Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Welcome leaders to week two of our holding on a study for the Book of Jude. We're excited to unpack this week's message and passage with you together.
If you're listening on Friday before the weekend message, here's a hand. This week we have our pastor, Meredith's, Kent and B-Shores speaking. We're excited to have him always enjoy when Kent teaches God's word. And today we're going to unpack this passage with Dallas Viva.
Dallas is here with us again. Say hello, Dallas. We have your leaders. Dallas had an interesting encounter this weekend where sometimes this happens to you and I.
I don't know what it is. It's a little similar, it's a tall thing, but somebody mistaken you for what? For you. Someone called me, Dallas.
Yep. Mr. Thomas. Mr.
Thomas, right. Yeah. I just want to verify right now. We're not related.
They did ask that. They did. And then they said I looked like Jared too. See that happens.
Jared, Dallas, John, we get it. All these tall guys, that'll look the same. But we are in fact different people. We just get.
We are. Made in the image of God. Yeah. There you go.
And it is so rich with only 25 verses throughout the entire book. But I love that we're taking time to go through passage. This is a five week series. Eric started us out last week, reminded us that we are called, loved and kept that that's our starting place that for all the effort that we feel to hold on to who God is or reminded that he's holding on to us.
And then we take the turn this week towards the first what is true about who we are, what is true about race and how we started here. Some of the implications for what it means to live it out. So before we get to the passage, we got a lean in question to set you up for the conversation. And it is an interesting one, Dallas.
It is. What's the question for you to this week? I ask members of the group to give their best impersonation of a famous person or character from a TV show or movie. All right.
So you ready to have a go? Your impression? What do you got? One of them I love to do is the Wizard of Oz.
This is unplanned. I have no idea what's going on. Most people have seen the Wizard of Oz. It's not one of those new movies.
This is true. But the bear, the lion. Sorry, the lion. Yeah.
Put them, put them, put them. And doing the punching motions. It's like you're in the movie with me. It's kind of like that.
It's also like something else. Like a nightmare. I would say. But that's great.
But as you can see, that could be a little awkward. But I'm not comfortable. Are you guys with each other? Totally.
It was the point of that question. What are we trying to get our groups to begin thinking through that? Lean in. Just get everybody talking.
Get everybody comfortable. I think when a good lean in question, it actually takes me off the distractions of my day and allows me to enter a different space. And you are inviting me into a conversation. Right.
And it's going to make more sense as a passage. Yeah. Because unfold. We learn about people that have come into the church and are not who they seem they are.
They're self-mode. That's right. So it'll make a little bit more sense. But have fun.
Be playful with that lean in question. Yeah. As a leader, make fun yourself. It's easier than others.
Yeah. Right. So I love Dallas if it sounds like I'm making fun of him. That's my love language.
I think it's my impression. Mine's more of a just who I am. I often get told that I look like Mr. Bean.
If you know Mr. Bean. So that's my go to. I'm not going to do the dance with the voice because he's actually silent most of the time.
Let's continue on. Let's read the passage here from Jude. That's running out for his three. It says, dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation that we share, which is interesting because Jude actually had a different, maybe initial intended purpose for what he wanted to write.
But he saw what was going on. He's like, wow, I got to address this. I just read about the salvation that we share. I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once and for all.
So like keywords there when we're going to highlight through this first look down is contend. And the question is, what does it look like for us to contend for our faith? Or what do you learn about contending from the faith from the passage? What stands out to you, Dallas?
I just love Jude's words and this necessary appealing. When I think of content, I think of who are the contenders and I immediately go to sports. Who are the contenders? These are the people who are working hard in the offices and these are the people who are putting in the extra hours.
So what is it like for us to contend for our faith? I'm taking it seriously. I'm contending for it. I take it seriously.
I'm putting in the extra work that it takes. Yeah, that's good. Right, because there's opposition. There's a force that's coming up against us to challenge us.
It's not a nominist or indifferent force. There's something within culture, something within ourselves that is trying to pull us away from right doctrine and right behavior as well as we're going to uncover. There are things I love too when he says the salvation that we share. I think it's very intentional and he talks about the saints.
These are in the plural. There's this understanding that what we've inherited, although it's individually impacting, it's never meant to be an individualistic outworking of our faith. That we do that together with one another and that's what you guys are doing week in and week out with your groups. You hit it too.
This is really important. I'm appealing to you to hold on to the faith that was delivered by who? Delivered by God, by his words, his God, read the word to us and that it's timeless. It's once and for all.
These are things you want to start to pull out as you look at the first section of the look down. Then we've got another look down question here as the passage continues in verse four. I'll just read this because it's short for us. It says, for some people who were designated for this judgment long ago have come in by Stelf.
They are ungodly turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. The question is, what do you learn about these people? What things do you teach about these people who've entered in? These are the ones that we need to contend against.
What stands out to you, 1,000 verse four? Stealth. Stealth mode engaged. I think of Avengers, the carrier, they hit the button and it blends in and it stealth mode.
They can go anywhere. I'm taking a word on that one. I don't remember that one. It's the same as Star Trek, P.
The same exact one. But stealth mode, it's under the radar. You can't track it. Who are the people that are showing up in the back?
Maybe there's people even showing up to your group that are doing stealth mode that are showing up, but are they engaging in the conversation? Then he gives us some handles to think about, here's some things that you can look towards because it's not always obvious. They'll blend in and maybe they'll say the right things, the right time, they've been around church for a long time. It's easy to know the rules of the game, but actually there's something that's misaligned and they're hard.
The other thing that I'm going to say is that these people were designated for judgment a long ago and you can get into a conversation there, couldn't you about calling an election and God's opportunity and everything else there. But the implications are, you can't really tell who they are because they've snuck in, but there are some things to look to. One of them is this important turning grace of God into sensuality. What do you think he's getting out there?
Can't talk about this a little bit in his message as well. Yeah, it's denying. Denying the authority of Jesus, denying who he says he is, your denying scripture, the complete opposite of what we believe. Sometimes it looks really close.
I think that's sometimes the danger of it is something can look so close and you're like, oh, you're lying there. But as you dig down, really, it's the complete opposite of what we believe. I look back at Eric's message on the table. Hey, there's only one way.
There's only one door in, but it's open to everyone. It's exclusive but inclusive. Rightically inclusive, that's right. Yeah, at the same time.
He talks about that from a doctoral standpoint, but also turning grace into sensuality. Meaning, and nobody, we don't encounter this anymore doing our modern living or maybe we do, where we turn a twist grace into a license for sin. I can do whatever I want because there's an unlimited amount of grace. Right.
Right. Grace is the great liberator. And so everything's level at the foot of the cross. So it doesn't really matter how I live.
I can say the right things and my lifestyle can be contrary. We see that right. We see that in our lives. We see that in our lives of those that you care for, that man, there's such danger in that way of thinking that grace isn't a license to sin.
The grace is the empowerment to live a life sanctified from sin. Grace is a one-time exchange. It's the daily living of our operating lives. And he has some strong words later as we go on to the passage about that.
These are some things to note as you wrestle through the look down. We're going to turn the corner to the look out. What does entering a church by stealth look like? What might that look like in our context?
And we're getting on that a little bit. But anything else you want to draw out for folks there? Yeah. I have a whole lot.
There's so many people who can show up and listen, but not do. You can listen to messages, but it's the application. It was a glad to apply. And are there people in your group?
Maybe you can pull some more out. And it gets into a group dynamics question too. How are you inviting them into a conversation? Like if your group everybody's talking, there's always that one person, that one couple that is really, really quiet.
How can you invite them into a conversation? I'm not saying that couple of that person's ungodly in any way or stuff. It's just how do we as leaders manage that in our group, inviting people in constantly. Hey, I would love to invite you in the conversation.
What do you think about this? Right. And we're going to get more of this in the look in. This is a huge part about Kenton's message about right beliefs that are informing right living, right?
Because it's both of those things happening simultaneously. And actually the more that we understand the magnitude of grace and God's love, the more that we can't help but just live out a natural response to it. But I think that you want to be careful leaders at this point, like, this isn't like, oh man, I met this person on the patio all around. This really sounds like a self move.
This person is still, because that's a dangerous game. But we start looking for planks in other people's eyes and we ignore the sawdust that's coming out of our own eye. Often we see deficiencies in others, what we are blind to see that's already there in ourselves. And so be careful, this isn't like gossip.
But also you might want to flip this, which even here at the lookout, I don't know that's more of a look in. But what about us? What are the things that we carry? Where do we often have a misalignment of our beliefs and our actions and our behaviors?
And where have you been stealth in your relationship? Totally. I can always be pointing back to repentance. That's where I can get so caught up in the unlimited amount of grace that you drift so far away that somehow, yeah, it's not that bad.
What I'm doing isn't that bad. And you drift further and further away. So that realignment of search my heart, Lord. Please search my heart.
That's good. And then the next lookout question begins to tell you thinking about what are the things that people are denying Christ about? We look at the faith that was once delivered to all through the saints. What are those things?
And of course, we just a couple of weeks ago finished eight weeks on eight hard-hitting questions in front of Christianity. You can be on the table series. And so you can think about those and you can kick those around with your group of what other ones might people wrestle with. What did you learn through that?
As you talk to friends that are maybe not currently Jesus followers, how would they engage that conversation? And I think that's a part of stealth too. And I'm so glad we don't serve in a church where people maybe have questions about historic Christian doctrine. Because I think sometimes if you have a question in your environment where you can't have that question voiced, that could also encourage hiding and pretense.
But how great is it that we acknowledge and give space for those questions and bring them into the right understanding of scripture too? So lots to say there. Yeah. And the fact that we do deep dive too.
Yeah, deep dive. We offer these classes for you as leaders, for your group. There's Q&A involved so you can ask questions in a safe environment. You're not going to be judged, but you're going to walk away learning about God's word, learning the right doctrine, the right belief as Khettons talking about this weekend.
Yeah, that's it. We want to quickly think, theologically just robustly, you know, and the thing through what the kingdom is and how to outwork that right. And so Gazdalles mentioned we've got several courses within deep dive and there's a new one or another one that's starting to get in April. You can look out for that.
Image of God. April 26th, I think it is, at least here in Irvine with Steve Bengli and Annes Franklin. It's going to be great. All right.
Look in time, you're ready. So we've kind of established what we're contending, how we contend. And now we want to get into the interpersonal things. Okay, what about for you?
Where have you experienced maybe pain or growth or opposition in contending for the faith? And then as you're either wrestling through that or you've wrestled through that, what did you learn about yourself about God? What's the truth that you need to hold on to in the middle of that opposition? How would you encourage people to navigate this question?
Yeah, this can get pretty vulnerable too. And I'm even thinking of an answer and I don't want to share an answer that would throw some like we were talking about it. I don't want to degrade someone like, oh yeah, they're so wrong out of my own pain. But it's pointing to truth.
And I think that's the greatest thing that we have as followers of Jesus is we don't have to come up with our own truth. But the truth has already been said for us. And the truth is Jesus. It's found in his scripture.
It's found in his actions and his words. And that's the truth that we get to hold on to. And it's so relieving. It's like a weight lifted off my shoulder.
So it's how do you point people back to the unity of the gospel? That whatever conversation gets brought up as you hear people talking about their pain and not letting it go completely like rabbit hole. But how can you at the end of all of this point people back to the unity of the gospel, the unity that we have together as followers of Jesus? Yeah, that's good.
And this is a helpful week too. As it often is like pay attention to how people interact with the questions leading up to this point, especially that look down question about what do you learn about what it means to contend for the faith? Because often people will highlight things in the passage that they're hoping that they're longing to be true for themselves, that they need to be reminded of in that look down passage. Like everything you need is in God's word.
It's right there for you. So whether it's man coming to the understanding that this is something that has been given, like this is something that has been delivered to us that I don't have to add to, that this is a grace that has been given being reminded that we're a part of a law, legacy and heritage of the snore Christian teaching that's communal with the saints, that we do that together, that we need one another to encourage to encourage each other. Pay attention, help people interact to respond because you might want to call out what you see and how they interact with us as it comes to this looking question. I think there could be people bringing up pain in their job, pain in their families for contending in the faith.
I hear those stories all the time in 2030s of people contending for their faith at work and just feeling so let down. So this could also be a time as a leader, encouragement. That's right. Yeah.
Speak encouragement. So pray for one another. This is a time where lay hands, pray on someone who's really, really struggling and needs the faith and encouragement to continue to contend. Yeah, that's right.
And as Kenton talks about this passage, like the case, so it's right belief, it's right living and that it's right corresponding like action, right? The first John 1411, dear friends, it's got to love us that much. We must surely opt to love one another. So how do we receive God's love, experience it so that we can express it for others?
Call that out and we'll see you in your groups. That's great now. Awesome, guys. Well, thanks for joining us this week.
We'll see you next week as we continue our series in the book of Jude.