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Jude verses 8-11, these are God's
words. Likewise also these dreamers
defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.
Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when
he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against
him a reviling accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke you. But
these speak evil of whatever they do not know, and whatever
they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they
corrupt themselves. Woe to them, for they have gone
in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam
for prophet, and perished in the rebellion of Korah." So far
the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. Jude continues to warn against
the certain men who have crept in unnoticed to the churches.
This is helpful for us to remember from verse 3, because the things
in verse 8 through 11 sound like they might be obvious and easy
to spot and watch out for, whether in ourselves or in others. But
we should be warned, remember, that these types of people creep
into churches unnoticed and have been doing so now for some 2,000
years. And so this should increase for
us our watchfulness, our carefulness with ourselves. Now, very interestingly,
in this new warning, he refers to them initially as dreamers. Now, this is dreamers in two
different senses. One, that instead of looking
to the scripture for God's word, looking forward, looking to the
writing and inspired teaching of the apostles, prophets, and
evangelists at the time, because Jude is writing during the New
Testament period, himself being a prophet under Christ. And instead
of looking to the preaching and teaching of the pastor teachers,
who are shepherding by teaching those things that the apostles
and prophets and evangelists have been writing and teaching,
They look to dreams. They are more impressed with
things that feel mystical and spooky. They do not treat the
Bible and the preaching of the Bible as supernatural. And so
they look for other things to be supernatural to them. And
they put more stock in dreams than in scripture. A second way
that they are dreamers is that they dream up for themselves
whatever it is that they desire. And these two things always go
together. Those who are superstitious without
having the word of God to overrule our false thinking and our false
emotions and our false desires are left especially susceptible
to those superstitious and spooky things that coincide with and
reinforce what they themselves dream up. And this actually occurs
then in their own dreams. By giving themselves much to
dreams, they are easy prey for those who might affect them,
spiritual beings, demons, attack, and dreams. And they will often
have dreams that come from their own heart, their own mind, dreams
in which they are indulging themselves in ways that perhaps they are
not able to when they are awake, or perhaps that their dreams
incite them to pursue when they are awake. And so just this one
word, dreamers, is by itself very condemning, and yet, in
the churches having crept in unnoticed. It is actually extremely
common in many circles for people either to give spiritual authority
to things that come to them in dreams or to pursue the desires
of their flesh that are expressed in an inflamed way in their dreams. So he says, Likewise, also these
dreamers. And now he's going to give three
areas in which it will show up in our life if we are, quote,
denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Three
areas that it shows up in our life, or we might say three more
areas that it might show up in our life. we are denying the
Lordship of Christ, if we're not living as those who have
Him as our Master. I think the first one of those
areas is dreams over Scripture. The second one of those areas
is the defiling of the flesh. Rather than considering our our
bodies, our mouths, our eyes, our hands, our feet, as our slaves
or offered to God as slaves because we are the slaves of Christ.
I hope you remember that whole idea from Romans chapter six,
presenting every member of your body, every member of who you
are, not just your physical members. unto God as slaves for righteousness. If we do not have Christ as master,
and we throw off his lordship, then we will defile the flesh.
A second place this shows up is in the rejecting of authority.
We will function autonomously. Children not honoring and obeying
their parents. Congregations. not submitting
to their elders, wives not submitting to their husbands, and even believers
who do not submit to civil authority and that which is commanded,
that is not unlawful. to them, this rejecting of authority. Because the chain of command
in a family or in a marriage or in a society or in a church
always goes up to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the master in all
of these things. And those who are throwing off
the Lordship of Christ will very easily, for instance, excuse
themselves for disobeying their parents. or excuse themselves
for dishonoring their husbands, or excuse themselves for wanting
the church to be run according to their desires instead of according
to the wisdom of the elders from the Bible, or will excuse themselves
for disrupting the order of the society by resisting the authority
of the civil magistrate in those things that the civil magistrate
does or requires that are not unlawful. The third thing they
do is they blaspheme glories. They blaspheme glories. I think
it's important to use the actual words here. And in Jude 1.8,
as we did, although we had done the books of Peter a long time
ago, so we didn't do them just recently, when we were coming
serially through the New Testament, in 2 Peter, I think it's 2, verse
10, at the end, it has the same thing, blaspheming glories, or
New King James has given us speaking evil dignitaries. That is, those
things that are beyond us. Those things that are not of
this world, that are more powerful and more able and greater than
we are. And then he uses an example that is from the common
literature at the time, and it actually Although the book of
Jude was from a prophet of Christ and received by the churches
as scripture, as it was written in the days that it was written
and distributed, yet on account of his quoting from this other
common literature of the time a couple hundred years later
when the canon was being recognized, trying to differentiate from
false books that were being written in the 3rd century and the 4th
century. Jude was questioned because it
quoted from some books that weren't scripture, that had been written
between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New
Testament. One was called the Testament of Moses and one was
called First Enoch. He's referring to an illustration
here. And he's, at the time that Jude
is writing, he is not treating the Testament of Moses or first
Enoch as scripture. And his readers are not treating
those things as scripture. What they are aware of, however,
is that even in these Jewish books, when they came up with these
fantastical things, and that's one of the things that the apocryphal
literature or the intertestamental literature is full of, it's full
of fantastical sorts of things. Even that, and that which wasn't
scripture, and that which, which had this superstitious and fantastical
flavor to it, character to it. They didn't have their characters
do things like rebuke the devil, okay? So he says, yeah, Michael
the archangel in contending with the devil, when he disputed about
the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling
accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke you. Now, one of the things
that dreamers in today's churches often do is they'll teach people
to rebuke the devil, but the scripture never tells us to rebuke
the devil. It says, resist the devil and
he will flee from you. You resist his temptations. But
the only people we see in scripture rebuke the devil is the Lord
rebukes the devil in Zechariah, and Jesus rebukes devils and
demons. But we should be careful when
we are under the lordship of Christ and we are recognizing
his mastery, we leave to him to deal with the things that
are glories that we cannot contend with. He gives us to trust him,
he gives us to obey him. We have enough in our hands by
his grace to contend with ourselves, let alone turning our Christianity
into some superstitious epic fantasy, which these people do
because they don't treat Christ as Lord and they don't treat
Christianity and walking with him as his slave as real life. So he says, but these speak evil
of whatever they do not know. So they speak evil here. It could be that there are reviling
glories that they don't understand, but more likely this is connecting
back to verse eight. Likewise, also these dreamers.
And so they speak evil of true Christianity. They speak evil
of sound doctrine. They speak evil of morality. Why? Because their religion is
all of this superstitious nonsense. which leads to the defiling of
flesh, which leads to throwing off authority and rebelling against
legitimate authority, which leads to superstitious messing with
things that are beyond their understanding. But then they
speak evil of true Christianity. Oh, they're so doctrinal. It's all head and no heart, they
say. or theology divides, they're
so divisive because they're so careful theologically, they speak
evil of what they do not know, or they're so legalistic. They don't just live a little
and have some fun and relax. They're always worried about
what's holy and what's right, not doing what's wrong. Oh, their church is run by the
elders. Instead of having a kind of egalitarian,
approach with authority in every congregant, where everyone's
kind of their own autonomous person in the churches, this
association of equal members rather than a body constituted
by Christ under authorities instituted by Christ. And the dreamers,
who sneak into churches unnoticed, creep into churches unnoticed,
and have been doing so for 2,000 years, because their religion
is more according to their dreams than according to the word of
God, they speak evil of whatever they do not know. And there are
some things that they do know, kind of instinctively. That's
the idea in verse 10. Whatever they know naturally
or instinctively, like brute beasts. But they're worse than
the beasts. At least the beasts follow their
instincts. But these people, even with that
knowledge that God has ingrained into them and made obvious, They
corrupt that knowledge. In these things, they corrupt
themselves. And so he says, woe to them, for they have gone in
the way of Cain. Cain didn't offer his offering
by faith, didn't offer according to the word of God. He gave what
pleased him and expected God to be pleased with it. And this
is what dreamers do. Instead of receiving from the
Bible what to believe and what to do, they come up with their
own thing, what pleases them in religion, and they expect
God to be pleased with it. And so if they are displeased
with God graciously, choosing and enabling and bringing to
faith and securing and sanctifying and saving everyone whom he brings
to faith, they come up with their own doctrine that pleases them,
that makes salvation some kind of cooperative work between God
and man, where God is the one who makes salvation possible
and man actualizes it for himself. They come up with what pleases
them and they expect God to be pleased with it. Nowhere is this
more evident than in worship. Whatever they feel is worshipful. Whatever makes them feel spiritual. Whatever they come up with what
pleases them and expect God to be pleased with it. Cain came
up with offerings. that he thought God should receive
and be pleased with. And when God wasn't pleased with
it, he became enraged. And he even ended up murdering
his brother because God wasn't pleased with the Cain-pleasing
religion. And yet it was his expecting God to be pleased with
his religion that was even the greater sin than murdering his
brother. So they go in the way of Cain. They run greedily in
the error of Balaam for profit. Balaam, who was prophesying,
who was supposed to be serving God in a serious, holy, spiritual
exercise of proclaiming God's Word. But what did he want to
do? He wasn't trying to serve God in the preaching of God's
Word. He was trying to secure the money of Moab. which he eventually
did, not by prophesying what Black wanted to. We're kind of
in the middle of that and Lord willing, tomorrow we'll hear
about the multiple attempts and how opposite it was that Black
wanted. But then you have in chapter
26 in Numbers, this immorality between the Moabite women and
the Israelite men. And then there's just one, there's
a little line in Numbers 31 verse 16, where it says that the Moabite
women had enticed the Israelite men upon the council of Balaam. He was unable to achieve, he
was unable to get his money. by prophesying falsely. So he
gave Balak advice for how to bring God's wrath upon the Israelites,
how to get the Israelites to bring God's wrath upon themselves.
He treated religion as something to be done in order to get what
he wanted. And so church history is full
of those who run greedily in the Arab land for profit. They
do in religion what pleases them and expect God to be pleased
with it. They do in religion what they
think will profit them instead of that which will obey the Lord
Jesus Christ. And therefore, they also rebel
against authority that is over them, perished in the rebellion
of Korah. Woe to them. for they have gone
in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam
for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah." You cannot
throw off the lordship of Christ without it having horrific symptoms. like defiling the flesh or rejecting
authority or blaspheming glories and ending up in a horrific end
like that of Cain or Balaam or Korah. And so if we find ourselves
indulging our flesh or resisting authority or blaspheming glories
in superstitious fantastical kind of approaches to religion,
or even if we just find ourselves giving credence to dreams instead
of to the scripture. Let us beware, for we may be
in the process of denying the only Lord God, our Lord Jesus
Christ. And then let's pray. Our gracious
God and our heavenly Father, as we read and hear about these
things, we ask that you would not permit them to come upon
our heads. Give us to rejoice to be Christ's
slaves, to have him as master. Make us to adhere to his word
and to consider his word, the great supernatural religion that
you have given us. Grant to us to beat our bodies
and make them our slaves so that we can offer every part of who
we are as slaves unto Christ. Give us to submit ourselves humbly
under authorities knowing that the chain of command goes up
to Jesus. Give us, we pray, to leave what
happens in the spirit world up to our master who can rebuke
and has crushed the devil and is crushing him under our feet.
And don't let us arrogantly blaspheme glories. Help us, Lord, we pray,
that we would not be taken in by such who creep into the church
unnoticed, and that we ourselves would not be such, maybe even
unnoticed to ourselves. Thank you for your word. Thank
you that it doesn't just tell us about these things, but it
is your instrument to spare us from these things. And so use
it, we pray, by your Spirit, we ask, in the name of your Son,
our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Distorted, Deadly "Christianity"
Series Family Worship
What does dreamer-religion cause? Jude v8–11 looks forward to the second serial reading in morning public worship on the coming Lord's Day. In these four verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that religion that is not bounded by Scripture results in men running off into their own destruction.
| Sermon ID | 10924194981783 |
| Duration | 19:58 |
| Date | |
| Category | Devotional |
| Bible Text | Jude 8-11 |
| Language | English |
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