Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

In the book that bears his name, Jude has compared the false teachers he opposes to the heavenly villains of Genesis 6:1-4 (see Part 3).

In this episode, Jude continues this literary and theological strategy by comparing the false teachers to the wicked in Sodom and Gomorrah.

While we associate those two Old Testament cities with a particular sin of the flesh, Jude has something more dramatic in mind.

today we’re going to focus on Jude 7. We’ll hit verses 7 and 8, but Jude 7 is the primary focus.

We got into verse 8 a little bit last time when we talked about verse 6.

So that will be part of the picture here anyway, but it’s primarily Jude 7.

So to jump in here, I’m going to read Jude 5-8.

I think it gives a little bit of a fuller context for what we’ll be talking about here in verse 7.

So beginning in verse 5 we read

So that’s Jude 5-8.

And again, like I mentioned a moment ago, Jude 7 and 8 (but mostly verse 7) is going to be our focus today.

We got into verse 8 last time because the verse explains (or at least reiterates) Jude’s rationale for comparing

the false teachers he is shooting at with typological or archetypal Old Testament sins and sinners.

The last time it was the angels that sinned in the days before the flood, and this time in verse 7 it’s Sodom and Gomorrah.

And as verse 8 suggests, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah had something to do with these three elements: the defiling of the flesh (which is language for sexual sin), rejecting authority, and then thirdly, blaspheming God and his host.

The first of these is what we always think of when we think of Sodom and Gomorrah, but I want to tie that episode into the other parts of Jude 8 as well.

I think Gene Green does a really nice job with this in his commentary—again, taking verse 7 with verse 8.

So just to read verse 7 again:

Then you get these three elements in verse 8: “defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.”

So Green in his commentary writes this.

He says:

Jude’s third example of sin followed by divine judgment is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

God revealed to Abraham his forthcoming judgment on these cities, saying, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin!” (Genesis 18:20 NRSV).

Somewhat surprisingly, the exact nature of the cities’ sin is not elaborated.

The reader is only made aware of the depravity of the inhabitants of Sodom when the angelic visitors arrive at Lot’s house.

These soon become the objects of sexual desire by all the male inhabitants of the city, from the youngest to the oldest: “Bring them out to us so that we may know them” (Genesis 19:5 NRSV).

Lot had shown the messengers hospitality and tried to protect his guests by taking the extreme measure of offering the assailants his daughters instead (Genesis 19:8).

Since not even ten righteous people were found in Sodom [ which was the barter discussion in Genesis 18:22-23], God destroyed the city by sulfur and fire along with Gomorrah (Genesis 19:12-29).

Included in the judgment were the surrounding cities of the plain (Genesis 19:24-25, 28-29), a piece of the story to which Jude refers in the opening of verse 7. The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah because archetypal in the Old Testament as well as in Jewish and Christian literature (Deut.

32:32; Isa.

1:10; 3:9; Jer.

23:14; 3 Macc.

2:5; 2 Esd.

[4 Ezra] 7:106; Matt.

11:23), as did the divine judgment that came on these cities (Isa.

1:9; 13:19; Jer.

49:18; 50:40; Lam.

4:6; Amos 4:11; Zeph.

2:9; 3 Macc.

2:5; 2 Esd.

[4 Ezra] 2:8; Matt.

10:15; 11:24; Luke 10:12; 17:29–30; Rom.

9:29; 2 Pet.

2:6).

They were therefore set forward as an example to “later generations” (3 Macc.

2:5).

Sodom and Gomorrah

So what was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?

I mean, that’s the first most obvious question.

And as I said above (and as Green suggested), when we think of Sodom and Gomorrah, that sin, we think of the sexual sin specifically.

We think of homosexuality because it’s the men of Sodom who want Lot to let them “know” the two men in Genesis 19:5, which the reader, of course, knows are angels.

It’s not that the men of Sodom know this and Lot doesn’t even know it yet, but the readers certainly do.

So since it’s the men of Sodom that want to “know” the two men there, we automatically think of the sin of homosexuality.

Now we know that this wording, “Bring them out so that we may know them…” We know this is sexual for two reasons.

First, to “know” someone is a Hebrew idiom used elsewhere for sexual relations.

For instance, in Genesis 4:1, Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived.

This is the birth episode of Cain and Abel and this “knowing” language is used in Genesis 4:1, verse 17, verse 25.

It’s very clear.

We get the same thing in 1 Samuel 1:19 with the case of Hannah and her

husband—the same kind of language there.

Ezekiel 19:7 is a little more off the beaten path and a lot of English translations obscure the verse there, but if I could read Ezekiel 19:7 to you, you’ll get the flavor here.

At least I’ll help fill in the gaps here.

This is ESV and I’m going to back it up to verse… In Ezekiel 19, there are a bunch of things happening to the city.

Verse 6

Again, “he” here is the… Chapter 19 is a lamentation for the princes of Israel, and basically they become representative of bad behavior.

And this line in verse 7 about “seizing their widows…” He laid waste their cities.

Well, the word “seized” there is actually yadah.

It’s actually “to know.”

So he knew their widows.

So basically, it’s the language of rape.

It’s the language of “ravishing” women in conquest.

So again, in Ezekiel 19 in the context, it is very clear what is being talked about, even though the English translations tend to obscure it with language like “ravished” or “took” or something like that.

“Know” is what it has in the Hebrew text, just like in Genesis 4, just like in 1 Samuel 1:19.

So that’s the first reason we know that this is sexual—just the idiomatic language.

The second is the immediate context.

Lot’s daughters… Again, you get the same language about them.

So if we go to Genesis 19:7, this is when the men of Sodom… Let’s go back up to verse 5:

So right there we get the same context with Lot offering his daughters sexually to the men of Sodom.

And he says, “Look, they’re virgins; they haven’t known a man.”

And it has to mean that they’re virgins because it’s just not possible that it means that they’ve never met a man or never seen a man before.

I mean, their dad was a man, okay?

So again, the sexual idiomatic language is pretty plain in the passage, as it is elsewhere.

So we can be sure that the language here and the violation (the potential violation) here is sexual.

These men want these two visitors (these two male visitors—two men, as far as they know) that Lot is harboring...

They want Lot to bring them out and they can have their way with them sexually.

Since the angels appeared as men and were thought to be men by the male inhabitants of Sodom who wanted to “know” them, it’s obvious that homosexual relations were part of the story.

But was homosexuality, per se, the sin?

You could ask it this way: Is this proof that all the men of the city were gay or were practicing homosexuals?

And that is very unlikely.

It had to do more with the homosexual rape of the two men Lot was harboring and the ensuing humiliation upon Lot in the shame/honor culture that required hospitality to strangers in the extreme—so extreme that Lot is willing to surrender up his daughters to be able to maintain hospitality to strangers.

Again, it’s a Middle Eastern cultural thing that we are just not familiar with.

But again, back in the Biblical day (and even to some extent now), hospitality was put very high on the cultural ladder as far as things that you do and don’t do.

But again, since everybody concerned in the story is male, it is very obvious that homosexual activity is in view, but that does not mean that every person in the city, every male in the city, was a practicing homosexual or something like that.

In this culture and in others, this kind of abuse, this kind of rape scenario, would have been sort of a gesture of contempt and humiliation.

Now none of this undoes the fact that scripture elsewhere refers to voluntary homosexual behavior as sin (for instance, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13 and verses like that), but it does, I think, honor the context more that this is really about a violation of hospitality, and in the most visceral sort of way.

So I say all that to say this: There’s an obvious “defile the flesh” element here that would coincide with verse 8. It’s nigh unto impossible to deny that (and the homosexual nature of it) as far as the actual activity.

But as far as the bigger picture… Again, I think we need to keep the bigger picture in mind.

A side bar

As a side bar, for those of you who are interested, I occasionally get the question, “Hey, what’s a good resource on the Bible and what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, and something that is current to kind of keep up with the hermeneutic gymnastics that have sort of evolved around this topic?”

And I think the best book here is Robert Gagnon’s book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics.

It’s a 2002 book so it’s been out for 20 years, but it is very, very thorough and very current, at least it was for its time.