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.