“Jude (461 words) (Jude)” | 3/28/2021
Jude | 3/28/21 | Will DuVal
But this morning is our final week of our “Little Book, Big Message” series, through the single-chapter books of the Bible”. I hope you’ve been blessed by this little series; I know I have! To Recap:
*Obadiah: “God judges his enemies but delivers his people.”
*Philemon: “The gospel changes everything!”
*2 John: “Love needs Truth”
*3 John: “Truth needs Love”
And this morning, we arrive at our final little book: JUDE. Jude is the LONGEST of these shortest books of the Bible, and by FAR the most complex. That’s in part why I saved it for last. The NT CANON also saves it for SECOND to last; Jude’s complexity is ONLY surpassed by the book of Revelation.
*“Jude was named after its author, one of the four half-brothers of Jesus (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3)... Although Jude had earlier rejected Jesus as Messiah (Jn 7:1-9), he was converted after Christ’s resurrection (Acts 1:14).” (MacArthur Study Bible, 1932)
And Jude himself identifies for us his “Big Message”, the reason he’s writing this particular letter to this particular unnamed church; v3: “Contend for the Faith”! CONTEND… “struggle in opposition”... “dispute earnestly”... “exert yourself in rivalry”... for the faith. The TRUE, Orthodox, Christian faith.
Jude is a “call to arms”. “Them’s FIGHTIN’ words,” as we say where I’m from.
*John MacArthur explains (1932): “Jude lived at a time when Christianity was under… aggressive spiritual infiltration from Gnostic-like apostates and libertines (we addressed Gnosticism 2 weeks ago with 2 John, and we’ll discuss “libertines” this morning.)… Thus, Jude called the church to fight, in the midst of intense spiritual warfare, for the truth.”
And Jude is going to give us 5 overarching strategies for continuing our “fight for the faith” TODAY as well.
So would you stand with me... ENTIRE BOOK of JUDE:
“1 Jude, a servant[a] of Jesus Christ and brother of James,
To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for[b] Jesus Christ:
2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
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. 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.
5 Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved[c] a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 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— 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire,[d] serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
8 Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. 9 But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” 10 But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. 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. 12 These are hidden reefs[e] 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; 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.
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 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.” 16 These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
17 But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They[f] said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” 19 It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. 20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment[g] stained by the flesh.
24 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, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time[h] and now and forever. Amen.”
This is the word of the Lord… Let’s pray…
Vv1-4 is Jude’s introduction of sorts, to answer “WHO he’s writing to”, “WHAT he’s writing”, and “WHY he’s writing it”:
First, who is writing whom here? V1: “Jude, a servant[a] of Jesus Christ [notice: Jude doesn’t emphasize his earthly, half-brother status to Jesus, but rather, his spiritual, subservient status; and you’ll see why soon enough… he’s] the brother of James, [writing] To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for[b] Jesus Christ”. Now, we could just camp out in v2 and spend a whole SERMON on the finer points of Reformed theology - God’s necessary, effectual, electing CALLING of those he “loves”, God’s KEEPING of those he calls. But Reformed theology is NOT Jude’s big message here, and unless you want to spend Easter next week talking about HERETICS in Jude, pt2, I will suffice it to summarize that Jude is writing to BELIEVERS. Those who are beloved, called, and kept for or BY (is the better translation), kept BY Christ. Orthodox, Christian believers.
To them, Jude writes: “May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.”
-In His MERCY, God has forgiven our sins because of Jesus’ death in our place, on the cross.
-His death brings us PEACE with a holy and just God, despite our sin.
-And NOW, because God poured out the wrath we deserve on Christ instead, he now pours out nothing but his LOVE, on those of us who are IN Christ. This is the gospel - God’s good news, for all who would simply trust in Jesus.
-
Second, WHAT is Jude writing to say? What IS his big message? Well, it’s not the one he WANTED to write! V3: “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation” - Jude says, “I’d rather be EXPOUNDING on God’s mercy, peace, and love for those of us now in Christ, but INSTEAD, “I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith” → “contend”: “epagónizomai” - it’s the Greek word from which we get AGONIZE. Jude is an appeal to ALL believers - 1st c. and 21st c.; pastors and LAITY - he’s writing to “all those called, beloved and kept”; paying your pastor to contend for the truth is NOT enough, Christian. Jude exhorts YOU this morning: “contend… AGONIZE... for the faith”.
WHAT faith? v3: The faith “that was once for all delivered to the saints.” If you’ve got a BIBLE with you this morning, will you hold it up for just a second (if you DON’T have one, we’d love to GIFT you one, at the Info Bar after the service) You see this? This is God’s “once for all” SELF-revelation to the saints. The BOOK of Revelation ch22 says you don’t need to add anything TO it; don’t take anything AWAY from it. So when the Mormon missionaries come knockin’ on your door and tell you they’re Christians too, they just have God’s COMPLETED revelation through the Book of Mormon… when your Muslim neighbors tell you they believe in the same God as you, Jesus was his prophet, but so was Mohammed, because God needed to ADD some more revelation 600 years later… when your progressive “Christian” sister in law says she doesn’t believe homosexuality is a sin because the Bible is a “living document” and “God is still speaking today”... you can point ALL of them back to Jude v3 and simply ask them, “Then why does God say that the orthodox faith was “once for ALL delivered - past tense - to the saints”, by the time of Jude’s writing at the close of the 1st century?
God’s word doesn’t need updates, friends. What it DOES need, in Jude’s day and ESPECIALLY in our own day, is to be CONTENDED for.
WHY? v4: “Because certain people have crept in unnoticed (they’ve infiltrated the church) who long ago were designated for this condemnation (they didn’t catch GOD by surprise; actually, he ORDAINED it, himself, to TEST and thereby purify the church; they are...), ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
So we contend for the faith because there are some IN the church who are not OF the church - posers, fakers… WOLVES in sheep’s clothing, as Jesus had warned in Matthew 7:15 - who want to lead astray and DEVOUR the sheep. And in v4, Jude gives us their 2 primary identifying characteristics, that he’s gonna spend the REST of his letter fleshing out in more detail: how do you KNOW if someone is a WOLF? #1- Un-godly behavior, and #2- Un-biblical beliefs. Jude says, “they’re UNGODLY; they pervert the grace of God, they preach CHEAP grace as an excuse to live however they WANT, lives of sensuality and licentiousness. And secondly, they espouse un-biblical beliefs by DENYING our only MASTER and Lord, Jesus. The Greek word for “master” is “despótēs”, it’s where we get our word “despot” - a KING with absolute power. And “Lord”, “kurios”, is a slave owner. That’s who Jesus is, friends: he has TOTAL authority over mind, body, soul and strength, the whole LIFE of every true believer, in contrast to these deceivers, who claim you can have Jesus as your Savior, and then go on living however you darn well please. That’s cheap grace. Doesn’t cost you a thing. And it’s worth exactly what you paid for it. Jude says, “That is NOT the gospel.”
So that’s the “Who, What, WHY” of Jude’s message. And in the rest of vv5-25, he’s gonna give us the “HOW” - if we’re supposed to contend for the faith, HOW do we do it? 5 ways:
#1) You REMEMBER heretics of the past. What’s the saying: “if you don’t learn from the past, you are… [WHAT]?” Doomed to repeat it, right? So Jude exhorts his church to learn from the past. Specifically, he offers them 3 OT illustrations of past heretics. Now, you’ll notice as we work our way through the letter that Jude is FILLED with OT examples; while he doesn’t quote the OT directly, there are at least NINE allusions to it. The first THREE of which, we find in vv5, 6 and 7:
He says, “Now I want to remind you… that Jesus, who saved[c] a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” Now some of you are scratching your heads already because you thought Jesus only showed up in the NEW Testament. But in Luke 24, after Jesus came back from the dead, he appeared to a couple of his OWN confused disciples on the road to Emmaus and “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (v27) Who do you think parted the Red Sea? MOSES?! The guy who tried to use his SPEECH impediment as an excuse to leave God’s people in slavery another 400 years?! Please! No, JESUS parted the Sea, miraculously SAVING his people, only to have “certain people” creep in and instigate grumbling, distrust and rebellion against God for 40 years in the desert, so God disciplined them with FIRE, with SNAKES, he even opened up the ground and let it SWALLOW them whole. Because God will NOT stand idly by and watch his people be led astray by wolves, and neither should we.
Second example: v6 “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” What in the world is going on there? It’s a reference to Genesis 6, and the fallen angels-turned-demons who followed Lucifer in his rebellion against God and then continued that rebellion on earth, by fornicating with human women. It’s a bizarre story, but it’s biblical, it’s true, and it was the reason God sent the FLOOD. And I did a whole “Ask the Pastor” podcast episode on it this time last year, so I’m gonna move on; suffice it to say: LIKE the demons who are doomed to be damned to an eternity of DARKNESS on the day of God’s judgment, are Jude’s 1st c. seditious heretics.
Third example: v7 “just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire,[d] serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Genesis 19. This time, instead of angels raping humans, it’s humans trying to rape ANGELS. And homosexual, gang rape at that. Say what you want about the Bible, but it does NOT try and dress up the darkness of this world we live in. There is REAL evil out there, and the Bible doesn’t gloss over it; it confronts our sin HEAD ON. Jesus did.
So what you’ve got here, in vv5, 6 and 7, are the interrelated sins of infidelity, insubordination, and immorality, respectively.
Refusing to TRUST God, refusing to SUBMIT to God, refusing to FOLLOW God’s ways. And these 1st c. wolves infiltrating Jude’s church are just the latest manifestation of an ancient apostasy.
So we need to REMEMBER, church. TODAY, you and I need to READ, we need to STUDY, little books like Jude, filled with BIG warnings against false teaching. We need to learn from the past, lest we be doomed to repeat it, and let “certain people” like this “creep into” our church today.
But how do you know who they are?! Second strategy for contending for the faith:
#2 - we’ve gotta RECOGNIZE heretics. Recognize them.
Jude lists SIX characteristics of false teachers, and notice the continuity with vv5-7; new heretics, same old heresies: he opens v8 - “In like manner”, these heretics today are just like the apostate ancient Israelites, the rebellious demons, the depraved Sodomites… And he continues his list of nefarious traits in vv8-10:
1) They “rely on their dreams”. It’s Infidelity again. Remember: the faith has been “once for all delivered to the saints”. God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures is COMPLETE. Final. Authoritative. And SUFFICIENT. So if someone shows up claiming: “God SPOKE to me, personally, he came to me in a VISION…”, Jude says, you better listen VERY CAREFULLY to the next words out of their mouth. If you can’t draw a FAIRLY DIRECT line between their message, the dream, this alleged revelation and [HOLD UP BIBLE] THIS revelation, then steer clear.
2) v8: they “defile the flesh”. That’s Immorality, once again. The apostle Paul lists for us in Galatians 5, the “works OF the flesh”: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you… that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (vv19-21) Anybody else secretly fascinated by documentaries about CULTS? What does virtually every cult have in common? A charismatic leader with DREAMS... But what is God’s secret message? It seems like it always involves the cult leader saving the world by taking as many young, teenage brides as he can fit in his bed. They defile the flesh.
3) Insubordination, again. v8: Jude’s false teachers, just like the fallen angels of Genesis 6, “reject authority”. Listen to me, church: anyone who comes to you, and claims to be an authority UNTO THEMSELF - you remember how the crowds were ASTONISHED at Jesus’ teaching, because he taught “as one who possessed authority,” intrinsically, and not like their scribes and Pharisees, who had to ground everything they said in the Old Testament (Matt 7:29); you know why that BAFFLED them so much? Because only JESUS can do that! Only JESUS is supposed to! I don’t possess ANY authority, inherently, when I stand up here in the pulpit… you don’t have ANY authority in and of yourself… ALL our authority is DERIVED authority. From GOD; He ALONE is authoritative, and He has authoritatively inspired the Scriptures as His “once for all” self-revelation, so to the extent that my words accurately reflect GOD’S words up here, then yes, you SHOULD respect, not reject authority. Hebrews 13:17 “Obey your [church] leaders and submit to them”. Authority is GOOD for you, God ordained, in fact. If submission was good enough for Jesus - 1 Cor 15:28: Jesus, the Son, submits to God, the Father - then it ought to be good enough for you. AND me. We are ALL under authority. Except these rebellious wolves. Don’t trust them.
4) Jude summarizes ALL those sins with this one: they ALL find their ultimate source in IMMODESTY, PRIDE. Pride was the original sin, and it is the root cause of ALL sin. How do you end up an authority unto yourself? When you conclude you are CLEARLY the smartest person in the room, the ONLY one worth listening to, God included. Pride can take a lot of forms. For Jude’s heretics, they were “blaspheming the glorious ones”, v8. Talking trash about God’s holy angels. You’ve noticed a lot of talk about angels and demons in Jude; there’s no way around it, folks: the world of the Bible is unapologetically supernatural. Literally, “beyond” nature. If you are a NATURALIST, and there has to be a perfectly logical, within the laws of science and nature type explanation for everything that happens, then you’re not gonna like the Bible very much. Because it is SUPER-natural. Which makes sense, if it was written by a supernatural God, who himself established the laws of nature, and defies them sometimes just to prove it.
But why “blaspheme”, slander, the angels, God’s “glorious ones”? Because who needs angels when you’ve got your OWN dreams and visions. Psalm 8:5 states that God “made man a little lower than the heavenly beings [that is, the angels...]
and crowned him with glory and honor.” False teachers don’t like that. They’re not content to be a little lower than God’s holy angels, or than God HIMSELF for that matter! So in their pride, they blaspheme the glorious ones.
v9: “But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” This is an apocryphal story, it’s not biblical; Jude gets it from another 1st c. book called the Assumption of Moses. Later, in v14, he’s gonna quote from another apocryphal book, the Book of Enoch. This is one of the reasons, Jude itself was one of the LAST books to be universally accepted into the canon of Scripture, in the 4th c. AD when the 27 books of the NT were finally locked in. But it should be noted that the apostle Paul also quoted not just non-biblical, but PAGAN philosophers on at least 3 separate occasions in his letters (Ac 17.28; 1 Cor 15.33; Titus 1.12). ALL truth, after all, is God’s truth. Even pagans and blind pigs find acorns every now and again. So if Jude quotes 1 Enoch… if I quote Taylor Swift, or The Office, or Dora the Explorer, as I’ve been known to do on occasion, from the pulpit, truth is truth.
But Jude’s point here about the archangel Michael is that even HE didn’t have the audacity to pronounce judgment against SATAN… and SATAN is a FALLEN angel - he’s not even one of the GOOD ones, the glorious ones! Romans 12:19 warns us - Judgment belongs to God alone.
v10: “But these people blaspheme all that they don’t [even] understand”! They’re IGNORANT. Not only are they PRIDEFUL, they are ignorantly prideful. If you’re gonna talk a big game, you better at least KNOW what you’re talking about. I’m a big NBA fan, so I loved the documentary The Last Dance, about the 1990s Chicago Bulls teams. Michael Jordan talked a LOT of trash. He’s a pretty prideful dude. But in fairness, he IS Michael Jordan! Compare that with a guy like Bryon Russell, this no-name rookie on the Utah Jazz, who had the audacity to say to Jordan’s face, after he stepped away from basketball to play baseball, that Jordan must have retired cuz he knew he couldn’t score if Bryon Russell was guarding him. So Michael came out of retirement to win TWO more championships in ‘97 and ‘98 by hitting 2 game-winning shots in the Finals over... guess who? It’s bad to be prideful; but it’s just downright embarrassing to be ignorantly prideful.
Lastly, v10: “they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. ” These heretics are INCONTINENT. Now, I know that word typically means no control over your bladder or rectal sphincter, but the secondary definition is “lacking in moderation or self-control, especially of sexual desire” (and more importantly, I couldn’t ruin my alliteration with the letter “I” on the last point.) They are “like unreasoning animals”; remember that song: “You and me, baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”? That is these heretics. They celebrate their animalistic impulsivity. It is “instinctive” for animals to mate all willy nilly. “If it FEELS good, just DO it,” is a GREAT mantra, if you’re a BUNNY. Or a BONOBO. But the Christian worldview says we are NOT just unreasoning animals, that God gave us a prefrontal cortex for a REASON, namely, for REASON. On the other hand, if you blindly follow your feelings, it will lead you to destruction.
Infidelity. Immorality. Insubordination. Immodesty. Ignorance. And Incontinence. This is how we recognize heretics.
#3 - Third strategy for contending for the faith: once you’ve RECOGNIZED heretics, you need to REBUKE them. Call them out.
Jude continues in v11: “WOE to them!” And what does he rebuke these heretics FOR?
“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.”
Three more OT references that we’re running out of time for. Genesis 4 (Cain), Numbers 22-24 (Balaam), and Numbers 16 (Korah - he’s the one the ground swallowed). Cain was RASH. Balaam was GREEDY. Korah was PRIDEFUL. The list goes on...
v12: they are “hidden reefs” - if you’re not careful, they’ll make shipwreck of your faith!
v12: they’re “shepherds feeding themselves” - They are like the condemned shepherds of Ezekiel ch.34 - “Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?” - NOT the commended shepherds of 1 Peter 5 - “shepherd the flock of God that is among you… not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”
12: they are “waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 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.” - Cliff’s notes? They’re NOT GOOD. They’re not just USE-less (waterless… fruitless…); they are destructive (wild waves… crashing meteors / “wandering stars”...). And God will DAMN them to utter darkness, FOREVER.
Vv14-15 just reiterate that, with another reference from the Book of Enoch: God will “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.”” I don’t know if you caught it, but these heretics are REALLY “ungodly”.
And Jude rounds out his description of them in v16; they are: “grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.”
Now I imagine by this point, if Jude’s letter was being read aloud to the church at their regular Sunday gathering, you could probably cut the tension in the room with only the sharpest of knives. If I’M a sheep in THAT flock, facing THOSE kinds of wolves - these are folks that I’m bumping elbows with at the communion table?! - I’m probably BESIDE myself! Remember: these are the days BEFORE “church shopping”; can’t respect a pastor who watches filth like The Office? Tune in to any of the other 127 evangelical churches right down the street from the comfort of your own couch! No, unless you wanna walk 30 or 40 miles to the next closest church, who’s probably dealing with the same problems anyway, these are folks you’re stuck with. There are sinners in every church, probably even HERETICS. So Jude: what is an orthodox, beloved, called, and kept, “contender” for the “once for all faith” to DO?
vv17-23: You RESIST heretics. Don’t just recognize and rebuke; you need to ACTIVELY resist them. HOW?? SEVEN ways; very quickly, I promise:
1) Expect them. vv17-18: “Remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They[f] said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.”” That’s a direct quote, THIS time, from Scripture: 2 Peter 3:3. Don’t be surprised when you encounter heresy; Jesus himself predicted it, Matthew 24.
2) Recognize them. Jude is REALLY intent on making sure we know how to spot a heretic; they’re the people, v19, “who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. ”
3) Grow spiritually. FINALLY we’re moving on from these heretics now, v20: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith”; how do you do that? If you’re SOUL were a muscle, what kind of WEIGHTS would you use, to give it a good workout? Answer: God’s WORD. 2 Timothy 3: “the sacred writings… make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God[b] may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (vv15-17) If you want to get spiritually JACKED, you need to get in God’s WORD. How many of you, be honest, if I had stood up here before today, and said, remember that story, in the Book of Deuteronomy, when the archangel Michael, argued with the devil over the body of Moses…” how many of y’all could have called me on it; would have said, “WAIT a minute; I know JUDE said something about that in the NT, but I think he was quoting some extra-biblical book…” How many of you, if I told you to open up your Bibles to the book of 1 ENOCH for this morning, you’d search the Table of Contents thinking you must have the wrong version?
Friends, knowing the books of the Bible might not make you GODLY; but knowing the Bible WILL. Not just in your head; there are PLENTY of heretics who’ve got it ALL up here. But do you have it down HERE? Have you hidden God’s word in your heart, that you might not sin against him, Psalm 119:11? Do you “meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it,” Joshua 1:8?
[HOLD UP BIBLE] THIS is your spiritual Peloton. Nordictrack. Your Chuck Norris-approved Total Gym 2,000; it’s the only piece of spiritual equipment you’ll EVER need, “for training in righteousness, that you may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
4) Pray constantly. v20: “praying in the Holy Spirit”. You know the armor of God, in Ephesians 6, that protects us against the fiery darts of the Enemy? You got the “belt of truth... the breastplate of righteousness...”, the whole suit. But you remember what holds it all together? Paul ends with this: “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” (v18) Prayer is like the chain link metal that knits the whole thing together. Your defense against the Enemy falls APART without it.
5) Pursue HOLINESS. v21: “keep yourselves in the love of God”. Now, God’s love for you, in Christ, is unconditional. It’s ALWAYS there. But you don’t always experience it to quite the same degree, do you? Skip Heitzig uses the analogy of a SHADOW, on a sunny day. Imagine you show up next Sunday, well, don’t just imagine, DO it - come to our Easter sunrise service, at 8am, but if it’s still 40 or 50 degrees that early in the morning, but it’s a beautiful, sunny day (let’s pray!), and we’re right out here in the parking lot, you’re not gonna be hiding in the shadow cast by the building, like you would middle of JULY, are you? No, you’re gonna make sure you got a nice SUNNY spot! In the same way, God’s love, like the sun, is always there. But your SIN is like an umbrella, a building, a cloud, that keeps you from fully EXPERIENCING the full beauty and joy of God’s love for you. So you “keep yourself in the love of God” by mortifying sin, KILLING it, and PURSUING holiness. Hebrews 12:14 “Strive for… holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”
6) Keep an ETERNAL perspective. v21: “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” Heretics are all about the HERE AND NOW. In Jude’s day it was immorality and immodesty - “if it feels good, do it” and “you can be your OWN authority”; today it’s “health, wealth and happiness”, Jesus wants you to have “your best life now”; but it’s always about NOW. It’s not enough to WAIT. Jude says: “WAIT!” “Christ’s mercy that leads to eternal life,” you only receive fully upon your glorification, in the AFTER-life. But it’s WORTH the wait.
And 7) REACH OUT to others. vv22-23: “have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment[g] stained by the flesh.” 3 categories of people there: 1) genuine believers who are just less spiritually mature, and thus, more prone to doubt, to entertain these heretic’s arguments; have mercy and patience with them; just keep loving them; the truth will set them free in time. 2) There are OTHERS who are NOT simply on the right path with a few honest questions and doubts along the way; rather, they are on a path leading to the fires of Hell, and if someone doesn’t intervene, to warn them, to SAVE them, to SNATCH them out, and talk and pray some biblical SENSE back into them, they are at risk of being lost forever. And finally, 3) there are those you show mercy BY showing them the door, because you fear them contaminating the whole church if they are allowed to remain. These are the heretics themselves. Jude gets one last dig in by painting them as fecal-stained underwear. Paul said of the heretics in Galatia: “A little leaven leavens the whole lump”. Jude is less refined: “A little poop ruins your whole undergarment.”
But reaching out to others - especially through evangelism and apologetics - is one of the most effective ways to resist heresy personally. If you are “always ready to make a defense… for the hope that is in you”, it tends to INCREASE your hope. Build your own faith. So I’ll put in ONE LAST PLUG to bring your unbelieving friends and family, especially those in category 2, who need to be “snatched out of the fire” - bring them with you next week for Easter. Be a contender for the faith.
But in closing: what about when you FAIL to contend for the faith?
When you FAIL to remember heretics, because you don’t know your Bible?
So you fail to RECOGNIZE wolves, because you haven’t refined your sense of discernment, knowing good from evil, godliness from wickedness?
When you fail to REBUKE heretics, because “I don’t like conflict” or “that feels unloving”? So sin goes unchecked in the church.
And then before you KNOW it, you’re failing to RESIST their sin yourself; because it’s easier, it’s like swimming downstream, for a sinner to sin.
Where do you turn? When all else fails; when YOU inevitably fail, you better...
#5 - RELY ON the Lord instead. (vv24-25)
And because this is perhaps the most beautiful benediction in all of Scripture, we’re simply gonna end here, reading vv24-25: “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling [YOU are NOT! Left on your own, you’ll make shipwreck of your faith in a heartbeat! But praise God, Christ is able to keep you til the end; so you better RELY on HIM!] and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, [what is due THAT kind of a God?!] 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time[h] and now and forever. Amen.”
Amen and amen.