Well, we're going to be continuing our study in the small letter of Jude. Last week we examined this situation. It's an urgent situation confronting the church, and it's so urgent that Jude is compelled to change what he was originally going to write to the church, and he's compelled to write about these false teachers. It was that bad. It was that serious. Jude saw the church under attack. He saw the very foundation of the Christian faith at risk. He writes to warn God's people to earnestly contend for the faith. And this morning we're going to begin looking at what God has to say about these false teachers and this judgment. So let's stand once again out of respect for the reading of God's Word. What we hold in our hands is the inspired and errant words of our God. Let's read Jude 5 through 7. That will be our text. Now I desire to remind you Though you know all things once for all that the Lord, after saving a 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 is kept in eternal bonds under 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. That's the reading of God's word. You may be seated. Let's pray. Holy Father, I come to you inadequate to teach your people, to instruct them in your words. I am just your mouthpiece. And I pray that, Father, you would speak, that you would teach us what it is we need to know out of your word. There are some weighty, heavy things here. And Lord, I know that this is not a popular message that people want to hear, but it is what you said. And we want to be loyal to you before any and everyone else. So Father, help us as your people to receive what it is you're saying. Help us to act accordingly. Give us a proper fear and reverence for you from this text we read. And I pray if there's anyone in our midst who doesn't know the saving grace of Christ, would you reach that soul, even today, as we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Historians have puzzled over what is regarded as Adolf Hitler's greatest blunder in World War II. Hitler was himself a veteran of World War I. He had observed Germany's incredible failure, really, of trying to wage a two-front war in East and West at the same time. And as a military strategist, one familiar with warfare history, Hitler was also well aware of Napoleon's invasion of Russia more than a century before. He knew how that Napoleon had invaded Russia in June of 1812 and how the Russians retreated and they scorched the earth behind them and they let winter come. And winter and starvation and disease would alone destroy Napoleon's grand army. Regardless, having so quickly gobbled up most of Europe in just two years, Hitler was power hungry and he was under this delusion that he was invincible. And so he brushed aside the history lessons. He brushed aside what history would have informed him of and invaded Russia in June of 1941. And this blunder would mark the beginning of the end for the Nazi dictator. When winter came, the German army was forced to retreat and Hitler had committed himself to a war he could not win. George Santayana, he was a philosopher, told us, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And I know many young people in America and our country, they live their lives as if the past is just completely irrelevant. Why do I need to know about the past? The past is boring. The famous American inventor Henry Ford is famed to have said, history is bunk. And why do we need history? And somebody will say to you, maybe if you're a believer, trying to witness some about the gospel, the story of Jesus Christ, why do I care about what happened to Jerusalem 2,000 years ago? Why do I care about what that old book has to say? These are questions our culture asks. That's not relevant to me, people say. That's not relevant to my life. Let's talk about the present. I want to talk about the future. Well, here's why it matters. Because the past has everything to do with the present and the future. Because what was determines what is and what will be. Because history does repeat itself and will repeat itself. And nothing can teach us and warn us or inform us on the subject matter that we call life better than the past. So we don't have to become regular historians. That's not my point this morning. But if you're a Christian, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you believe that God gave you his word here, then let me tell you. You need to take seriously the history God has preserved for us in Scripture. Paul wrote Romans 15, 4. Whatever things were written in earlier times were written for our instruction. God gave you his word for your learning, for your instruction. So what does this have to do with Jude? What does this have to do with the text we're examining this morning? Well, Jude is writing to give us as the church a history lesson. It's God's history lesson on apostasy. He wants us to learn from the past. The textbook he's using is what God himself wrote. And the subject matter is severe. It's arresting. So the thrust of our text is that God is a history lesson for all of us living in these days of apostasy. For those of us living in days where many, many that we even thought, wow, that was a great teacher. That was somebody I respected. And they're departing from the truth. God says, here's a history lesson to warn us all. And it ought to leave a strong impression on us. Here's how it begins. Verse 5, Jude says, Now I desire to remind you. He's given us the introduction already in verses 1 and 2. We saw that a couple weeks ago. Then he's given us the purpose and occasion for his letter. That was verses 3 and 4. Now he begins the real substance, the real body of his letter. He says, I only desire to remind you. Apparently, Jewish readers were, most of them at least, Jewish Christians. So they knew their Old Testament. They knew the Hebrew Bible. They knew the stories. They knew what God had said. Jude desired to remind them of things that they were familiar with from Old Testament history. He acknowledges, I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all. Now the NIV translates this, though you already know all this. And I think that's a legitimate sense of what he's saying. Jude's not saying, you know it all, you know everything already. Of course not. These people didn't have it all figured out. He's saying, what I'm about to tell you is something you've heard before. But that's OK. You need to hear it again. And you need the spirit of God many times to take old truth that we know in our minds and to refresh us with it and to impact us with it. And that's his point here. He's going to give them familiar truth. And here's the first of God's judgments that we must remember. The first of these history lessons. It is the apostate Israelites in the wilderness. That's verse 5. Apostate Israelites in the wilderness. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. So the Lord miraculously delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. It's a great story. In fact, there is no greater demonstration of God's deliverance anywhere in the Old Testament other than the Israelites being delivered out of Egypt. You had well over a million people here in Egypt slaving under bondage in a most deplorable bondage. They were carrying these heavy loads day in and day out, having to work for Pharaoh. They didn't have their rights. They suffered the sting of the whip, and they had, even as Exodus records, the sudden intrusion of Egyptian soldiers entering their homes, killing their firstborn males to keep their population, as it were, from becoming too large. We can't even imagine living in such a state. And moreover, they were under the man who was the mightiest man in the world at the time, Pharaoh. He was the most powerful dictator in the world at that time. And yet the Israelites had no leader to organize them. They didn't have a plan. They didn't have any means with which to obtain their liberty. There was no hope of deliverance. They were condemned. If you were born into this society, you were to inherit slavery and you were to live and die as a slave. That was it. Sorry, pal, that's it. And yet these people, God delivered them, we're told, through miracles. You can read about it in the beginning chapters of Exodus. And so we can see how God's deliverance is so incredible, but along the same lines then, such an incredible bondage, such an incredible deliverance, we can now see how it was such an incredible departure from the faith. Such an incredible departure from God that we are told, as Jude relates in verse 5, they did not believe. They still didn't believe God. These people redeemed out of Egypt actually departed from following the Lord, you know, before the children of Israel entered into the land of Canaan. They were brought there to the borders and Moses, by the word of God, sent in 12 spies into the land to spy out the land, a reconnaissance mission. And it wasn't a mission that was intended to decide Do we have enough to take these guys? Can we indeed conquer these enemies? That wasn't the point of the mission. The point of the mission was simply to gather data and to discover how they were going to take the land, because God had already promised to give it to them. And it was to them to believe and to act on God's word. But you know the story. I mean, they came back and 10 of the 12 spies reported, we can't do this. We can't do this. I don't care what God said. We aren't able to take the land. They saw those giants, they saw the people there, they were scared. And they started grumbling against God and against Moses. Actually, they took up stones to kill Moses. Can you imagine that? And Moses would have been toast, except God intervenes. And this is what God says in Numbers 14. Surely all the men who have seen my glory and my signs, that is miracles, which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put me to the test these 10 times and not listen to my voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers. He goes on to say, you will all of you, all of you who griped against me, who did not believe, departed from faith in me. When you saw all my mighty works, you will die in this wilderness. And your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for 40 years, and they will go in after your generation is gone. God took very seriously the apostasy of these people. Fast forward about 1,500 years later. Paul the Apostle is writing to New Testament Christians. By extension, he's writing to us. And he says this in 1 Corinthians 10. I do not want you to be unaware, brethren. None of you are going to be unaware after this morning how that Our fathers were all under the cloud. They all passed through the same sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were all drinking from one spiritual rock that followed them, that is Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were laid low in the wilderness. They perished. Now these things happened, Paul says, as examples for us, that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. Verse 11, Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come. You see what he's saying? All right. It happened. It's etched in history. I've preserved it for you in my word. And it's for you as an example that you would not follow the same path of departure away from the truth. And verse 12 gives us the real punchline. Paul says, therefore, if anyone thinks he stands, take heed, lest he fall. lest he fall. Christian, when you hear of others falling away from faith, when you hear of churches closing or people changing their doctrinal statements and no longer adhering to the gospel of Jesus Christ, no longer affirming the Bible as the Word of God, don't get a cavalier attitude. Don't get an attitude of, well, how dare they? And I would never do that. That's not the right response. From Jude's text here, we ought to fear. We ought to tremble when we hear of things like that. I remember in July of 2019, the lead pastor of Covenant Life Church, that's the founding church of Sovereign Grace Ministries. And this pastor was also the author of several well-known Christian books, announced that he and his wife were separating and that he no longer held to faith in Jesus Christ. He says, I'm no longer a Christian, I don't believe that stuff anymore. I remember my brother telling me about that. I remember my response. Sad, yes. Surprised, yes. But you know what really gripped me? It was the thought that but for the grace of God, there go I. What is to exempt me from falling away? It is only the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. That ought to cause us to fear and to tremble. You see, that was these people. That's Jude's point. They'd seen all of God's incredible works in the wilderness. And here they went, away from God, and they were subsequently destroyed. Notice the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. The Israelites were destroyed, and they were destroyed because they did not believe, he says. Faith is a big deal to God. Believing His Word is paramount. One thing we should learn from God's destruction of these Israelites, we could say, is how severely He may chastise His people, His own elect, His redeemed. You know that God actually takes the life of some of his children. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church and he told the Corinthians, because of your sin some of you are sick and some of you sleep. That's a euphemism for saying some of you are dead. Some in your congregation are no longer alive because of your sin. God takes seriously sin in his church. But you know what, this is also, and I think more directly, A lesson that God destroys. He does not mess around with apostates. That is these these unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness who departed from the faith are an example that God will severely judge those who know the truth. They say, oh, I know the gospel. I see what the gospel is. I believe it. Maybe they were even baptized or whatever, and they walk away from it. God doesn't take that lightly. This is serious. And so the history lesson is that you can be a part of God's church. You can profess faith in Christ, at least with your lips. You can be baptized. You can witness all the same wondrous works at God's people, partaking of communion, all of that. And yet you can walk away, you can lack a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ and therefore walk away from all of that, from Christ. And Judah's saying the result will be destruction. So that's the first history lesson has to do with the Israelites in the wilderness. But the second lesson Jude gives us out of verse six, and that is the example of these apostate angels in the earth, apostate angels in the earth. He says, verse six, and angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he is kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. That is a fascinating text. This is very mysterious. What on earth does Jude mean? He mentions angels, but exactly what angels is he referring to? And he says they did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode. It's clearly an act of apostasy, departing from the truth. But what? What apostasy is Jude referring to? Well, hold your place in Jude, if you will, and you can jump back with me to Genesis chapter 6, if you like. There's three basic explanations as to what Jude is referring to here. Some believe that verse 6 is describing the initial fall of angels who joined Satan in his rebellion against God and were cast out of heaven. John Milton, really romanticize this view in his epic poem Paradise Lost. There's another view. Others believe that this may refer to some unmentioned incident in Scripture. In other words, their explanation is no explanation. We just don't know. We don't know why Jude would have said this or what he's referring to. I think that's unlikely right off the bat just because Jude has already told us that he's writing what he's writing to remind us of something that we should know, that presumably God has already spoken to in Scripture. Now the other view is that others have interpreted Jude in light of Genesis 6. which they believe to describe angels leaving their own domain, leaving their proper domain in order to cohabit, that is intermarry with the daughters of men. And to understand this, we're just going to look at Genesis chapter 6 and verse 1. Notice with me. Genesis 6, 1. Now it came about when man began to multiply on the face of the land. and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. The question is from this text, who are these sons of God? that took to themselves wives from the daughters of men? It's a very good question, and by the way, this is something that we have to have grace on, because there's good men that will disagree on this interpretation. Some believe that the sons of God here is referring to the line of Seth, the godly line of God's people. non-believers. I once held that view, and I think that view has some things to commend it, but I think the Scriptures are plain enough, and I'm going to show you why, that the sons of God here are, in fact, angelic beings. They're angelic beings, and that this is a historical event, the historical event Jude is referring to. I know that sounds a bit sensational, okay, because to say that fallen angels intermarry with human beings, that's a bit sensational, I'll admit that, but The scriptures, I think, are quite plain. This is the best interpretation. First of all, everywhere else in the Old Testament where we see this expression used, sons of God, it's always only used of angels. It's used of angels. That's in the book of Job and also in the book of Daniel. We know by the time we get to the New Testament and the apostles are writing, we know that God refers to or the apostles refer to His people, the believers, as the sons of God. We believe on Christ and we have the right to become the sons of God. But you know what? That is not how... The original readers of Genesis 6 would have interpreted this. Our question is not, what would Christians millennia later think about the sons of God in Genesis 6? Our question should be, what would this have meant to the original readers in their time? And the answer is, they would have understood it as a reference to angelic beings. Now, both Jews and Christians also, for what it's worth, shared an early consensus about this. They were in agreement, Jews and Christians, that Genesis 6-1 was indeed referring to the sin of angels. That the sons of God were angels rebelling against God. This was the prevailing view of the Jewish synagogue until the middle of the 2nd century, and the early church until at least the 3rd century AD. That means this. This was the interpretation at the time when Jude wrote this letter. And you say, why is that important? Because if you were reading this letter that Jude's writing, there's only one way that you would have understood naturally what Jude is saying. He is referring to those angels God talked about in Genesis six. And you would naturally have understood Jude that way. That's important. And another reason for understanding Genesis 6 and Jude this way is that Jude is going to go on to directly cite from 1 Enoch. Now 1 Enoch is not a part of your Bible. It doesn't belong in your Bible. It's an apocryphal writing. We'll talk about it later when we get to verses 14 and 15 of Jude. But it's worth pointing out that Jude cites from this letter, because the letter of 1 Enoch, which was never written by Enoch, does make a big deal about the fact that in Genesis 6, angels did intermarry. They rebelled against God by intermarrying with human beings. And Jude makes no attempt whatsoever to correct this. So you've got to just think about this. The readers in Jude's day would have clearly understood Jude is referring to only one thing. And that is in Genesis 6, these angels intermarry with human beings. Now at this point somebody might say, but Pastor, what about in the Gospels where Jesus says that the angels in heaven don't marry and they are not given in marriage? Certainly, Jesus is teaching that angels couldn't do such a thing, right? That's the objection. And while it's true that Jesus told us the angels in heaven do not marry, Jude and Peter are going to tell us that these angels, these fallen angels, these angels that are not in heaven, these angels that have no thought for the will of God, they indeed left their proper domain to intermarry with the daughters of men. Let me show you that. Peter, connects the rebellion of certain angels with Noah's time. He does this twice. First Peter 3, I know this is a lot of information, but this is the history lesson, right? First Peter 3 and second Peter 2. Two different times Peter relates the sin of angels with Noah's time. Why would he do that? Because Peter clearly understood that the sons of God in Genesis 6 were angels, just the way all these Jews and Christians at the time were understanding this text. And by the way, if you take a different view than that, I respect that if you want to say it's the sons of God or the sons of Seth, but here's the issue. You have a lot of explaining to do. It's really not as easy as just taking another view of Genesis 6. You've got to explain what is Peter talking about, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Jude, how does this all work together? And finally, flip back to Jude if you're not there already, flip back to Jude and One of the most clear reasons that we know what Jude is talking about, that he's referring to this incident in Genesis 6, is that he directly connects the sin of these angels with Sodom's immorality. I mean, it's just plain. Look at verse 7. Notice how he begins verse 7. Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude is drawing a direct connection between how these angels in verse six did not keep their own domain. They left their own proper abode. And he's connecting that with just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them in the same way as these, in the same way as these angels what? Indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh. Jude is saying the gross immorality that we know about in Sodom and Gomorrah that was a sexual perversion, he's relating that back to the sin of these angels. So we don't know exactly, we aren't told by Jude exactly what these angels did, but we know it was of some gross, immoral nature. It all points back to Genesis 6. Now, Jude isn't referring to a mere legend here. Somebody might think, well, but pastor, what if Jude is just making an illustration? You know, that was some Jewish myth that didn't really happen. Obviously, the context is arguing against that. In verse five, he just told us about the Israelites in the wilderness. No Bible believer doubts that historically happened. The Bible treats that as history. The Bible also treats Sodom and Gomorrah as history. No Bible believer takes Sodom and Gomorrah lightly. And yet, Sandwiched in between that is this incident of these angels. It's history. It happened. And that's the point of Jude's argument. He's saying, just like the Israelites and the Loners, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, just like these angels, this happened. So therefore, because this is history, it happened. You take heed to yourself. Well, what's this have to do with false teachers in the church? How do we understand the point of Jude's history lesson? Well, there's at least three points of correlation between the angels that fell and these false teachers in the church, these apostates who walk away from the truth. First, both fall from such a great position. Angels possess great dignity. We know that. That's clear throughout the Bible and throughout history. We look at angels, we talk of angels as those of exceptional dignity. And yet God says they left that. They abandoned that for this shameful sin. And Jude's point here is significant. He's emphasizing how great a position, how with great dignity somebody held in the church, maybe in angelic status or whatever, could fall. And everybody could be so impressed. How could that person do that? That's some of these TV preachers, some of these people who are all about the money, right? And people just kind of worship at their feet. They're not preaching the gospel of Christ. And whether or not we realize it, whether or not we see it with our own eyes, they're not true. They are apostates. And people walking away from that, they're like these angels falling from grace, from all their dignity, from such a great position. Secondly, both these false teachers and these angels, they fell into such great perversion. Jude says there's something especially upsetting about these angels' disobedience. They did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode. And like these fallen angels, these false teachers were doing something unseemly, gross. It was perverted. It wasn't proper. It's somebody leaving the work of the ministry or the work of God to engage and gratify their sinful lusts. And God says, that's disgusting. And he's not going to tolerate it any more than he tolerated the sin of these angels. We should also add this, that both these angels and both the false teachers were seeking to pervert God's purposes. Apparently, there's some speculation here, Satan intended these angels' perversion as a means of further corrupting the human race. Now, the human race is already corrupt. It has been ever since. Adam's fallen to sin. But this was apparently Satan's way of perverting man further. And of course, the false teachers are doing the same thing in the church. They're trying to pervert the church. And I just want to say this as a caveat, by the way, we need to be careful. We're not going to blame Satan. We're not blaming demons for all the failures of the human race, for the corruption of the human race. Mankind is not a victim to the devil. We are our own greatest problem. That's the message of the Bible, that it is our own sinful hearts. And we need the grace of God to save us. And nevertheless, we see here this great scheme of perversion. It's happening in the world, it's happening in the church. And God doesn't take it lightly. And that's the third correlation between these angels and these teachers. The third correlation is these apostates both fell to such grievous punishment. Jude says that these fallen angels were being kept in eternal bonds, eternal chains. And there's a fascinating play on words there because these angels, they wouldn't keep God's word. They wouldn't keep God's will. And so God says, I will keep you. I will keep you. in chains forever, in chains of darkness. By the way, this explains why God is keeping some angels in chains, some of these demons are chained, and some of them are free to roam. It's because of what happened. It's because of this particular incident, mysterious incident. Scripture doesn't make a big deal about it, but it's there in Genesis 6. Well, if we don't keep God's word, the same play on word applies to us. If we don't keep the truth, if we don't keep to what God has said, the gospel of Jesus Christ, God is able to keep us under his judgment. If God was able to keep in bonds, he's able to keep bound angels. What makes us think that we can escape the judgment of God for departing from his truth? We can't. So Jude brings to mind the apostate Israelites in the wilderness and also these apostate angels in the earth, leaving their own domain. But his third example is apostate cities of the plain. The apostate cities of the plain comes from Genesis. In Genesis 13, you read about the cities of the plain, the cities where Lot, Abraham's nephew, pitched his tent Look at verse 7 in Jude. Jude says, 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. The history lesson here comes right from Genesis 19, verses 1 through 11. And it's where we read For sake of time, I mean, you can go there, but I'm just going to have to give you the story. It's where we read that God sends two messengers to Sodom. They are sent on a mission to retrieve Lot, who is righteous. He was a God-fearer, at least to some degree. And God wanted to remove him from the city with his family before he sent his judgment. So he sends these two messengers, angelic messengers. They appear just like human beings. They go to Lot's house, and Lot compels them to spend the night with him in the shelter of his home. We later find out why. Well, while these men finish dinner, they hear a knock on the door. In fact, it's a loud banging and there's a loud commotion and they find the house has been surrounded by these ruffians. It is the men of Sodom, we are told, young and old. Playboys who have come out and they demand that Lot surrender his guests for some sport. The way the text puts it is, we want to have relations with them because such was their custom. This was just the custom of Sodom. And Lot tries to reason with them, but these angels, thankfully for Lot, throw him back. They slam the door and they strike the men at the door with blindness. Now, if there's one of these things in the Old Testament that I would have liked to have witnessed, that would have been quite a scene. That would have been one of these epic moments to witness how the angels did that. But what's most impressive to me about the story is Genesis 19.11 says that even after being struck blind, they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway. Here's the image. These sinners, perverted, eager to seek wickedness with these innocent guests, who they don't know are angels, by the way, and they are violently determined to go forward with this wickedness. And even when struck blind by the work of God, they weary themselves to find the doorway into their perversions. That is how far gone they were from repentance. They won't go home. They won't repent. They won't have any sorrow for their ways. They are in their blind state, groping around for the doorway of wickedness. That is reprobation. That is one who is beyond repentance. And it is because of this, these who are completely beyond any hope of repentance that God rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone, completely destroyed the city. And can I say this? He did a thorough job. I mean, you can go to the region of the Dead Sea to this day. It looks as lifeless as the landscape of Mars. It's a moonscape. Nothing lives there. In fact, it's ironic that scientists tell us that the region of the Dead Sea was once a lush, verdant valley full of agriculture, full of fruits. It was incredible. They know this. But you wouldn't have guessed that by looking at it today. Because all that's there is there's mounds, there's walls, there's mountains of sulfur deposits. And that is exactly what God told us He did. He buried this place under His judgment. We don't know exactly where Sodom was. There's debate about it. There's dispute about it. There's a couple sites that could be the potential sites of Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet we know this, those cities were, they were actual cities. These were actual people living, talking, sinners, just like you and I, but they are no more today. And those cities are no more today, and we don't even know where they are for sure because of the judgment of God. So Jude recalls the unrestrained immoralities of these cities, he says, These cities, in the same way as these angels, indulged in gross immorality. Indulged in gross immorality, that's one word in the Greek. It only occurs here. He's saying these people of this city, they were sexually perverse and they were pushing it to the limits. That's the idea. And they went after strange flesh, he goes on to say. He's saying they were pursuing another or a different kind of flesh. It's much the same language that Paul uses in Romans 1.27, where he tells us how men abandoned the natural function of the woman, burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts. It is sexual perversion. And Jude's warning us here that God will not tolerate unrestrained immorality. The word in Jude 4 is licentiousness. It is those who say, I can do whatever I want. I can do whatever I want with my body, whatever I feel like. I can gratify myself the way I please. Who cares about God? And just because, I need to say this, beloved, just because homosexuality was among the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, let's be careful that we don't somehow get this tunnel vision to think that that's the problem here, that that's the root of the issue, homosexuality. Because the root of the problem was licentiousness. The root of the problem was unrestrained immorality. It was the heart that said to God, I don't care. I don't care for your ways. And that is something any one of us could be guilty of if we don't really know the Lord Jesus. When you realize the immorality rampant in the Greco-Roman world in Jude's time and how people were living, it's like this. It's like Jude could simply have in mind that people in the church were saying, hey, my neighbor does it. Hey, my friends at school do it. Hey, my colleagues do it. It's okay. It's the unrestrained immorality of my culture, so I can do it. It could simply be that. How subtle, how deceptive. And yet that is what the enemy is doing in our churches. Finally, Jude recalls the warning which these cities left behind. He says, these cities are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. And that Greek word exhibited is in the passive voice. It means someone else is doing the exhibiting, namely God. God is setting them on display, like at a museum. He's saying, look at this. It's an exhibition that I do not take lightly apostasy. No judgment in the biblical narratives is as harsh and memorable as that of Sodom and Gomorrah. You can find this over a dozen times. Sodom and Gomorrah is used as an example of how God will thoroughly and severely judge sin. So we should pay attention. And this is also, Sodom and Gomorrah is also an example of God's timeless judgment upon gross evil. Maybe you know the city of Pompeii. It was this city in Italy, a Roman city, that was buried under this volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. We can read about it. The Romans talk about it. We also know that Pompeii was just very well known for being a promiscuous city. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah of its time. And ironically, archaeologists have discovered an inscription on the wall of a house excavated in these ruins of Pompeii, in this ghostly house they found etched into the wall of one of these homes, Sodoma Gomorrah. Sodoma Gomorrah, someone, we don't know who, but we know why, wrote on the wall of this city exactly what God was thinking. This is the unrestrained immorality that I will take seriously. I will judge. And isn't it ironic that Jude gives this history lesson about Sodom and Gomorrah of all places to the church? No, he's not talking to the people in these bars where they have the drag queens and things like that. He is talking to the church. He is warning the church about what he did to Sodom and Gomorrah. Why? Because he knows that perversion that is in the world is creeping into the church. And next time you hear of children being molested, In a church, by a pastor, we hear about things happening, children being taken advantage of, of all places, in the context of the house of God. Remember Jude 7. Remember that God told you this kind of perversion was creeping in. And God does not sanction it at all, and He will judge it. So, beloved, we've seen God is a history lesson for us all in these days of apostasy. It's pretty severe. It's pretty heavy. I know this is not, this isn't the feel-good message, but I have to give it to you because it's in our text. It's in the Word of God. And you may have heard these stories before that Jude raises, but God's not simply after you knowing the story. He's not even simply after just calling to mind, okay, yeah, you know this happened. He wants you to live in fear. Live in fear. That is, live in awe of who He is. Live in respect of His judgment. God is not our equal. He is our God. He is our Lord. He is holy. He gives his commands for a reason. So he is a God of love. He is a God of mercy. He is a God of grace. He is a God of righteousness, holiness, and judgment. And we must embrace all of what God said and not just part of it. If the Israelites had feared God, they never would have departed from his truth and complained against him and failed to believe him. If the angels had feared God, they never would have left their proper domain. But they would have trembled before him. and not been so perverse. If the cities of the plain had feared God, Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented of their gross immorality. But you see, they didn't. They didn't fear God. In fact, they took no thought for him. And therein lies the problem. Now, if you've ever believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you know to fear the Lord. You know what I'm talking about. But maybe there's somebody here. You've never trusted Christ as your savior. And maybe you've never submitted yourself in faith to Jesus. You've never received his eternal gift, his gift of eternal life. Can I say this? This is a scary passage because it's a passage on God's judgment. And God is a God of grace. He's a God of love. But like Jesus said, he who believes not the son of God will not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. The only way to escape judgment is through the Son of God, Jesus Christ. That's why he came. He didn't come to destroy the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Saved why? Saved from what? Saved from our sin, saved from destruction, judgment. So don't brush aside God's history lesson. Don't put off Jesus Christ if you've not received him. Now is the time. Today is the day of salvation. Let's pray.