Craig Guntrip | Contending for the Faith | Deep calls to Deep | 26th April 2026 PM Service

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Village Church Podcast. We hope you enjoy this message from the weekend. And if you want to find more about us, visit us online at vlg.church. We have been doing a series called Deep Calls to Deep, which comes from the Psalms and Andrew this morning over here. I did a great job of preaching and sharing so beautifully on the grace of God and what it means to work from a place of grace for the kingdom. And then last Sunday night, actually, I want to give Sarah a shout out for being so vulnerable and open with a testimony and leading us into a beautiful place of ministry. I've really enjoyed having some people preaching that I can just sit and listen to. It's ministered to me instead of being the guy that does it all the time. So we're going to read from the book of Jude tonight. So you're welcome, mate, Jude. Thanks on the drums tonight. So we're going to read from the book of Jude. If you want to feel really impressive with yourself and read a whole book of the Bible, Jude's a great one to do because there's only one chapter. If you're not sure where it is, flick all the way to the back and then just go one book back. It is worth the read. So I'm going to unpack that. Really, one of the key thoughts of Jude's in the passage is what I want to focus on tonight and hopefully can speak to us. It's one of my favorite lines in the scripture because I feel like you can unpack it in so many different ways. But for those that don't know, Jude was probably the youngest of Jesus' brothers. And the reason for writing this, he says in verse three, he says it's to urge you to contend for the faith. That is his purpose of writing this one chapter letter that he wrote. It's not to a specific church like Philippians is to a specific church, Corinthians is to a specific church. This is just to the church. The churches are the date. Basically, because grace in a sense is being twisted into God forgives you saying, "Hey, you can live however you want it, it doesn't matter." Which we know is not true. Andrew did a great job of sharing how that's not true this morning. But Jude writes to warn the church about basically this internal corruption and cause believers to actively guard, live, and fight for an authentic faith. So that's kind of the focus of the book. And hopefully we can take from it from the posture and position of how do we guard and protect and actively live an authentic faith. It talks about false prophets coming into the church just to heads up. I'm not trying to say there's false prophets in our church, but I'm trying to say, let's look at what he encourages the church to hold onto in the midst of attack on its faith. So this is what I'm going to read verses three and four and then we'll jump to verses 12 and 13. So this is what three and four say. He says, dear friends, although I was very, eager to write to you about the salvation that we share, I felt compelled to write an urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality, and they deny Jesus Christ as our only sovereign Lord. Verse 12 and 13, as he goes through any talks and references some old testament things to really display what he's trying to get across here, but he kind of closes out this sort of portion in verse 12 by saying, these people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest quam, shepherds who feed only themselves. This is the line I want you to catch tonight. They are clouds without rain blown along by the wind, autumn trees without fruit, and uprooted twice dead, they're wandering stars that goes on to say. We're good? Yeah, heavy. You're either falling asleep or feeling the heaviness of his kind of confrontation. So let's pray, Lord, we just thank you. God for the scriptures. We thank you for the boldness of disciples like Jude, God that they would not sit back and watch the churches' faith be diluted, but they would speak up. And we pray, Lord, even in this day and age, when there's so many things trying to tell us to make our faith quiet, tell us to compromise on the grace that you've offered us, we pray God for a church that would stand up, Lord, that you would feel every cloud in this room with a substance of your Holy Spirit that would bless the community that we live in. We pray in Jesus' name. And everyone said, amen, amen, amen. I don't know how many of you have ever experienced just that feeling of having an empty stomach, like that, like it's gurgling, you get kind of a bit of a stomach ache, and it feels, and you're just really hungry. Is anyone like, that's my daily life, even when I've had a meal, I'm just like, "Lord, you've wired me different." I'm built different, I don't know. Built. Yeah, thanks, thanks, Isaiah. You're with me tonight, mate. You're at a sleep-in and you're feeling fresh. I appreciate that. Basically, you, stomach makes weird noises, all those sorts of things. Maybe we've even tried fasting before. Have you tried fasting before, when you get to the point in your fast where you start to regret the decision and the commitment that you made to God? And the point of fasting right is to be able to fix your attention on the Lord, but all you're thinking about is your next meal. You're like, "God, I am doing this for you, but I really want some food right now." And in some ways, you probably have more attention on God if you ate something, because you could stop thinking about your stomach and start thinking about him. You read verses like, "He is the bread of life." And you're like, "Bread." "Bread." I don't know. Is it getting weird? The most empty my stomach has ever been, was actually before I had to go to hospital once. I'm getting to the age now where you get to experience things like a colonoscopy. If you don't know what that is, don't Google it. It's not really probably worth googling. But part of the process in the lead up to one of those is that they have to empty your stomach because they're about to look in your stomach. I'm not gonna tell you how they look in your stomach, but they look in your stomach. So the process is they give you this stuff that helps you empty your stomach, which we all know how your stomach gets emptied. I don't need to explain that to you. But it's disgusting and it's gross. You have to drink it the night before and it sort of flushes out your system. So I was up all night the night before heading to the doctors, just emptying my stomach throughout the night and feeling more and more like off as I was going through the night. The next day, I've got a head to the hospital. They put you in a gown and a waiting room and you sort of got to do, you know, you're waiting and you talk to the guy. I think he's called an anithesis or whatever and they're gonna give you, put you under, so he explains that to you. And I thought I better just go to the bathroom one last time before this surgery because basically for the lead up, you just feel like you've got to go to the bathroom the whole time. So I wandered off to the bathroom. And while I was in there, I passed out in the bathroom at the hospital. And I just remember waking up like, I've been unconscious. Like that's, you know that, you don't know you're gonna pass out but you know when you woke up that you were not conscious for as long as you should have been conscious. And I was like, how long has it been? Like, has it been a minute? Has it been seconds? Has it been hours? Has everyone knocked off and gone home and I'm about to walk out the bathroom and it's like a closed down hospital. It had only been seconds, no one knew. So I just wandered out like nothing had happened and just went and laid back down on the bed and got ready. For those that have been really worried about me, nothing was wrong, everything's okay in there, it's all good. But I say all that to say, we think start happening when you are empty. When you have emptied yourself of what sustains you, nourishes you, kind of keeps you running. But all of that is out. You start to not function properly. And as much in the natural as we need those things for our energy, our sustenance, our fluids, our calories, our nutrition, all that sort of thing, we are not created to live empty in the physical and you are not created to live empty in the spiritual. There's actually something off with your walk with God if you are walking around empty of what God's intentions are to fill you up with, which is the person of the Holy Spirit. We're not meant to just be even filled with God, we're meant to overflow with God, the Scriptures say. And when the men, the book of Judas talking about they're intentionally have come in to rob the church of its faith, they've secretly slipped in to the congregation and they're basically sowing discord. Jude confronts the false prophets in the church and he says that they are like clouds without rain. Something that clearly is meant to have something in it, but there is no substance on the inside. He doesn't just say that, he goes to pile up a bunch of illustrations like this. He says that they are like hidden reefs in verse 12. He says their shepherds are only feed themselves. They're like autumn trees without fruit that need to be uprooted, twice dead. He says that they are like wild waves foaming up their shame that their chaotic and noisy, but they expose themselves in the process. They're wandering stars, which is like basically saying they are an unreliable guide. They lead people off course. So if that's all of the things that he is saying is wrong with some of these people, the false prophets that have crept into the church, then what would it mean to do the opposite of those things? If even our sinful nature we are at war with, and we understand this, we've got to also understand that we can lose our reign, become a cloud without rain. Every believer needs to be aware of this happening in their own life, that we can slip into a place where we are no longer actually active in our faith. We are just going through some set of spiritual motions. I don't know about you. I've had days in my life that would be no, would be. that are no different than every other person living their life because I did not engage in anything that required faith. Unfortunately, I've had weeks in my Christian life where I have not engaged in anything that required faith of me. I don't actually wanna know how long I've gone at times where I've just lived like the rest of the world and thought that I had something to bring but living completely empty. Not intentionally necessarily, but just unaware that I have actually become completely empty of a substance and a source that God could use in my life. In the book of Exodus, God uses clouds, a cloud of pillar by day and by fire by night to guide the Israelites through the wilderness. In the book of Kings, it talks about how the temple, at the opening of the temple, a cloud of glory filled up the temple and they had to stop doing their religious things and they dropped to their knees to worship. In the New Testament, there's this moment where Jesus heads up the mountain with a few of his disciples and a cloud engulfs the mountain, it's called the Mount of Transfiguration and the voice of the Father speaks. Clouds throughout scripture represent the moving and the guiding of the Holy Spirit. And then here we go, we see this saying that's actually a Hebrew saying that these people are like clouds without rain. Basically what it means is that they are like people of promise without any purpose. They are people who like to do all speech but they've got no substance. This is what it means to be a cloud without rain. And I think that, I don't know about you, but I feel like people who are looking for something from Christianity or the church who have even an openness in their hearts of the things of God are looking for a sense of something of substance. Not just talk, not just fluff, not just philosophy, but something of substance. In Hebrews 11 verse 1, it says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, "it's the evidence of things not seen." It says that hope actually doesn't have a substance. Not to we add faith to our hopes, does it have a substance? Hope is the cloud in a sense, but faith is the thing that fills it. Hope doesn't create evidence, it's faith that creates the evidence of God. For instance, if a farmer was desperate for rain, they would feel hope as they saw a cloud come, but they would experience no change if it was empty. A cloud without rain is actually false hope to the world. A Christian that's not filled with God can become a false hope. I thought you came to help me, but you actually do the same as everyone else. You don't just have hope, you don't just wanna bring hope to those around you, you wanna bring faith to those around you. It's the difference between what the world offers to come for you in a time of need where they come and rub your back and maybe sympathize with you or empathize with you, but there's no faith to change the circumstances that you're in. And as a believer, we need to come to situations like that, not just to bring hope, but to bring faith, because hope is just an offering of maybe there's something that could happen, but faith is the substance that might change their situation and circumstances. Faith is the thing that's required if you wanna pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to move in someone's life. Faith is the thing that's required if you wanna pray, but believe that the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you could shift the circumstances of the world around you. When Paul teaches about the armor of God in the New Testament, he doesn't talk about a shield of hope. He talks about a shield of faith. Not a hope isn't a part of the armor of God, but faith absolutely is. You know the thing about God, think about Paul describing faith as a shield is actually really interesting, because often particularly in Pentecostal churches, we talk about faith more like a weapon, a weapon of offense than a weapon of defense. We think it's the thing that takes over the world, but it's actually the thing that protects you when you need to be felt safe. It's a protection against the attacks of the enemy. You might remember that, or have heard of the story of Peter walking on water, he sees Jesus walking on water towards him, and he steps out of the boat, and he walks on water for a while, which is crazy. By the way, I don't know if you've tried it. But can you imagine? That would be the wildest feeling to be walking on top of water. But then he sinks. And Jesus says something along the lines of your faith, you didn't have faith. But the truth of that story is that what Jesus is saying to Peter at that time is not that he didn't have enough faith to believe that he could walk on water. We saw, and we know that that was the case. It was that his faith didn't endure. It's that his faith was fleeting. You see, the thing about having a shield of faith is that it protects you against the attacks of the enemy. And what God calls us to what Jesus speaks to us about is having a faith that endures. Even when our circumstances are changing around us, it's easier to have faith for a moment. It is much harder to have faith that endures. You know the other thing about a shield that I find interesting is that the rest of the armor of God in many ways other than the sword is attached to a person physically. The breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, these things are attached, but you get to yield the shield. Is that the right word or will the shield? Will the yield? You get to use the shield. You get to control the shield. But you get to choose where you put it. The helmet of salvation is there, and it belongs there. But you get to choose where you put your faith. You get to choose whether in a time of need and where situations and circumstances around you aren't, adding up or working out how you feel. You get to choose whether you put your faith there or not. You get to choose whether you protect your trust in God or not. You get to choose whether you believe for your friend to be healed or not. You get to choose how you're going to position your faith and God allows you to have control of it. Jesus also talks about having faith like a mustard seed, that even faith like a mustard seed can move a mountain. So it's not about having the most faith. It's about having enduring faith. It's about positioning the faith that you do have. Even if you have a mustard seed of faith, it is a shield to the work of the enemy in your life. He cannot penetrate it. Faith that brings us to substance is what God is calling us to have. You know, the thing that Hebrews 11 verse 1 says, says faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. I don't wish this upon anyone, but if you ever have to go to court, you'll have to provide evidence to prove your case, which is interesting because most Christians, when they're asked to prove God, we kind of get backpedal because we intellectually can't explain something because it's outside of our understanding. But the Scriptures teach us that there'll actually be enough evidence if you apply faith. If you are a cloud with rain, there will be evidence in your life of God. Oh, do you need evidence? You ask me if God's, I don't know how to explain only a theological question, but I tell you about this miracle that I saw. You can tell me about this time that God pulled me through a situation and I can go on and continue to explain to you the evidence that I've got. We're walking around with just hopes and dreams, no faith and no evidence. You want a case for God? Begin to build up evidence in your life that he is, who he says he is. Jesus lived this out. He was a person of substance. He's the God of substance. He didn't just preach and teach, but he examined a life of substance. He didn't just teach us about love. He loved the most unlovable people of his time. He didn't just teach us about healing. He healed and made people well. He didn't just have a theory and a theology of healing. He practically had the substance of it. He didn't just explain to people how to pray. He regularly retreated and was a person of prayer. We can end up if we're not careful having all of the knowledge of it, but no substance of it. He never said a single thing that didn't align with his own personal life. Jesus, at one point, he turns water into wine. He can take one substance and turn it into another substance. He can take a substance like water that requires absolutely no process. And he can turn it into wine, which requires time, pressure, and fermentation instantly. He changes one substance into another substance. I don't know entirely what all the layers to that are, but what I do know is that if you have ever felt behind in what God has called you to do, if he can turn water into a substance that is known for taking time, he can totally accelerate whatever it is that he's got for your life. He feel like God, I missed it. God, I should have done this. God, I would have done that. God, I don't feel equipped. God, I don't feel enabled. He can take whatever substance you offer him and turn it into something that's perfectly ready for exactly what he needs. He took a boy's lunch at one point. One boy's lunch, he didn't steal his lunch. That's how I'm a bit bad, didn't it? He's like, give me your lunch. He's like the school yard bully. No, the disciples did that. He said the disciples out. They went and stole the kids' lunch. Then they brought her back to him. He was innocent. But ask Andrew. I'm not sure who it was. I think it was Andrew. Was it Philip? Peter? Definitely one of those guys. One of the fishermen, that definitely stills in kids' lunch. Anyway, so he takes the kids' lunch at one point. And he turns a few loaves of bread and a few fish, one substance, or a very small amount of substance, into enough to feed 5,000 men in their families. One substance turned into endless substance. They left with more baskets than they offered him in the first place. So if you feel like you've got nothing to offer God or not much to give him, he's the master of taking whatever you offer him and turning it into far more than you ever would have expected. But it does require faith. And trust to put it in his hands, not just hopes and dreams, but faith and you'll have enough evidence in your life. The people around you start to wonder what's going on with you. One thing I want to say tonight in particular, because I feel like we are in an age of content overload that content is not substance. It's not the same thing. This is important because you can love your favorite podcast. You can watch as many Christian Reels. You can read as many Christian books or ask chat TTP or your Christian questions. Content is not the same as substance. You can accumulate content as still be a person that lacks substance. We're not meant to just finish our lives with hopes and quotes, but build a life with God that has substance. You like that one? Isaac, you got that one? Cool. Good job. All right, you're with me? Are we going OK? The worst thing that can happen to you is you end your days with a bunch of hopes and a bunch of quotes, but you haven't lived a life of substance. You never knew how to position your faith. You never knew how to build a life with God. You just became knowledgeable about him. What does Jude say to do when it comes to this? He explains to us about the false prophets that have crept into the church of their day. And this is how he explains what to do about it. In verses 18 to 21, he says this. He says, "In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires. These are the people who will divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the spirit." I don't know if you've ever encountered this, but I feel like Jude could be writing to any church of our time. In your times, there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires. These are the kind of people who will divide you and who will follow mere natural instincts and do not have the spirit. Instincts and substance are two different things. But you, he says, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. What's his solution as he confronts clouds without rain? He says, "Build yourself up." You know what's interesting about this? Is that you got to do it yourself? Simple, right? But this is what he's saying. Build yourself up in your most holy faith. You've got to do it. You've got to choose to participate in it. It's not someone else's job. It's yours. In your most holy faith, it's about being full of faith. And he says, "Praying in the Holy Spirit," which I think more and more as we go on, it becomes a harder and harder topic to talk about in churches as praying in the Holy Spirit, the gift of tongues. There's a purpose for that. There's a reason for that. It's because it carries so much power in the life of a believer. But if the enemy can disarm you in a thing that is meant to build you up and edify you, then how much more vulnerable would you be? He says, "Keep yourself in God's love and mercy." In God's love and mercy of our Lord. There's a book I read many years ago. It's called "The Walk of the Spirit, The Walk of Power." It's by our guy named Dave Robus, and this is what he says when it comes to praying in the Holy Spirit. He says, "Every time you give the Holy Spirit opportunity, he will use that language to pray for your calling, to pray out the plan of God, to edify you, and to charge you with his Holy power. He will lend himself to you as your faith allows him to be activated within your spirit. He'll pull you out of everything Jesus set you free from, and into everything Jesus says that you are in him." That's a pretty bold claim, that when you pray and take the time to pray in the Holy Spirit, that you're praying the perfect will of God of your life, that it's charging you with the Holy power. And the promises of God will become activated in your spirit. Nearly, why don't you come and join me, mate? We might actually get you all to stand, and we'll get the rest of the band to come forward. Matthew chapter 5, verse 6, it says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." It doesn't say that. "Blessed are those who are empty, because they will be filled." It says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." It's sort of this principle right that God's just not moved by the empty, He's moved by the hungry, which goes to say that the scariest place that you can be in your life is empty and not hungry. The catalyst for being filled is a hunger for God. It's a hunger for the Holy Spirit. It's a hunger to no longer be empty, or not to become empty, or not to stay empty. We aren't made to function empty. We're made to function to be filled and overflowing. As much as our stomach's grown for food when we've not nourished them, our spirits should be groaning for God. There's a desire, a deep desire within us to not just get more information, but to receive Him, Himself, to be filled with God. What a beautiful promise. Jesus said, "It's good for you that I go, as the Holy Spirit will come. No longer will you just walk with God, you'll be filled with God." You know, when there's a lack of rain in a community, it impacts the entire region. But when there's an abundance of rain in a community, it blesses the entire region. I'm sure there's many things that a few are thought of. Dams that are used to generate power operate because there's enough rain to keep them sustained and filled. Where there's rain, there's power. Farmers fill up dams. They make provisions for seasons of drought. But sometimes those go empty and the crops go dry. And what was meant to fill stomachs just lies in the dirt. Rain leads to sustenance. It leads to crops. It leads to people being filled. Even when it comes to seasons, when there's wet seasons and dry seasons, the wet seasons come to life in the dry seasons. Things shrivel up and die. This is the power of rain. Our disappointing for communities when churches are filled with clouds without rain. Throughout scripture, we see clouds guiding people through the wilderness. We see clouds leading to people encountering his presence in temples. We see clouds engulfing moments of encounter at mountains. And you are God's clouds. You're meant to have an abundance of rain. You're meant to walk filled and overflowing with the Holy Spirit. And you can be filled with God at an altar. We will pray for people tonight to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But you remain filled with God because of your secret place. You can come to an altar and get filled. But the only way you stay filled is to create a life of spending time being filled and ready to be come a cloud full of rain. No, it's interesting. The book of Judy talks about praying in the Holy Spirit. Build yourself up in the Holy Spirit. It'll edify your spirit. Paul talks and teaches the church about when it comes to speaking in tongues, when and where, and how it's not valuable. It says that it's not really all that helpful if you get up in front of a bunch of people and start speaking in tongues. It's like you might as well speak in English and it might bless someone. So even in the sense what Judy's saying is not about a public gathering. Because the gift of tongues is for your prayer life, your personal prayer life with God. So he's not saying how you come to an altar and pray in tongues. He's saying, "Build a secret place." When was the last time you just spent time in your secret place with God praying in tongues? You are a steward of your own edification. God has given you the gift of speaking in tongues. If you don't tonight, we'll pray for you to receive the gift of speaking in tongues. It can be made weird in our head. We can have narratives and stories told to us about it from conservative movements. Someone once had a bad experience. But you cannot read the New Testament and find a reason to not have an active in your life. Every time Paul went to a new community to plan a church, he went to the synagogues and found people that had an understanding of God and he asked them one question straight up, have you been filled with the Holy Spirit? And most of them hadn't heard about what took place at the upper room. They're like, "No, we know about the scriptures. We know about the Torah. We know about God and all this sort of thing." But we haven't heard about this Holy Spirit. And the first thing he does to birth church is to pray for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit and they speak in tongues. And that's when the church began. The Book of Acts, that's when the church began. People being filled with God till something in them was overflowing. It's a sign of an overflow of what's happening inside of you. And you can turn it on and off. Once you get the gift of tongues, I've seen many Christians who have come forward been craving the gift of tongues. They've had a desire and began to get an appetite for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They've heard about prophecy, they've heard about speaking in tongues, they've heard about discerning, all this sort of stuff. They get an appetite and a desire for it. They have meetings like this and church camps and conferences and they come forward and they speak in tongues. And it's exciting for a moment, but they never stewed it. It becomes a thing that they pull out when they're at youth camp or a conference or an event with a feeling extra spiritual. But no one carries it into their secret place, just what it was intended for. If you confuse about tongues and Paul's writing, I'm going to tell you three things real quick just to try and soften your heart towards it. If you've become anxious about it, there's times in the scripture where people spoke in tongues and they heard their own language. The people that spoke in tongues didn't know the language, but the hearers heard their own language. It was a way of spreading the gospel quickly across cultures, people who didn't know the language were able to share. People heard the gospel in the book of Acts because people spoke in tongues, it's something supernatural that takes place. You're still here stories today, people on the mission field who pray in tongues and the locals where they don't know the language can hear what they say. There's times in scripture where it's your personal prayer life where it's about praying what I've just read before the perfect will of God over your life. And there's times where it's prophetic because one of the other gifts of this spirit, a mayor of red, it says that another gift of this fruit is interpretation of tongues. No one needs to interpret the things you're praying in your personal prayer life. That's not for someone to interpret that, it's for you and God. But there are times where the prophetic will be delivered in a tongue and that would require someone to interpret it. I hope those three simple things help you because sometimes you can read an inscription and categorize things into a posture of not being open to it anymore. I don't pray in tongues up the front here often because Paul says it's not all that helpful. But I'm trying to build a life in the secret place. Using the gifts that God has given me, you are a steward of your own edification. If you're feeling empty, if you're feeling dry, it's not because he hasn't given you the Holy Spirit, it's not that he hasn't equipped you with the gifts to live a life of overflow. This week's Rejoe is not to bother using it. Maybe here, and it's too big a step tonight, but. Jude tells us, he tells us what false prophets are like. He says they're like clouds without rain. And I just cannot help but think what the exact opposite of that is. Clouds within abundance of rain. I think that's what God's calling His church to be. People that have built such deep, secret places of intimacy with God, that they walk within abundance, to offer the world.