Books of James & Jude - Jude Intro/Overview

Today we're going to look at the small little book of Jude. So actually what I'd like to do is I'd like to just read, and we could read the entire book right now, but I'd like to just read the first four verses, and we'll talk about kind of introduction, and then we'll read the rest of the verses as we go through. So could someone read, if you don't have your Bible, I'll see, actually I don't have it up here. You have it on your electronic device there. Would someone like to read the first four verses in Jude?

Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you, appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

Great. Thanks, David. OK. Wow, we're growing in numbers. There's handouts in the back there if you need one. OK. So it starts off. So I'd like to first kind of cover the, actually, what happened to my little, oops. Where's my little clicker? Oh, here we go. So the question comes up, who is Jude? That's the first question. So Jude, the name Jude is Eudas.

That's how my computer pronounces it. So I go, if the computer pronounces it that way, I go with that pronunciation. So this is much smarter than I am. Judas, Jude, Judas, or Judah are all the same, all come from the same Hebrew word, and it's been transliterated into the Greek and hence into the English. And there actually are eight occurrences of people in the New Testament with the name Jude, Judas, or Judah. There's actually another alternate spelling that I'll show you as we go along. And basically this comes from Zodiates.

So my proposal is just to go through and look a little bit. So as we read the first verse in Jude, it says, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. So that little phrase or that sentence there, basically Jude identifies himself as a believer, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and he identifies himself also as a brother of James. So there's been some discussion about which of the eight Judas, Jude it is. But most people, And I think I'm convinced as well that he says he's a brother of James because that kind of identifies James was more of a leader in the New Testament church. So Jude identifies himself as being the brother of James to kind of say, hey, here's who I am. He wasn't necessarily a prominent person, it seems like. There isn't a whole lot about Jude other than the fact that he's a brother of James.

So we're going to see a bunch of verses on that. So, I just kind of like to go through these eight occurrences. We won't go through every single verse here. So, the first one is Judah. He's the fourth son of Jacob. So, remember in the Old Testament, the twelve tribes of Israel. So, basically, if you look, and this one, let's just look in Matthew chapter 1, and we'll just look briefly here at This one, this is the first one, and this is the one from the Old Testament too. Could someone read verses 2 and 3 in Matthew chapter 1? I want you to read 1, 2 and 3. of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Sarah by Tamar. Paris was the father of Hesron, and Hesron the father of Ram. So Judah here, he's the fourth in line under Abraham.

So that's one Judah. Judah was a popular name. It's sort of like, what's the most popular boy's name today? Jacob? Yeah, that's interesting. It used to be Michael. When I was growing up, Michael was big. Anyway, I grew up in kind of a Jewish community. It was Michael and Leslie. Those were the two, because there were a lot of Jewish folks there. Those were the two names. OK. Next occurrence. Judas or Judah. Two of the ancestors of Jesus.

And if you look in Luke chapter 3. And this is the one that, at least in my Bible, I'll be curious to see what you guys have. If we look at verse 26, we look at 326, it says, yeah it says, I'm not sure I can pronounce some of these names here, but the son of Matthew, the son of Matthias, the son of Simeon, the son of Josesus and the son of Joda. I mispronounced probably all those.

But actually Joda, J-O-D-A, is actually, it's another alternate rendering. So if you look at verse 30, go down to verse 30, you'll see that it says, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Joann, the son of So here's Judah here again. So this is basically ancestors of Jesus basically in this case. Then we have the 11 names, the 11th name of the list of apostles. Actually if you realize the 11th and 12th name are both Judah and it's going to be Judas Iscariot. So let's look at that one.

That's in Luke 6.16. Could someone read that?

Luke 6.16.

It's just Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot who also became a praetor. Right. So actually, this verse actually covers two of the names. Actually, in this listing from Zodiac, he has it listed separately, but Judah is listed. Judah, the son of James, and then Judas Iscariot. And then here's the one that most believe kind of connects up. This is Judas, the brother of James in the Gospels and in Jude. So let's look at Matthew. 1355 and these two verses actually are pretty, pretty much the same rendering. And this is a case where we can tie it down. Matthew 1355 says.

And basically this is kind of a, let's go back to 54, and coming to his home, speaking of Christ, coming to his hometown, he began teaching them in the synagogues so that they became astonished and said, where did this man get his wisdom and these miraculous powers? Is this not the carpenter's son? Is this not his mother, called Mary, and his brothers, James, Joseph, Simeon, and Judas? So this listing here is where most people hang their hat. They say, OK, here are his brothers. There's basically four brothers. And then actually go down to 56. And his sisters, are they not all with us?

So the mark occurrence is virtually the same, rendering the same account of the same situation. So this is a verse, these two verses are the two that kind of connect up Judah, Judas, with James, his brother, and they're both, and they're half brothers of the Lord. Okay, so then the next page, I'm just going to clip through these real quick. I won't spend a tremendous amount of time on these. But basically the next one, the fifth one, is Judas. And this is Judas Iscariot. We've already kind of covered that previously.

Then the next one, the sixth one, is the surname for Barsabba, a teacher sent from Jerusalem to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. And then the seventh one here is Judas, a Jew living in Damascus. Remember the Damascus Road at Paul's conversion? There was a Judas there. And then lastly, there's Judas, the surname, the Galilean.

So there are eight in all total. So it seems like the Judah or Judas we're dealing with here is a half-brother of the Lord. And to that end here, I found a little chart that Vern put together. Here's the family tree of Jesus, Joseph and Mary. So Jesus has his four brothers and he has sisters, plural. Scripture doesn't really tell us who they are, but actually extra-biblical, actually Vern, he had a similar chart like this. So I took the liberty of taking off the names. Nothing against Verne. Since he actually, extra-biblically, there were some names that identify as Christ's sisters. So I decided just for the sake of making it match, I would make it just sisters.

So it matches those two verses we just read, or at least one of the verses we read. Now here's some notes. They're half-brothers, half-brothers, and half-sisters. And actually, Jesus' brothers did not believe in him until after Christ was resurrected. Let's just look at that briefly.

John 7.5.

Could someone read John 7.5? And this is just going to talk about the fact that they weren't believing in him. For neither did his brethren believe in him.

Okay, thank you. I didn't realize it was like that. Okay, I actually looked at that. Basically, if you go back up it says, for no one was doing anything in secret when he himself was seeking to be known in public. If you do these things, show yourself. For not even his brothers were believing in him.

So at that point they were not, and then in the Acts passage, let's look at the Acts passage as well, Acts 1.14, it says, These all were of one mind, were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. What this is kind of connoting here, it seems like, is that at this point they're anticipating the Spirit to come, Christ has been ascended, and they're together and they're praying, and actually there will be an allusion to this later on, that Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers were praying and so the assumption is that they were believers at that point. So that's kind of the logic. You know, you don't have a tremendous number of verses here to hang your hat on. You have a few here and there, but it does seem to paint a picture. The name's James.

You know, I actually wondered if that spelling is actually some spelling for Joseph possibly. J-O-E-S, Jude, Simeon. They're given in Mark 3, which we looked at, and his sisters. And we have the most information about James. There were handouts there. So we have the most information about James. And it seems like that Jude identifies himself with James. He says, I'm his brother.

So that's the thought process in the book of Jude there. OK, then some other things I thought would be worthwhile mentioning. It seems like, according to Constable, that James, like James, he was a Hellenistic Jew, Jude was, who wrote in a certain Greek style. And this kind of refers back to the fact that he became a believer after the resurrection.

Jesus' brothers were part of a praying group. We just read that verse where it says his mother was praying and his brothers. You know, Judah alludes to many allusions in the Old Testament, sort of similar to James, but his audience was Jewish believers. That was the majority of believers, certainly. And then lastly, the time of the writing, approximately 66 to 69 AD. It was apparently difficult to kind of hang your head on when the actual writing of this, but it had to be after, certainly after Pentecost and after certain other events.

So that's kind of the, who is Jude and distinguish him from the other Jews in the Bible or Judas in the Bible. So now we're just going to launch into looking at some key points in the book of Jude. So let's go back and just re-read. Al, could you read for us, if you have it there, Jude 1-4?

Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ. and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation ungodly men who turn the grace of our Lord God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. the first four verses of the next two weeks. So I didn't want to go too deeply here, but I did want to kind of start off, since we're going to look through the whole book here this morning, and just kind of highlight a couple of things that I think are kind of key here. The first thing is, in verse 3, he talks about, to write to you, appealing to you, to contend earnestly for the faith. So that word, the faith, It's kind of a red flag.

Actually, if you do a search in your Bibles, you can do it electronically or you can do it manually. Electronically is certainly a lot nicer these days. I do like that. In the old days, I might share with you guys, I'll date myself here, the concordances I'd actually go through and get the concordance out. I'd start looking through It takes a long time. You type in THE FAITH in quotation marks, hit the return key, and you get over 20 occurrences. Yeah, but you'd have missed the context unless you take the whole thing. I realize that. Good and bad. Good and bad. You get the good with the bad. Okay.

So anyway, if you look through, and actually Vern has a paper which I'm going to recommend that we give the pass out. I'll talk with Bob about this. It's a paper he wrote on THE FAITH. I just kind of pulled some of his definitions out of there. The faith is the teaching of the apostles and prophets. But really, it's even almost wider than that. It's the core beliefs that believers in the Lord Jesus Christ hold. And it sometimes can be equivalent to the truth or even sometimes the gospel. So let's look at a couple of verses here that kind of speak to that. The first one, the first set of verses here is going to be in Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4 and could someone read 11 through 13? Ephesians chapter 4, 11 through 13.

And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Okay, great, thank you. So basically, as you might guess, it's in verse 13, until we all attain to the, this adds another thought in here, and this is kind of a key point in understanding scripture, the unity, there's to be unity of the faith, with a definite article, the faith. So the faith is, and there's to be unity around the core teachings of what scripture has to say.

So there's actually another 20 or so we can look at. A lot in Acts. I'm not going to cover those because Bob's going to be doing that when he teaches this section. But I did want to bring that part out. But let's look at another verse here that kind of talks about the truth aspect. A familiar verse in John 16. It doesn't say the faith in this case. Yeah, the faith, but it does say the truth. So, John 16. Someone read 12 and 13. And John 16. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come. Great, thank you. I think it doesn't take a whole lot of extension to see that the faith has to be the truth. that Christ wanted for us, and basically the Spirit of God is going to guide us into all the truth.

I don't really have one for the gospel example, so I just want to introduce the fact that a key teaching here is that Jude said he intended to write about the common salvation, I have some charts on that, but he decided that he wanted to convey the idea of appealing to you that you contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down to you by the saints. So that's one of the key points of this book. So then the next key point in this book, which takes up a whole lot of territory in this book, is apostasy.

So actually there's a definition I have from the Standard Dictionary, which is sort of OK. A total departure from one's faith or religion. To apply it to scripture it's a little bit hard because it sounds a little bit mayoral worldly. Apostasy literally, apostasia in the Greek is literally to stand off from or stand away from. And I like what Macaulay had to say about apostasy.

Apostasy is when you have heard the truth and understand it and understand what is said and then you willingly reject it. That's really going to be key as we go through this book. Because we're going to see example, and we're going to cover a lot today. Example after example of where the truth is presented.

It reminded me of the Romans. Turn to Romans chapter 1. Reminded me of the Romans. Let's talk now about part of Romans. Romans 1, 17 and so on here. Part of that. You have the truth, but you reject it knowingly. And actually this one in Romans is pretty condemning in the light of the apostasy we're going to be studying here.

It says, verse 18, Romans 1.18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God has made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God, or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God for the image and form of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. They knew God in the sense that they could tell about him from creation or whatever.

So this apostate even goes even farther than that. They have understanding of the truth and they understand it, but they willingly reject it. So we're going to see that as we go through Jude here. And then lastly here, Hebert has, he said the epistle of Jude is without parallel in the New Testament. It denounces I looked it up, it's no moral restraints, especially in the sexual area and apostasy. So it's packed with a lot of discussion about people willingly going contrary to the truth. And it's going to state many examples. Some examples occur nowhere else in scripture. and some about the angels. We would never know some facts about the angels, the fallen angels.

OK. All right, so any questions in this chart? And actually, there's more to come. We know we're going to get a lot more detail. We actually have eight more classes in the Book of Jude. So this is just an overview. Now we're going to start off. Macaulay had some other good things, so I decided to just go ahead and use some of his outlines for this. There are two things I just want to show you here. We read the first four verses, but there's kind of a pattern in this book.

Jude is going to talk about the Beloved, and that word Beloved is Agapitos, which is divinely loved ones. He's going to tell us some wonderful truths about the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and what we have. But then he's going to contrast that with their certain men.

And he's going to call them, what's interesting, he doesn't even give them a name. You know, in today's world you might give names to groups of people that are in opposition to who God is. You might be able to name those groups of people. Well, Jude doesn't even give them names. He just says certain men, they, these, them.

He just uses pronouns. He never names a group. He doesn't give examples. He's going to talk about Korah, Balaam, and those kind of things. But he doesn't get when he says certain men, he doesn't refer to who they are. He just says they're there and they're in opposition to God, which is interesting.

So I wanted to show you that. I just want to zoom ahead here. I didn't put this in the handout. So let's just look here for a second. So here in the blue is the good guys and the red are the bad guys. OK, the good guys here, beloved. While I was making every effort to write to you, referring back to the Beloved, certain persons have crept in, unnoticed, those, referring back to certain persons, who were long ago beforehand marked out for condemnation, ungodly persons, and so on, Then it comes back to you in blue. Now I desire to remind you, and you again, and then down here at the bottom. Yet in the same way, these men also dreaming, defiling the flesh, rejecting authority, and so on. So we have the beloved, and we have the certain persons that are in opposition to God's work. So I want to do that. So I'm going to go back here. So I wanted to kind of cover this. You have to look at your Bibles for this one here.

I didn't print the rest of the verses out. So here's a couple of contrast cases. It's these verses, but you beloved. These verses, you beloved. So let's look at verse 16, 16 and 17. Because I want to read 16 and 17 in Jude. And we'll see the contrast between these, but you beloved.

These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, and their mouths speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Great, great, thank you.

Okay, so that's the first, you know, these do one thing, but you do, in contrast to that, you do something else. Then down in 19 and 20, does someone read 19 and 20? These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Spirit.

Great, thank you. Okay. And then it's going to tell us, I have one last little bullet there, it tells us how to treat these men. And actually, that's going to be right toward the end of this passage in Jude. It's going to, actually, interestingly enough, it's going to tell us about showing mercy to them, hating their sins, basically. Loving them but hating their sins. So we'll see more of that to come. So we'll go past this guy here. So point two in this outline, Jew did not plan to write this book. And you get that. You're saying, well, that sounds kind of strange, Roger. How do you know that? Well, it tells us that.

If you go back to verse 3, verse 3 says, and we've read this a couple of times already, Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you. So he wasn't just casually sitting down to write a letter. He was making every effort. It was a concerted effort to write to you about our common salvation. So that's what he intended to write a book about, our common salvation.

And that word common basically says what it means in belonging to several things. And there's actually a verse in Titus that kind of speaks to that. Titus 1.4 says, it says to Titus, my true child, in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and from Christ Jesus our Savior. So it says, to Titus, my true child, and a common faith. Same word. Common salvation, common faith.

Very similar kind of description there. So he was planning to write about the common salvation, but he felt it necessary to write about contending for the faith. And we've already kind of talked about that a little bit already. So we'll go past that. So third point. The theme is to contend for the faith. Contend is the idea to fight and the word contend, it actually has kind of nestled in there is the word agonize. So it's actually to contend about as a combatant.

And if you look in 1 Timothy 6.12, it says, fight the good fight of faith. And there's another occurrence.

And then in 1 Timothy 1.18, it says, you fight the good fight. So it's almost like it's an athletic term. It's not like you casually encounter something. You do it earnestly.

So the question's going to come up, How are we going to do this? So that's actually the next couple of questions. And that's going to take up the rest of our time. Why contend for the faith is question one, and how to contend for the faith. So before we look at that, before we look at those two, without looking ahead, why should we contend for the faith?

Any ideas? I have a question whether this is responding to somebody who is bringing you what it sounds like. There's people who have crept in our circle of friends or whatever, and they're saying something that's not true. Versus going out and evangelizing and saying, OK, I'm just going to go out and evangelize. I'm going to go out and calling that contention. But it seems like contention in this In this context. In this context is when somebody else starts the conversation.

I would agree with you on that. We're going to see a ton of examples in here, but that seems to be the flavor too. It would be, and we've had occasion, it would be like someone comes into Holly Hills and they decide they want to teach about some topic that's not scriptural. What do you do about that? Do you pound them back and say, that's okay brother, we all have our own views, that's good. We're one in the Lord. All roads lead to God. All roads lead to God. Go ahead. Another thought comes up, and this is, let's say, where I was, and the church is talking about losing your salvation and how dangerous you have to be. Very, very careful.

Now would I contend with those people? Okay, well, that seems, are those people, and one question is here, and this is something that kind of hit me, the apostates, are they believers? That's a very important question to think about here. Are the apostates believers? No. We're going to see that they can't be.

So it's a different, if you have a brother or sister and you have a disagreement about scripture, that's a different story. I mean, that's a different, that's not an apostate. Apostate is one who has denied the faith. He's denied who Christ is, or any number of things. And there are bodies of, I'll call them so-called believers, that have tenets of Christianity.

I mean, they have some doctrine about some aspect of Scripture. But if it's the faith, then if they're denying part of the faith, then there's a problem there. So I'm not sure I actually fully answered your question, but I think what you're talking about is someone has a belief that maybe over time you've come to believe is incorrect, that you believe that salvation is secure. that you're saved, that Christ has maintained your salvation, and this brother or sister from some other... And actually, we have relatives that say exactly the same thing. They come to visit us and we tell them about how their salvation is secure, and they're very polite when they leave, whether we've made any progress or not. And they're still believers.

So, I mean, there's no doubt that scripture that talks about evangelizing and communicating the gospel in the world and about the places that we go. So we're not talking about that here. We're also not talking about being outside of a church context and sharing with believers or talking to leaders. We're talking about a church context where there are unbelievers that are utilizing certain common speak and then twisting it for their own lifestyle. And so, while we have other scriptures that tell us how to deal with other situations outside of the church, that's specifically what's going on here is the desire to draw away believers into an apostate style of living similar to those that were you know, trying to communicate that in this group of people.

And so, the fight, the good fight that 1 Timothy talks about, similar situation, but continuing for the faith, and it's a shepherding and a protecting of the body situation that's going on here, and it has a certain kind of approach that is specific to that scenario. trying to take it into other situations. In fact, we have other scriptures that guide us in how we be prepared, give a reason for the hope that you have, Peter being a parallel book to Jude and all that. But here we are in a situation where you're teaching and I get up and I say, hey, let's talk about grace and how that just gives me the ability to do whatever I want. And this is the contending for the faith scenario for Jude. That's good. Al?

There's also the aspect of not everyone in the church body is at the same level of understanding and maturity, and although I'm taking it a little bit out of context, in the first chapter of Proverbs, the big emphasis on wisdom, getting the wisdom of the Lord rather than the wisdom of this world.

And it talks about the problem that the simple-minded and the fools and the mockers. It talks about those three classes of people. It says, how long will you deny the wisdom of God? And one reason for contending for the faith is so that those who are on the verge, so to speak, the simple-minded and the fools, by the definitions that are in the Scripture. would start listening to the mockers who say, like the people in the time of Noah, where is this God?

Why are you doing this? Ever since time began, things have been going on as they always have, and they're not changing now. The Russian astronaut approach, I'm out in space and I don't see God. I don't see God. It is very easy to take the world's wisdom and lead people astray who are not secure, who are not grounded.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. Just one further thought. Okay, go ahead. So there is no the faith, if it's not contended for, there's no common right agreement. And so why contend for the faith, so that the faith remains intact, right? Otherwise, there is no such thing. Right. And that's good. And I think it's also, that's excellent.

And then kind of coupled with that, that verse in the Ephesians says, it's the unity of the faith that we all can, as a body of believers, all can ascribed to, that we have a unity because we have a set of truths that we hang our hat on. That's what's true of God and who we are, and that's what we desire to convey and teach. Once we're on the same page and we understand that, I think that's how the local churches operate in doing that. The second point is how to contend for the faith.

We're going to find that How contented for the faith is not you go out and somebody comes in and you bop him over the head with a thing. You get each other and you bop him over the head. It's interesting. It talks about, toward the end of 23 and so on, it talks about having mercy and compassion on someone like that. It's actually quite a bit different than you might think.

Well, I'm going to contend for the faith. Get the boxing gloves out. I'm going to really go after this guy. I'm going to tackle him. No, you have mercy for him. You have compassion for this person. Because if he's truly an unbeliever, his destiny is hell. So you're contending for his very life. Yes. Paul has a phrase that I just love, speaking the truth in love. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Alright, so we're going to expand these last two here.

So we're just basically going to go through and look at On the first point, let's look at verses 5 through 7. Could someone read 5 through 7? And this is going to be the first point that God always judges apostasy. We're going to look at the Israel, the angels, and Solomon Gamora in 5 through 7. So Bonnie, could you read that?

Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving the people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds until darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality, and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

So we see in these three verses, the first one talks about the Lord's work in the nation of Israel, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt. And then he talks about subsequently destroying those who did not believe. There were a large number of those who came out, he saved them out of the land of Egypt.

But they didn't go into the promised land because of unbelief. So they were in the definition of apostasy. God had revealed his plan, but they didn't believe him. They said there are giants in the land. They said, giants in the land? I can't believe you're going to save us from those giants. So they were in unbelief.

And that's kind of a hard lesson there. God saved them out of the land of Egypt. but they didn't believe the next step, so to speak. So that's example one. Example two, this is one that we don't have a lot of information outside of this verse. I'm glad I'm not teaching this verse. I'm joking. It says, and angels who did not keep their own domain abandon their proper abode.

So basically because of that they're going to be judged. It's a judgment on the great day. It seems like that's speaking of the great white throne judgment at the end of the age. And then Solomon Gomorrah. Look at the pronouns there. It says since they, in the same way as these, indulging gross immoralities, went after strange flesh, and their punishment is eternal fire. So that's kind of the first point, is that God always judges apostasy. The second point is the sins of apostasy. I just listed a few there. Defile the flesh, reject authority, unreasoning animals. And that occurs in 8 through 11. Let's see, how are we doing here? Yeah, could someone read that, 8 through 11?

Likewise, also, these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuketh thee. But these speak evil of those things which they know not, but that which they know naturally is brute beasts, and those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the heir of Balaam for reward, and perished in the game-saying of Korah." Right. Thank you. So here again we have some other information. Once again, this is only in Jude, like the Michael, the archangel, disputing about the body of Moses.

And it says, you know, these men revile things, and they are destroyed. It says, woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, and so on. So we're going to be studying about all those different events there. We're going back and reviewing what it means, what Cain we know about. Arab Balaam may not quite as familiar in the rebellion of Korah.

And then the next point is, Jude gives very interesting names for these apostates. So I'll just read in 12 and 13, he says, these are the men who are hidden wreaths in your love feast, when they feast with you, without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting their own shame like foam, wandering stars, for whom black darkness has been reserved forever. So it seems like he'll state something about these people and at the end he'll say, and here's their destiny. And then lastly, in 14 and 16, the doom of the apostate.

It was also about these men that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied saying, behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all. And to convict all, this is amazing, in 15 is an amazing verse. It has the word ungodly four times. To execute judgment upon all, to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and all of the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, fault finders, falling after their own lust. They speak arrogantly, flatteringly, flattering people for the sake of gaining advantage. Okay, so there's the why contend.

So the how contend, I'm just going to kind of go through this just in bullet form this time. So basically, before I start here, I say it's not we're going to box these guys. Here's our game plan. It's sort of like the best offense is a good defense, right? Remember the words spoken beforehand. I didn't catch every... I have about five bullets here. I don't have every point in those five verses or so. Remember the words spoken beforehand.

Building yourself up in the faith. Praying in the Holy Spirit. Keeping yourselves in the love of God. Waiting anxiously for the mercy of Christ to eternal life. And then it says, this is interesting, and this is the last point I was kind of mentioning. Then it says, it kind of changes the tone, part of how to contend for the faith. This is Macaulay, Macaulayism, which I kind of picked up.

Rescue who you can. And part one, mercy on some, save others. And then I actually had a couple others I noticed that I was going through this morning. Mercy on some with fear, could be another bullet. Mercy on some, save others. Mercy on some with fear. And then there's a fourth one, hating the garments by the polluted flesh. It's like you hate the sin, but not the sinner. That's kind of my paraphrase.

So we're going to see that all in those verses here. And then the last major topic here is there are three separate destinies talked about in Jude. First destiny is a beloved. to make you stand in the presence of his glory blameless with great joy. So the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the beloved, has a wonderful, he's going to see his Savior in his presence face to face. That's his destiny.

The angels, and I have to come, this is an asterisk here, I didn't put that, but this is the fallen angels, the angels have gone astray. He has kept them in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. And then the apostate, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. So quite a contrast between the... Is there any possibility for these apostates to ever come to the Lord?

Well, I'm looking ahead and looking at those last verses we talked about there it says it's actually down in 22 21, 22, and 23. 20 says, but you, beloved, building yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. It seems like there's an effort that Jude talks about on trying to convince them of the truth. I thought maybe these were different people.

And that's one of the things. I thought about that. So, we haven't said the whole book out. That's one of the questions that we're going to have to kind of tackle with it. When it comes down to the end here, is this offering, like you say, is that the hope that we may turn an apostate to a believer? I don't know, and that's a good question. I haven't studied that in depth, but it appears to be. So, Al?

There's always the interesting thing. that we as human beings like to think of the impact we have on others, either for good or bad. Exhortations for fathers to be good examples to their family, particularly their sons who are coming along. And yet, ultimately, the responsibility I have is for me to be faithful, to abide in Christ, and to follow that which the Lord has prepared ahead of me. So sometimes we get involved with these questions about, well, what about the others.

And it reminds me of Peter saying, and what about him? When the Lord said, feed my sheep, and he saw that apostle whom the Lord loved following him up, and he said, what about him? And Jesus said, well, suppose I saying, I'm going to keep him until I return. And so you pick up all kinds of theology from that verse about the other. But the point was, Peter, I told you, this is your job. Don't worry about what the other's going to do.

So in a sense, we don't know what the Lord has for us. But if we are called upon to contend, to share, to show compassion, we do it and New King James has an interesting word there at the end of verse 22 says on some have compassion making a distinction. Interesting. So it implies in my mind that in the Lord's wisdom when we get faced with that situation, he'll know, we'll know if we're abiding in him.

Whether to open our mouth and follow that, or whether to listen. Whether it's a time to speak out or a time to listen. I was thinking of Bonnie's question. You know, Bonnie, he listed earlier, he listed people that had already come to a settled position.

Take for example, they came out of the promised land. They could not believe the Lord could faithfully take them into the promised land. There were giants in the land and the Lord said, well if that's your decision, that was it. So he used that as an example of an apostate. But there were a few, right? that did believe the Lord. So out of that group of people, it kind of fits that there may be a group of apostates, but you may save someone out of that, if you use that example from the Old Testament there.

So I know there's a lot more to come. I think in verse 23 it says snatching some out of the fire, so it seems like there's some that can come back. I think it's kind of like the church discipline process where the church discipline process isn't about kicking people out. How many people can we kick out of the church? The church discipline process is how can we bring this person back to a right fellowship with God? So I think that's what the goal of this is, to snatch as many people out of the fire, not to throw them into it.

The Lord is not a nagger. He's very patient, but he doesn't... I think of Jesus with the rich young ruler. He didn't run after him when the rich young ruler went away sorrowing because he had much riches. The Lord didn't say, wait, wait, listen, let me tell you one more thing. There's a point, yeah. So there's a lot about it that... I have yet to learn, so I won't try to act wise in this area, but it just strikes me more and more. I keep forgetting, what's the name? None but the hungry? Miles, Andrew? Yeah. Anyway, a couple days ago there, we talked about Satan wants us to make instant decisions and do things rashly in the heat of the moment.

God's way is a settlement in quietness and confidence, Isaiah 30, 15. It was, that was the, So, God's way isn't the world's way. Absolutely. Okay, well in closing, the last two verses are often used as a closing to most services, so I thought I would close with these last two verses. Those last two verses really speak a lot to the fact that The Lord desires that we be strong so that we will have the ability to snatch others so to speak.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in his presence of his glory, blameless, with great joy, to the only God our Savior." Notice this, our Savior. I always like that. He's not just anybody's Savior. He's our Savior. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, authority, before all time, now and forevermore. Amen.

Thanks. Well, it's going to be some fun eight weeks to come. I thought that's what the doxology was there. Your father, we thank you so much, Lord. Thank you for our time, Lord. Lord, we just thank you for this little book of Jude, Lord. It has many challenging things to say to us, but it also has many things that are obvious. easy to understand the Lord and we thank you that we can spend our time these coming 8 weeks Lord we just pray for your spirit to guide us and we thank you for each of the teachers that will be teaching their sections Father and we pray for your spirit to guide them and that your truth would be revealed.