. We'll do that in just a minute. Pray
with me. Lord,
we thank you that when we were doubters and deceived or in our times of deconstruction,
you showed us mercy.
And Lord, we want to be people who model that mercy for others.
who speak the truth in love,
who demonstrate love with hearts full of compassion, kindness,
and mercy toward others. Lord, we do pray this morning for
kids and grandkids, friends, coworkers, people we know who have wandered,
who are confused, who have listened to the wrong voices, who have bought the lies.
Lord, would you Wake them up. Would you show them your mercy in a way that leads them back to you?
And Lord, for any here this morning who are hearing your voice today,
calling them to turn, to repent, to come home,
give them the courage today to respond to that voice,
to cry out, confess their sins, receive your pardon. Help them to believe what is hard to believe.
to believe the gospel, and to move in the direction of faith and not unbelief.
We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.