Episode Transcript
- Good morning everybody, or good afternoon, good afternoon.
Oh, we got one over here already.
Here's the verses.
Back up.
Up or okay?
Okay.
Here's the verses we'll be covering if y'all wanna jot them down for later or check 'em out later if I go a little too fast, which I'll do that sometime.
Here's the verses we're gonna be covering today, God willing.
There we go.
All right.
All right, I'm sorry I missed everybody last week.
Boy, I had to cough and cough and I couldn't quit coughing.
Oh, it was awful.
But I think Donna's got that cough now.
You get coughin' so hard it hurts your head sometimes, Donna, boy, what a baby.
I finally, my wife and I went to the doctor, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, and gave her some cough medicine and that cough medicine seemed to help a little bit.
It would've been hard for me to talk up here and be coughing and I didn't want everybody thinking I'm sickly, so I didn't wanna do that.
So anyway, I let the activities lady know that I was sick and wasn't feeling good, so I hope she let y'all know.
If for some reason I am not here for some reason, more than likely it's because I'm sick.
So if you don't get the word that I'm not here, it's not because I don't love you no more, it's because Brother Doug's sick.
So don't ever think that it's because I don't wanna come.
This is one of the highlights of my week, is to come here and share God's word with y'all.
So don't ever think that it's something, other reason than me being sick or some emergency's come up.
I earn that high plan on being here every time, God willing.
So with that said, we're still in the book of Jude as we go verse by verse.
Now upon our last visit, we left off in the book of Jude at verse 12.
As we went verse by verse in our study of Jude, so let's read verse 12, if y'all wanna look at your Bibles at Jude at verse 12, we're gonna read that before we get started.
Jude says, "These are spots in your feasts of charity "when they feast with you, "feeding themselves without fear, "clouds they are without water, "carried about of winds, "trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, "twice dead, plucked up by the roots."
Camera lady, would you, Sherry, please turn that off?
Please unplug it, that's very distracting to me.
Thank you, Sherry, appreciate it.
All right, so we left off at where Jude says, "Carried about of winds."
And we talked about when the winds come, if you are in Christ, you will remain with the Lord, but the ungodly shall be blown away as the chaff.
Job 21, 18 says, "They are as stubble before the wind "and as chaff that the storm carries away."
So back in verse 12 of Jude, this is where we're gonna start today.
Jude says, "Trees whose fruit withereth without fruit."
Now when we look at the words, "Trees whose fruit withereth," we think about fruit, don't we?
Fruit like peaches and apples and oranges and there are many more.
That is what came to my mind when I read this verse.
And maybe you thought the same thing.
But when I looked up what these words were translated from in the original Greek language, I learned that I was wrong.
The word trees gives us the idea of an oak tree.
On the property where my wife and I live that the good Lord has blessed us with, there are several large oak trees.
They provide wonderful shade and they are really nice looking trees.
I think they are called live oaks because their leaves stay green all year long and they keep their leaves on their branches all year long.
Now if my wife and I were to get up one day and go outside and look at those live oaks and all the green leaves had turned brown and they started falling off, what do you think we would be thinking?
We would probably be thinking that those trees were dying, wouldn't we?
Pardon me.
That is what Jude is saying here by the words whose fruit wither.
These three words come from the Greek and give us the idea of autumn time when the leaves start changing color and falling off the branches.
The live oak tree maintains its leaves through the winter.
You have trees that keep their leaves and you have trees that don't.
Here when he says trees, he's referring to the oak tree.
When you look at a tree that is supposed to drop its leaves in fall, you don't think nothing about it.
But when you see a tree that is not supposed to drop its leaves, we think it is dying.
And that is exactly what is happening with the ungodly.
They are dying.
Now we are all dying, but Jude says that the ungodly are dying how?
Look back at your text.
Without fruit, without fruit.
These two words, without fruit, come from the Greek word akarpos, akarpos.
It is spelled A-K-A-R-P-O-S and it means barren or unfruitful.
When a live oak has lost all of its leaves, it is no longer nice to look at and it will no longer give any shade to sit under when the sun is beating down upon you.
The only thing that I can think of that it would be good for is firewood.
The ungodly do not work for the kingdom of God.
They are unfruitful.
Let's look at Ezekiel chapter 15 and we're gonna read verses one through five.
And I've got y'all marked with a little tab here.
Oh, I did.
That's okay, we'll get there.
Ezekiel, I had that in there.
That's all right, I thought we could find it again, God willing.
Ezekiel 12, wait a minute, let's see.
Ezekiel 15.
Ezekiel 15, we'll read one through seven.
Should have you marked there, y'all, with that little pull tab, this little pull string.
Ezekiel 15, got you marked.
Should have you marked over there, Don.
Ezekiel 15, right there.
Got it, Bill? - Yeah. - Ezekiel 15.
One through, what'd I say, five. 15, one, one through five, okay. 15, one says, "And the word of the Lord came unto me, "saying," this is God telling Ezekiel.
He says, "Son of man, what is the vine tree "more than any tree?
"Or than a branch which is among the trees of the forest?
"Shall wood be taken thereof to do any work?
"Or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon?
"Behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel.
"The fire devoureth both the ends of it "and the midst of it.
"It is burned.
"Is it meat for any work?
"Is it good for any work?
"No.
"Behold, when it was whole, "it was meat for no work."
This is the ungodly.
"How much less shall it be meat for any work "when the fire hath devoured it and it is burned?
"No chance to do any work at all "after it is burned up, completely destroyed."
The ungodly are without Christ.
You cannot produce fruit until you have been washed clean and planted by the word of God.
John 15, one through nine.
John 15, one through nine, and this is good right here.
John 15, one through nine.
John 15, one through nine.
John 15, one through nine.
This is good right here, folks.
John 15, one through nine.
Let the pastor get there now. (pages rustling) John 15, (laughs) one through nine.
This is Jesus talking.
Jesus says, "I am the true vine, "and my Father is the husbandman," or the farmer.
"Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away, "and every branch that beareth fruit, he purges it, "that it may bring forth more fruit.
"Now ye are clean through the word "which I have spoken unto you.
"Abide in me and I in you, "as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, "except it abide in the vine.
"No more can ye except ye abide in me."
That's the god.
"I am the vine, ye are the branches.
"He that abideth in me and I in him, "the same bringeth forth much fruit.
"For without me, ye can do nothing."
The ungodly do not have Christ.
"If a man abide not in me, "he is cast forth as a branch and is withered, "and men gather them and cast them into the fire, "and they are burned."
The ungodly will be burned.
"If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, "ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
"Herein is my Father glorified, "that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples.
"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.
"Continue ye in my love."
Christ loved you so much that he gave his life for you.
Christ loved you so much that he gave his life for you.
Those without Christ are ungodly.
They will be completely destroyed, burned.
Jude says back in our verse, twice dead, back in Jude.
Twice dead.
Our bodies are born dying, folks, because of the unbelief of Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Adam brought sin into this world, and because of that, these bodies, our souls, and our spirits are housed in, will give out someday, and return to the dust from which they came, and our spirits will return unto the Lord.
Ecclesiastes 12, seven says, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, "and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
God breathed life into Adam's nostrils.
God blessed each and every one of us with a life.
He put a spirit, he put your spirit inside your body.
Now someday, that body that your spirit is in, it's gonna lay down for the last time.
That spirit is gonna come out of your body, it's gonna go back to the Lord who gave you your spirit, and it will be judged.
It's going to return back to God.
That spirit just don't go back to the dust.
It didn't come from the dust.
Your body came from the dust, the spirit come from the Lord.
Our bodies are born dying.
Now, now our bodies die, but our spirits do not.
Your spirit will live forever, but the question is, where will your spirit be living forever?
There are not but two places, two places your spirit is gonna go after it leaves your body.
Either with the Lord who created you, and loves you, and wants nothing but the best for you, or with the one who lies to you, and only wants what is best for himself.
Now where he is going to be for eternity is going to be full of torture, and misery, and sin.
But where the Lord is going to be is going to be sinless, with no more tears, and no more pain and suffering.
These old bodies that you're in now, folks, they break down.
When you go to be with the Lord, if you choose Christ as your Savior, you get to stay with the Lord, you'll be given a new body.
And that new body is not gonna be sinned.
It's not gonna be tainted by sin.
That new body's not gonna be broke down.
We're not gonna be stuck in wheelchairs.
We're not gonna be stuck on oxygen.
We're not gonna have aches and pains, and fever, and sickness, and coughs.
It's gonna be a perfect, sinless, holy body that the good Lord is going to give you to be with the Lord.
God don't want sin in his house.
He don't want no sinful flesh in his house.
If you choose to live with the devil in the pain and suffering, then you have refused to believe the Lord and called him a liar when he has said to believe in his only Son as your Savior.
And you will not only die once by the death of your body, but you will die again by the separation from the Lord, twice dead.
Jude says back in our verse, "Locked up by the roots."
When a tree is uprooted, it cannot continue to grow.
It dies. (pages turning) Let's close today by reading Psalms chapter one.
And we're gonna read verses one through six.
And after we read these verses, please think about what we read and ask yourself if you are a tree planted by the rivers of water, or are you chaff that will get blown away by the wind?
Psalms one, one through six.
Psalms one, one through six.
You got it?
Psalms one, one through six.
There, John.
You got it, John.
You good, Bill?
Psalms one, one through six.
One, one says, "Blast!"
Don't you wanna be blessed?
"Blast is the man that walketh not "in the counsel of the ungodly, "nor standeth in the way of sinners, "nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
"But his delight is in the law of the Lord, "and in his law doth he meditate day and night."
Folks, read your Bible.
You wanna be blessed?
Read your Bible.
Meditate on it.
What you read, think about it.
All week long, when I'm getting ready to do my lesson, I'll read the verse, and I'll try to think about it all week long.
I'll let God just open up my mind to what that means, and different verses will start coming to my mind.
Folks, think about it.
Get you a verse.
Think about it.
Think about that verse.
Meditate on it.
"And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water "that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.
"His leaf also shall not wither, "and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
"The ungodly are not so, "but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
"Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, "nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous."
And folks, I'm gonna tell y'all, when I leave this old world, I don't wanna be around sin no more.
I don't wanna be around sin no more.
I don't want sin around me.
Last verse, Psalms 1:6, and we'll close.
"For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, "but the way of the ungodly shall perish."
God knows if you have accepted Christ as your Savior or not.
God knows that.
God is what the theologians call omniscient.
That means all-knowing.
I believe omniscient's right.
I get 'em confused.
There's omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
Let's see.
I forget them.
I get 'em confused.
Omnipresent means always present.
He's here with us now.
He knows what's going on.
Let's see, omnipotent is all-powerful, right?
Think?
And omniscient is all-knowing.
I believe that's right.
I hope I ain't tellin' you wrong.
But God knows whether or not you've accepted Christ as your Savior.
That's your choice.
God blesses us with the ability to choose.
And I pray that you choose Christ.
Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for those that have come to hear your word, Lord.
And we're just so thankful, Lord, for your word, Lord.
I pray that you would glorify it here today, Lord, by your word, Lord.
Father, we wanna pray for those who are sick and couldn't make it today, Lord.
We just pray your will be done in their healing.
As in these bodies here today, Lord, we pray your will be done in our lives as well, Father.
We thank you so much, Lord, for all that you do, Lord.
And we're so thankful for the ones you put in our lives to encourage us, Lord.
Help us to stay the path that you want us to be on, Lord.
And we're just so thankful for Jesus, Lord.
Thank you for Christ.
And we pray for those who don't know Christ as their Savior, Father.
We pray that you would draw them to the cross and open their eyes to Christ, Lord.
We thank you and we love you, Lord.
We ask these things today in Christ's name, Lord.
Amen.
