Here then the reading of God's Holy Word. Now 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 is 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 in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. 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. These people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Ascends the reading of God's holy word. Let us bow and ask his blessing upon it. Almighty gracious Father, since as our whole salvation depends upon our true understanding of your holy word, give all of us hearts that are free from worldly affairs that may hear and believe your holy word. Listen with all diligence and faith that we may rightly understand your gracious will, cherish it, and live by it. with all earnestness to your praise and honor through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We come once more in Jude to some difficult verses. Last time we were in Jude, we took a little bit of an academic rabbit trail. and talked about some things. Don't worry, we're not going to do that again this week. But maybe this is one of the reasons you don't hear books like Jude preached very often. There are a lot of difficulties to work through. But we have been working through these small books. Difficult though they sometimes are, those ones that are often overlooked in our Bibles because all of God's Word is His gift to His church. And we want to be blessed by it. And so this morning we'll try to focus on the forest so much as each individual little detail of controversy we could get into with some of these difficulties in these verses. Also try not to run too far down any rabbit trails, beneath any one tree or another. And part of the difficulty in this passage is that Jude alludes to various Jewish traditions. He alludes to books that are not part of the Old Testament, but were things that the Jewish people read and understood and were kind of part of their broader culture. There is much debate about these. What is Jude doing when he quotes them? Is he saying that they should be in the Bible? Is he saying that they are true but not part of the Bible? Is he just using them as illustrations much in the same way we might as pastors refer to some story that everybody knows or some work of literature? How do they teach us, some ask, that we should interpret other parts of the Bible? Those are some of the questions that come up and that if you really want to get into it, you can come see me after the service and we can nerd out if that's your thing and talk about some of these. But what we'll try to do is to focus on Jude's main point instead of every detail that we could go through in these things. One thing we see in this text that we do see in this book, as short as it is, is that Jude likes the number three. He likes to do things in threes. And so in this passage, what he does is he gives three examples of sort of infamous judgment, of notorious judgments of sinners. But he does this to expose the people, I've called them the creepers. We don't really know what they are, but they've crept into the church, Jude says, those who've crept in. And Jude references these kind of three examples of sin and judgment to expose the false professors, the false teachers, if they are teachers, who have crept in and to show what they are really like. He does this also to warn his readers not to follow them. He says, these are the kind of people that were in Sodom. These are the kind of people in the wilderness. These people are behaving like fallen angels. So don't you behave like them. And after he gives these three examples, he then moves on to a description of the present false teachers. He uses that word, these people, when he talks to them throughout his letter. And he gives us three examples of their sin and ungodliness. Again, to warn us, do not be like them. Do not follow in their steps and even be rightly disgusted by their behavior. There is in these verses from Jude, a bit of an emotional appeal, not an inappropriate emotional appeal. but to have a proper emotion which is founded on the truth of who these people are and what they are doing. Through this, Jude teaches us, if we might indeed forget, that God is indeed a God who judges. And the false Christians who've crept into the church They are exactly the kind of people upon whom his judgment falls. God indeed judges, and the false teachers of Jude's day who crept in are the sort of people who will endure his judgment. So he says, do not join them. Don't be like them, but rather instead put your faith in Christ for deliverance from judgment and for victory over sin. Unlike the false teachers, put your faith in Christ for deliverance from judgment and victory over sin. Jude starts with talking about judgments in the past, past judgments. He lists three of them for us. The first one he lists comes from Numbers 14. We alluded to this before in our meditation verses. And he starts out with the example that is most like the one his readers are in. Because he starts with the situation of God's people. He deals with those who are in the church, at least from an outward and formal perspective. He talks about the people that God saved out of Egypt, the nation of Israel, the church in the Old Testament. This fits his context because remember he's addressing here people who've come into the church, not the world outside that hates the church, but people who he says have crept into the church and yet from within are denying Christ. These people who've crept in are members of the church. They come to the love feasts of the church. That's just what the example he uses talks about. What is the sin mentioned in Numbers 14 here? The sin mentioned is the sin of unbelief. Sin mentioned is the sin of unbelief. There are many instances of rebellion in the desert, but as we read before, God said, why does this people not believe in me? That's what Jude is picking up on here. It's that story of the spies who are gonna go into the land. Do you remember that, kids? It's one of those Bible stories from the Old Testament you might know. And they went and they saw how wonderful the land was and they gathered these huge clusters of grapes. But it wasn't just the grapes that were big. What else was big? The people. They were really tall, they said. They're bigger than us. We'll be like bugs and they'll squash us. And so the spies come back and say, yeah, we can't do it. We can't take the promised land. Who do you kids remember? Who are the two spies that disagreed with all the others? You remember their names? Joshua and Caleb, that's right. There is indeed sin here. But what Jude highlights and what Numbers highlights is that this is sin that is tied to disbelief in God. It is sin that is characterized by a lack of faith. The people are not trusting God to bless them. They are not trusting God to empower them to overcome their enemies who reside in the promised land. And so they say, slavery in Egypt is preferable. Let's get a new leader. They've maybe got t-shirts with pictures of Moses that say, not my mediator. Let's get somebody else and go back to Egypt. Why did God bring us out here to die, they said. This helps us to see a way in which I think we could misunderstand this text when we look at the particular sin that is highlighted. There is a great emphasis here, particularly on the church and the way the judgment of God will come upon those who sin. And some people look at passages like this and mistakenly, they think that what's being taught here is that God saves people, but then it's up to those people to stay saved. We could read books like this, like Jude or books like 2 Peter that emphasize the judgment of God. And we can think that they teach that you were saved by grace in the beginning, but then after that, it's up to you. You've got to complete your salvation by works. You kind of get a jumpstart by grace, but then you better hope there's plenty of fuel in the tank to keep going. If we don't keep up our salvation, then we won't be saved in the end. Or as we might put it, some people believe that you get in by grace, but you stay in only by the power of your works. Not by faith, not by believing and trusting in God. That's not at all what the Bible is teaching. That's not at all what God is like. Children, you've probably heard from your parents, I love you no matter what. You think that they're any better than your heavenly father? Would God kick out his own children like a parent that said, all right, your room's not clean, out on the streets, no more dinner for you, no shelter, I'm done. See, the problem here is not that you have people who are believing and trusting in God. and yet they fall because they are still marred by sin. You have people who aren't believing and trusting in God. That's the problem in Numbers 14, and that is the issue that results in judgment here. He says, they've seen my signs, but they don't trust in the goodness of God. They don't trust in the power of God to deliver them. It's a picture of those who don't believe. Where are they looking, we might ask? They're looking at the people in the land, and they're really tall. And then they say, we can't beat them. And they're half right there. But where they're not looking is they're not looking at God, because God can defeat the people in the land. And eventually, 40 years later, he does. But the problem with this generation is that they did not trust in the power of God, in the goodness of God, but looked only upon their own power. They would not humbly submit to God and trust in Him to deliver them. And so they come into punishment. There is the sin of Numbers 14, and the punishment is that they were destroyed. They died in the wilderness. They did not get to enter the rest of God. That's what it's called when they came into the promised land to dwell in the presence of God with his people in the land that he promised to give them. Everyone 20 years old and above as they wandered 40 years in the wilderness died, except those two guys, Caleb and Joshua. They went and they perished in the desert. They were destroyed, Jude says. And it was only the next generation, their children, who would come and enter the promised land. This is the picture painted of those who, again, were a part of God's people in an outward sense. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, those who were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea, who ate spiritual food and spiritual drink, but they didn't enter his rest because they didn't believe in him. It reminds us of the central importance of faith in our lives. Trusting in God and not in ourselves, that is the only means of salvation. The only way we receive the free grace of God is through faith. There is no salvation outside of faith. Even for those who are members of the church on the roll, who come and eat the Lord's supper, who hear his word preached, who are baptized, If they do not trust in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their sins, they will come into judgment. That applies to all of us. It applies to our children who've been born as members of the church, born into God's people. They have many great blessings. They grow up in Sunday school. They have parents who teach them the word of God, memorize the catechism. They memorize scripture. They know the truth of God. Yet it is up to them, therefore, after that to trust in the God whom they have heard. To trust in the God who's revealed himself to them in church and family worship. You're not automatically in. You must believe and you must trust. First example Jude gives is this desert generation. They sinned in unbelief. They perished in the wilderness. But he goes on to another one. He goes on to talk about angels. It says this in verse six, talking about angels. And what he's referring to here is a traditional Jewish interpretation of Genesis chapter six. And I'll read a couple of verses from Genesis six. It says, this is right before the flood, when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took them as their wives, any they chose. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. Some older commentators think what's being talked about here in Jude is the original fall of Satan and other angels. But the language Jude uses here and in other places makes it fairly clear that he's thinking of this Jewish tradition, which is found among other places in this book called 1 Enoch. It's an extra biblical Jewish book. And there the interpretation is that, as it so often is in scripture, the sons of God are angels. That's a way of speaking about angels that scripture uses. It's also a way of speaking about God's people. And that's where the difference of interpretation of Genesis 6 comes in. But according to this Jewish interpretation, which Jude is citing, Whether he's using it as an illustration or whether he's endorsing it as this is the right way to understand Genesis 6 is not something we'll delve into today. But in 1st Enoch, what happens is the angels come down and leave heaven. They intermarry with humankind. And as tradition goes, they make giants and there are giants in the land and they are punished by God. And that's the sin that is spoken about here as Jude says they abandon their domain and according to this Jewish tradition this is where all the problems on earth come from is the angels come down intermarry and they teach man to be really bad. And that's what necessitates this flood. Paul thinks it had something to do with Adam. I tend to agree with him. But according to the Jewish, the larger Jewish tradition, which Jude doesn't cite all of it, very often it was seen kind of as the origin of evil in this tradition. But what they did is the angels left where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing and went somewhere else. They went if we look at the next section spoiler alert. He starts talking about Sodom and the people of Sodom pursuing the ESV says unnatural desire and literally talks about pursuing strange flesh or other flesh. And it could be that that's what the angels here would have been doing. They left heaven and they went to live among men. They violated the created order. They sought to leave their own place to seek another one. That is their sin. They're doing things against the created order of God. And so according to the tradition, as Jude cites it here, they are doomed to this gloomy sort of death row. They are kind of under punishment now, left in these gloomy dungeons in darkness, but they were gonna be held there until the final judgment. As Jude says, you're kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of that great day. Again, you see sin and you see punishment, locked up until that great day of the Lord would come. So Jude says, God has judged his own people who didn't believe in him. God has judged angels who didn't do what they were supposed to do. Then he gives another example. This is a famous one, Sodom and Gomorrah. He comes back to Old Testament biblical examples, and it's one of the most infamous examples of wickedness and one of the starkest pictures of God's judgment in Scripture. It's kind of a famous one that's used in the Bible and in Jewish tradition as well. Just like the Exodus is kind of the event of salvation in the Old Testament, in some ways Sodom and Gomorrah is the event of judgment. What was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? It was the sin of sexual immorality. Just like after the angels came, as the story goes, here, the men are actually going after the angels that visited Lot. There's possibly that comparison there. They didn't know that they were angels, but in any case, when we read scripture, the men wanted to violently take them. They demanded that Lot give up these guests of his to fulfill their own perverted desires. Once again, you see them violating the created order, not in leaving their domain as the angels did, but at least in throwing away God's design for how intimacy is to be used. And so God punishes them. He destroyed those cities by fire and only Lot and his family escaped. rained down fire and brimstone upon them. And writers at this time would point to some of the physical features of the area where it was still an area of a sulfurous waste. And they would say, look and remember what God did. God judged. He brought destruction. And in some ways there's a culmination from destruction of the people of Israel in the desert to the eternal chains and waiting for the final judgment that we see with the angels to this kind of climactic judgment of eternal fire being poured down from God. And so Jude teaches us that judgment is real. For those who fail to trust in God and instead continue in their sin and unbelief, there awaits a great judgment. And that brings us to the second half. Why is he bringing up all of these judgments in the past? He says all of this stuff applies to the present. All of this applies to these people also. That brings us to the present problems. that Jude's church is facing. These people have crept in. He's saying they're just like these groups in their sin. So they will be just like these groups in their judgment. And he makes them question, is this the side you really want to be on? In a way, it's something we kind of can't do anymore because it's been overdone. But when somebody used to say something that was kind of bad, you could compare them to Nazis. Like somebody said, well, you know, maybe we should take all of these people and round them up in some kind of camp. You say, you sound like a Nazi. You might want to rethink that position. In America, certain practices used to be something that people were thinking about, eugenics, sterilizing undesirable people to make the human race better. And then after Hitler, you can't really talk about that anymore, thank goodness. It's an evil and wicked thing. Hitler's kind of an extreme famous example of evil. So Jude brings up these famous examples of evil and says, hey, that's what these people among you that have crept in, this is what they're like. You might be tempted to follow them, but do you really want to go down this road? You've seen where this highway leads. So he begins to apply this to the false teachers, the creepers. I keep calling them the false teachers because that's what Peter talked about, but they're a little bit different in Jude. He just talks about them creeping in. First, these people have a false wisdom. They seem to claim that their way, their kind of version or spin on Christianity is the really true better way. And it says they are relying on dreams. relying on dreams, this is the sort of language used of prophetic visions. Very often the prophets of God would see and receive revelation in a dream or a vision, and God would give that dream or vision so that they could then reveal it to everyone else. And so we read in Acts 2, quoting prophecies of the Old Testament, in the last days it shall be, God declares, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Same language used there. But this supposed revelation they have that they rely on runs counter to biblical revelation. What they say, well, God told me this is the way to do it and it's all right. I saw this in a dream or a vision. And yet what does Jude say? What does he say at the beginning of verse five when he starts this section? Now I want to remind you though you once fully knew it. He says, I'm going to lay down some truth, and you've heard this all before when we came and preached the gospel to you. And yet these dreams seem to run against that. He says in verse three, which we've looked at before, he talked about contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. This message of Christianity. And yet these people have some better idea now from some dream they had, supposedly, And Jude says, no, go back to what you were taught. Go back to the true gospel that you were first given. I'm going to remind you of it, though you know it. We gave it to you straight the first time. And yet these people counter that by their behavior. They run afoul of the faith once we're all delivered. Again, Jude likes these threes, and so he lists three sins of these false teachers. First, they defile the flesh. It's not hard to see the connection above to the sexual immorality of Sodom or the angels who went after strange flesh with them. 1 Corinthians 6.18 says, They defile the flesh. It's not exactly clear how they do so, whether it's the sort of homosexual lust that was seen at Sodom, or whether it's any other sort of lust outside the biblical parameters of marriage, which God gave the good gift of intimacy to man and woman to be used in that context. He defiled the flesh. They also reject authority. Literally, they reject lordship. And that, I think, makes it clear that the authority they reject is the authority of God Himself, the authority of the Lord. They do that by continuing to sin against His law. They do that by violating His created order as He made the world to work in a certain way. He made the woman for the man and the man for the woman to be together, to be faithful to one another. We saw that theme above, the angels stepping out of their God-given place, the people of Sodom stepping out of the natural order to follow unnatural desires. These people reject the authority of God. Finally, he says, and this is where more difficulty comes in, they despise angels. They blaspheme the glorious ones. Again, what does that mean? How would you go about blaspheming angels in a bad way? For one, we ask what type of angels is he talking about? The good angels of God or the fallen angels? And what does it mean to blaspheme them? Some people think this refers to evil angels, in which case these people would be mocking the power of demonic influence, while at the same time, they're sort of in slavery to the demonic lusts, which they are tempted by. Well, perhaps they don't trust in God and seek victory on their own. One commentator looked at Acts 19 where some Jewish exorcists went and started trying to cast out demons in the name of Jesus that Paul preached, and yet they didn't know Jesus. And then the demon kind of got them. They couldn't do it because they weren't trusting in the power of God, but kind of seeking victory on their own and just using Jesus' name like a magic formula. In some ways, it would be like the Israelites who didn't trust in God for the victory. But instead of not doing it on their own, these people think, I got nothing to be afraid of the demons. And yet they're not trusting God, the only one that can bring victory over them. Other commentators believe it's speaking of good angels. These people are despising good things that good angels do. For one, angels are mediators of the law of God. We read that in Hebrews 2. Therefore we much pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? There again, the law from the Old Testament delivered by angels is the same law these people want to put aside. And it seems that perhaps they think, well, I don't have to listen to the angels' law. It's not really God's law, it's just the angel's law. So I don't have to obey it anymore. But Jude has argued that who is the one who brings judgment? God is the one who brings judgment on those who break his law. Even as we've looked at before, Jesus is the one who delivered the people out of Egypt and yet who punished in the wilderness. But either way, in some way here, they are either neglecting the authority and the power of God to give victory over the evil angels, or else they are not looking to the power of God to pronounce a judgment. And that seems to be what's illustrated in verse nine. This comes from another Jewish traditional story called the Assumption of Moses. It's linked with Zechariah 3, which is kind of quoted there, the Lord rebuke you. But the archangel Michael is trying to bury Moses because remember Moses didn't get to enter the promised land and the devil comes and he does what the devil does. And he says remember all Moses sins. He doesn't deserve this. Why should he get a nice burial. And instead of telling him off the archangel Michael says the Lord rebuke you. The Lord rebuke you. In Zechariah 3, it's the priest Joshua in his dirty robes before God. And God says, the Lord rebuke you. Again, Satan coming as an accuser. And yet, what is the point of this? The Archangel Michael in this story looks to the judgment of God, not himself. He's pointing to God as a judge. And that is what he's outlined in the first verses we looked at. God indeed is the judge. You cannot despise his authority. You cannot despise his judgment. You cannot look to yourself either to conquer the demons or to be free from the word given through angels. These people despise angels. They corrupt the flesh. And they reject God's authority. Jude concludes in verse 10 with these words. These people blaspheme all they don't understand. Picking up again on this idea of blaspheming angels. They don't really get and understand what they're even doing there. And they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Despite their claims to heavenly revelation, he says, they don't really get it. They say they've got these dreams and visions, but they claim this high knowledge. But Jude says, literally, they are lower down to the level of animals. All they can understand is creaturely instincts. And just as all the previous examples showed, there was a sin, and Jude is listed three, and what follows is judgment. And he says, so they will be destroyed. Their lusts of which they will not repent will be their destruction. I'll be judged just like the examples Jude has enumerated above. There is a judgment to come for those who reject God, for those who refuse to trust in him, for those who willfully continue in their sin and throw off his law and his created order. Jude says we've seen it again. Excuse me, he says we've seen it before and we will indeed see it again. How then are we to escape such a judgment as this? Jude gives us in these verses a picture, to use the language of the sermon from last week, a picture of what Jesus is like. Ferguson used that language. Jude tells us that Jesus is one who will judge. John's gospel makes that clear. The father has given all judgment into the hands of the son. As we confess, he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. How are we to stand in such a judgment? How will we escape when the actions of all men are weighed in the balances of God's justice? When even the secrets of our heart that no one else knows are laid bare, how can we stand in that judgment? The way of escape is by faith in Jesus Christ. Remember what Ferguson said as well about what he is like. He is one who will come to judge, but he's not come yet. And now the invitation is there, come to me. Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden. The same Jesus who will judge now says come. And as we read before from John's gospel, everyone who believes in him will not come into judgment. And why will they not come into judgment? Because if you were trusting in Jesus Christ, in one sense, you've been through the judgment already in him. You've been through it in him when he came to earth and he took on human flesh that he could die, that he could drink the cup of his father's wrath. All of these great pictures of divine wrath are just pictures. The judgment in the wilderness, fire and brimstone coming down on Sodom. They are pictures of the infinite wrath of a just God against sin. And yet they were poured out on the person of Jesus Christ on the cross. They're pictures of what will happen on the final day, but they're pictures of what has happened already on Calvary. And so if you're united to Christ, when God looks at you, He sees you who are trusting in Him, And he sees Jesus Christ. He sees the one who has borne the punishment already. The one who has already been through this judgment. Jesus himself, who is to be the great judge, has already been judged. The condemnation you deserve fell on him. So then do not have evil and unbelieving hearts, but confess your sin to God. Repent of it, turn away from it and turn toward him. Do not be like the people in the wilderness who doubted God's goodness and mercy to them. Why would he deliver us from Egypt just to let us die here? His goodness is there for you. His goodness sent his son to bear your penalty. Trust in what he has already done for you in Jesus Christ. The picture of Ferguson brought us last week of the weak and wounded, sick and sore, those weary and heavy laden. That's the opposite of these creepers, isn't it? Proud, blaspheming. Put off that pride and come humbly to Christ and he will give you rest. And then no judgment will remain for you. Let's bow in prayer.