This sermon focuses on the importance of adhering to correct doctrine and avoiding false teachings, emphasizing the need to have a right concept of God, ourselves, sin, and Christ. It stresses the significance of conforming to the truth revealed in the Bible and not altering it. The speaker highlights the consequences of falsifying spiritual data and the necessity of staying true to God's attributes and teachings.

I wanted to talk on that book of Jude this morning, bringing again, after the passing of some years, a bit of attention to this little but powerful book. Now the man Jude, a brother of Christ, had planned to write an encouraging letter. Just as you might sit down to write to your friends a letter of encouragement, he had planned it, dealing with what he called our common salvation. But he said it became necessary, rather, as he was more than impressed by the Holy Ghost, to write something else altogether. An unpleasant circumstance had risen which forced him to write quite another kind of letter from the good encouraging letter that he had planned. Now, I want to talk just a little, because I don't want my emphasis to fall elsewhere, but a little about this false teaching. Not naming any false teaching specifically, and I do not use this because I think there is any false teaching here. We have had an amazing success under God in the last years in keeping from our fellowship those who would subvert us. They just don't feel healthy around here, the atmosphere is not wholesome, and they don't stay very long. So this is general rather than specific, but because it is for the whole Church of Christ it certainly is also for us. Now, what do we mean by false teaching? Well, it means teaching that things are otherwise than they are. Now, things are, both physical things and spiritual things are. They are, and you can put a period after that. And when we have discovered or have revealed to us the facts about them, either things material or things spiritual, then we are morally required to acknowledge those facts and to make our teaching conform to them. Now, that's all so very simple that I almost apologize for saying it. But it is the broad framework upon which everything else must hang that things are as they are. Whether we like them or not, that's the way they are. God made things, and things are. Physical material things are, and spiritual things are. Now it is our business to find out how they are, accept them as they are, and then make our teaching conform to them as they are. That's rather simple, isn't it? Now, correct doctrine is of vital importance, because it is simply the teaching of things as they are. There are five there, and I say that's five. Ten over there, and I say that's ten. It is July 3rd, and I say it's July 3rd. That doesn't take genius, that's just stating things as they are. This is Chicago, Illinois, not Memphis, Tennessee. This is Chicago, Illinois. This is July, not August. This is the 3rd, not the 9th. This is 1955, not 1957. This country is the United States of America, not some other country, not England, not the Scandinavian country. So telling the truth about things is simply finding out what they are and then conforming my statement to their facts. Now, it's the same with spiritual truths. When a truth has been revealed in the book of God, our business is to find out what that truth is, and then in all of our teaching conform to that truth, not edit it, not change it, but let it stand just as it is. It is the truth of God declared as it is, and don't try to change it. It would be ridiculous of me to try by some twist of logic or sophistry to make this to be August when it's July, to make it to be the 9th when it's the 3rd, to make this to be winter when it's summer, to make this country to be Canada when it's the United States. The truth is just as it is. God Almighty has made the world to be a mathematical universe, and he runs all things according to mathematical laws. And he has a moral world which runs according to moral laws as exact and as unchanging as mathematical laws. So nonconformity to the truth anywhere brings disaster. Let an engineer be wrong about a position, and let him build according to that wrong concept, and his building will collapse around him. Let a navigator be wrong about something, and he will run on a rock, and his whole ship will shudder as it runs onto a sandbar or a rock. And he will settle in the water and sink out of sight, because a mistake has been made. The man has not gone according to truth. Nonconformity always brings disaster, wherever it may be. And the vastness and hugeness of the disaster depends upon the high level or low level of the facts we have before us. If I started with a compass that was backward and we were driving the other day in Mr. McAfee's car and we went west all the time, no matter which way we turned, the compass said west. Something wrong with the compass. Now that didn't do us great harm, because there were markers and we didn't go according to that. But if there had been something serious and we'd had to know and our lives depended upon it, we might have left our bones someplace because the compass went wrong. So nonconformity, failure to stay by facts as they are, will bring disaster if we depend upon it. Now, false teaching is the falsifying of data. It's falsifying of data about God, ourselves, sin and truth. First of all, any false teaching must begin with the wrong concept of God. You can put that down in the back of your Bible or the back of your memory. But any false teaching of any sort must begin with the wrong concept of God. It can't be otherwise. Nobody who holds the right concept of God can go very far wrong in anything else. And all the basic great mistakes that have been made, the great fundamental errors, have all rested down to the wrong concept of God. Men are not willing to let God be what he says he is. They're always trying to change God and trying to make him to be other than what he is. God is, and we better accept him as he is. God is, and the angels want him to be what he is. God is, and the elders and saints and heavenly creatures want him to be what he is. We better want him to be what he is, too, and conform to what he is. Any structure that is crooked or any foundation that is crooked will bring the structure down in time. It will either sink or it will collapse or lean or fall over, but it will not stand long. For if it does, it will lean as the leaning tower there in the bush. Now, God, of all the foundations, God is the most important, because God is God and made the heaven and earth and all the things that are therein. And if it's a great error, it would be a great error for a man or woman to go a lifetime thinking they were talking to the God of heaven and earth and find that they were talking to a God which they had confounded out of their own imagination. It would be a tragic calamity to the human spirit for me to pray a lifetime and preach a lifetime about a God that wasn't a true God at all, but some other God. It was a composite of ideas drawn from philosophy and psychology and other religions and superstitions. No, God is what he is, and we had better learn what God is and then conform our teachings to God. If we take away any of the attributes of God, we weaken our concept of God. We do not weaken God, but we weaken our concept of God. Christian scientists have taken all the justice and judgment and hatred of sin out of the nature of God, and they have nothing but a soft God left. And there are those who have taken love and grace out and have nothing but a God of judgment left. And there are those who have taken away the personality of God and have nothing but a mathematical God left, a God of assignment. All these are false, inadequate conceptions of God. While God is a God of justice, he is a God of grace, and while he is a God of righteousness, he is a God of mercy. While he is a God of mathematical exactness, he is also a God that could take babies in his arms and pat their heads and smile. He is a God that could forgive and a God that does forgive. So we had better make the study of this Bible of ours the business of our lives, to find out what God is and then conform our views to God and then ourselves. That's the second thing where we make a mistake in any kind of false teaching, because any wrong idea of God is bound to give us a wrong idea of ourselves. Some people approach God through science, through the study of anthropology. But anthropology without theology is bound to arrive at an error at last, bound to arrive at a dead-end street. You and I can only explain ourselves in the light of the doctrine that God made us out of the dust of the ground and blew into our breath and nostrils of death and life, and so man became a living soul. Science has discovered many things about God, but they have not discovered it in context. They have not begun with God and reasoned down to his world. So they have begun with the world and tried to reason up with God and stopped short of finding God. And the result is only tragic to everybody. If a man is wrong about God, he is bound to be wrong about himself. If he is wrong about the artist, he will be wrong about the picture. If he is wrong about the potter, he will be wrong about the vessel. If he is wrong about God, he will be wrong about the future. So, while multiplying scientific facts all around the balance, men are wrong because they have let God out and say in their heart there is no God. Or if there is a God, he is a God of mathematics and laws, but not the God that the Bible makes him out to be. That is all wrong. And my friend, you cannot know truth about yourself unless you first know truth about God. You came from the hand of God, and back to God you must go for better, for worse, for judgment, or for blessing. Until we take God in and understand God and let God be what he claims to be and believe about ourselves what God says about us, we are believing false doctrine. If you believe you are any better than God says you are, you are in error. If you believe you are any different from what God says you are, you are in error. You have falsified the data. If somebody has falsified the data and made you a victim, no, no, my brother, believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you are as bad as God says you are, and believe you are as far from him as God says you are, and then believe in Christ who can come as near to him as he says you can. And accept what he says about you as being truth. Then there is sin. Sin cannot be understood until we believe in God and believe what God has said about ourselves. Sin is that intrusive phenomenon, that ever-present, ubiquitous phenomenon. There it is, hate and lying and dishonesty and murder and crime and injustice, and segregating law and police and jails and gallows and locks and gales. But there are those who would deny it, and of course that's falsifying the data. There are those who would rename it, and they're falsifying data. There are those who would treat it as a disease, and they're falsifying data. God says that it's a breaking of the law. God says it's a rebellion against his will. God says that it's a nature inherited from our fathers and mothers. God says that it's an act against the faith and love and mercy of God. God says it's rebellion against the constitutive authority of the majesty on high. God says it's uniquity and personally chargeable to the one who commits it. God says the soul that sins shall die. We had better believe about sin, what God says about sin, or we will be falsifying the data. And falsified data in spiritual things is more terribly wrong, and will bring more terrible consequences than falsifying data in material things. The doctor who miscounts the number of, or the amount of that which he gives a patient, and may kill the patient, that would be only to destroy a body. The preacher who makes judges who miscounts the truth concerning sin and man and God, will damn his heirs, which is infinitely more terrible. The truth concerning God means that I must accept God's sovereignty, God's holiness, God's justice, God's grace, God's love, and all that the Bible says about God. Concerning myself, it requires that I must believe in myself as a fallen image of God, one who wants to bore his image of a fellow. No, the fourth is Christ himself. For if I do not have a right concept of God and of myself and of sin, then I will have a twisted and imperfect concept of Christ. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the average religionist today is not the Christ of the Bible of course, but a manufactured Christ, a Christ painted on canvas, a Christ drawn from cheap poetry, a Christ of the liberal and the soft and timid person, a Christ that has not in him the iron and the fury and the anger, as well as the love and grace and mercy. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my oneness and charitable conviction that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. that the Christ of the Bible is not the Christ of the Bible. And to extend that contradiction, this gentleman here knows better than most to say that he is not the Christ of the Bible, But I say that he is the Christ of the Bible. And therefore, friends, he is not the real Israelite Christian. is because we do not have the Holy Ghost in us. No man can pray in the Spirit except we have a passion for the Spirit. It is only as the Holy Ghost has unlimited sway within us that we are able to pray in the Holy Ghost. I do not hesitate to say that five minutes of prayer in the Holy Ghost will be worth more than one year of bitten, mispraying servant in the Holy Ghost. Pray in the Holy Ghost. Third, keep yourselves in the love of God. Be true to the faith, but be charitable to those who are in error. Never feel any contempt for anybody. No Christian has any right to feel contempt. Contempt is an emotion. It can only come out of tiredness. So let's feel no contempt. Let's be charitable and loving toward all while we keep ourselves in the love of God. And then, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of course that is the second coming of Jesus. Looking for Jesus Christ's coming. The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ that he's coming. Wonderful, isn't it? That his mercy will show itself at his coming. Even his mercy will show itself then as it did on the cross, as it does in receiving sinners, as it does in patiently looking after us. Christians, then, it will show itself at the coming of Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Then, verse 22, Some have compassion, making a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. There is a charge that we should win others, that we should do everything in our power to bring others to Christ. Saving them with fear, pulling them out of the fire. Wesley, all his life, referred to himself as a brand cut from the burning. Never called himself anything else than a brand cut from the burning. He knew that he was on fire already with the hot flames of hell when Jesus Christ grabbed him out of the fiery pit and extinguished the fire above his own blood. Wesley became Wesley. He never dared to arise and think of himself as a great Oxford man or a great genius. All he thought of himself was a brand cut from the burning. So now we look forward to Jesus Christ's coming, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is what the old silk news has said about it. These are a few short lines from 1 Thessalonians. There is a balm for every pain, a medicine for all sorrow. The eye turned backwards to the cross and forward to the mosque. That's what Paul said. If you do show forth the Lord's death, he'll watch till he comes. There is a balm for every pain, medicine for all sorrow. Some of the old saints in days gone by called the communion service the medicine of immortality. We couldn't follow them in every one of their beliefs, but that I think they were right. The medicine for all sorrow, an eye turned backwards to the cross and forward to the morrow. The morrow of the glory in the psalm, when he shall come. The morrow of the harping in the psalm and the welcome home. Meantime, in his beloved hands are ways. Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to thee? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the liberals? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the dead church? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to those who've chosen to walk in the low shadows of Christianity? Never! Dare to contend without being contented. Dare to preserve truth without hurting people. Dare to love and be charitable and bear. Meantime, in his beloved hands are ways, and on his heart the wandering heart at rest, and comfort for the weary one who lays his head upon the grave. Thank God for the old churches, who walked with these saviors, and was not as God took them. So let us think of the medicine of immortality today, and let us, by the grace of God, with charity for all and hatred toward none, have determination to be loyal to truth, and if it fails us, let us put our chin a little higher and our knees a little lower. Let's look a little further in to the throne of God, to Jesus Christ who is at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Let us be courageous, determined, severe but kind. Let us pray in the Holy Ghost, and keep ourselves in the love of God, and build ourselves up in the most holy faith, and win all we can, until the day of the glory and the song.