In this insightful episode of Through the Bible, Dr. J. Vernon McGee delves into the New Testament book of Jude, exploring the early Christian warnings against false teachings. As the Bible bus travels through these timeless scriptures, listeners are encouraged to take a comprehensive approach to scripture, looking beyond familiar passages to the invaluable depth found in the other 66 books of the Bible. The discussion highlights the perils of apostasy and the importance of safeguarding one’s faith through rigorous study and understanding.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. We’re in the small but powerful New Testament book of Jude. And I hope you’re enjoying this front row seat as we explore Jude’s first century world and his urgent warning to watch out for false teachers. So as you hop aboard the Bible bus and find your seat, Greg and I have an update on our mission to take God’s whole word to his whole world.
SPEAKER 03 :
And it’s great to be here, Steve. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me in the studio. And I love it when we get to take a little bit of time to talk about some of our core values that actually really guide us in our choices, decisions. And one of them is we are media agnostic, which means we don’t care whether it’s radio, television, digital, carrier pigeons, whatever it is. We want people to get the Bible and the systematic teaching.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yep, absolutely. And we get testimonies from places outside of radio like this one. Here is a TV viewer from Assam, India, who shares this. My husband is addicted to drinking alcohol, and we often had fights. I became fed up and upset with life. One day while watching TV, I came across the Bhakti… As I watched, I felt a sense of peace in my heart. Gradually, I began watching the program regularly and was amazed by the teachings. I started praying to Jesus, and amid all the problems I faced, I found peace. I also began praying for my husband, asking God to help him leave his addiction. Over time I’ve seen a change in him. Today he no longer drinks like he used to. Please pray for both of us. This program is helping me learn many new and meaningful things.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now we’re not using any radio because we’ve shifted to video and some of it’s on satellite TV. It’s all on YouTube. It’s on different platforms because we just want people to get the content. And what strikes me, Steve, is that sounds exactly like the radio letters we got for decades. Absolutely. And so that means we’re hitting the center of the bullseye or God is using a new medium to reach people more effectively.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Now, here’s one. Let me read this next one, too. This is from a difficult place to live and be a Christian. There are several places that we cover that fall under that category. And this is a note that comes from TWR, one of our partners, from Kareem in Iraq, who shares this. I had always thought that getting into heaven meant doing enough good to outweigh the bad. I fasted during religious seasons, gave to the poor when I could, and tried to keep my conscience clean. But deep inside, there was a fear that never left me. What if it wasn’t enough? Well, one evening while scrolling through my phone, I found you and heard your teaching from Romans 5.1. The speaker read the words slowly. This hit me like a bolt of lightning. Justified by faith, not by works? I sent a message to you and asked, so does this mean I don’t have to do anything to be saved? What about repentance? Isn’t that important too? The reply came gently but clearly. Salvation is not about what you can do for God. It’s about what Jesus already did for you. I love that. That would be like Dr. McGee on the other end of that text coming back. So good answer. And let me continue. Faith isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about trusting someone. And true faith brings repentance, a turning of the heart that welcomes his grace. For the first time, I felt peace instead of pressure. I didn’t need to earn love. I had already been offered through the cross.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Steve, we often get the question, how do you know that Dr. McGee’s teaching and theology is getting through? Well, there you have it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Bingo right there. Greg, why don’t you go ahead and pray for us as we begin our program?
SPEAKER 03 :
Father, we’re just amazed at the way you work through so many different means just to get the gospel and the truth of the word to people. We thank you for what you’re doing, the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the word, and the power of the gospel. And we pray you’ll continue to do it through our humble efforts. In Jesus’ name, amen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Here’s Dr. Jay Vernon McGee with our study of Jude 19 on Through the Bible.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, in verse 19, Jude is describing again the apostate. He’s given us so many descriptions of him in this epistle that there’s no reason for us to miss him at all. And I think that you can test an unregenerate person, even a minister, that’s unregenerate by the Word of God. As I like to use the expression, I use the Word of God as a Geiger counter. That’s the reason I teach the Word of God on the radio, because when it goes out by the Geiger counter, it registers. And I get a comeback from folk that listen to the program. Many have responded and have accepted Christ. Many tell us how it’s actually revolutionized their lives, even as believers, and also their homes. And it has made everything different. But there are another group of people that think I’m a loony bird. I’m way out in left field. That I’m not just quite right. And that teaching the word of God is a very foolish sort of thing. So the Geiger counter works. And it tells you. Now, what about these unregenerate? Now, here in verse 19, describing the apostates, he says, these are they who separate themselves. They like to consider themselves the church. The liberals took over the church and then said the fundamentalists were dividing it. Well, they wanted to separate themselves. And of course, it was not the fundamentalists that divided the church. They were the ones that were holding to the great doctrines that the denominations were founded upon. And the creed of all the great denominations are sound creed. They differ a little in some points, one from the other, but on the great basics, there was no difference at all. Now, that’s one thing, but the word that I was concerned about is sensual. They are sensual, and the next is having not the Spirit. That is, they do not have the Holy Spirit of God. They’re not indwelt by the Spirit of God. You remember when Paul got to Ephesus, that was the question. These people were passing as believers. They were not believers. They’d only heard the baptism of John. And he asked them the question, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you first believed? Why, they said, we know nothing about that. And they didn’t. Now, when they did hear it, they have accepted the revelation as far as it had gone, but now they accept Christ, and they are born again and receive the Holy Spirit. Now, what about these when it says they’re sensual? The word here is actually psychokos. We get our word psychological from that, and we speak of it sometimes as the soul of man. You see, man is a tripartite being. That is, he has a threefold nature. We are told over in 1 Thessalonians, the fifth chapter, verse 23, and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless under the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I’ll not turn to it because we want to conserve some time today. But at the creation of man, if you read that very carefully, you will find out that physically man was taken from the ground. The 15 elements in the dirt are made into our bodies. And our bodies, when we get through with them and move out, and that’s what death is, we’ll be moving out of these bodies that we are living in today. These bodies will return back to the earth. And again, at the resurrection of the believer, why the body will be raised, a resurrected body. It’s sown in corruption. It’s going to be raised in incorruption. But what happened to this man that God created? Well, he’s given what we would call a soul, but that word’s misunderstood. He’s given the psychological part of him. That is, That part which directs him in his approach to the physical universe today. He gets hungry. He goes to eat. He wants entertainment. And he provides that for himself. And he actually may be a very generous person. individual and maybe very amiable and very attractive, have what we call charisma today. Many unsaved people are like that, very likable folk. I could wish sometime that all the saints were like some unsaved people that I meet, that is, on the surface. Now, underneath, they’re different, of course. But this is man’s psychological nature. But man also, God breathed into his breathing places the breath or the wind or the atmosphere, if you want to call it, the pneuma, the spirit, and that is man’s human spirit. Now, that spirit is above the psychological. It’s that which looks to God, that which longs for God, that which wants to worship, that which looks to God. Now, man has, therefore, a tripartite nature. He is a trinity. Body, psychological side, and pneumatical side. That is, the psychological, that is still what is called here sensual. Now, at the fall, what really happened? Here is man, and I like to think of it as a house with three floors in it. On the first floor is the dining room and the kitchen. On the second floor, there is the library and the music room. That’s psychological. The first floor was physical. On the top floor, there is a chapel, a place to worship. There is the Word of God, because man will not understand it without the Spirit of God leading him. The natural man would not want it. Now, what happened at the fall? The spiritual was on top. But at the fall, actually, man died spiritually, and the house turned upside down, and the physical got up on top. Man is primarily today, in his natural state, physical. It’s meat and potatoes. It’s self-preservation is the first law of life. Sure, he’s like the animal world in that sense, physical. But man is psychological. He is self-conscious. He enjoys music. He loves beauty. And then he indulges also in immorality. That is the area. And that’s the sensual part of man. Now the spiritual died. Man no longer had a capacity for God. In fact, the matter is, he is now an enemy of God. And he’s described that way for us. You remember over in Romans, the eighth chapter, For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. They that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Now, when you live in the lower nature, psychological, sensual, then you’re dead to God. No fellowship with him. Fellowship is broken. John says, if we say that we have fellowship and walk in darkness, we lie. And many do that, by the way. Now he says in verse 7, because the carnal mind is enmity against God. That’s the reason Adam ran away from God. For it’s not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And you can’t bring that old nature into obedience to God. You can’t reform man. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Now he tells the Romans, you’re not in the flesh, but in the spirit, since the spirit of God dwells in you. Now, that brings me to consider what happens at a conversion. When you and I, who were dead in trespasses and sins, spiritually, well, you can walk around physically alive, but spiritually dead. Now you hear the gospel, the Spirit of God applies it to your heart, and you trust Christ. Now we say you were born again. May I say that spiritual nature now is reborn, and now you have a capacity for God. And not only that, there’s no power in that new nature, so the Holy Spirit has come in to dwell in you. And that’s what Paul meant here in the 8th of Romans. The Spirit of God dwells in you. since you’re children of God. In other words, that’s the mark that you’re a child of God. Holy Spirit’s not something that you get 10 days after you’re converted. If you don’t get it at the moment you’re converted, you’re not converted, you see. Because the Holy Spirit regenerates and born of the Spirit. And the Holy Spirit now is there not only to help you, but to interpret to you the Word of God. And the Word of God is no longer foolishness to you because a new world is open to you. A new life has been open to you. Now, there is a struggle that goes on. And that is what Paul talks about in the fifth of Galatians. For the flesh here warreth against the spirit. And I’m reading Galatians 5, 17. For the flesh, actually, it’s warreth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. Now, here are these two natures, the old nature, this lower nature, the psychological part of man wants to turn away from God. The spiritual part now wants to turn to God. Do you know anything about that conflict in your life, child of God? If you’re a child of God, you know about that conflict. There are times when you want to get away. There are times when you want to turn to him. That is the thing that takes place, and that’s the reason most of us, we’re like a roller coaster in our Christian life. Boy, we go up today, and it’s great, but then down tomorrow, and boy, what a trip it is. Up and down. It ought not to be that way. But unfortunately, most of us have to testify to that. Now, Paul is talking in 1 Corinthians about the resurrection. And he has this to say in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45. And so it is written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul. Psychological, you see. He was made a living soul. Now, he also says the last Adam was made a quickening, that is, a life-giving spirit. That’s the difference between Adam number one, Adam number two. Adam in the Garden of Eden and the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. He came to give his life. that he might be a life-giving spirit. Now, he goes on to describe that. He says, howbeit that was not first, which is spiritual. Adam was a psychological being, you see. But that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy. The second man is the Lord from heaven. And that, by the way, is, I think, the big difference between Adam before his fall and mankind today that’s regenerated. We are today made sons of God and given a spiritual nature and a capacity for God. Man’s highest nature at the beginning was God breathed into his breathing places and that is a spirit that could fall. You and I have a nature today That is a sinful nature. We’ll have it as long as we’re in this body because it actually controls this body, psychological. I remember when I first studied psychology that they had a saying going then that psychology, the suitcase, was to study the soul of man. Then they got away from that and said that they just study the mind of man. Then behaviorism came along, and then Freudian later on, and took man farther and farther away from anything that was psychological or even mental. That man was actually nothing in the world but a sort of a robot. He was like an IBM computer. You push a certain button and you get a certain reaction. And so the cliché that went around at the time was this. Psychology at first lost its soul. Then in the second place, It lost its mind. And I don’t know whether it’s got it back or not. Today, I do not follow psychology like I once did. It was my second major at one time. But the thing now that interests me is this. That here is the flesh pulling man down, and here is the Spirit pulling man up. Now, these men never got in the realm of the Spirit. Jude says here, they having not the Spirit. They’re sensual. They never get above the psychological state. So that today, friends, it’s, I think, very easy for you to tell whether you’re a child of God. The works of the flesh, Paul says in Galatians 5, are these. And if you’re producing those, you’re living in the flesh. Now, he says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. If you have those things in your life, you’re a child of God. Now, the apostate does not have those things. He cannot have them. Now, I’ve spent a little time with this because I felt that this was very, very important that you and I might somehow or another understand ourselves. Why all the conflicts today and the frustrations that we Christians have? We’ve got two natures, friends. And you remember, the psalmist says, we are fearfully, wonderfully made. Man is a very complicated creature today that’s in this world. A man that walks this earth with a body that is taken out of the dirt, but a man that has a capacity for God. How tremendous. man that wants to worship God and serve God, and a man that can become a son of God through faith in Jesus Christ. What a prospect is that? Now, having described here the apostasy that was coming and the apostates that would come into the church, What can believers do? What can believers do in days like these that we are living in today? Now, he mentions here, beginning with verse 20 through 23, he mentions seven things that believers can do in days like these. The first one, and I’m reading verse 20, “‘But ye, beloved.'” Now, you see again, he’s talking to the believers, those beloved of God. “‘But ye, beloved.'” Now, what can we do today? Well, number one, but ye beloved, number one, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. Now, what does he mean by that? Well, building up yourself on your most holy faith means the study of the word of God. And I just have the notion that since God gave 66 books, That he meant that we’d study all 66 of them, not John 3, 16 all the time or John 14. How many Bible classes go back and over the same teaching they teach John? They teach Romans. And oh my, they’ll get to Revelation, I guarantee you that. But what about the other 63 books that are in the Bible? Why don’t we study them? Why don’t we study all of it? Because, my friend, if you’re going to build yourself up in your most holy faith, you must have the total Word of God. You can’t build a house without a foundation. And when you get the foundation down, you’re going to need to put up some timbers there that are going to hold a roof. And you’re going to need a roof on it. You’re going to need a side on it. You’re going to need to fix it up on the inside. And you need all 66 books of the Bible if you’re going to build yourself up in your most holy faith. Now, that’s what we’re to do in days of apostasy. Now, we’ve already seen this, and I’ll merely refer to it. Paul and Peter urged that in the last days you’re to study the Word of God. Now, you will recall that both Paul and Peter, Paul in his swan song, which happens to be 2 Timothy, He said, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You’re to study and that all scriptures given by inspiration of God. In other words, the recourse that you and I have As a child of God in these days is the Word of God. And the reason that many fall by the wayside today is because the seed fell among stones. It didn’t get deep root. What does that mean? The Word of God is the seed. My friend, unless you study all the Word of God, get down in the good rich soil, you’re not going to become a very healthy looking plant. And it won’t be long until you’ll be walked down and the sun will burn you out because of the fact that you can’t stand up, and especially in days like these. Now, Peter in his second epistle, and he’s writing of the apostasy just as Paul did, And he says there that we have also a more sure word of prophecy. Whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise. in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. Don’t just pull out one or two little verses and think you’ve got it, my friends. That is, I think, the tragedy in Bible study today is drawing out a few verses here and a few verses there, and you build a system. Why not take it all? It always reminds me of Lincoln when he was having his portrait painted. The artist kept definitely shifting Lincoln around so that wart on his face wouldn’t show. And finally, after he got him adjusted so the wart wouldn’t show, he said, now, Mr. Lincoln, how do you want me to paint you? Mr. Lincoln said, paint me just as I am, wart and all. And certainly there’s part of the Word of God that you’re not going to like. It steps on your toes. Many people say, I step on their toes. I don’t step on anybody’s toes. The Word of God steps on your toes, and people don’t like that part. My friend, today we’re to build up ourselves in our most holy faith. That’s what we’re joined to do in days of apostasy. And that’s the reason that we’ve got one purpose today in the Through the Bible. just to teach the Word of God. We’re not promoting anything else but the Word of God. All right, we’re going to leave off there, but next time we’ll see the other six things that we can do in days of apostasy. Until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 02 :
Jesus made it all.
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All to him I owe. Sin hath left the prince unsaved. He washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Through the Bible exists to take God’s whole word to the whole world. And we invite you to stand with us with your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God’s word go today?
