Dove Creek Bible Church's Podcast

“There is the God you want and there is the God who is...and they are not the same God.” People who confuse the God they want with the God who is go the way of Cain, commit the error of Balaam and engage in the rebellion of Korah.

In verse 5-7 we learned God judges sin and although His wheels of justice may grind slowly when it comes to these false teachers they will grind exceedingly fine. In verse 4, Jude gave a threefold description of these false teachers: they are ungodly, they pervert grace into a license for immorality, and they deny the Lord. In today's text Jude gives a threefold description of the activities of the false teachers which confirm his description of them.

In today’s text, Jude warns us of the impartiality of God in dealing with sin...He deals with it in His people in the earthly realm, He deals with it in heaven in the celestial realm and He deals with it in unbelievers in the spiritual realm. God's ultimate place of dealing with sin is the place we call hell. You can choose not to love and serve God, but you cannot choose the consequence for that decision. God will choose the consequence and when He does your choice and the consequence of that choice will be irrevocable. Choose wisely! As Jonathan Edwards warned, “Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it.” The author of Hebrews says, "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God".

Jude’s short letter is of great assistance to us in our personal walk as we battle against professed but false Christianity that sadly we find so prevalent in our culture. This once delivered faith we contend for is the anchor that secures us in the ever changing winds of culture. We cannot have orthopraxy (i.e. right practice) without orthodoxy (i.e. right doctrine). If we truly appreciate and believe in the power of the gospel and the blessings we attained through it then how can we keep ourselves from being passionate in defending it?

As we conclude this message, we also conclude our study of the Book of Ruth. The story of Ruth should enhance our trust in the providence of God. Truly He is working all things toward the good as we are promised in the book of Romans. Now Paul doesn't say in Romans 8 that all things are good. He doesn’t even say everything works to your good, he just says they work to the good. The promise is that our trials and hardships can be redeemed and work toward the good. How do all things work to the good? As we have seen in the Book of Ruth God in His providence can combine our bad circumstances with other circumstances to redeem those bad circumstances into a good result.

In Ruth 3, did Naomi apply godly wisdom or earthly wisdom in attempting to play matchmaker with Boaz and Ruth? Was she trusting God or attempting to manipulate circumstances? Does the end justify the means?

Often the providential hand of God is difficult to detect while it is happening, but later with the benefit of hindsight we discover His fingerprints. We also experience times when events appear to be moving in a negative direction only to discover that God hid a smiling face behind a frowning providence.

Part Three in this series considers sound and consistent hermeneutical principles of interpretation as the only way to really understand the biblical text . There is some discussion of how some hermeneutical systems differ from one another and where everyone is generally agreed on principles.

Often in life we do not know the value of what we already possessed. We will find this to be true in the Book of Ruth of a woman named Naomi. Many of us learn this same lesson in one way or another. Often in hindsight we realize we did not fully appreciate the value of some blessing in our life at the time we received the blessing...we only understood it later.

Continuing with our series on why we believe the Bible is the Word of God. We are using the acrostic MAPS and we have already covered Manuscripts and Archaeology. Part Two concentrates on Prophetic Fulfillment and Scientific Accuracy.

Why believe the Bible is the Word of God? Since all of our beliefs are derived from the Bible this is a great question. After all what makes the Bible unique among all the other religious books ever written which claim to be some form of absolute truth? So why is the Bible any different? How do we even know the Bible we have is anything like the Bible that was written? Using the acrostic MAPS as a guide we can defend the Bible: Manuscripts Archaeology Prophecy Science Part One of this series concentrates on the first two categories: Manuscripts and Archaeology.

The introduction of the Book of Ruth warns of the danger of placing pragmatism over principle. We are, just like the people in this story, often tempted to resort to a pragmatic solution, rather than one that is founded upon faith and rooted in principle. Our natural tendency is just to utilize the most pragmatic solution because it is so obvious.

Challenging authority is suddenly very popular and in vogue and it often seems easy to justify this attitude because of well-publicized scandals involving the abuse of authority or stupid decisions involving a misuse of authority by leaders both sacred and secular. If everyone is constantly challenging authority soon there is no authority left to challenge and anarchy reigns. Letting everyone do what is right in their own eyes soon leads to confusion and chaos. What is true in society can also be true in the church; therefore, the author of Hebrews wants to end his letter with an exhortation to leaders and those they lead, because it’s easy to take our leaders for granted.

Here in the last chapter the author of Hebrews decides to wrap things up, but before he does he quickly gives us specific, concise, and practical exhortations in a bullet point fashion regarding our actions toward others and attitudes within ourselves.

The discipline of children is a delicate thing. Too much discipline is a problem and too little discipline is a problem. Yet all children need the training of discipline, even God’s children. learning to receive and respond to proper discipline is a key factor in how we run the race of faith.

The author of Hebrews says we are in an amazing race. However we do not all run this race in the same way. This text gives us the rules of the race.

There are two sides to faith. There is a side that risks. This is the side that steps out in bold confidence in the power of God daring to do the seemingly impossible and such faith receives great victory. The other side of faith is the faith that rests. This is the side that patiently endures great hardship calmly trusting in God and such faith reckons that God’s grace will be sufficient to sustain them in the trial. In this text we see that the men and women listed needed one side of faith or the other depending on whether they were called to triumphs or tragedies.