Alright here we are, the book of Jude, part 2.
We're going to cover verses 17 all the way to the end of this one-chapter epistle.
So let's do a little bit of review, shall we?
What we've learned so far.
First of all in the salutation part of the epistle (vs. 1& 2)
Jude, the early brother of James and Jesus, he refers to the church as:
"the called out," "the beloved of God," "the ones who are kept for Jesus."
And he recognizes the high regard and value of the church,
which is God's most valuable creation.
When you think about it, God's created a billion stars
and the church is worth more to Him than the billion stars.
There is a great value we see Jude placing on the church in God's eyes.
And of course he refers to the fact that Christ died for the church
and no other organism, no other unit, not other thing in creation,
has God sacrificed in order to save. The animals go extinct, and God doesn't stop that.
Stars flame out and God doesn't stop that. But God interceded in human history
in order to save man's soul.
Then he talks about the danger, verses 3 and 4. He was going to write a general
type of epistle, a general epistle on Christianity, if you wish,
encouraging the brothers to remain faithful.
But instead, he chose to write about a certain threat that was facing the church at that time.
There was a form of gnostic teaching.
Gnostic, from gnosis, which means knowledge.
A form of gnostic teaching that promoted the idea that the body and the spirit
were actually separate, so that what was done in one did not affect the other.
And, as I mentioned in our last lesson, if you bought into this type of teaching
it led to, among other things, immoral physical behavior because people
would think that whatever they did in the body had no effect on the soul.
There were two major (or main) dangerous affects of this teaching:
1. It would give excuse to sin without guilt or fear and this would lead to an immoral lifestyle.
Let's face it sinners like sin. The flesh is easily drawn to sin.
And what holds an unsaved person back from all out sin is the Law
which causes guilt and threatens punishment and so on and so forth.
And what holds the saved back from sin is the power of grace working in our lives,
moving us to obey God out of love and out of gratitude.
So if there is no connection between the actions of the flesh and our souls,
then the unsaved will give themselves wholeheartedly to sin and the saved
may be seduced into returning to the practice of sin, which was what was
leading them to condemnation in the first place.
Think about it, if Eve, who had no sin at all could be seduced into sin, then imagine
Christians can be seduced into rather easily because we are sinners.
Eve was created perfect. She had no sin in her. No "weakness of the flesh" but she was
seduced into disobeying God. So imagine us, if that happened to her, imagine us.
Our flesh is full of sin.
If we see no consequence in it, how easily seduced we could be.
And then the other danger of this doctrine, is the fact that it denies
the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
If there's no connection between the body and the soul, the flesh and the spirit
then what Jesus did in His body has no effect spiritually.
The cross is for nothing. Why go to the cross?
So by providing this teaching they were denying the gospel and the cross of Christ.
And of course this is the danger that Jude is warning them against.
If there is no connection between the body and the soul as far as sin is concerned
Then the offering up of Jesus' body pays for sins but He didn't have to do that,
because no one is condemned.
So His cross was for nothing.
So this is why in verse 3 he tells them (the Christians) to strive or fight or make an effort
to maintain the faith, or the set of teachings concerning Jesus and His Word
already given to them by the Apostles and not go off to some new teaching,
or additional teaching. We're to do the same today in our day as well.
We're to stick the same gospel as was taught to them many years ago.
And then he talks about dangerous men in verses 5 to 16.
So after summarizing the danger, Jude warns his readers that those who disobey God
will be punished, no matter who they are.
And he gives examples of those who were punished in the past.
The nation of Israel was punished for disobeying in the desert.
The angels were punished for disobeying in the spiritual world,
and even the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were punished for disobeying in the secular world.
He describes how these false teachers operate.
- They have immoral behavior. - They reject Christ's authority.
- They use false spirituality. - They will be punished like the rest for disobedience.
One reason that he compares them to Israel, angels, and so forth,
is that their attitude was proud.
And they saw themselves as superior to the Apostles and not subject to discipline or authority.
Jude reasons that if God punished His own chosen nation, as well as the mighty angels,
when they disobeyed, He could and He will punish these false teachers for their sins as well.
No matter how highly they thought of themselves.
And then he finishes he review by comparing these men to underwater reefs
that destroy or waterless clouds that promise but don't deliver in the end,
fruitless trees and so on. And he says in every generation ever since the beginning
of time such people never escape the judgement and punishment of God
and they will not escape in their generation as well.
And so in the final section that we're going to cover in this lesson,
Jude will explain to his readers how to avoid the danger.
A lesson that applies not only to that congregation (those people) but certainly
applies to us today in the modern world as well.
So how do you avoid the danger? Let's go to Jude and pick up in verse 17,
But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers,
following after their own ungodly lusts.”
These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.
The first thing he says to them is heed the warnings.
Heed the warnings of your teachers.
Here he is saying, Jesus' Apostles warned of these trials and these types of temptations.
Paul warned the elders in Acts 20, when he met with them.
And Peter warned in II Peter 3, again the leaders. There was a warning given to the
church, to be on guard against this type of thing. Not only them, but in every generation.
Then he goes on to say in verses 20 and 21,
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
So what does he say? #2 Build Yourself Up Spiritually
How do you protect against false teachers and false doctrine coming in?
Well, heed the warning of your teachers who are teaching you the correct doctrine,
and build yourself up spiritually. In other words, be proactive.
How? He mentions through prayer and through maintaining the love of God among yourselves,
and by persevering in waiting for the Lord. Don't get distracted by sin.
Be assured that the Lord will come
You know, false teachers and false teaching (sometimes not always done maliciously)
sometimes it's just laziness, sometimes it's just a bad idea that runs it's course
through the church and there is no one to check it, but usually when people are paying attention.
Usually when the brethren are making an effort to love one another.
Usually when there is a strong prayer life in a congregation bad ideas (false teachings)
don't get very far. It's when a congregation is not paying attention.
When a congregation becomes lazy spiritually.
When there starts to be division in the church that's a congregation that becomes ripe for attack.
Whether it's done inadvertently or on purpose still the church that is not prepared
the church that is not pre-warned, the church that is not proactively growing spiritually,
they are the ones that become vulnerable to these type of things.
And then he goes on to say in verses 22 and 23,
And have mercy on some, who are doubting;
save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear,
hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
So, what's the message here? Help the weak.
How do you avoid the danger?
1. Heed the warning 2. Build yourselves up spiritually, be proactive
3. Help those who are weak
Weak in wha t? Weak in the faith, in this case.
Because if the church was strong in the faith meaning they were maintaining the doctrine
the one doctrine that he talked about, if the church was strong in the knowledge
of the Word, strong in the idea of preserving the unity, well they'd be able to fend off attack.
In any congregation, there are those who are strong and those who are weak
so he says "help those who are weak in the faith." How? By teaching them and encouraging them
and supporting them and so on and so forth.
And try to bring those who are being carried away back to the faith.
But there is the warning, "don't get to close to their sin lest you get carried away too."
Some people say, "well you know I go to bars and so on, Jesus went to the sinners
and the publicans." Yes, Jesus to the sinners and publicans for what reason?
To teach them. To bring them to the understanding and the knowledge of who He was.
But He didn't hang around with them to share their vices. So we need to make sure
that we're not hanging around with people simply to share their vices, but rather
to encourage them to be faithful and to believe.
So there is danger, obviously, but you can do something about it for yourself
and for others as well.
So we read in verse 24 and 25 how he complete the epistle.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,
and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy,
to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen."
So that's doxology. A doxology is a spontaneous burst of praise.
And Jude ends his letter with praise for God and His Son Jesus Christ.
He hasn't been talking about that subject. He hasn't been talking about how wonderful God is
and how wonderful Jesus is and the wonderful things that They've done.
He has been talking about trouble in the church, judgement on the troublemakers,
warning to the brethren to be faithful and to persevere, etc.
That's what he has been talking about and then out of nowhere there is this,
"boom" - this expression of praise. That's what a doxology is.
A sudden burst of praise and glory to God.
So what's he saying in this doxology? First of all he praises God for His ability
to keep us from stumbling. In order words, from falling down into ignorance and sin.
And He does this by providing His Word and His Spirit to guide us and to strengthen us.
In the modern church we have the same thing, don't we? In today's church?
We have the same strength given to us. We have God's Word. We have the Spirit of God
living within us and we also have (the Apostles are long gone) leaders in our congregations.
We have the Elders that are leading us spiritually, we have evangelists and teachers
that are teaching us the Word, helping us to maintain that body of doctrine,
helping us to pass that body of doctrine (that body of teaching about Christ and His cross)
helping us to take that, learn it today and pass it on to our children, to the next generation.
So this is how God is helping us today and he also says (as far as the praise is concerned)
he praises God for His work in bringing us to God.
Without Christ we come before God simply as condemned sinners.
That's our status.
But Jesus sheds His blood and brings us into God's presence as people who are forgiven.
As people who are holy. As sons and daughters of God.
There is no fear for us to come before God because the judgment has been passed
over us, right? We've been found holy, we've been found acceptable, why?
Because our sins are forgiven, not because we have sin,
not because we're not guilty of sin, but because God has forgiven us our sins.
And so He brings us in this state to rejoice before God forever and only
Jesus can do this thing.
Jude says that Jesus, who accomplishes this, and God the Father who offers it,
deserve glory, deserve praise, and They deserve the majesty that Their in and that
we acknowledge of Them. They deserve dominion, rulership. They are God. They are in charge.
And we're in submission to Them. Authority. Another word for authority is judgment.
They're the ones that will do the judgment and They deserve to do the judgment.
And we will accept Their judgment.
And They deserve all of these things, right? The majesty and the glory and the authority,
and so on an so forth, They deserve all of these things forever.
They've always had it and They deserve to have it forever.
That is the sense of his praise, the core of his praise.
He closes with the word "Amen" ('let it be so', 'this is the way it should be')
So Jude points out the false teachers, he reveals their sin, he warns about their punishment,
and then he encourages the saints to continue faithfully following the teachings given to them by the Apostles.
And he says if they do, they will receive the blessings of heaven as surely as the
false teachers will receive the punishments of hell.
So basically, in some form, that's pretty much what he is saying here in this letter.
So in closing this brief series, I'd want to re-emphasise the important fact that Jude
appeals to his readers to follow the set body of doctrine that was already present
and distributed throughout the church and considered “authoritative” by the Apostles
and the church leaders at that time.
In other words, all the information about Christ, all the teaching about the church,
everything we needed to know about salvation and God and the future and the return of Christ, etc.
all of that has already been given, it's already contained. There's no new information.
There was no new information. At that end of the writing of this here, back in the 1st century,
at the end of the writing of the New Testament, that's the sum total of the information that God
has decided to give us about Himself, about salvation and the future.
Jude's appeal in this letter was to hold on to that
standard of teaching which was complete and non-negotiable.
Even today, 2,000 years later, we in the churches of Christ hold to this idea that
the entire body of basic doctrine concerning Christianity was recorded and preserved in the 1st century.
We know they gathered them together in book form several centuries later,
but the actual production of it was complete back then.
This is why we emphasize the idea that our task in teaching the Scriptures is not to
change, add, or subtract from this body of doctrine but rather it is to:
1. Understand.
That's our job. Our job is not to change this. Our job is to understand it.
We study to understand precisely what the writers were saying to their readers, the 1st century church.
This is why there is emphasis on the meaning of the original languages and context of what was being said.
We want to understand in English in our day what was being said in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years ago.
And we can. It's not beyond us.
There are some religious groups that promote the idea that Bible is too complicated,
an ordinary person can't [understand it] but Jesus never said we could.
Paul never said that we could. Paul said to Timothy (in II Timothy 3:15), he says to Timothy,
"From an early age you have known the Holy Writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation."
What was Paul saying? He was saying as a young person you already knew what
the Scripture (what the Bible) was saying and the knowledge of that, the knowledge of
Scriptures, led you to what? To Salvation? He doesn't say there anywhere well you were
too young to read the Bible. You as an individual, too ignorant to read the Bible.
As an ordinary person you couldn't understand the Bible. He didn't say that.
He says from an early age you have known the Holy Writings.
You knew. You were taught and you understood.
So if Timothy, young man back then, could understand, we can understand today.
And our job, today, our task in the church (as far as Bible study is concerned)
is to understand what the Scriptures mean. We want to understand.
That's why there is such an emphasis in the "Churches of Christ" on Bible Teaching.
We have Bible class on Sunday mornings. We have a Worship Service where there is
a sermon. We have an evening service where there is more teaching and preaching.
We have usually a mid-week service where there is even more teaching.
And we have retreats, seminars, lectureships and so on.
All of these things are based on the idea of understanding
more perfectly what the Scriptures are teaching.
And then secondly: #2 Obey.
Once we have understood in context the teaching of Scripture,
we want to apply accurately what was being taught then (to those people)
we want to be able to bring that and make a proper application to ourselves in our own lives today.
The Scriptures were given by God for people of every age
but it requires some effort to make sure that we apply correctly today
the instructions and concepts communicated several thousand years ago.
It's possible.
We just have to understand the context (the point that was being made)
Like in Jude, is there anything that Jude was saying to these people (some 2000 years ago)
that can't be applied today? Right?
1. Watch out for false teaching. 2. False teachers better be careful cause they will be judged.
Is there anything there that we can't do today?
No.
We can be careful of false teachers. We can do that. We can try to understand the
Scriptures. We can do that. We can hang on to the body of teaching. We can do that.
There is nothing in Jude, that Jude was saying to the church at that time which
cannot be applied today in the same way in our church today some 1000s of years ago.
The Scriptures were given by God for people of every age including this one.
However, once we do grasp the meaning, we want to obey the things God has given us in His word.
In Matthew 28 for example, Jesus said: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Is there anything there that we cannot obey today? Go into all the world.
They went into all the world. We can go into all the world.
Preach the gospel. They preached the gospel. We can preach the gospel.
To who? To all the nations. OK. Make disciples of them. Can we make disciples today?
How? By baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Can we do that today? Sure, water is water. Baptism is baptism.
The name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, right?
And then what does he say? Teaching them to do what?
Teaching them to obey. Yes. All things that I have commanded you.
All the things He has commanded and taught. Can we do that today?
Sure, we can do that today. See what I'm saying? We understand what it says.
We understand the context so that we properly grasp what the point it.
The spirit of the thing. And then we apply it to our situation today.
And the third things that we try to do. 1. Understand. 2. Obey
3. Pass it on.
Once we have understood and begun to apply these things in our lives as Christians,
we begin not only teaching others this “body of doctrine,”
we also teach them to pass on this cycle of learning, obeying, passing on to the next generation.
Again, Paul says in II Timothy 2:2:
"The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses,
entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."
Short form: Whatever I've taught you from the Word, you understand and you obey and then teach others.
And you also teach others to pass it on to the next generation.
Can we do today? Absolutely. We're in the process of doing it.
As a matter of fact, the whole BibleTalk.tv (our internet ministry) is an effort to do that.
To accurately teach the Scriptures in such a way where the information is preserved
and can be easily passed on, one to another using modern technology.
This is why we have training classes.
why we take a long time to select elders and preachers, teachers and deacons. Why?
Because they must be ones who are able not only to understand and themselves put into practice;
they must also be able to instill in others the desire and ability to pass
this treasure (the Word) on to the next generation.
Our congregation here has been in existence for over 75 years.
Now whether or not we continue to exist for another 10 or 100 years,
will not depend on getting just more people to attend this building.
Or to expand this building.
Our future depends on whether or not we can teach the church to understand God's Word,
to obey God's Word, to preserve and to pass it on intact to the next generation.
That's our goal. And that's the goal that's been given to us by the Bible.
That's not something that the elders came up with or the preachers at a ministry meeting.
Somebody said, "you know what would be a good idea, that we kind of teach the church,
and we try to give them the information that's in the Bible,
and you know I have a good idea! Why don't we just make sure that
they pass that along to the next generation." Nobody came up with that idea.
That idea (that command) is in the Scriptures
The idea that there's one body of doctrine is not something we came up with.
That's not a "Church of Christ" thing.
That's what Jude says.
And so we in the modern era, we try to understand, we try to obey,
and then we try to find ways to preserve and to pass on to the next generation,
the teachings that were given to us. And encourage them to make sure that they
pass it to the next generation and so on and so forth.
So my hope for us here listening to this class. Those hearing it on video or in book form.
My hope and my prayer is that you will be found faithful if the Lord comes during our lifetime.
And if not, I pray that our children will be faithful and that we will successfully pass
on to them the teachings of Christ and the body of doctrine that Jude talks about
and that they in turn will understand it, obey it, pass on to the next generation.
If we do that, we have done what God has asked us to do in this particular field of endeavor.
That's the end of our short 2-lesson series on the Book of Jude.
I appreciate your attention. I pray that God bless you in your study of God's Word. Thank you.