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 the Life Group Leader podcast. Today we're going to continue our look at the book of Jude as we've been in this sermon series holding on.
Today we're going to be joined by my very good friend and our Irvine lead pastor, Mr. Jared Kirkwood. What's happening? We've got to be here.
Yeah, Jared, man, really excited to have you with our leaders to walk through this passage. Just have a chance to actually sit down with you and hear a bit from the teaching that we're looking forward to this weekend. It's going to be a great weekend. It's as it is with many of the verses of the book of Jude.
It's not necessarily an easy passage. There's some certain warnings in here, but there's also very pastoral tone to it, which I was going to come through in your teaching this weekend. Just be curious before we dive in, what are you excited for? What do you believe in God to do as you prepare to teach it this weekend?
Yeah, well, I'm really thrilled to teach at the Irvine congregation. I just think that this is one of those passages where it's almost surprising to me how compassionate and kind and beautiful it is to be a part of God's family. It's half the book. So we're taking, you know, Jude is only 24 verses and this passage is 12 through 23.
It's definitely a lot of weight to carry. And there's some, like you mentioned, there's some really staggeringly scary things in this passage, right? For those who have departed, the ones who are completely gone, turned away, become antagonistic towards the faith, towards the church, towards Jesus, it really does. This passage will show what happens to those people, right?
Which is terrifying. Yeah. And those people for all of us are going to be real people in our lives, people that are in a part of your group, family members, loved ones who have actually, there's a difference between doubting you and I will have ever talked about this last weekend. There's other things that are hard to believe, either that God is as good as that we read him to be or the suffering that we see.
There are things that we wrestle through, but there is a difference in what Jude is talking about when you're talking about this weekend with those that have actually wandered, that have gone far, far from home, that there's a warning there. Yeah. And the interesting thing that you impact the message is it's the warning for our response and how we live in a relationship with those people. Yeah.
And I think that even as I think about our life groups and people that are walking through this passage together in a form of community, there's going to be something that we know about each other. There will be doubts that we know we have. And by the way, like you said, John, doubts I think are so accepted in the kingdom of God because we live our day to day life in an earthly world that is so broken. It is so far off what God's original design was that when you have a true encounter with the kingdom of God, like a true miracle, an act of generosity, when you see the salvation of somebody that you never thought possible, it's easy to doubt because you think there's just no way it could be this good.
There's no way it could be this beautiful. It is so unlike our normal life experience that we go, whoa, I got a question that just for a second. Yeah. Yeah.
That's really like it's almost too good to be true. That's right. That's the lead in question for leaders for your question. So we just kind of getting at what's the craziest get rich quick scheme that you've heard about.
What are people trying to do with these schemes? Why do people fall for them? I think because we want to find a quick way through the right. We want to find that thing rich thing because we think it's there for us.
Yeah. We want to skirt around the responsibilities of our life. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever fallen into one.
I don't know if you have. No. I mean, I had a pretty good puppy wear racket in college. I had the curp painting.
I had that with some friends for a little while. You've had that before? What is that? You know, and the people knock on your door and they're like, hey, we're going to come back this week and paint your address numbers on your curb.
Yes, got it was a position to me as a get rich quick scheme. It was not. It was a get a summer quick scheme and get run out of people's neighborhoods. So that didn't really work.
I think that you were the one who got scammed. That's it. So that's the point of that question to get you along these lines of things that are too good to be true. And then as Jared mentioned, we are looking at a substantial chunk of passage from June 12 through 23, which is the majority of this incredible book.
We won't read the entirety of the 11 verses now, but you'll see that you start to paint this picture of these six unique illustrations to describe what false teachers and their impact on the church. Just walk us through some of the imagery there and what are the commonalities that we're drawing. Yeah. And I don't think that it's necessarily only about knowing what those people look like.
I think that there's an invitation in this section here to use it as a way for the scripture to be a mirror held up to us. That might read our own lives because there's really three kinds of groups of people here. There's those who are called and kept and they are secure into the family of God. Then there are these people who are far off antagonistic and then there's anyone drifting towards that.
So there's kind of these three phases here. And I think these illustrations, this imagery that you'd use this here is a way for us perhaps in our groups to say, oh man am I at risk of any of these things. So there's three kind of categories. It starts with these dangerous reefs.
And I think an image there would be a reef is something underneath the surface of the sea that perhaps a ship could not see. And yet if it runs into that reef, it will sink their ship. Perhaps for us there are things lying beneath the surface of our own lives that are at risk of putting us in danger. Maybe there's a lie, maybe there's a false belief that we're hanging on to.
Perhaps there's something in our life that is at risk of sinking our own life. The second one, you get a couple of pictures. You get a waterless cloud. You get a barren trees.
Really this is a picture of things that have lost their purpose. They have abandoned their purpose. They are no longer fulfilling the one thing that they were designed to do. And then it kind of moves on and you see wandering stars.
You see these foaming raging seas. And that's a picture of what Sin does. The wandering stars, I think there's a picture there's something that's astonishing for a moment but fades so quickly. And even in our life, like there are people in our life, if we want to admit it, there are some that we have been so amazed by, so impressed by.
And yet their character could not stand on how impressive they were pretending to be. They shone brightly for a moment and then they disappeared quickly. Wandering star, I actually talked about this with Eric in the, if I had more time podcast, but that imagery of the star, in the early first century, stars were used for navigation. First stars, you can trust as something for guidance.
A wandering star, you could never use for guidance. In our life, there are wandering stars in our life that you should not trust to give you advice about your life. They should not guide you in spiritual formations. They should not guide you as wise counsel for your life.
They're not to be trusted, right? So you see these three images. And I think it's a chance for us to look into our own life and say, okay, where have I perhaps have something hidden beneath my surface of my life that I've yet to reveal to somebody? Or maybe what's a part of my life where I have left that purpose?
I know something that God has called me to do and yet I disregard it. Or maybe this place in my life I'm trying to be astonishing. Or perhaps sin that I'm trying to cover up? I do.
I love what you said about using these things as a mirror. So it's not necessarily, you know, like, but knock it was we're looking out primarily at other people. But yeah, we want to look in through our own lives and ask always for it to show us. But then there is this aspect too, because he gives us some instruction to also treat how to treat others that might be in these different categories.
And he says twice here in your leader notes, you see the question about showing mercy and to even save those who are going astray, which is kind of a fascinating thing that that should be our response to show mercy and to go after those that are going astray, which is an interesting thing that he highlights those that he compels us to. So we show mercy to those that are going astray. We're showing the same grace to others that we have been shown through Christ. Our consistency can be restorative and winsome after we go after people, that there's a seriousness about that.
But then also there's a call to, okay, we trust in God's grace and his pursuit for others, but this also says something about us. Dear friends, then he says there's an encouragement to us in response to what he's written here. So talk just a little bit about that. You get this into this message a bit.
Like, what is our role then when we look at those that have wandered far, we look at those that have, you know, come outside of their faith. What's our role in that? Well, yeah. So again, I think that Jude is separating out people who are departed and those who doubt and those who are on their way to departure.
Yeah. And really we see that the departed, it says that God's going to handle those. But there are people in our life who are doubting and we should help them learn how to doubt well towards Jesus. We should come alongside people.
We should create safe environments where people can grab a cup of coffee, ask their questions, they don't feel any shame or guilt for not knowing the answer to things. I mean, none of us got here because God just zapped us with all the information we need to have knowledge about God. No, it's we had to have conversations. We had to work out our understanding of God's word.
That's okay. That's actually what's intended to be. We should have mercy on those people. That's a great thing.
But then the harder one is probably those who are like this snatched them out, the ones close to the fire. There's something about probably every one of us as a person that can come to our mind. When we think about that, one who has drifted quite far, we have to be more intentional with them. We have to be more urgent.
I think there's something about being urgent and yet also patient and kind and clear. Yeah. But it's intentional. You have to go after that person.
You need to speak the truth and love. You need to model exactly what Jesus does for some others throughout the Gospels where he has pulled them in away from where they were heading and rescues those people. We have to go in and do that for people. Totally.
And all of that is even made that much more efficient within the context of community and relationships, right? When you're walking with people like the leaders as you are, we can and we doubt that that's that call that we get to help shepherd those that are in our groups as we serve and shepherd ourselves through that as well. And then do you know what I'm excited that we're doing something a little bit different in this service as well for those that are coming into service and they haven't seen it yet. We're calling people in towards something kind of beautiful at the end that might have some implications and talking points within groups this week.
Just talk about what we're landing and expect there. So in this idea of having mercy on those who are drifting, wavering, doubting or even have found themselves, you know, they kind of lift their head up and they realize they're drifted further than they realize, we are inviting people to return at Irvine. We'll be teaching through the prodigal son and having a moment where we are confronted with a reality that at some point we all kind of walk away to some degree. And this surprise, the shock of the family of God is that the father is watching for us when he sees us runs to us.
He's the one who closes the gap. He's the one that restores. He's the one who welcomes us right back into that family, not missing a beat, right? It's not our work.
It's nothing that we did for ourselves. And so we are in a sense, we are renewing our own faith in Jesus. That renewing peace though is not work that we do other than the one thing that we do is we repent when we repent. Our faith is renewed.
And so we're inviting people to that. I think in a group, it's totally appropriate that as a leader to just say, hey, this last weekend, you know, this is a thing that I wanted to renew in my faith or this is a thing that I was repenting of. Repentance is one of the rhythms that we practice and rooted in its ongoing. It's appropriate inside of your group that this week you invite people to talk about their repentance.
You can do a quick Google search. You can look at any of the great church, you know, fathers who have written on any of this stuff. Every one of them writes about repentance being a continual process. Repentance is not once and for all.
The price that was paid by Jesus was done once and for all, but the invitation for us to come back to him is continual. That's good. And so in rooted in we do that. We talk about where do we need to come back.
And I think it's appropriate right now in our life groups that we say, this is a place in my life. This is an emotional thing I'm going through. This is a physical thing that I'm struggling with. This is a doubt that I have.
And you can invite people to return to come home to renew that sense of faith commitment, dedication, to what we want to have in our relationship with Jesus. Yeah. Confession, as you said, it's an ongoing part of our fellowship of Jesus and it's a really important essential part. I think sometimes there's this belief that, you know, we all carry things and when we don't share it, it can foster this lack of vulnerability.
It could foster pretense. It could foster the sense of I'm good. Everything's fine. I've got it all figured out.
And actually we need to reenact our reliance upon the gospel. Repentance is that it's moving as he ever talks about last week, moving from self-reliance to full reliance upon the sufficiency of Jesus and what he's done. And nothing more will confront us with that reality with our sin and with our brokenness, you know, justified. And we are the justified.
The sanctification process is ongoing. And so that's where we need the reliance upon Jesus's grace daily, continually asking the spirit to lead us and guide us because it demonstrates that much more fully the gospel in our lives. And so I love that you're going to lead us through that. And group leaders, as you're instead, this is a great week set to follow up on that conversation.
You've got your questions. You understand these questions are more of a guide for you. It's not a straight turn by turn map. But do want to encourage you as you do every week.
Open up your marriage, church app, take notes, bring your Bible, talk about the things that you noted during the message, bring that to your discussion this week because it's that much more vibrant of discussion when we bring what we got to highlight it to us during the weekend message. So we're excited for this. Thanks so much for your time. And I can't wait to hear here this weekend.
It's going to be great. Appreciate it. All right. You guys, we'll see you all next week.