Jude part 2
Notes
Transcript
Kid’s Church
But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
One very important thing that we need to understand is how we build ourselves. Especially when you are kids, you work on things and as you learn how to do one thing, you then move on to the next thing. You do this over and over and that is how you build yourself up.
So if you want to become good at basketball, you learn how to dribble and then you learn how to shoot and then you practice and practice.
How many people know who Steph Curry is? He is the greatest 3 point shooter in the history of basketball. Here is how he builds himself to hit 3 pointers
He makes 500 shots every day. Tallied up that's 3500 shots per week. 168,000 per year.
So to build our faith up we need to look at how we live our lives and build it around Jesus. That means we need to pray, we need to read the Bible, we need to stay in God’s love. We also means we need to make sacrifices in our lives as well. Which means we need to give some stuff up sometimes. For example not everything on youtube is good for us to watch. Not everything on TV is good for us to watch. There are things in this world that wants us to move away from God’s love. It means listening to our parents or grandparents and other adults that want what’s best for us.
You will always be building yourself.
Now who has arguments with their friends? Here is the argument I hear all the time. Messi or Ronaldo? Let us look at what Jude tells us about people we disagree with
Be merciful to those who doubt;
We need to be careful how we talk to each other right? Just because someone disagrees doesn’t mean that we get to be mean to them. If someone doesn’t believe in Jesus, what should we do? We should explain why we believe in Jesus and be nice to that person. Because how we treat people is also builds up or tears down that person.
Let us pray.
Adult portion:
If you have your Bibles, we need to move backwards just a little bit.
But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
I think we covered most of this sufficiently last week. However the desired effect that the enemy wants to have is to divide us. We can see this happening right now. While splits in denominations are not new, what is new is the amount of splits that are happening. Across almost every major denomination you are seeing the largest splits in the history these denominations. Now we can debate the need for denominations but the fact remains that these have been around for a very long time and they are crumbling before our very eyes.
People have chosen their own ungodly desires. I want to share a couple of stats about how far we have gone from God. This is what happens when the church is weakened.
Planned Parenthood released its 2022–2023 annual report disclosing data on services provided for the year 2021–2022. In just that single year, Planned Parenthood ended the lives of 392,715 unborn children through abortion, or an average of approximately 1,076 unborn children per day.
the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S. for that year, behind only heart disease, cancer, and COVID-related deaths.
Planned Parenthood only made 1,721 adoption referrals for the reported year — or about one per 228 abortions.
Planned Parenthood Data
Year 2021-2022
392,715 Abortions
Average of 1,076 abortions per day
4th leading cause of death in America behind heart disease, cancer and COVID related deaths for that year
Planned parenthood only made 1,721 adoption referrals for that year
Or 1 adoption referral for every 228 abortions
This is how far we away from God’s love we have moved. While Christians are arguing about simple truths that have been true since God created man. This is what we are missing.
So what do we do about all of this. I know it can be overwhelming. Truthfully I get overwhelmed. You look at those numbers that I just listed and whew that is rough. Now Jude doesn’t leave us hanging. So let us go back to where were with the kids
But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
Everything that we do in life builds up who we are. How we react to stress, how we deal with bad situations. How we deal with wins? All of this builds who we are as a person. It doesn’t stop as we get older, actually it becomes even more of a part of our life as we get older.
What kinds of media we consume, movies and TV especially today they are all designed to get you to think a certain way. At the same time how much you study the Word , and how much you are involved in the church will get help you get closer to God.
Remember when your parents would warn you about the “wrong crowd” Well it works the other way as well. When you surround yourself with Christians, guess what happens? You start doing Christian things. We have to continually be building upon our faith. This is how you persevere, this how you do not get overwhelmed because we are not in control. God is in control of this world. We keep praying and we keep doing what God is asking us to do each and every day.
Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
We have to understand the situation we are in and the stakes that people are facing.
The situation is that we are in a spiritual battle. It is not a political battle. This is a spiritual battle we are in.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Build yourselves up and put on the armor of God. Our struggle is the spiritual forces of evil. This is what we are facing outside the doors of this church. We must understand that to continue the next part.
We must be willing to step into the fray and help people find their way back to our Lord and Savior. Because here are the stakes, it is eternal life living with the Holy Father or it is judgement. Those are two options for people. Now we cannot make the decision for them nor can we judge them to one of those to fates. That is up to God. That is why Jude says to be merciful.
I want you to think about when you were caught in the snares of sin and corruption, Who reached out to you, who gave you a hand or an ear to listen? Jesus is the one who ultimately grants true freedom. It is a spiritual battle and it is our job to open people’s hearts and minds to the Gospel.
Let us close Jude with his doxology
To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
Jesus is the who who can keep you from stumbling, Jesus is the one who can present us before God without fault and with great joy because of what He did on the cross.
Let us pray.