This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Lewis
Harold, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland
County in Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Lewis as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
The heart of Cain was exposed because he became jealous, even
to the point of a murderous spirit.
Because of his pride and self righteousness, he killed his
brother. And we have to be careful of our
motives when we do things. Are we doing them out of pride?
Are we doing them out of self righteousness?
Or are we doing them in faith, understanding that none of our
good works are going to be good enough to get us into heaven?
We don't do good works in order to earn our salvation, but we do
good works because we are saved. If there were only one way to
reach heaven, how do you think it could be obtained?
Is it through a life dedicated to giving back?
Is it by being a good person? What if I told you that only one
thing truly matters? In today's message, Pastor Lewis
reminds you that there is only one way to have eternal life
with Jesus by placing your faith in Him.
No amount of good deeds or perfect living can bridge the
gap between you and eternal life.
It is only through Jesus and His grace that you and I can be with
Him eternally. Now here's Pastor Lewis in the
Book of Jude, chapter one with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. I was home one Saturday morning
recently and I heard the knocking on the door.
Kind of had an idea who it was. So that's why you didn't rush
down to answer, right? So we come down, we answer the
door. I think my wife actually
answered the door 1st and then I was upstairs.
I was trying to hide and, and she eventually answered the door
and started talking with them. And she said, wait a minute, let
me ask my husband. I thought, oh man.
So so I came downstairs and this, you know, woman was there
at the door. There was two other people on
the sidewalk looking, watching. So we knew exactly what this was
about. Total witnesses.
So this woman is trying to share her Watchtower information with
me and share her scriptures and try to make me convince me, you
know, that Jesus was not God in the flesh, right?
Yeah. She's just, you know, I believe
in Jesus too, just like you do. I said, oh, do you?
Yeah. I believe that Jesus, you know,
is the Son of God. Do you?
Yeah. I believe she is the Son of God.
Yeah. Well, I believe that Jesus is
God in the flesh. Oh, no, no.
So she begins to explain to me why Jesus is not God in the
flesh. And because she said it's just
not logical. There's a number of things that
she mentioned. It's just not logical.
And that's one of the things I've noticed that they will say
when you start talking about the things of God, you know, these
things are not logical. For example, they think the
Trinity is not logical. So they don't, you know, talk
about the Trinity or what are you talking about?
You know, God in three persons. What are you talking about?
It's not logical, doesn't even make sense.
So I listened to her talk about that.
And then she, you know, we, you know, we even talked about the
the incarnation. Of course, you know, she totally
got rid of that. No, Jesus, you know, you know,
no, he's not he. He's a son of God.
He was created being, you know, but he's not God in the flesh.
Talk a little bit about that. And and then she went to the
resurrection talked a little bit about about that.
Well, he resurrected, but Aiden resurrect in fully, you know,
body. He's resurrected.
He was just a spirit. What we just got finished
reading last week, right, that when he resurrected, he
resurrected in the in the body, right, Because Mary Magdalene
grabbed his feet, right? You can't grab the feet of a
spirit, right? So anyway, I made this one
statement to her and this woman turned into an angry demon and
all I said to her, well would you know these things are only
discerned in the Spirit, Only the Spirit can recognize these
things. Or you said I don't have the
Spirit of God in me. Yes, yes.
And she went on a rant that I never thought a woman that now I
was, I'm about 6-1. Well, I was probably 6-1 then
this woman, you know, probably only came to about here, but I
mean, she just rant and raved and looked up and just I mean, I
she wow, she was angry. She was really, really angry.
We never had another person come back after that.
Never had another person called. Have we anybody come back after
that? Yeah, we never had another
person come back after that. So she obviously wouldn't told
her homies just bypass that house, OK, 'cause they 'cause
they hanging with it. But yeah, I couldn't believe how
angry she got. But it's the Spirit of God that
discerns these things. That's why Paul prayed to the
Colossians. When he prayed for the
Colossians Church, he prayed that they would be filled with
the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual
understanding, spiritual understanding, because that's
how these things are understood. But these false teachers don't
have that. They don't have the Spirit, so
they can't talk about the scriptures or the things of God
from a spiritual standpoint. They can only look at it through
the natural. They can only look at it through
the natural. And that's why they get into so
many problems, because they can't see it through the Spirit.
First Corinthians chapter 2 and 11 says for what man knows the
things of man except the spirit of man, which is in him.
Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
Now we have received not the spirit from the world.
If you have the spirit of the world, you understand the things
of the world. People who are in the world,
they can have a conversation with each other and say things
that to us now, those things may sound absurd to us or just like
things. There's no way we're doing that.
You know, there's no way I'm, I'm going to be in agreement
with this, but you can see in the times how people are fine
with some of the way that society is changing.
The people of the world are fine with it.
They're totally fine with it. But us, we're grieved by it.
And it's because the world takes on its own.
The world loves its own. The world deals with its own.
They understand those things because they have the spirit of
the world. But we have received not the
spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we
might know the things that have been freely given to us of God.
We get those things freely through the Spirit of God.
But they, they have no understanding of, but yet they
speak negatively about the spirit when you know someone
that could be even someone who goes to church all the time.
And because you may be, you know, walking in obedience,
because the Holy Spirit, you're developing this relationship
with the Lord and you're walking in the Spirit and you're
walking, you're trying to, you're walking in obedience to
the Lord as much as you possibly can in your own cause.
And we, we're all still sin and we're honest about that with
each other. But yet you get someone who's
not into walking in obedience and they begin to start speaking
evil of you. Oh, he thinks he's too good for
us. He thinks he can't do this
anymore. He can't do that anymore.
You know, they start speaking evil of you.
And that's exactly what happened when they start speaking evil of
the teachers who were teaching the truth.
They're speaking evil, those teachers demeaning them to other
people. So then we going down here to
verse 11, like he said, he says, whoa, he said they're like, you
know, before he said they're like group beasts and they
corrupt, you know, they, they, they corrupt themselves with the
things that they do know. And then in verse 11, he says
woe to them for they have gone the way of Cain and in the era
of Balaam for prophet and in rebellion of Korah.
Well, first of all, they're brute beast.
And that means that they're only living in a way that satisfies
the flesh, their primal instincts, brute beasts.
You're living like a brute beast and that means you're just
living to satisfy your urges. That's why animals are able when
he said, you know, they corrupt themselves and in, in those
things that they that they do know, because the only thing
they do know is their urges, their loss, their desire for
natural things. And that's why animals can get
trapped. We have some people here who are
hunters. They trap animals or they lure
animals. How do they trap them?
They lure them. How do they lure them?
They lure them by things that they're driven to eat, things
that they're driven to do. If you got an animal who loves
meat, you put a piece of meat in a box, he's coming for it.
He's coming for it. And when they come for these
things, they don't come with a regard of the consequences of
what they're. They don't even think about
those things. Only thing they're thinking
about is that I want to get to the meat because I'm going to
satisfy this urge to eat. I want to satisfy this urge to
eat. That's all they have, That's all
they know. And when we live in disobedience
to the Lord, when we live just doing what we want to do,
ignoring the Spirit of God, then we live almost like brute
beasts, just satisfying our flesh, satisfying our flesh.
And how many times did we and men today, how many times do
they fall into trouble following after their urges?
How many pastors have fallen? How many people have fallen
falling into these traps that the enemy sets to try to lure
you to satisfy your flesh? I'm going to tell you something
that's going to everyday there's something that the enemy is
going to try to do in your life to try to set you up to fall
into one of his traps and he knows what you desire.
He knows where you're weak. So I so important stay close to
the word of God and in prayer and to be filled with the spirit
to ask every morning, Lord, fill me with your spirit today so
that I can walk in obedience to you because I can't do it on my
own. We would fall into every trap
that the enemy was set if we try to do it on our own brute
beasts. So when we try to please our own
selves, that's what happened. We're like brute beasts.
And he says woe to them. That woe means it's like an
expression of of coming up calamity.
Whoa, it's almost like a cursing.
It's like an expression of of calamity or judgment.
Woe to them. Jesus used it quite a bit in in
Matthew 23 when he was talking to the Pharisees and he said woe
you hypocrites, woe to you. They have gone in the way of
Cain the heir of Balaam for profit, and also of Korah.
Now it's interesting because Jude almost makes it seem like
he thinks you already know what that means.
You know, like he's like, he's sure that everybody who's
reading this knows what that means.
What does it mean to go in the way of Cain?
What does it mean to go in the in, in in the era of Balaam for
profit? What does it mean to go on the
rebellion of Korah, of Korah? What does that mean?
Well, unless you read the Old Testament, you won't know what
that means. And but he just assumed that
everybody read it because that's all they had was the Old
Testament. So let's look at these.
He said, first of all, you go in the way of Cain.
How did Cain go? Well, if you read Cain's story
way back, Genesis 4, that's where you read the story of Cain
and Abel, where Cain actually killed his brother Abel.
Now prior to that, though, they both came to God and offered a
sacrifice. Abel, Cain's brother, offered a
sacrifice of blood. There was a he was a shepherd,
so he offered a sacrifice from his flock.
It was a sacrifice of blood. Cain, on the other hand, brought
a sacrifice that was from the field.
Cain was a farmer, so he brought a sacrifice that was of the
field, of his of his produce. Now, is it wrong to present a
sacrifice of produce? No.
Is it wrong to present that sacrifice of blood?
That's not what the issue was. The issue is that only one of
them presented it in faith. Only one.
And it was Abel. And the reason why it's even
said that Abel presented it in faith.
Again, you'd have to go back into Genesis chapter and chapter
3 before where they were, when Adam and Eve sinned, when they
were in the garden. If you remember when they
sinned, they made fig leaves to put around their bodies to cover
themselves up because they knew that they were naked, their eyes
were open, they made fig leaves. God wasn't satisfied with that.
That's not the sacrifice that he wants for sin.
It had to be a blood without the without the remission, you know,
without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of
sin. So it had animal had to die.
Something had to die to cover that sin.
So he, God sacrificed an animal for them.
So the blood had to be shed for the remission of the sins and
they put, he covered them with that.
So when Abel came in that same vein, because of faith, the only
way we're getting to the Father is through Jesus Christ and
through the blood of Jesus Christ.
So when Abel came and he presented the sacrifice with
blood, that was in obedience to the sacrifice that God wants,
and it was done in faith. It was done in faith.
Hebrews chapter 4 he says very clearly, and I'll read it to
you, you don't even have to go look for it, I'll read it to you
over in Chapter 11. He says this.
Hebrews 11 For by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent
sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that
he was righteous God testifying of his gifts.
And through it he being dead, still speaks.
He received that sacrifice because it was sacrifice.
And faith, you see, Cain offered a sacrifice that was just from
works of his own hands. Works.
It was a sacrifice of works. You know, look what I do I earn
this, but Abel understood that without the remission of blood
there can be without the shedding of blood, it could be
no remission of sins. He understood that.
So that's why his his offering was accepted and and Cain's
wasn't Bible also said, and this is my favorite Scripture.
In fact, when I'll die, I want this to be on my head stone
because it brought me through when I first got saved.
Help me understand faith. Hebrews 11/6.
But without faith it's impossible to please Him.
When you come to God, you must believe that He is and that He
is the rewarder of them. That not casually seek Him, but
diligently seek Him. That verse got me through a lot.
So that's why Abel's sacrifice
was accepted and Keynes was not. But as a result of the heart of
Cain was exposed because he became jealous even to the point
of a murderous spirit. Because of his pride and self
righteousness, he killed his brother.
And we have to be careful of our motives when we do things.
Are we doing them not a pride? Are we doing them not a self
righteousness? Or are we doing them in faith,
understanding that none of our good works are going to be good
enough to get us into heaven? We don't do good works in order
to earn our salvation, but we do good works because we are saved
and it's who we are. It's who we are.
So then we're going to go just just one more Balaam, he said.
You'll run greedily in the air of Balaam.
Well, Balaam was back in the Old Testament also.
In order to get to Balaam's example, you'd have to go back
to Numbers chapter 22. And I definitely suggest that
you go back and read that when you get an opportunity because
it talks about Balaam who was a, was a prophet, but he was a
prophet with, he's kind of unscrupulous, put it that way.
He used his gift of prophecy that God gave him.
He used it for money, for filthy lucre, use it for money.
And because he used it for money, eventually, again
exposing his heart, he could not curse, which is what Balak the
king at that time wanted him to do.
He wanted Balaam to curse the children of Israel and they were
coming out of Egypt and they were now on his territory and
they wanted, he wanted those children cursed.
Well, Balaam realized that he couldn't curse them because God
had blessed them. However, because of his heart
and because he wanted the money, I'll show you how to lead them
into sin so that they become a curse to themselves.
And he tempted them with the women, the Pagan women.
He tempted them with them and they fell into sin with these
Pagan women. Again, sexual immorality being
the headline of that particular sin because of the urges that
these men had, not being able to restrain them on their own and
went into disobedience against God.
So Balaam cursed was able to have those children basically
curse themselves. And I'm going to wait before I
go in the court because that's a story that takes a little bit
more of a description that I think is really important.
And I don't want to rush through that.
Now think about, as we talked about earlier, our our
thankfulness to just be saved, the salvation that Jesus Christ
came and died for for us. And when I think about all these
men, all these situations that these false teachers have fallen
into because of their rejection of Jesus Christ, because of
their rejection of the apostles doctrine and truth, they are
bringing sin on themselves. But Jesus Christ came and he
brought his word with he gave us his word.
And as we said, all Scripture is inspired by God and it's all
profitable for doctrine, which means it's profitable for
teaching. It's also used for to correct
us. It's used for reproof and for
instruction in righteousness. And I'm so grateful that Jesus
came as the word of God, Word made flesh that we would
actually people who witnessed his life actually saw, not just
read, but actually saw the word of God being lived out in the
person of God the Son. And we have that opportunity
when he gave his life and paid for our sins, which we could
have never done on our own. No matter what, how good we
think we were, how good we think we are, we would never be good
enough to be able to achieve salvation.
But Jesus Christ died on that cross that we would have our sin
debt paid. It's paid in full.
It's already done. So for those of you who have not
taken advantage or those of you who have not received His
salvation, you don't have to do anything for it.
It's already done. You just have to accept it.
Accept it. First of all, accept the fact
that we needed it. I needed Jesus to come and die
for me because I'm a Sinner. I needed Him to die for me.
We have to accept that and the fact that He died not for
himself, but He did it for us. He died for me.
He died for you, God, for all of you.
That's why He's our God. You've been listening to Living
Waters of Grace with Pastor Lewis Harrell at Calvary Chapel
Westmoreland in Greensburg, PA. As Pastor Lewis continues to
preach through the book of Jude, he wants you to realize that you
can't be a part time Christian. If you're going to follow Jesus,
He is going to ask for your undivided loyalty.
If you try to serve your own interests while following Jesus,
you find that you can't do either one successfully.
But if you run after Jesus with everything you have, you'll be
amazed at how He provides for you and sustains you on the
journey, even when you have no idea of where your provision
will come from. If today's message has
encouraged you, we'd love to hear your feedback.
You can visit ourwebsite@calvarychapelonline.com
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