Jude
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning, brothers and sisters. Victor Chong is my name. Thank you for inviting me to speak again. I remember the last time I was here was in 2019. It is good to be back. I bring you greetings from Edge Community Church. I believe after me, Colin Yeo, one of our elders will be speaking here next week. I thought given that I am here only for the one week, perhaps we should look at a small book; one that stands alone and sufficiently short for a single sermon. And I thought the book of Jude is a good idea. My wife also thinks the same, so I must be right. So, we will look at the book of Jude this morning.
Prayer
Prayer
Let us start with a word of prayer.
Background
Background
This is the structure of Jude
Structure of Jude:
Greetings, vv 1-2
Purpose, vv 3-4
God has judge, vv 5-7
False Teachers: what and why, vv 8-13
God will judge, vv 14-15
Calling, vv 17-23
Doxology, vv 24-25
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Like other letters of his day, Jude starts his letter by first introducing himself. He is Jude, the servant, or slave, of Jesus Christ, and the brother of James. The name Jude is a common name in Palestine in Biblical time; it is variously translated as Jude, Judas or Judah. This is the same Jude or Judas, the younger brother of Jesus and James, who is mentioned in Matthew 13:55
Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
The letter was probably written around AD60, to the diaspora Jews and gentile believers in the cities of Palestine to combat false teachings that were brought into the church, we read this in Jude 4
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Jude’s recipients are believers as Jude assumes they are very familiar with the Old Testament and Jewish tradition. We shall see that Jude quotes and alludes to multiple Old Testament passages without skipping a beat to explain what is going on.
So Jude wrote to encourage them, to spur them on in the struggle, the fight, the battle, the war of their faith, as he says in Jude 3
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
The word “contend” here carries the meaning to fight, to struggle, to strive, to contest or contend for a prize; like fighting in a war, but it’s spiritual warfare that Jude is talking about here; not a physical war, nor a cultural war; but we will return to this later.
Who are these false teachers? Jude 8-13
Who are these false teachers? Jude 8-13
Jude tells us 6 things about these false teachers
Disguise as believers
Claim to receive revelation from God in dreams
No understanding of their teaching but blaspheme and grumble
Deny Jesus’ lordship
They are motivated by sensuality and worldly gains
They are fruitless, lost, dead and under judgment
They disguise as believers, and share in communion with the whole church, Jude 12
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;
These false teachers claim to have received direct revelation from God in their dreams. Jude 8
Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
The Jews believe that God sometimes reveals his intentions through dreams to prophets and kings, such as to Jacob in Genesis 28:11-12; Daniel in Daniel 7:1, the Pharaoh of Egypt in the time of Joseph in Genesis 41, and Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2.
Yet, they have no understanding of what they are teaching about; Jude 10
But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
and, they deny Jesus’ Lordship, Jude 4 and Jude 8
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
The word “authority” here refers to Jesus’ authority or lordship.
So their teachings were nothing but blasphemies,
But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
And, Jude 8
Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
They grumble, complain and find faults in the church, in Jude 16;
These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
Their motives is selfish, ungodly gains, both sensual, in Jude 12 and Jude 4
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
And for worldly gains, Jude 11
Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
Jude compares these false teachers to Cain, who murdered his own brother Abel because of jealousy, in Genesis 4:8
Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
And Balaam, who for worldly gains, help Balak to curse the Israelites when they came out of Egypt in Numbers 22-24; but God turned his curses into 7 blessings.
But their teachings and ways of life are dead and fruitless, and Jude likens them to waterless cloud, fruitless trees in late autumn that are dead and uprooted, in Jude 12
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;
They are lost like wandering stars, their ends are shameful, and gloomy in Jude 13
wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
Fate of the False Teachers; Jude 5-7, 14-15
Fate of the False Teachers; Jude 5-7, 14-15
So, what would happen to them? Jude bracket, or sandwich, the description of these false teachers with the Scriptural proof that they will be judged and destroyed by God.
First, Jude gives 3 examples of how God judged the wicked in the past; to emphasize that as surely as he did in the past, he will do so again.
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
The first example refers to the first generation of Israelites who came out of Egypt in the Exodus, but refused to obey God to enter the Promised Land when 10 of the 12 spies sent by Moses to explore the Promised Land brought the news of how well defended and fortified the Promised Land was; and the entire generation died in the desert, except for Caleb and Joshua; Numbers 14:26-29
And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me,
The second examples are the stray angels in Jude 6
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
Jude here gives the example of the angels whom Jewish tradition identifies as the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2-3
the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”
Jewish tradition holds that God was not pleased with the “sons of God”, or the angels, and imprisoned them in the gloomy underworld dungeon, according to the book of Enoch chapters 6-8, a pseudo-epigraphy written in the inter-testamentary period; that is, written after the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, but before the first book of the New Testament.
And finally, the example of Sodom and Gomorrah in Jude 7
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
This probably needs no explanation from me; I believe we are all very familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis chapters 18 and 19.
The other bracket is in Jude 14-15
It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
Here, Jude is quoting directly from the book of Enoch again in 1:9 to emphasize the certainty of God’s judgment on them.
Summary: False Teachers
Summary: False Teachers
These false teachers claim to receive special revelations from God in their dreams; yet they blaspheme and deny Jesus, and motivated by sinful desire. Jude assures us that God is certain to judge them.
How do We Respond
How do We Respond
After identifying who the false teachers are, and what is their fate, Jude then goes on to talk about how should we respond to false teachings in verses 17-23. In these short 7 verses, there are 5 imperatives; 5 things that Jude calls us to do. These 5 imperatives are:
Remember, Jude 17
Keep, Jude 21
Have mercy, Jude 22
Save, Jude 23
Have mercy, Jude 23
The first thing is what we can do for ourselves in Jude 17-18. The NASB translates these verses as:
But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.”
The first thing that Jude asks us to do, probably the most important one, is something we do for ourselves; that is to be familiar with God’s words, which forewarned us about false teachings and false teachers. Jesus himself said this in Matthew 24:23-26
Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.
And if we are familiar with God’s words, we will be able to detect these false teachings. What can we do, practically, to be familiar with God’s word? Well, there are 5 things we could do, and these are in order of the degree of commitment:
Daily prayer and Bible reading
Systematic Bible reading
Involve in Bible study groups
Personal in-depth study; audit course in Bible college
Learn the original languages
The second thing that Jude calls us to do, is something that we do for each others, as believers. Jude calls us to keep ourselves in God’s love in Jude 21
keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
How do we do this? How do we keep ourselves in God’s love? Jude 20
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,
We can do so by
Building each other up in our holy faith
Praying in the Spirit
How do we build each other up in our faith? By meeting with each other regularly, in church, in small group meetings, in prayer meetings, to encourage each other, to show each other our care and concerns.
And then by praying for ourselves and for each other.
God is Able
God is Able
But what are we to do with the false teachers, and with those who have strayed? Ex-communicate them? Have nothing to do with them?
Well, the next 3 imperatives concerns those who are led astray by false teachings, and possibly the false teachers themselves. Jude 22-23
And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
The word “mercy”, in “have mercy” or “show mercy” carries the range of meaning of having mercy, compassion, pity; and has the same cognate root in alms giving; charitable giving and help. The word carries the connotation that as God has mercy on us when we sin against him and fail him, so we, too, must have mercy on others when they sin and fail. The emphasis here is not on the attitude, but the manifestation, the action of forgiving and helping those who have failed.
Jude tells us that those who doubt, those who are led astray, and even the false teachers themselves are not our enemies; rather, we are to have mercy on them, and to try to convince them with the true teaching of the Bible.
Why and how can we do this? We can do this because God is merciful to us, and ultimately, it is God who is able to keep us from stumbling, from falling; and if we do fall, to forgive us and to restore us to his grace, Jude 24-25
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
After exposing the false teachers and their false teachings, foretelling their condemnation, and encouraging the believers to contend for their faith in this spiritual war, Jude concludes his letter with this most elaborate, and probably the most glorious doxology in the entire New Testament. Jude reminds us that ultimately, in our spiritual battles, it is God who gives us victory; it is God who is able to keep us from stumbling and guard us from falling into the trap of false teachings, so as to present everyone of us blameless before his own glory with great joy, through Jesus Christ. Despite the dangers that we face, and the spiritual war that we are fighting, Jude reminds us that this is God’s battle more than ours; and God will be victorious. While Jude asks us to “keep” ourselves in God’s love in Jude 21
keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
Ultimately, it is God who has kept us in his election, God has fought the battle and won - in the very opening verse of Jude 1
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:
So, God is able to keep us, to guard us, and to present us faultless and blameless on the Day of Judgment with great joy in this glorious presence.
How then should we respond to God’s wonderful work? What shall we do?
We will praise him, and according to the last verse in Jude 25, ascribe to God all glory, majesty, dominion and authority in our life; not just now, but also before all time, and forever ever more - Amen!
Closing prayer
Closing prayer
Let us close with a word of prayer, and the doxology from Jude 24-25
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
