the epistle to Jude. I think I'm going to maybe leave the microphone off. I have a little bit of a cough and it always makes me self-conscious that I'm going to cough and blow your eardrums. Maybe I won't cough at all, but I'll try and speak up. So let's go ahead and just read. Let's read the first 10 verses. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. Mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved his people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, under the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, They despise dominion and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuked thee. But these speak evil of things which they know not, but what they know naturally is brute beasts, and those things they corrupt themselves." And we'll just, we'll go from there. The Lord bless his word. We've spent a couple sessions looking at Jude and I tried, maybe or maybe not successfully, to give you the idea of how important Jude thinks this is. He began by saying, I was going to write you this, but it was very needful that I write you this instead. And that's what we have, is what he wrote instead. It is the last book before the apocalypse, before the return of Christ. So if you want to look at the Bible as chronologically, as it's written and laid down for us to read, this is the last thing to happen in the church age. before Christ comes. And it's not really necessarily a book that is uplifting in a large portion of it. What I want to do today is look at the examples that he's given us and hopefully see the hope that's behind them. Apostasy. That's the subject. A falling away. And Jude sees it happening in his time, but he sees that in the last times it is going to be really bad. And we looked a little bit last time about how there were certain men crept in unawares and how they acted, how they turned God's grace. They take God's grace and they take advantage of it. They said, if God gives us grace and liberty, we can do whatever we want. And these are things we need to look out for when we're looking. What he's giving us here, as we've mentioned before, is the Acts of the Apostates. We're going to give the Acts of the Apostles. This would be the Acts of the Apostates. And James, How do you tell the evidence of someone's faith? By their works. How do you tell the evidence of an apostate? By their works. So he's going to give us some examples of those things. Now he gives us eight total examples, right? Remember that from last time. Eight total examples, six of which speak of apostasy. And that makes sense, six being the number of failure, falling short. So that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to look at the first three. The first three are of groups. The next three, which is Cain and Cor and Balaam, are of individuals, and we won't get to those today. We want to look at the groups here. We have the people coming out of Egypt, the angels which kept them out of their first estate. Now that's a pretty interesting thing. I want to get into a little bit about what I think that means. I'll try to give honest effort to show what the other maybe beliefs are behind it, but I'll just have to do my best there. I can only kind of give you what I believe passionately. So after that we have Sodom and Gomorrah, and then Michael the Archangel and Satan, which is not apostasy. It gives an example of the opposite of that. The order of the three, and we mentioned last week, but I want to bring it up before because the structure in these things is always interesting. He doesn't give them to us in chronological order, which, you know, when things aren't in chronological order, like in the Gospels sometimes, you'll see one Gospel, this event happened before this event, and the next Gospel they're flipped around. There's always a reason for that, and we need to keep our minds open to that to understand why that is. There's always a reason for it. And we looked at that. The reason why, I believe, is because it gives us the moral order, or we would call it the immoral order. We looked last time. Unbelief is the first thing we'll see with the children of Israel. Then rebellion. And then that leads into immorality. And you can look throughout history. We looked at the example of the history of just in the age of enlightenment, how men got so smart, right? They got science and they no longer needed the legends and myths, as they call them, of religion. And then the next thing that led after unbelief was rebellion. And you can look throughout the world. You had the rebellion here in the United States. Rebellions in France, all over Europe, in Mexico. Rebellion was the zeitgeist, as they say, the spirit of the age. It was everywhere. And lest we leave England out, England had its own rebellions at that time too. There was rebellion going on everywhere, right? So what would we expect to see next? Immorality. Are we living in an immoral age? So Jude knew what he was talking about. The spirit of God was was leading him on. And that's what we want to look at. So we'll begin this morning with the unbelief of the people coming out of the land of Egypt. In the verse it says, The Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward he destroyed them that believed not. Now it's good to remember that when the Lord called Moses out of Egypt, he predicted that Pharaoh would not believe. Right? He knew it. That's one of the things that we can take hope in as we look at books like Jude or even some of the Old Testament prophets that when they give give these declarations that things are going to go bad, we have a hope in knowing that God already knows about it. Things are still under control. We don't have to worry that something got loose out of the pen and He didn't know about it. He is aware of everything that's going on. And we understand that that's the way the world is today. Now when we consider this exodus, we know that all the people of that time would have understood it as we do. What do we know about these people as they came out of Egypt? There were 10 plagues, right? There was the parting of the Red Sea, water from the rock, manna from heaven, and there's others we could go in, but I'm just mentioning some of the highlights, right? They had miracles and signs just daily, literally daily, they had manna from heaven. We know how we are with miracles, right? If you get one miracle, it's a miracle. It happens every day. It ceases to be a miracle to us, doesn't it? And so after 38 years of eating manna, they weren't too impressed with it. And they weren't too impressed with it at the beginning when they came to Cetus Barnea. They have the party to the Red Sea. That must be, I don't know about you, but if you ever watch the The Cecil B. DeMille version, to me, the part of the Red Sea is still one of the greatest things ever done on cinema, right? I mean, just to make it look real on that is amazing. Can you imagine how amazing it must have been to see it for real? But they forgot about it. They forgot about it very quickly. Unbelief. They had a special revelation, and we've got to keep this in mind because throughout Scripture, we tend to think sometimes that God just scatters His miracles evenly throughout, but that's not really the case in Scripture. He picks special times, and in those times get special time of miracles, where God did a lot of miracles. And it's usually because there's a change of some sort. He's changing the administration a little bit. He wants to back that up and let them know that this is not something to deceive them. This is from Him. So He gives miracles that cannot be explained in any other way except that He did them. And so they have this special revelation. When you have special revelation, you also have special responsibility. And that is what they had. Now, if you do the math, there was around 2 to 3 million is what the estimates are. Some as high as 6 to 7 million, depending on how many children each of them had. They had large families. But anywhere from 2 to 3 million would probably be a good estimate. That's how many people came out of Egypt. That's about the same number as living in Chicago. That's quite a few people. Now imagine the entire city of Chicago gathered there on whatever river you want to think of. That's a big number. That's a lot of people. And as you think of that number, think of how many of those two to three million people go into the promised land. Two. Not counting the children, but two. So what does that tell us about unbelief? The unbelief of 10 people going into the land, God had given them the word. They went in and they said, yeah, it looks good, but we can't take it. And that spread throughout the entire camp. Unbelief is a disease. It spreads like a cancer very quickly, so quickly that the unbelief of 10 immediately spread to the unbelief of millions. That's why we have to be careful. That's why he is so diligent here, Jude, to make sure we keep our antennas up when any kind of thing that is even evidence of unbelief. We need to nip it in the bud. We need to figure out what it is and how to deal with it. If it's a question that's an honest question, that's not unbelief. But we need to get the questions answered, don't we? And it's not just unbelief, as we're going to see. There are other evidences. But the unbelief spread immediately. Now, what are the evidences of modern unbelief? I'm going to give you a couple suggestions, and in the process, I'm not trying to lift us up, but I'm just going to put them out there and do with them as you will. Paid pastors, right? You go to places and the ladies don't wear their head coverings. To me, this is pretty simple stuff. This isn't one where we have to have a theological discussion. It's laid right out for us, right? How many denominations have voted in the last several years? They get together with their big denomination Shall we have women pastors? Shall we have homosexual pastors? Let's have a vote on it. That would be a good democratic way to handle these things, wouldn't it? That's exactly how they handled going into Kadesh, going into the land, wasn't it? They had a vote on it. And the vote came up this way, therefore it was good? No. We're not supposed to vote on God's Word, right? That is the problem. That is unbelief. If you have to vote on it, it's implied already that you don't believe it. Okay, God, we like your suggestion, but we'll see if we all agree on that or not. That's not the way it works. So we have evidences of modern belief. Now, I would suggest to you that in Jude's epistle here, I notice it doesn't mention the church specifically. It is written to believers. But I think the idea is that we need to be looking for apostasy everywhere, watching and keeping our guard up everywhere. In the world especially, when we leave this building, right now we're a majority, aren't we? If not everybody, close to everybody in here is a believer. When we walk out the doors and go to work, we've entered apostasy. So we need to know how to notice and guard ourselves again to contend for the faith, as we were told earlier. So what is our response? What's your response to unbelief? Obviously the answer is if you have a hard time believing, you go to the word. And that's what we're going to see later on in the epistle. It takes us to go there. And we don't need to be surprised by it either. Sometimes I see Christians and I've heard them say stuff like, you know, they're surprised that the world is doing abortions and that we've legalized gay marriage. They're surprised that the world's doing this. We should not be surprised at that at all, really. Right? Isn't that what his point is? In fact, he tells us how to deal with it in 1 Corinthians 5 is the verses that come to mind. He says, now, if someone in your company gets involved in these things, you're not even to eat with them. You're to expel them, turn them over to Satan, and let that be taken care of that way. However, he says, I'm not telling you to not have it. In fact, I'll just read the verses. 1 Corinthians 5, he says, I wrote unto you, 1 Corinthians 5, 9. I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of the world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, for then ye must need to go out of the world. 10. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or a covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one know not to eat. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? Do you not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judges." So the idea is we are to protect our assembly, our meeting. We're not to allow wickedness in it. When we go out into the world, there is wickedness there. We can't fix that. We're not going to go march in front of an abortion clinic and change the world. It's not going to happen. We may make a little progress, but it's not going to make eternal progress. The only progress God asks us to do is to present the gospel. That's the only way to change people's hearts. All these other things are symptoms of wicked hearts, right? And unbelief, as we're looking at here. So the final outcome, and this is Jude's point of view, is having saved the people out of the lands of Egypt after we've destroyed them that believe not. So let me paraphrase. After going to the trouble of saving these people, God destroyed them that didn't believe. I mean, it's kind of paradoxical, isn't it? He went to all this trouble to save these people, and then He destroyed them. It's a warning. We can't get over the fact that it is a warning. And what was their sin? Was it idolatry, murmuring, fear? Sure, any number of those. But really, what does it come down to? Unbelief. We're told in Romans, Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin. Think about that statement. For whatever is not of faith is sin. So that's not just active, that includes passive, that includes I'm not going to do something. If faith is not involved, it's sin. That's a pretty broad statement. Now I would like to propose a couple questions that might come to your mind. Were they saved? Was Israel saved? Yeah, they were saved, right? They were saved by the blood of the Lamb. They came through the river. The Red Sea was opened up before them. And yet God destroyed them. So were they saved? Okay, now maybe you're talking about individuals because this would be a question that perhaps would come up. Were any of these individuals saved? We need to understand a little bit. It's a question that comes to my mind. Was Moses saved? Yes. Absolutely. And yet we read of Moses in Numbers Chapter 20, verse 12, it says, The Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because you believed me not to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. So we need to make a distinction, don't we? They were destroyed for unbelief, and yet we would all agree that Moses had the same sin, didn't get to go into the Promised Land, well not during that lifetime, perhaps during the Transfiguration in the future, But, so was he saved? Yes. So were some of these people saved? I would suggest to you very likely. We have to understand the Old Testament's set up a little different. And when I say that, you've got to be careful. They were saved the same way we are. By the blood of Christ. And here's the work of the cross. Individually. See the difference? Was Israel saved? Yes. Did Israel go into the land of Canaan? Yes. Was it a different people? Well, yeah, it kind of was. But the children, in fact, keep in mind, how many of them went back to Egypt? No. Right? None of them went back to Egypt. God did take Israel as He promised into the land. The Old Testament promises were different. That's what I'm talking about is different. Especially under Moses. They were promised earthly things. You will not see promises of heaven. You will not see cursings of going to eternal hellfire for disobeying the law. Right? I mean, look and see if you can find me wrong. I'd be glad to be proven wrong and I'll say so. The promises were different. Their promises were of long life and those sort of things and blessing in the land. And that's what they failed to go into. So we can take comfort in, yes, some of those may have failed in one point or other point. As we're going to look into the next two, we're going to see that that's the case in each of these. There's hope. Yeah, we're going to fail sometimes. Sometimes we're not going to believe. We can say like the man in Mark's Gospel that says, Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief. Right? How many times do you feel that? I do believe on a certain level, but I know, Father, I don't believe like I should. Help my unbelief. He's not going to abandon us. That's not the kind of God he is. But he does. We can't get rid of the other two. We've got to keep them both in mind. He judges apostasy. He judges unbelief. It's patriarchs as we read in Hebrews. Because when I say that, their promises, yeah, they were earthly and so forth. But when we read in Hebrews, we understand that they were able to see past those promises, weren't they? In Hebrews 11, in the Hall of Phases, it's called, For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. He was expecting the promised land, but he looked for something that went beyond that, transcended that, something that was eternal in nature. They all did. We can see that's why Joseph, why in the world did Joseph say, look, when I die, make sure you take my bones into the promised land? Who cares? Right? Wouldn't that be your thought maybe? Well, what does it matter? Because he understood there was something that was coming after death. In fact, I would submit to you that if you go through Hebrews chapter 11, you will see a faith in not only God, but a faith in a God of life, a God of resurrection in every individual case given. Abel speaking from the grave of Abraham when he offered up to Isaac, even though he'd never seen a resurrection before, never even been told about one, he believed that God was going to raise him from the dead. Why? Because God said, I'm going to make you a father of many nations, and this is the seed. Isn't it amazing how smart these people were? They were able to take one or two statements from God and build an entire theology on it. How much do we have? We have a hard time understanding our own theology sometimes. They understood not just theology, the science of it. They understood who God was. They understood His personality. That's what I think we need to understand is we don't have to worry about losing our salvation. We don't want to fail. That's not something that's going to happen. God puts a premium on faith. That is the key. Why did he count Abraham righteous? We talked a little bit about this yesterday in Edmund's Bible study. He believed. He believed God. And I like it in the New Testament, it doesn't say he believed in God. Because that's implied, right? He believed God. God said so. And I've used this example before, but I'll use it again. Have you ever said something to someone that just didn't believe you? And they just flat out told you. You're like, well, that's kind of rude. You know, you didn't have to tell me if you didn't believe me, but they go that far as to even tell you I didn't believe you. Doesn't it just stick in you a little bit, just makes you a little angry? How dare you not believe me? And yet, we have the audacity to do that to God. How many times has He ever told a lie? I don't know about you. Well, I bet I do know about you. I bet we've all lied here once or twice. And yet, when someone tells us they don't believe us, we get upset. God's never lied. He is incapable of lying. And yet, we have a hard time believing Him. Go do this, and I'll give you this. We're like, I'm afraid to go do that. Do we not have the same problem as the children of Israel? Here's a word, and I'll just mention it one more time before we go on. How important is this word? He could have thought the worlds into existence. He spoke them into existence. He started off creation by putting out there that His Word was the most important thing. In the Psalms we read, For thou hast magnified thy Word above all thy name. He put His Word above everything. The longest chapter in the Bible. The Word is mentioned in every verse. He wants us to believe Him. It speaks of His character, doesn't it? His Word is not just... See, when we say stuff, we tend to say stuff, you know, if my mind is shut down and I'm sitting around relaxed with people, I may say some things I don't really mean. When God says something, He always means every single syllable of it. So we need to keep that. And again, the application. I talked about the things we see in the church not happening today. How dare they? He's made it very clear. And how dare we if we were to do the same thing? If we see something in our meeting that's not according to the Word, I don't think we need to be rude about it, but we need to look into it, don't we? We need to fix it where it matches up. Did Israel lose their salvation? No, they didn't lose their salvation. Some of the people were probably not believers. And some of them I would suggest to you probably were. It's interesting in John's gospel. It says, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. Listen to the next verse. My father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. How many hands are there? How strong do you think each one of those hands is? I can't pluck myself out of those hands. It's interesting, in the tabernacle, you guys know the table of showbread, right? And you know what the bread on there represents. It represents Christ on one level, but it also represents the children of God. There's 12 loaves. We're told in 1 Corinthians, we being many are one loaf. We're represented. It's interesting, the only time that this measurement is used in the tabernacle, it's only used as cubits. But on that table, you know they had to pick it up and carry it. You ever wondered what kept the bread on? See, I work at a place where we have little roll-around tables and you put your tools on them and they start rattling and they start falling off so you're trying to hold them all on there. Wouldn't it be handy if it had a little fence around it? That's exactly what was on the table of showbread. Had a little fence that went all the way around. Guess how tall it was? It was a handbread. Does it not speak to us of that hand that we cannot get out of? It holds us on there. So I would suggest to you that's the same for Israel, anybody who was saved individually, for Israel as a nation, and for us as believers. Let's go on to the next verse. The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, under the judgment of the great day. Now there's difference of opinion on this. Even though I don't think it's completely the subject, really, to go into this, I think it's a good time to look at it a little, because, you know, sometimes we don't come to passages very often. Who are these angels? Let me suggest one more passage to you that also makes reference to them. That's 2 Peter, chapter 2 and verse 4. It says, For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and deliver them under chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment. I think probably everyone here would agree at this point this is probably the same thing being referred to. So from there we can, to that point I think we can all agree. There's two general views. What falling is this talking about? And my view is, well I only give my view, the first view is It's the rebellion of Satan and the angels at the beginning of creation. And that's a very good view. There's quite a bit of evidence down to it. One of them being, they left their first estate. I would assume, based on that, they left their first estate. They left one time. There wasn't several different times where they moved. They left their first estate. And if that's the case, it's referring to Satan and the angels. And that was the fall. But there's another view, and that's Genesis chapter 6. Let's turn there and just look at it shortly. Genesis chapter 6, right before the flood, it says, It came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair. And they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, that he is also flesh, yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bared children unto them. And the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and creeping thing and fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The other view on this, if you notice, how many of you are familiar with where I'm going with this, if you think? I'm kind of curious. Give me a nod. Anybody with a no? It uses two different phrases, right? It says, sons of God, but the daughters of men. Now the interesting thing about the phrase sons of God, it's only used in the Old Testament to describe angels, except here, depending on your view. It's used in Job that way. If you were to ask a Hebrew at this time, when you look at the Talmud and those sort of things, if you were to use the phrase son of God, they would have thought of an angel immediately. The offspring of these individuals were apparently monstrosities. If you look at the word giant and its meaning behind it, it means fallen ones as a matter of fact, the word giants. So it kind of takes us back to the fallen ones, doesn't it? Generally, we don't have monstrosities today. Maybe you would argue that. You see some children, I don't know, but I don't think that's the idea, right? I don't think it was, I think that these were, they were giants. Men of renown, different. In fact, some would go as far as to say this is where mythology gets their demigods and those sort of things, that it's actually based in reality and it goes back to this time and right after the flood in David's time. These men that were giants and were capable of amazing things. In Peter's, the portion of Peter we read, it says they're locked in Tartarus. The word hell there is a word that's only used one time in scripture. It's the word Tartarus. It's not Hades, the normal word for the grave. They're locked up in a special place. So it's interesting to me why some of them are locked up and some of them are not. Because wouldn't you agree, Satan and his minions are still active on the earth? But there's some that are locked up. Apparently, maybe for this. Maybe they've done something else. And then there's some arguments against this. One of them is We read in the scriptures angels have no gender and they don't marry. The verse is actually Matthew 22 30 says, for in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. If you were going with this second view, you would, you would say, well, these are not really angels of God at this point, and they're no longer in heaven. And it doesn't mention gender. So either way, I did want to touch on it to get both views out there. One other thing is that if, see one of the views is that the sons of God were the line of Seth, right? They're the godly line of Seth. Some would go as far as to say that. And the others were the evil line of Cain. And if that's the case, God destroyed the godly line of Seth with the wicked line of Cain in the flood. So those are some of the views, and I apologize for giving more credence to one view than the other, but I just have a hard time seeing the other one as much. So there are many people, there's people here that disagree with me, there's many men that are much smarter than me that would disagree with me. So in the end, what really matters, what really matters, they rebelled. That's what we're really, that's what we're really told here. They rebelled. Why? Unbelief. It's the result of unbelief. There's not much hope in this little portion, right? Not for the angels. Angels don't have any hope. They are free moral agents. Now you hear the word, we have a free will. I'm not real fond of that because to me, if you take it to its extreme, that means I can make anything I want happen. I will that I can fly, right? I'm a free moral agent. God gives me moral choices and I get to choose one way or the other. And I would say the angels are the same. The difference being when an angel chooses morally wrong, they have no hope of salvation, do they? They have no hope. Christ was not made an angel. He was made lower than the angels. He was made man. So there's no hope for these angels. But isn't that nice to think of that we do have hope? Again, there's hope in it. I think back to Nineveh, because when you look at that, you see there's not much hope. Do you remember the message that Jonah preached to Nineveh? Remember Jonah was not in a bad, he was not in a good mood. I don't think anywhere in that entire book was he. He ended up unhappy. He threw it all. So he finally, God pushes him into Nineveh and he says, 40 days and you'll be overthrown. I'm done. You know, that's kind of the idea. I got there and you've had it. From that message, The entire city repented down to the animals. They knew so little about God, but they put sackcloth on the animals. They repented completely. Is that not able to see God through just a little portion? They thought, well, if He's given us 40 days, then that means we've got 40 days to do something about it. He could have said, I'm coming in and you're destroyed now. He could have not told us at all. Okay, that is the way I think we need to look at God. He is a good God. Brother, thanks him for his goodness so often, and I think we need to remember that. We could have a God like Allah, right? Good is not the word that usually comes to mind when you hear the things that they do in his name. We have a God that is good. Isn't that great? Lastly, let's look at Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." In case I don't get to it, I think that last phrase could be rendered a little differently because the idea isn't that they suffered eternal fire. The fire's not still over there. You can go there. As far as I know, they've never found fire. It's still there. The example goes with it. An example of eternal fire. I believe it could be worded that way if a Greek scholar was here, at least from what I've read. The idea was it was an example of the eternal fire that is coming. But let me ask you this. When you think of Sodom and Gomorrah, if I were to ask you this before this message and you were just out talking, what comes to mind? I mean, I don't even have to give you context. Sodom and Gomorrah. What comes to mind? You start thinking of homosexuality. sexual sins, lust. Isn't it interesting that Jude puts this in the context, not of those things really, but of apostasy. Because that's the whole point. Apostasy begins in the mind, it begins in the intellect, it begins with unbelief, but its natural outcome is physical degradation. And that's what we see in our culture. That's why it should not surprise us. That is the exact course that happens with unbelief. It may take a while to get there, but if you start with unbelief, you're going to end up with physical degradation, depravity. That's what we see. You can't turn on a cartoon without seeing hints of it. Sodom had truth. This is implied. This is implied for all the world, I would say. We were talking about this a little bit yesterday as well. You can look at the Native Americans and they have a little bit of truth, don't they? They believed in a great spirit, one that was above all the others. And when you start hearing about them, you're like, that's kind of close to some of the things we believe. You do that with a lot of other religions. In fact, if you talk to a person that's not a believer, they'll lift that right up there with Christianity and say, look, they're almost exactly the same, but they're not. They're missing a Savior, for one, aren't they? They're almost always missing a Savior. Well, I think you can go as far as saying they're always missing a Savior. They're missing the fact that we can't pay for our sins. There is a difference. Sodom had that truth at one time, as the whole world did. Sodom and Gomorrah happened less than 500 years after the flood. Remember Shem? Ham, Shem, and Japheth? He was still alive at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. The people that lived in Sodom and Gomorrah could many of them talk to a man that was an eyewitness of the flood? Right? So this is unbelief. This is willful unbelief is what we're told in Peter, aren't we? It's the idea that you can give them all the evidence they want. I'm not believing. I don't want that. Let's turn to Genesis 18. I want to look at a little bit of the hope in it real quick before we close. because there is hope in the story even there. Genesis 18-23, I'm going to start there. God declares that he's going to go wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham. It says, Abraham drew near and he said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Perhaps if there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? that it be far from me to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that it be far from me. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. Now I'm always impressed with Abraham. I guess just his audacity. I don't know if what he's doing is right or wrong. Abraham answered and said, Behold, now I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes. Perhaps there shall lack five of the fifty. Wilt thou also destroy the city for the lack of the five? He said, If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it. He spake unto him yet again, and he said, Perhaps there shall be forty found there. He said, I will not do it for forty's sake. He said unto him, O let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Perhaps there shall thirty be found there. He said, I will not do it if there be thirty there. He said, Behold, now I've taken upon me to speak unto the Lord. Perhaps there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake. He said, Oh, let not the Lord be angry. I will speak yet once, just one more time. Perhaps ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. And the Lord went his way as soon as he had left communion with Abraham. And Abraham returned to his place. And here's my question. I don't think there's an answer. I just find it an interesting question. Why did Abraham stop? He's already pushed. It's interesting to me, the numbers that I like, how many times do you suppose he tried to get God to stop? Six. Six is one short of completion, one short of perfection. In fact, it's failing, it's falling short. Six times he interceded for these people. We'll never know what would happen if he'd have gone one more. In fact, in Jeremiah, we read in Jeremiah 5, speaking to the children of Israel, it says, So it makes you wonder, doesn't it? But we don't have that answer. In Genesis 19, the next chapter, it says, I want you to get the idea as they're taking Lot out of this city, because we know the story, we're pretty familiar with it. Genesis 19, 12, it says, Verse 14. And Lot went out, and he spake to his sons-in-law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law. 15 And in the morning rose, and the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife and thy two daughters which are here, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. 16 And while he lingered, the man laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters, they drug him out of town. He sure loved Sodom, didn't he? Is that how we're going to go? I hope not. The Lord comes kicking and screaming, right? I don't think we are like that. Verse 22, it says, Haste thee, because I think this is an interesting point. The angel talking to Lot, it says, Haste thee, escape there, for I cannot do anything till thou come there. These angels could not destroy the city, until Lot was removed. God's going to judge apostasy, right? That's what we're getting from Jude. But He always takes care of His own, doesn't He? I think there's a principle here. We see it here. They could not do anything until the righteous was removed. Now, everybody here knows Lot was righteous, right? You don't tell it from the Old Testament. In fact, it goes on and gets even worse. The last thing you hear of Lot is not the way you want to You don't want that written on your tombstone, is it? But in Peter, we read that he was a righteous man twice. Now, I believe that we have men like Lot and Samson just for this reason, to give us hope. They are not the pattern we are to follow. But God gives them to us to let us know that even though this isn't the pattern to follow, It is possible to go a long ways down and still you're not going to lose what I've given you. So I would just suggest to you as we close, the two things I see here is Jude's point is there is apostasy and we need to keep our eyes open, be aware of it, be ready for it, and we'll look for it as we go. The next portion is really interesting with Michael and the archangel and Satan. He will judge apostasy, but there is hope. Right? We just need to keep that in mind. Let's go ahead and close the prayer. God and Father, we thank you again for this opportunity to open your word and look into it and to just remember these things that we are all familiar with. Many of us from childhood in Sunday school, but We thank you that we can look at these things and you bring more things to light to us, more understanding about you and your character. We ask that you would help us to just always want to get to know you better, not just about you, but to get to know you, to know what you're like, your personality, your goodness, your righteousness. And Father, that these things would change us so that we would be more like you. We ask that you be with us as we now end this meeting, and as we begin this time of fellowship, that you would bless that as well. And we ask these things in your son Jesus' name. Amen.