Jude 4-7
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word. I’m only gonna read verses four through seven. So pick up
there, it says, for certain people have crept in unnoticed too long
ago or 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 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. 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, just as Sodom and Gomorrah
and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged and sexual
immorality and pursued unnatural desire serve as an example by
undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Amen. This is the word
of the living God. There’s a preacher I like to
listen to. I think his advice is good, his
preaching is good, and he says that in the Bible there are some
nasty texts. And this is one of them, I think.
And it’s, I think, very helpful for us as we enter into the next
year, but also enter into the coming generation to be warned
as a church about what is out there, what is endangering the
church. All right, so in a couple months,
it’ll be spring, believe it or not. Right. It’s getting colder
by the minute. I think tonight’s going to be
25 degrees. We’ve had enough rain. Now we got the cold coming. But a couple of months, you’re
looking forward to the hope of spring. You’re going to plant
your garden. Right. You’re going to till up your
soil. Put in your seeds. Water it. Make sure the sun, pray for the
sun to come out. And you’re hoping for produce.
but weeds come, right? And what do weeds do? They choke. They prevent a healthy garden. They prevent fruit. So we want
to weed our gardens. And there’s times, well, Jesus
speaks of his church, his body, often in agricultural terms,
there’s times when the weeds can grow and develop in the church
and they choke. The church becomes fruitless.
the church becomes not a healthy place, a fruitful place, but
a place where there is no growth. And so the challenge for congregations
throughout church history are to identify the weeds and remove
them so that there can be fruit, so there can be produce. In the
church, Jesus speaks sometimes, there will be weeds, wheat among
the tares, and at the end, at judgment, there will be the winnowing
Well, there will be a judgment. The weeds, the tares, will be
removed from the church and the wheat harvested. Remember last
week, our beginning of the study of Jude, our reading of the whole
book, Jude, the half-brother of Jesus, a servant of Christ,
he says, we’re on red alert. Remember the watchman says, watch. We’re on red alert. There’s weeds
in the garden. there’s enemies within the church
walls. And remember, he was so concerned
that he said, I wanted to write you basically a simple gospel
treatise, but I’ve had to write to you to contend for the faith. And so tonight I want us to think
in verses four through seven about the enemies of the true
religion, the weeds in the church, the things for which we ought
to be concerned. I remember last week was a little
bit happy. We looked at our calling, those called by God, kept for
Jesus Christ, those who receive God’s mercy, peace and love and
abundance. Sometimes we face conflict. And
so he’s going to describe tonight in our study those who’ve crept
in the church unnoticed and who are the weed producers, so to
speak. Remember last week we looked
at his call to the end. The watchman says, watch, contend
for the faith, fight for the faith, preserve the faith once
and for all, hand it down, gotta agonize over it, gotta give it
all you’ve got, contend for the faith. Saints of God must fight
for the truth of Almighty God. Tonight we want to think about
the enemies of the true religion, their end. their ways, and then
there’s gonna be three examples, which we read about in the passage.
So first, think about the enemies, all right? So Jude is a watchman,
he’s warning them. We don’t have city watchmen anymore,
but they would, you know, back in the day, you’d have the night
watchmen, watchmen for this watch, this hour, these hours. You remember
the midnight ride of Paul Revere. You know, it took night and day
personnel to keep an eye on the enemies. The enemies are close. The enemies are coming, right?
They’re here. That’s sort of Jude’s message
to us. The enemies, they aren’t close.
They aren’t coming. No, they are here. Notice verse
four, for certain people have crept in the church unnoticed.
So Jude, the itinerant preacher who knows and loves this congregation,
he warns them and he’s telling them, look, the ancient serpent
has slithered into your church. And he slithered in unnoticed. He’s intent on evil. He’s intent
on stealing the glory of God as he has been doing from of
old. It’s a good It’s a good thing
to have a good set of elders in your church. I remember, well,
it was seven years ago, Bill’s not here, he would corroborate
my story, but seven years ago, I preached and met with the pulpit
committee and got hired, but the Sunday I was here, somebody
came up to me and showed me their Sunday school lesson from that
day. And I remember pulling Bill aside and saying, if you call
me as your pastor, that can’t happen anymore. I think there
was a study on the 12 days of Christmas. That’s just not in
the Bible. That’s just not even something. Read that on the internet and
forward it to all your buddies. Put it on Facebook if you want
to. But that is not making disciples. And so one of the things I knew
before I came here is we’re probably gonna have to say a few hard
things to a few hard people. That’s just not biblical. But think about if it was worse
than that. Okay, the 12 days of Christmas,
pretty harmless. Well, not really. But what if
somebody was promoting Same-sex marriage. What if somebody was
promoting, there is no such thing as male and female. What if somebody
was promoting the word of God as not really the word of God?
It can become the word of God if God reveals himself to you,
but it may not become the word of God for other people. That’s
out there. All religions are the same. All
roads lead to heaven. Those kinds of things. Well,
we’ve got to Listen to warnings. We’ve got to make sure our teachers
are sound and orthodox. We’ve got to look out for these
kind of things. We’ve got to contend for the
faith. Now, Jude, if you’ve read through
it as we did last week, maybe you’ve looked through it again,
it doesn’t really spell out who these people are. Some believe
they were the Nicolaitans. They get a mention in Revelation. Look out for the Nicolaitans.
perverters of the gospel. Some think that there were antinomians,
people who said, I’m saved by grace so I can sin all I want
and God will just forgive me more. Kind of what we’ve dealt
with in Romans chapter six. And then there were what we would
call proto-gnostics. That’s a fancy word for people
that think they have secret knowledge and nobody else does. And so
therefore you ought to listen to me because I know stuff you
don’t know. And anyway, They had these churches with itinerant
teachers popping through. And so just creating a mess. It’s why it’s good to be part
of a Presbytery. We approve our ministers. We
don’t approve of others. And our elders guard the pulpit. They guard the teaching ministry
of the church. That’s good and helpful. No 12 days of Christmas
in our Sunday school lessons. Around here, you can figure that
stuff out elsewhere if you so wish, but we’re going to teach
the Bible here. But these itinerants had come in. How might we think
of this today? Well, there’s all kinds of people
and all kinds of pulpits they get on TV. They have ink pens
and typewriters and computers and blogs. They have microphones. They’re
pulpits, as it were. They get around, and you hear
it from people. You hear their theology. You’re
at the water cooler at work, the coffee pot at work, and you
hear people’s theology. And, you know, maybe you’ve been
around here long enough where you can know to scratch your
head and say, hmm, I don’t know about that, but I’ll just, you
know, I’ll be kind. But like weeds, these things
can grow. And you say, well, this person’s
well-intended, and that person’s well-intended, but what happens
if you say to your wife when you’re looking out at the garden
one morning over coffee, those weeds are well-intended? What
did they ever do to deserve the discerning eye of the church?
And what happens after a while? Some of you who grow gardens,
it just takes a week or two of neglect. And then you kind of
throw your hands up and say, it’s just too much. We’ll take
what we can get, but I can’t even begin to weed this garden.
And it can be devastating. The elders interviewed a family
for membership this week, and they are, well, one’s in his
90s, the wife, I guess, is a little far, maybe trailing behind in
age, but they said over their decades of marriage, it wasn’t
until recent years that they found a healthy biblical church.
And if that isn’t a chilling statement, I don’t know what
is. Living your whole life, and they talked about how hard it
was to live life Raising children, being married, doing the Lord’s
work, trying their best without a good, healthy Bible-believing
church. How sad that is. And so that’s why an alarm like
this, a warning like this, ought to make us say, yeah, it’s worth
fighting. It is worth fighting for to have
a good, quiet, healthy, not totally weedless. We got our few weeds
around here. Just ask me, I’ll tell you. but lots of good blessings. It’s
good to have it. And so that’s just a little bit
about the enemies. They’ve crept in unnoticed. Now
we’re gonna talk about the enemy’s end. This is where, as our theologian
friend would say, the text gets rather nasty. Look at verse four. 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
they deny our Master and Lord Jesus Christ. So the enemy’s
end is that they’re doomed. Teamed up with Satan, they’re
gonna end up where Satan ends up. Long ago designated for condemnation. God knows about them, the end
of their life, the end of their days is written. They’re enemies
of God, enemies of his people. They are already judged, and
that judgment says they are already condemned. How does that make
you feel? Well, maybe sad. People doomed
to everlasting destruction. That ought to make us sad. But
if we pray every week as we do, maybe you pray it every day,
our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy kingdom
come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We know that
Satan opposed God in heaven and fell. and that those on the earth
who oppose God through his church are destined and doomed to that
same end. And so we ought to think a little
more black and white than we do. You’re either for God or
you’re against him, right? You’re either with us or you’re
for us, so to speak. And so the enemy’s end is one
of doom and destruction. And so it’s, yes, sad, but it
also ought to comfort us. God is gonna take care of business.
What is that we sing in a mighty fortress is our God? Lo, his
doom is sure, one little word shall fail him. Right, remember
the beginning of Jude, which we looked at last week, that
we are those called by God, beloved in Christ, and kept. So, stark
contrast, there are those doomed for destruction because of their
evil ways, but God and his righteous ones are called, beloved, and
kept. for Jesus Christ. So something
about the enemies, they’ve crept in unnoticed. They’re in, they’re
doomed. Third thing we want to think
about is the enemy’s way of life. Sometimes you watch the news
or maybe you walk down the street. Somebody today was describing
to me a scene in a restaurant where all the young people in
town were dressed up for their little Christmas formal. And
she said it was almost impossible to describe what the girls were
wearing. Because you really had to describe what they were not
wearing And some of you you understand this culture. It’s there’s just
no shame things things we y’all we wouldn’t have been caught
dead doing or wearing or or being is now a Celebrated way of life. You know if if you are Trying to have manners trying
to have a decency, you’re kind of looked on as a prude, as a
whatever. But there is no shame in today’s
culture. It is a vile culture. People
don’t even hide their sins. No, in fact, they don’t hide
their sins. Their sins are put on a pedestal and they dare you
to say anything which would be considered hate speech about
their behavior. But bless the Lord, we’re in
the church. Bless the Lord, we have the teaching
of the scripture. And it helps us see this, verse
four, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. They deny our only master. Look
at these three things. They’re ungodly, they pervert
grace, and they deny Christ. Ungodly, they’re unrighteousness.
They’re unrighteous. They’re impious. They’re irreverent.
They do what we looked at earlier in the third commandment. They
take God’s name in vain. In fact, they don’t worship God.
They don’t love God. Romans chapter 1 tells us they
enjoy the creation, but they fail to give worship to the creator. So they’re ungodly. They pervert
grace. They use God’s good gifts for
the wrong purpose. Unbridled living, licentiousness,
sensuality. They live for the flesh. They
live an unredeemed life. They send their brains out, so
to speak. And if they’re some sort of Christian,
maybe antinomian, they say, well, God’s grace abounds. I’m helping
God out. I send more so he can give grace
more. They pervert grace. They’re ungodly.
The third thing that verse tells us, they deny Christ. I’ll have
it my way. They don’t submit to King Jesus.
He is not their master, their sovereign ruler. He is not their
Lord. They reject not only Jesus, but
his work, his work of redemption. And so the enemy’s way of life
It is seen in their fruit. They live an unredeemed life
and it shows. This is chilling, isn’t it? This
is alarming because this is not Jude saying, when you leave today,
church, when I give you the benediction, you’re gonna go into a dark world,
a dying generation, a crooked culture. No, he’s saying they’re
here, they’re now, they’re in your church, they are your teachers,
they are your, Sunday school classes. They are your women’s
groups, your men’s groups. Well, today it’s the preachers,
isn’t it? Isn’t this rather chilling, rather
alarming? I know so many in our congregation
have seen the rise of liberalism and you’ve had to make hard choices
in your life to walk away from those things. The saints of God
have to fight for the truth of God or it will erode. So this is something about the
enemy’s way of life, ungodly, perverting grace, and they deny
the Lord Jesus Christ. Their fruit is alarming. Let’s think lastly about the
previous enemy’s ends. God and Jude here is going to
describe three times where something like this in the book of Jude
happened and he took care of business. These are from the
history of God’s people. These ought to be familiar examples. People have disobeyed God before.
Nothing new. They rebelled and it did not
end well. In fact, 1 Corinthians tells us the reason that those
Old Testament stories were written telling about rebellion and Nadab
and Abihu, and was it Uzzah who touched the ark? And all these
things where God’s justice was executed, they were written so
that we would not repeat these offenses. What’s the idea behind justice? The gallows are always in a public
place. The person who committed the crime is gonna get justice,
but why is it done publicly? It’s so others will see and maybe
their life will be a little more restrained from committing evil
acts. Well, in verse five, it tells
us of these three instances. He says, I want to remind you,
although once you fully knew it, that Jesus who saved a people
out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who do not believe.
That’s example one. Example two, and the angels who
did not stay within their own position of authority, but left
their proper dwelling, he’s kept in eternal chains under gloomy
darkness until the judgment of the great day. Second example,
third, verse seven. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and
the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality
and pursued unnatural desire, served as an example by undergoing
a punishment of eternal fire. These are all familiar Old Testament
judgments. If we were to list criminals
in American history, you would say, oh yeah, electric chair,
oh yeah, hung, oh yeah, firing squad, oh yeah, Alcatraz. We
would know the name and the crime and the punishment. And it’s
sort of like that when we are reminded by Jude of these instances. The first instant in verse five
is the people of God who were pursued out of Egypt by
Pharaoh’s army. God opened the sea. They walked
across on dry land, and when they got safely across, the sea
closed up. And Miriam and Moses sang, I
will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.
The horse and the rider have been thrown into the sea. And
they get out into the wilderness. God takes care of them. He feeds
them. He gives them bread. He gives them water. He gives
them quail. He gives them manna. He gives them cloaks that do
not wear out, sandals that aren’t worn down. And He takes care
of them. And they have the nerve to say,
we’d rather go back to Egypt because there we had leeks and
onions. And we come to this recognition
when we read Psalm 95. O come, let us worship, let us
bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our God, our maker,
for he is our God. And it goes on and on. And then
after that wonderful, glorious call to worship, it says, today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as the people
of God did. What did God do with them? He
put them to death in the wilderness. They did not get life in the
promised land. And so do you think, do you think
you can rebel against God and escape? No, you can’t. And so
he’s saying God’s previous enemies, it was the Israelites who saw
a lot of grace and glory. God’s chosen ones, they disobeyed
and God put them to death. So here’s something for us. We
live in the new Exodus, Jesus, who has brought us up out of
the land of Egypt. He’s taken us out of the house
of bondage, Satan’s bondage, and he’s put us in the position
of new life. If we go on in unbelief and disobedience,
you think it’s going to be any more gracious for us? Thank the Lord for Christ. and
his greater exodus. So that’s example one. Example
number two is in verse six, and it speaks about fallen angels.
You know, we’re singing a lot about angels at Christmas, right?
Angels from the realms of glory. Hark the herald angels sing. We sang about angels in our opening
hymn tonight. Angels have gotten to see a lot
of things because, well, they’ve been in heaven serving God and
his purposes. And so can you imagine being
a fallen angel? Can you imagine saying, I’ve
had enough of this glory. I’ve had enough of this Yahweh.
I’ve had enough of this Jesus, God’s son. I’ve had enough of
this Holy Spirit business. I think I’d like to go live in
chains in an outer darkness. And I’d like to get whooped at
the cross by the son who comes to save. That’s how foolish,
that’s how wicked these angels are. They fell because they did
not like their pecking order their position in heaven. I can
do it better than you, God. They left their dwelling place,
the place of absolute beauty. Now they’re in chains, condemned.
They left the place of power. Now they’re under that power
in chains. They left glorious. eternal light
and are now in darkness, simply because they refuse to obey God.
You know, we cheapen evangelism. You know, you don’t want to go
to hell now, do you? Right? That’s our little saying. It’s a massive
thing to turn God down. And it’s even more, I think,
difficult to understand when we realize they lived in eternal,
heavenly presence of God, and they turned it down and are now
in chains. So that’s the second way God
has dealt with this before. There’s the third way in verse
seven. There’s the story we know of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now Sodom
and Gomorrah was a beautiful place, a lot of beautiful people,
a lot of privileges, and they took the good gifts of God and
they perverted them. One man, one woman, marriage,
producing children, producing godly offspring. They turned
that place into a hell hole. In fact, they turned it into
a place that was destroyed by fire. And that’s what God’s people,
that’s what the people have been doing ever since the fall, right?
They’ve been distorting creation. They’ve been taking God’s good
and perfect gifts, distorting it and destroying it. And they
would not repent. Our passage tells us it’s in
God’s face. And these little bits, these
little pictures of judgment, fire, being wiped off the earth. God promised, remember, never
to destroy the earth. That’s what he promised to Noah.
But I would be afraid of a localized judgment if I were not living
for Almighty God. He overthrew them. Remember,
Abraham prayed, and if there’s 50, if there’s 40, if there’s,
you know, he whittled it down to, I think, 10, right? And then
he had to go rescue Lot because Lot loved living there. Remember
Lot looking towards Sodom? He moved near Sodom, and before
long, he’s in Sodom. And then when it was time to
leave Sodom because the angels were going to destroy it, he,
he’s like, but we have a Starbucks here. We, we, we have, um, You
know, all the amenities are here. And he said, if I’m going to
have to leave Sodom, at least send me to a town with a Bojangles. He
whittled his way into, instead of hiding in the hills from God’s
judgment, he ended up in another town living immorally. And the
story doesn’t get any better for him. But the fate of those
who saw redemption, rejected the rule of God and they destroyed
God’s good creation. Their fate is known. And there’s
two advantages for us as Christians. There’s an evangelical advantage.
Don’t be like them, come to Jesus. But there’s also, I guess, a
promise that we ought to think of. People will seek to destroy
the church, but they’re going to get theirs when God judges. There is a fate for them. Jude’s message is part of an
age-old story. The serpent crept in unnoticed.
He was crafty. He was deceitful. That’s why
you need good elders to say, nope, this is our standard. These
are our lessons. This is what we’re learning.
This is what we’re teaching. Y’all may want to do that, but no thanks.
Y’all may want to do that, but no thanks. We’re going to have
a quiet, happy, peaceful church where we live the word, learn
the word, and grow in the word. We try to keep the weeds out.
And we definitely have the machete and if the certain snake sneaks
in, we chop his head off. That’s what good gardeners do.
But that’s what faces the church in Jude’s day. Certain people
creeping in unnoticed, taking over. Have you ever been in a
room and The lights slowly got dim, maybe at a theater. And
before you knew it, it was dark. And you’re like, when did that
happen? How did that happen? I think that’s the way darkness
has crept on the American church. The lights have just slowly been
dimmed. And it’s time to read the word,
preach the word, pray the word, sing the word, and let the lights
get brighter and brighter. Our job as a church is to be
an outpost of heaven. and not an outpost of hell and
made by God’s grace that be true as we press on and keep the faith.
Let’s pray for God’s help. Lord, we ask and pray that you
would help us to always be watchful, always be vigilant for those
who creep in the church seeking to destroy your glory, your grace,
your goodness, and your peace among your people. Help us to
be safe and to be kept pure and entire and whole by Christ. through
the ministry of our elders, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.