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[0:00] Listen 9, covering Jude verses 14-16.

[0:23] ! There's an old saying,! Judgment delayed is never judgment denied. And the judgment of each and every apostate false teacher is certain.

[0:40] It's coming at them. The lake of fire is certain. And eternal punishment in hell is certain. Every unbeliever needs to go to bed and wake up with this thought in their mind.

[0:57] Judgment is coming. Now, Jude understood this. And he wrote about it in a book that bears his name, which is exactly where we're going to go this evening in verses 14-16.

[1:15] Let me read those to you. But Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, also prophesied about these men saying, behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they had done in an ungodly way and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him, these are grumblers finding fault, following after their own lusts, and their mouth speaks arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of their own benefit.

[2:15] You know, it's no small irony in our day that most people in the world deny the existence of hell.

[2:31] Of course, this is a day of political correctness and such thoughts are repugnant to enlightened people, right? After all, hell is not a topic that is brought up in polite conversation.

[2:48] Even a lot of mainline Christian denominations will not preach or teach on hell.

[2:59] They won't do it. A number of years ago, we had some good friends that were members of a large church downtown.

[3:11] That church has now moved into a new building away from downtown! And sold their property. And one Sunday morning, their Sunday school teacher, according to their little booklet, was supposed to teach on hell.

[3:34] So he got up there and he refused. and he said, in this enlightened age, we all know hell does not exist. And our friends were quite upset.

[3:48] And they went to the pastor and complained. and the pastor told them, well, this is the richness of our faith.

[4:01] You all can believe the way you want to. And your teacher can believe the way he wants to. And we can all just love each other. And that was the only remedy.

[4:13] Well, the reality is that hell is real and many are going there someday.

[4:26] I've never been real close to the ministry of John Hagee. I don't dislike him. I disagree with some of the stuff. But I had to laugh, though. He was preaching in Canada.

[4:38] It's the last time he ever preached there. He found out when he was leaving that they had issued a warrant for his arrest. And if he ever came back into Canada, he'd be arrested for hate speech because he said Jesus was the only way to eternal life.

[4:55] But anyway, Dr. Hagee, he was leaving Canada and got on the airplane and flying back to... He lives in San Antonio. There was a gun there and Dr. Hagee said, I hadn't slept three hours.

[5:12] He said, I just wanted to get on the airplane and get a pillow and just go to sleep. And this guy spotted him. He said, Hey, you're that TV preacher, aren't you? And Dr. Hagee said, Yeah, I am.

[5:25] So Dr. Hagee put his pillow, you know, and the guy says, I don't believe in heaven. Dr. Hagee said, You don't? He said, No. He said, I don't believe in Jesus either.

[5:39] He said, You don't? He said, No. He said, And I'll tell you something else. I don't believe in hell. And Dr. Hagee said, It's real and you're going.

[5:54] And he went to sleep. He said, I slept the whole way to San Antonio. Best trip he said he ever had. Many call our culture postmodern. And in a setting such as ours, it's taboo to criticize another's beliefs or attitudes.

[6:13] Billy Graham once said, Society today bends over backwards to keep from offending anyone except God. They don't mind offending God, but they don't want to offend anyone else.

[6:30] So, the mention of hell is very unpopular. The idea that God would come down and judge people is ridiculous to some, given the fact that people are, after all, and this is the explanation they give, basically good and decent.

[6:47] I once had a person say to me, God would never let a good person go to hell. Well, I really shocked them when I said, You know what?

[6:59] I agree with you. But let me point out something. I said to the guy, there's never been a good person when we apply God's standard. And he said, Can you back that up with the Bible?

[7:13] I said, Sure. So I had him turn to Romans chapter 3. And I begin in verse 10. This is a description of people.

[7:26] There's none righteous. Not even one. There are none who understands. There are none who seeks for God. All have turned aside.

[7:39] Together they have become worthless. There's none who does good. Not even one. Their throat is an open tomb. And with their tongues they keep deceiving.

[7:54] The poison of asp is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths.

[8:08] And the path of peace they have not known. And then this summary sentence explains it all. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

[8:20] And if I could say anything about our culture today, it says we've lost our fear of God. Fear of God. Fear of God. And for us believers, fear of God is not cringing in the darkness.

[8:34] And maybe if we sit real still, he won't find us. Fear of God is honoring him and respecting him and worshiping him in spirit and truth. But there are people that need to fear him.

[8:46] Sadly, these ideas have spilled over into the church. Even in conservative circles, the mention of hell is an embarrassment to some people.

[9:01] And for those who still cling to the idea of an afterlife in heaven, the method getting there is totally false and totally unbiblical.

[9:11] So, the prevailing attitude among people to get to heaven is what I call justification by death.

[9:23] Not justification by faith. It's justification by death. You die, then you go to heaven. I meet with people all the time that lost a loved one.

[9:36] Well, he's in a much better place. And I can't remember who it was, but they told me, I said, well, I know he's in a better place. I said, why do you assume that? I mean, I was just blunt.

[9:47] He wanted nothing to do with the Lord, nothing to do with the church. They got mad. Now, over and against this, we have the plain words of God.

[10:02] He's very straightforward about the reality of divine judgment. God has judged in the past. He is judging now.

[10:13] He will judge in the future. Of this we can be certain. And the New Testament actually speaks more about future judgment than it does about future joy with life in heaven.

[10:29] The final form of God's divine judgment is first of all connected to the second coming of Christ. The Bible very clearly teaches that at the end of the age, the Lord is going to return to execute judgment upon the earth.

[10:48] In Acts 17.31, we read this, He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He determined, having furnished proof to all by raising Him from the dead.

[11:09] So God's fixed a day. When they asked Jesus, when He was coming back, He said, only the Father knows. I don't know that. But it says right there, He said, the Father proved that He is His chosen because He raised Him from the dead.

[11:33] So no one knows the day or hour of Christ's return. Now, a lot of men say they do know. And they write books. And they make a ton of money.

[11:46] I've got to tell you. They make a lot of money. But if a man comes to you and says, I know when the Lord's coming back, mark it down, He doesn't know.

[11:59] And I had one minister say, that's probably the day that God would never select just so that guy's not right. But we don't know. I do think we're close.

[12:13] Certainly closer than we ever have been right now. And five minutes from now, we'll be closer then. One Bible teacher said this, there are four events in history that have happened or will happen.

[12:27] And they'll all happen exactly, or did happen exactly on time. Not a minute early. Not a minute late.

[12:39] But the four that he mentioned were the birth of Christ happened precisely when it should, where it should, in Bethlehem.

[12:50] Second one is the death of Christ. Third is Christ's resurrection. And the fourth is Christ's return.

[13:03] All those will happen right on time. Right on time. Now what time is that? The Lord hasn't spoken to me. And I don't expect He will.

[13:15] That's reserved for the Father. There's a fixed moment yet future when Christ will most definitely return. He promised this.

[13:26] He said it will happen quickly. It's going to happen quickly. There are seven features I want to mention about coming judgment taught in the pages of the New Testament.

[13:42] No one, first of all, is going to be able to hide from this judgment. Men will try. You remember that passage of Revelation when they hid in mountains and caves and prayed that the rocks would follow them.

[13:57] Greatest prayer service in history. Praying that the rocks would follow them and hide them from the face of the wrath of the Lamb. But no one's going to hide from the judgment.

[14:10] But men will try. Now we're all responsible for our sins and either we have been judged at Calvary or we will be judged at what is called the great white throne judgment.

[14:27] That's for the unsaved. But judgment's coming. And that judgment will be general and public.

[14:38] Two aspects of it. The third aspect of God's judgment is it will be just and it will be impartial.

[14:51] No one will escape this judgment. People think they will, but they won't. And it will include people who have been extremely wicked and it will also include people who have outwardly manifested great, now be careful what I say here, great self-righteousness.

[15:17] That's really the story of Matthew 7 where the Lord says, I never knew you. And they say, but haven't we done all these wonderful things? That was salvation by works.

[15:30] And so many people, I read the other day, these were obviously Christian people, they lost their salvation. There wasn't anything obvious about that. They weren't obviously Christian. And the fourth aspect of His judgment, it's intended as a warning.

[15:46] God promises divine judgment. And He intends it to be a warning to draw people out of their sin and into a relationship with Christ.

[16:04] It's designed to produce fear of His approaching wrath. God warns the lost that judgment is coming in order to draw them out of their bondage to sin.

[16:16] He is giving even now a final offer to repent. Matthew 10, 28. And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul.

[16:32] But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. But God is gracious and He's long-suffering. And He continues to offer people the opportunity to repent and be saved.

[16:51] That's still an open invitation. The fifth feature of God's divine judgment is that it is based upon His divine law.

[17:02] God's divine judgment on the earth. Now, let's be clear. No one has ever been able to keep God's law.

[17:14] We never kept His law perfectly for a tenth of a second. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.

[17:26] All have violated God's law. Therefore, we're all guilty. Therefore, we're all deserving of punishment. We who are in Christ will not be judged based upon the very exacting of the law and the righteous demands that the law makes on an individual.

[17:50] Christ has fulfilled the law for us. He lived the perfect life. Never broke any of God's commandments. For those apart from Christ, they will be judged based upon the perfect requirements of the law.

[18:12] And their rebellion will be put down. There will be a rebellion at the end. It will be put down. And judgment is spread out. There will be a future judgment that will be spread out over a number of events.

[18:32] It's going to begin immediately after the departure of the church. What we call the snatching away or the rapture. And then we'll kick in the beginning of the seven year period known as the tribulation.

[18:46] Not everybody believes in that. I do. And during that time, God will unleash His wrath. The very wrath of His fury against the ungodly.

[19:00] And it's going to be coming to a series of judgments. You could read about them in Revelation. Known as the seal judgments, the trumpet judgments, and the bowl judgments.

[19:11] And this judgment period will culminate in the battle of Armageddon after which the Lord will establish His kingdom on earth.

[19:27] This is a real interesting time. And actually, I have to say, I look forward to this time. It's a time when Satan will be bound. He will be cast into the lake of fire not permanently yet, but He'll be bound.

[19:45] And Christ will be living on planet earth and be ruling from Jerusalem for a period of a thousand years.

[19:57] And people say, well, I don't know, that's just symbolic of something. It says in Revelation six times in one chapter, the Lord will be here for a thousand years.

[20:09] It uses that term. The millennium. A thousand. And during that time, God's going to unleash the wrath of His fury against the ungodly.

[20:24] The period of judgment will culminate in this battle. Then Jesus will establish His kingdom, Satan bound, Christ ruling from Jerusalem for that thousand years.

[20:38] What will we be doing? Worshipping Christ? I love Derek Thomas. He's from Wales. Beautiful accent. He preached on that. I'd like to find it sometime.

[20:50] But he said, what are we going to be doing? We're going to be living our lives. We're going to be worshipping. We'll have jobs to do. He said, you may have a job that you did before a thousand years.

[21:05] I don't know if there's going to be any market for police chiefs. I don't have a clue. But this is going to happen. The scriptures teach this. And at the conclusion of a thousand, you think of that, if that started today, what is this?

[21:21] 2026? Put a thousand years. Figure that out, you mathematicians. But after this, Satan was going to be released from the lake of fire.

[21:34] And he will lead fallen humanity in one final rebellion. And then he will be crushed.

[21:48] His demons will be crushed. The unsaved that do end with him will be judged. And they'll be cast into the lake of fire.

[21:59] I heard John MacArthur preach on that one time. He said, we're not really involved in that. We're more observers than anything. And he said, I want to be on the front row because I want to see everything.

[22:10] Well, you know, John was six foot something. I mean, am I going to be behind him and not able to... I don't know. But what is the result of all this judgment? Well, it results in damnation.

[22:23] God's final judgment will result in the eternal damnation for those who are outside his saving grace.

[22:35] You know, let's be honest here. Probably every one of us in here have family members that are outside. We do. And close family members.

[22:47] Close family members. Now, their typical response when I talk to them about it is, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm okay now. I'm okay. But they don't want to get specific. What made you okay?

[23:01] But God issues warnings of coming judgment and he issues those to the unsaved. And they're especially directed at apostates, which we've been studying, and false teachers.

[23:18] Now, I don't spend a lot of time watching those guys on television. But do they not understand judgment's coming? I mean, my gosh. These are people that claim to represent God and they do major damage to the cause of Christ.

[23:39] And they do it through the church. The church that they're in. This is what the writer of Hebrews had to say. Hebrews chapter 10, beginning verse 26, something that would be very familiar to you.

[23:54] For if we go on sinning willfully, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.

[24:20] Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy by the mouth of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has regarded as defiled the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

[24:52] For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine. I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people.

[25:05] And then what a fitting way to finish this in verse 31. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

[25:16] And we think about that, it is terrifying. And we have family members who are going to fall into those hands. So Jude tells us that judgment is coming.

[25:29] And he lists three realities concerning this coming judgment. He said, first of all, the Lord himself will come. There's not going to be some stand-in.

[25:41] It's going to be Jesus. And he will not come alone. And when we read that, we think he's bringing back holy angels and vessels of the church, people of the church.

[25:59] And then third, he will come to execute judgment. When the Lord returns, he will not be alone. He will bring with him thousands of holy ones.

[26:11] And that could refer to believers or to angels. And I think it refers to both. I believe it does. And Christ is returning to execute judgment upon all the ungodly that have ignored his law and lived lives in rebellion to him.

[26:34] And this verse says he's coming to convict them. That's an interesting word meaning to expose, rebuke, and prove guilty. He is coming for all of these purposes.

[26:48] He speaks here of all the ungodly. And that certainly includes the apostates of every age, including ours.

[27:02] And we have plenty of those to go around. God will punish all their unrighteous deeds. In context, both their words and works betray them.

[27:16] And the Holy Spirit gives an interesting description of the apostates that will come under his judgment and his condemnation. And he says, first of all, they're going to be grumblers.

[27:30] And that's a word to use to describe those who murmured. Remember when Moses was out in the desert with those guys and they murmured? And the Scriptures often said they murmured against Moses. They were murmuring against God.

[27:42] They just were afraid to voice it. They pretended it was against Moses. But they murmured, we don't have enough food. We don't have enough water. The sun's too hot.

[27:54] The sun's too cool. The nights are cold. They murmured against Moses and against God during the Exodus. Apostates will always find fault and complain about God's holy plans and his purposes as compared to their own.

[28:19] Finding fault means to blame and it describes someone who is always discontent and dissatisfied. Why were they this way?

[28:34] Well, the Scriptures say they wanted to follow after their own lust. Interesting language. language. And this is often used to describe the unconverted.

[28:46] The apostates also use flattering speech in an effort to deceive and gain an advantage over their hearers.

[28:59] Jesus spoke of these false teachers when he said this, the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and those defile the man.

[29:12] Matthew 15, 18. So if we carefully examine Jude's words, we discover that he addresses the who, what, where, and why of Christ's return.

[29:29] The only thing Jude doesn't reveal to us is the wind. For good reason. He didn't know. He's a half-brother of Jesus.

[29:40] He didn't know. God hadn't told him. That is reserved for the Father. Let me close with chapter 13 in Mark's Gospel.

[29:53] Verses 32 to 37. But of that day and hour no one knows. not even the angels in heaven nor the Son but the Father alone.

[30:10] Take heed. Keep on the alert for you do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man away on a journey who upon leaving his house he put his slaves in charge and he assigned to each one his task.

[30:37] What he was supposed to do while the master was gone. And he commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert. That's probably a security detail. doorkeeper.

[30:53] Therefore and the Lord gives us a command here be on the alert. Guys I can't go to sleep at night before I pray and I can't pray without looking up at the stars.

[31:06] I get a good view of him and I can't think perhaps tonight you'll be back perhaps in the morning. Be on the alert the master of the house is coming back whether in the evening at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning and in case he should come suddenly and find you asleep what I say to you I say to all be on the alert.

[31:47] And that's how Mark ends that chapter in chapter 13. Let's close with a word of prayer. Gracious Father may we be men who are on the alert and I know there's men in here that have lost children I've been through that and I'm so grateful that one of them is on fire for you.

[32:15] Lord we need to be on the alert because that day is coming and it's as certain as the day that is going to end here just in a few hours that day of judgment is coming.

[32:30] Lord be with each man here love them love their families and Lord give them an opportunity to see their children and grandchildren saved and ready for that trumpet blast which is coming upon this world and upon the church.

[32:55] We pray in Jesus name Amen. Thank you.