Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea

Tension: How will God deal with all those who reject him?

Resolution: God will judge every person who does not follow Christ.

Exegetical idea: Every person who denies our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ has been and will be judged by God.

Theological Idea: God will judge every person who rejects Christ.

Homiletical Idea: God judges those who reject Jesus.

Intro

One of the things that most preachers will tell you is the hardest topic to preach on is God’s judgment.

Because, in our culture and our society, it is hard to believe that God could at the same time be both loving and yet still judge people for their sin.

And, yet, I think the clear teaching of teh Bible, including this passage, is that God will judge those who reject Jesus.

And that’s hard, because like most of of you, I have many friends and family who do not follow Christ.

I have family members who I love dearly, who aren’t Christians.

I have friends, and neighbors, and people that I know and love who reject Jesus.

And it is hard; because we love these people, and we don’t want them to get judged.

So how do we reconcile these two things?

How do we make sense of God’s judgement?

And why even bother talking about it?

Well today I’m going to try to answer some of those questions.

So today here is what I want to do, first, I want to walk through this passage, and I want us to see all the different ways that people reject Jesus.

And once we have come to terms with that, then we can move to try to make sense of this.

One of the things that most preachers will tell you is the hardest topic to preach on is God’s judgment.

Because, in our culture and our society, it is hard to believe that God could at the same time be both loving and yet still judge people for their sin.

And, yet, I think the clear teaching of teh Bible, including this passage, is that God will judge those who reject Jesus.

And that’s hard, because like most of of you

God Will Judge

So, there are seven types of situations that this passage tell sus God will judge.

But we have to understand that all this is in relation to vs. 4.

Because what we saw last week in vs. 4 is that these are all those who reject our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

And Jude in our passage this week defines who those people are.

The Exodus generation: The first kind of people is listed in vs. 5.

These are the people that God saved in the Exodus generation.

God brought them out of the land of Egypt: he sent a savior, Moses, and Moses performed great signs and God sent great plagues taht eventually pried Pharoah’s grip off of Israel, and Pharaoh eventually sent them away.

So they got to the Red sea, and God split the sea from end to end and made a way for them to walk across on dry ground.

So they come to Mt. Sinai, and God gives them his 10 commandments, and they receive the law.

But while Moses is up on Mt.

Sinai, the people make a golden calf and they start to worship it.

So Moses comes down and sets the camp in order, and God says, “Okay, Moses, I’m going to destroy this stubborn people,” But Moses says, “God don’t do that.

What glory do you get out of that?”

So God says, “Okay.

Go forth from here.

Go to the promised land and take hold of it.”

And Moses says, “God we’re not budging an inch until you tell us that you are going with us.”

And God says, “okay, Moses, I’m going with you.”

Then Moses says, “God, can I see your face?”

And God says, “No, Moses.

but you can get a glimpse of my back as I walk past.”

So Moses hides in the cleft of the rock, and God causes his glory to go past him, and Moses peeks out at the right time and beholds the glory of God.

Well Moses comes back to the camp and his face is shining so brightly that the people can’t stand to be around them.

And this is the God who brings Israel to the promised land.

And God brings them right there, and then he says, “Go in.”

And what do they do?

They’ve seen God’s great power, they’ve experienced his forgiveness, they’ve been led by him, they’ve been rescued by him, they’ve been shown his mercy.

What do they say?

“Uh, God, we’re not going in there.

There are giants in there.”

So God leads them through the desert for 40 years until all of that generation dies.

And Jude looks at that generation and says, “Just like God has judged them, so I will judge.”

The rebellious angels: Then Jude says in vs. 6, look at the rebellious angels.

After all, before even history began, God was in heaven, being praised by thousands and thousands of angels.

And yet, Lucifer was not happy, so Lucifer says, “Okay guys, let’s rebel against God.”

They, as Jude says, “Would not stay within their own position of authority, and left their proper dwelling.”

They were not content that God had made them angels, they rebelled against him with all their might.

and Jude says, just like God is holding them in “eternal chains under gloomy darkness,” so he will judge the wicked.

Sodom and Gomorrah: He says, look at Sodom and Gomorrah.

now, these two cities are pretty notorious in the Bible.

If you are familiar with the story of Abraham and Loit, Lot was the nephew of Abraham.

And Abraham and Lot split ways, and Lot went with all his men, and, after being taken captive and rescued by Abraham, Lot dwelt in Sodom.

And one day, God sent these angels to see if there were any righteous people in the city.

And the angels, dressed up as men, were taken in by Lot because he knew the city was dangerous.

Well, after nightfall, the men of Sodom banged on the door so that they could rape these strange men.

So here we are, they are violent men, they are dangerous men, they have absolutely no respect for God’s gift of sexuality as a gift for a marriage of one man and one woman only, and they are transgressing the social norm of hospitality.

We get the sense in teh story that they hvae done this before.

But, unfortunately, they knocked on teh wrong house, because the angels blind them all until morning.

Well the angels get Lot and his family out of town, and as they are leaving, God sends down fire to burn up this wicked people.

And Jude says, just like God judged them, so God will judge all those who reject Jesus.

Blasphemers: Then Jude points his finger at those who “blaspheme the glorious ones.”

Now, this is an interesting sentence, but it seems to be those who basically make up their own reality, they defil the flesh, and they reject authority.

But hte peak of their incredulity is that they blaspheme the “glorious one.”

And here, he points to the example of the Devil.

And the Devil here is mocking Moses, teh archangel, and wants to defile the body of Moses, and the angel says, “may the Lord rebuke you.”

And specifically we’re meant to see the contrast between the Devil and between MIchael in this moment.

Well, Jude says that they blaspheme what they do not understand, and they become like unreasoning animals.

Jude says “Woe to them!” Jude says, we know God will judge such people.

Then he cites three people in rapid fire succession which is meant to get to this crescendo of cursing in vs. 12-13.

Cain: The first persoin he cites is Cain.

Cain was the brother of Able.

And wehn God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s, Cain killed Abel out of jealousy.

And God says, those who reject Jesus walk in this way.

Balaam: He then cites the example of Balaam.

Balaam was a sorcerer in teh country of Moab.

And Balaam was the one who the king of Moab hired to come and prophesy, and was on his way, but God put the words in the mouth of the donkey to warn him.

So Balaam gets to the king, and he is unable to curse Israel.

But instead, he tells the king of Moab how to really get at them.

What he has to do is tempt Israel to disobey God, and then God will himself judge Israel.

So here we have Balaam, who knew better, putting himself under God’s judgment, by convincing the king of Moab to get Israel to be judged.

And Jude says, everyone who rejects Jesus abandons reason to follow in the error of Balaam.

Korah: And Jude’s final example of someone who is under God’s judgement is the man Korah.

Now, Korah was an Israelite during the Exodus generation.

And Korah was a fellow Levite.

And he got sick of Moses’ leadership and he and some others conspired against Moses.