Jude 1-4

Introductions matter. I mean it changes the way you even read an email. Theres a different tone when someone begins an email and says “Hi Jason”, or “Good Morning” as opposed to starting by Just saying “Jason”, then going into the email.

I get a knot in my stomach when they start like that. Thats how a “You are fired” email starts.

Introductions matter.

As we begin a study of this power packed letter we begin with the introduction, the first 4 verses.

We are going to see 4 things:

A True Shepherds Introduction, A True Churches Introduction, A True Shepherds Desire, A False Shepherds Desire

Lets pray and read our passage and dive into this amazing letter

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James:

To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all. 4 For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. -- Jude 1:1-4 (CSB)

A True Shepherds Introduction (1A)

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James:

What we gloss over is actually very intentional and an epic opening for Jude.

The word for servant also means slave. That’s the way Jude sees himself

How he even got to this point is a work only the Gospel can do.

We have seen Jude before and how the resurrection wrecked his world.

Look with me at Mark 3:20, , Mark 6:3-4, John 7:3 and then Acts 1:14

Mark 3:20

20 Jesus entered a house, and the crowd gathered again so that they were not even able to eat. 21 When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him, because they said, “He’s out of his mind.”

Mark 6:3-4

3 Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us? ” So they were offended by him.

Here he is mentioned as Judas but if you know the bible story another Judas made that name very unpopular for Followers of Christ

John 7:3

3 So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples can see your works that you are doing. 4 For no one does anything in secret while he’s seeking public recognition. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 (For not even his brothers believed in him.)

Acts 1:4

14 They all were continually united in prayer, along with the women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

What would make you go from mocking your brother who claimed to be the long awaited messiah of the faith.

To ruining your earthly life from the worlds

Standards as a slave of him as lord.

What sent them from disbelief to the upper room praying and among the first to receive the Holy Spirit?

The resurrection happened.

The resurrection changes every thing and it did for Jesus’ four brothers.

He could presume a place of power because of his family. But he chose his Big Brothers example

He introduces himself as a slave.

In a passionate letter where Jude is going to come down on other teachers for their self serving and self exalting gospel-less shepherding

He identifies himself as a slave.

One commentator Ruth Anne Reese says it wonderfully when she says:

Jude is the salve of the King, The Messiah, The anointed one. In addition, Jude’s work is one of a shepherd. In this letter he is a leader who is able to see how the opponents make up a threat to the honor, effectiveness, and reputation of his Master, Jesus Christ

This was what God has called the Shepherds of His flock to be.

He loves His Savior, He loves His people, and he is willing to lead them to still waters that can only come from surrender to the Lordship of Christ

For good measure he makes sure the church knows he claims no authority or status given him by family name.

He says he is the brother of James. He is even putting himself under his other brother.

There was only one James that only needed to be introduced by his first name and all the early church knew who he was

James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem

He was like saying Tiger in Golf, they all knew who he was talking about.

Jude is claiming an authority of service and character not family name...why?

Because he had made the faith his own.

This was the Gospel and the Savior who saved Him

The brother he fought with in the house…. He had encountered as the risen Lord and he never looked back.

The family name didnt save him the Gospel did

Too often in our churches I meet people who say they are saved because they grew up in the church, or they've been a member at so and so church for 50 years and they have been in church their whole life. That does not save you. Coming from a family of christians doesn't save you.

Have you fallen in love with the Savior of your soul yourself.

Do you see the greatest calling to be his servant in glad submission to him?

Make your family's faith your own. Because like Jude. You are not justified because your grandma brought you to church when you were 5.

You have to make HIm Lord as Jude will so passionately shout in this letter

he knows the beauty of a life lived surrendered to the “Jesus way”.

He is passionate about the Gospel and passionate about his church.

As a good shepherd he sees clearly what they may be blind to or may fall into that can harm them.

While he presents his authority on the bottom side of the family coin in humility

he exalts as the privileged and blood bought community they are.

He introduces the true church

A True Churches Introduction (1B-2)

To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Jude lays his identity out as a slave and not even the famous pastor in his family.

But he elevates the identity of the church in this incredible powerful way.

Judes elevation of the people of God here is incredible.

This is a pastor's heart we are to emulate.

He elevates the Lord and elevates His people.

He chooses language for maximum impact.

Jude is located in a palastinian Jewish first century context.

While that sounds like a lot of nouns and adjectives that make no sense it is important to see something profound as he describes the believers he is writing too.

This context means that Jude and the audience are devout Jewish Believers.

They believe Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament

And they knew their Old Testament. They are an intelectual church

They knew all the types and prophecies and the language.

What that means is that the three words he uses to remind them of who they are were scandalous to non believing jews ….but life changing to the believers of Christ.

What Jude does when he calls them the Called, the Loved by God, and Kept is apply the descriptions of Israel from Isaiah to the fulfillment of the people of God...US the Church.

The end time people of God are us. The Church. They are “The Called”.

Isaiah 41:9

9 I brought you from the ends of the earth

and called you from its farthest corners.

I said to you: You are my servant;

I have chosen you; I haven’t rejected you.

We are those who have been called by God’s unmerited iniative to be His people, ransomed and made new to display the scandal of His grace….ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

They are the “Loved by God the Father”

Hosea 11:1

When Israel was a child, I loved him,

and out of Egypt I called my son.

To these believers the Exodus event is the greatest event in the history of the world.

Yet what God is telling them is that the greatest event they ever heard of only pointed to the exodus from sin and death

led by a better Moses, Jesus Christ our Lord

Are you getting the depth of what Jude is saying to them?

And he isn't done

And they are Kept

Isaiah 42:6

6 “I am the LORD; oI have called you2 in righteousness;

I will take you by the hand and keep you;

I will give you pas a covenant for the people,

qa light for the nations,

This is you brother or sister here are Monaghan or watching online.

You and I are the continuation of this end time people of God.

We are the called, we are the loved, we are those kept by God to be presented blameless for Christ for all time.

Let the weight of that glorious truth sink in.

Before Jude ever even goes into the main point of the letter he is making profound statements about who they are and the work of the God acting in History to make a people for himself for His Glory For His Plan

The plan God is fulfilling is verse 2

2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Multiplied, and through His chosen people spread to the world so that all may know He is God

Jude is appealing that they value this threefold blessing from God above all things in this life.

Mercy- Gods unstoppable kindness lavished on and demonstrated for His covenant People

Peace- Not the absence of difficulty but the presence of other worldly flourishing in the face of life lived under the sun in ups and down whatever may come. It is the well being that only comes from the Gospel

Love - Jude alone uses this in addition to the standard mercy and peace greeting. Though the love of God is implied by the Mercy of God Jude is hammering home the awesomeness of God’s love for us demonstrated in the Lord Jesus our Savior

What an introduction.

Now Jude shifts to why this letter is so important and again letting his content demonstrate his qualification to lead. We see a true pastors heart for his people

A True Shepherds Desire (3)

3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.

Jude’s faithful character as a shepherd comes through again in his eagerness to write to encourage his people to action.

Verse 3 is his reason FOR WRITING. He is calling God's people to Action

James was centralized in Jerusalem but Jesus’ three other brothers were itinerant pastors traveling in small areas among churches.

So you can tell Jude was thinking originally he could recharge with the people he loves after some time on the mission

but he loves his people too much and he sees the wolves in the fold.

he knows his people and knows what they need in order to deal with the threat.

SO he calls them to continue in a term he borrows from the Roman athletic world to agonize in a battle or contest.

He tells them you are doing the right thing, remember who you are, remember how beautiful the mercy peace and love of God is and remember how to keep them.

You have to fight and work and strain to press forward.

You can hear his heart pleading to remember. Because we are prone to wander as the old hymn says. Prone to wander prone to leave the God we love

Remember how amazing a salvation we share. it is the salvation.

nothing short of the Gospel itself is on the line.

One Commentator says “In the situation he is writing it is not one particular point of orthodox belief that is at stake, but the gospel itself”.

There is one salvation message and that is expressed in one faith that the apostles themselves handed down to these believers when those who were with Jesus established their churches.

He says

I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.

There is an important piece to this we hold in tension. The Faith Jude is referencing is two sided.

It is belief in the one time redeeming salvation we received through Christ. That happened once and only will ever happen once.

But the faith to agonoize for in this letter is so much more it is life lived in the Gospel.

Jude isn’t telling them to have debates with these people he is calling his people to live lives like they are the called of God.

This is huge for us.

We can so easily love the salvation faith and think the faith lived out is just legalism but the bible holds them out as 2 sides to one coin.

Our faith is a way of life as much as it is belief in the salvation we have.

In most of the statistics coming out about young people 18-29 leaving the church the majority is not because of great theological debate but it is because of indifference.

30% and identify as none as in no religious affiliation of any kind. That % is only growing daily.

Indifference...Why because they have seen time and time again that a professed faith on sunday makes no difference to the church monday to saturday. Why waste time.

They see no need to have it in their life. We have to regain the power of our faith lived out in every area of life.

Listen to this description of this passage:

“The fight which Jude has in mind is that which Christians carry on by being faithful to the Gospel in their lives, BY LIVING OUT THE GOSPEL, not in the sense of merely defending the gospel against attacks, but in the OFFENSIVE sense of POSITIVELY PROMOTING THE ADVANCE AND VICTORY OF THE GOSPEL IN HUMAN LIFE”

Our Greatest witness today is our faith lived out Not in the Comment section of facebook

Its demonstrating that the gospel is where flourishing is found.

The gospel is where the longings of every human heart find completeness.

The Gospel is the story of reality that offers the hope we are desperate for.

Jude is telling them to do the hard work of living out there faith.

The gospel is at stake in how you live Jude is saying.

The days of Billy Graham filling an arena are gone. But good news they didnt have billy graham in Palestine 2000 years ago either

And guess what ? The Gospel exploded into a movement the Roman Empire had no idea what to do with. Acts tells us that the early church turned the world on its head.

They did it with lived out faith.

Do you believe the gospel? Does it define who you are, why you are here, how you should view your spouse, how you parent, how you spend your money, how you spend your time, how can you have hope, what does justice look like, what is true, how you view sex and power and government.

If you answer those questions the exact same way the world does then Jude is telling you the gospel is at stake in your life and witness

Our lives should be marked by the gospel. But the lure of Cheap grace is all around

This is the issue in this letter.

These teachers are a threat to Judes readers Because they are persuading them not to live out the gospel in their lives, in effect to give up contending for the faith.

Don't miss who it is that Jude is calling to be equipped and ready to contend for the gospel. The church. Every believer.

This letter is written to the church as a congregation or small congregations, not pastors or elders.

It is the role of every believer to know the word, know the Gospel, know a life lived for God in righteousness so that you may contend for the glory of the gospel.

Confessing Jesus as Lord makes us slaves to Him just as Jude was.

Jude wants his church to know that it is in living this way that peace and joy and the life they really long for is found.

We are all to live equipped for the work of ministry, slaves to our king and advancing his kingdom.

There are always those who will tell you there is cheap grace.

So Jude shows this type of teaching for what it is

A False Shepherds Desire (4)

4 For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.

He starts with some people or certain people and he references these 6 times in the next 15 verses.

So in these first few verses we see these themes and we will see over and over in the letter.

You are kept in God so keep yourself in Him by loving the gospel and living it because these people who don’t keep themselves are kept for judgement.

These themes jump out at you at you read this letter.

We just saw The call is to contend in living out the Gospel and the occasion is that certain leaders are offering a different way to do the Christian life and the Gospel itself is at stake in the outcome.

These certain people were visiting evangelists like Jude.

In a small area they no doubt ran in the same circuit of churches so Jude knew them and had watched them and the result of their teaching.

This church no doubt knew them as well. It says they were among them often later in the letter at their family meals as a church.

They would no doubt even be in the congregation as this letter was read. Because Jude says that they have crept in. the original word conveys the idea of smuggling

Their entrance into the church wasn’t bold or self proclaiming..instead it was slowly unnoticed, carefully gradual to gain trust.

They did not come into the church shaking hands and telling every greeter they met that they were there to tell the church to stop following Jesus. They didn't have false teacher tee shirts.

Ruth Anne Reese comments here:

Jude does not portray the Others as people who stand up in the midst of a large group and say “I don't believe in Jesus Christ. THey are more subtle than this. Instead they engage in practices that twist the grace of Jesus to their advantage and at the same time deny the Lordship of Christ”

Tell me that that is not all around us today.

The threat Jude sees is not outside in the culture it is inside the faith.

If inside the church the authority of the teacher is knocked down then the teaching itself will become even less authoritative.

To deny the lordship of Christ and the authority of scripture opens the door to make the promises of Christ anything the reader or heart wants them to be.

Then and today there is no difference.

It’s the culture within the church not the culture outside of it that is the threat.

Jude wants this church he loves to know that the way of life these leaders promote only ends in destruction.

From verses 5 to 19 Jude goes into great detail describing the type of person these certain ones are and what happened to the type of person in the past...and Jude leaves no stone unturned.

He is saying that in every writing genre, every literature type, biblical and not, and in every time period there is only one way their life ends and it is destruction.

It is the promise through time. A rejection of God ends in promised destruction.

That is where these leaders are going and all who deny the faith in belief and in practice.

Jude has to tell them this …...Just because something is false does not mean that it cannot captivate your heart and desires.

We will all worship something or someone as ultimate. We are worshippers at heart.

What these people love ultimately is themself.

They may come to church but they approach the faith as a buffet line.

Taking what affirms their own wants and leaving the parts they don’t want.

A misuse of the Gospel is a denial of the Gospel. There is only one Gospel.

What these others have done is misuse the Mercy, Peace, and Love of God by looking at Jesus simply as a genie in the bottle who just empowers them to be who they want to be.

Jesus to them just exists to provide them with the things they want as they are the lord of their life not the God who made them.

They believe that with this grace they are free to live how they want, to assert their desires, to further their own desires, and justify all of that worldly behavior in the name of “Love” and “Grace”

Again is this not today?

Pastors making millions saying that God exists to help you live your destiny, live your truth nothing can stop you just speak it over you and live in any relationships you want because God is love and you are already forgiven

like Jesus is a palastinian Jewish Harry Potter.

These “others” take the same Gospel the believers are contending to live out and they pervert it by using grace freely given and changing it from a gift into tool for their own pleasure and power.

Look at the compromise around us. Love is love is taught in churches all across America as leaders twist the love of god into a justification for sexual ethics that contradict gods design.

Jude makes a startling connection between this and its result.

He says it is denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.

We have seen being Kept will be a repeated theme, and we have seen the these others are repeated 6 times...the other major melody Jude is playing is the Lordship of Jesus.

A denial to live out the Gospel is a denial of Jesus. This is shocking.

This type of person denies the authority of Jesus Christ in their life.

They want a Gospel about them and deny any claim the Gospel makes of them.

Listen to Paul in -- 1 Corinthians 6:19-7:21 (CSB)

9 Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

If the Gospel is yours than your life is His. All of you even your body and how live

Do you want the mercy and peace and love of God? Do you want to be kept for Him in that?

Then Jude says how you live out the Gospel keeps you there.

And it is a fight to do it. To do anything else is a rejection of the Gospel. This is sobering for us

How you live matters.

It is not what saves you. The Gospel saves you but it is in living it out that you are kept in the security of the mercy peace and love of God.

Kept for Christ because he is Lord.

Jude emphatically hammers home the Lordship of Christ at the end of verse 4.

Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.

The word Master more appropriately is Sovereign ...Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

From here on out in this letter Jude always combines Jesus Christ with Our Lord.

Jesus the Christ implies it but he wants to leave nothing in the air He adds the title Lord every time to emphatically make his point

He hammers the point home in a way that would have blown away a Jewish reader.

Jude uses a greek word the jews used for the only God and his sovereign judicial and royal authority.

Richard Bauckham nails the power of this : “This is the kind of phrase which Jews used to confess the exclusive Lordship of the One God of Israel and to refuse idolatrous allegiance to other Lords.”

For them this was only reserved for God.

That Jude can speak of our only master and Lord Jesus Christ demonstrates that at His ascension Jesus is the enthroned and eternal Son of Man from Daniel 7.

Jude is hammering home the reality of Jesus’ last words to his disciples in Matthew 28..”ALL AUTHORITY IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH HAS BEEN GIVEN TO ME”

Look what Jude does with this phrase.

As this word was used more and more for the Lordship of Jesus it became associated with the royal reign of Christ and His family.

IF anyone ever could have claimed he was in the royal family by blood it was Jude...yet he takes the form of a slave and claims no rights but calls the Father and the Son the only royalty that matters.

A humble shepherd who loves the gospel, loves his lord, and loves his people.

What an introduction.

We are left to ask ourselves is HE LORD of our lives.

Do we love the mercy, peace and love we have in him and live as though they are our greatest joy

Or have we been influenced by the false gospels that abound and want our Jesus to fit our wants.

Jude is holding out the beauty of a life lived as a servant in the house of the King who reigns.

If you have never experienced the mercy, peace and love of God in Jesus make Him Lord today.

Reach out to one of us on staff we want nothing more than to help you make Him yours.

Lets pray