Jude

If you would turn with me to the last, next to the last book of your Bible, the little epistle of Jude. I think this is one of the least spoken upon epistles in the New Testament. In fact, if you look at a person's library among commentaries, you'll find very few books that have ever been written on the epistle of Jude.

If you look at commentaries of the whole Bible, you'll find very few pages that are devoted to these 25 verses. Yet I want to try to speak to you a little bit about it. The epistle of Jude, I believe, has great application to conditions that we face in our world today.

The great needs for preservation in terms of doctrinal truth, upholding that which is right according to Scripture, of which we've been hearing by our brethren. I appreciate what we've been hearing. I almost hesitate to try to speak on the book of Jude, the epistle of Jude.

I have 20 pages of notes that I've written on it, and I can't condense them. So I'm going to have to draw on my memory, and it may not be quite as orderly as I'd like to, or as complete, but I don't want to take a lot of time either. I think I gave four nights of ministry on Jude up in La Crosse one time, and I'm sure that many people forgot what I ever had to say.

But Jude is the one who closes the last aspect of the epistles. It's the last epistle of our New Testament. It's been well said that the history of the church begins with the acts of the apostles.

And when you come to Jude, you have the acts of the apostates. And our brother Scott has touched on the subject of the apostates. I'm not going to expand on that necessarily, except to say that I believe that what Jude is speaking about here are men who have come very, very close to the truth, to the point where it might be even difficult to identify them as unbelievers, as those that were not genuinely saved.

Outwardly they appeared the same as the believers. Outwardly they had their place among them. You'll find that as Jude goes on to describe them.

Then he reveals the fact that inwardly and under the surface that they were ungodly men. They were unfruitful men. They were evil men.

They were those who were very contrary to the truth of the word of God. And he warns the believers against them. You may not like to read the epistle of Jude because it really packs a lot of very strong language.

Extremely strong. He's one who tells it like it is. He doesn't beat around the bush.

He doesn't gloss over the evil. He brings it right out to the open and he says this is the way it is and you need to understand this is how God sees it. I will just read a few verses in this book, perhaps at the beginning and at the end.

I won't read all 25 of them. I want to leave time for another brother. Beginning in verse 1, Jude, a servant, a bond slave of Jesus Christ, and brother of James to them that are sanctified by God the Father.

Mr. Darby and other translations give us the translation that that word is beloved. They are beloved of God the Father. Regardless, both of them would be true.

But I like the thought that this is the thought of beloved because he uses that word four times in these 25 verses. He's a man that is writing because of deep concern for the welfare of God's people. He's not writing to abrade them.

He's not writing to criticize them or condemn them. He's writing to expose evil and to do so so that they can be encouraged and preserved. They're not only beloved by him.

He knows they are beloved by God. Four times over he says that they are beloved. Beloved of God the Father, you notice we have the Trinity in this verse.

Beloved of God the Father, preserved or kept for Jesus Christ and called. Evidently, I could say called by the Spirit of God, as our brothers are speaking in relation to the gospel. Mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied.

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, that is the salvation that every believer truly enjoys, every genuine believer enjoys. Not every professing believer enjoys, but every believer genuinely knowing Christ enjoys this salvation. He says that's what I intended to do.

I was going to write about the common salvation. It was needful. I've been obliged.

I've been forced to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints. Because 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, using it for moral evil and immorality in their practices and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, he says, I will put you in remembrance.

Then he follows with three examples of three groups of individuals who were privileged, brought to a great place of privilege, and yet they ended up condemned and judged, and they fell from that place. Going down just to the end because of the intervening words, I'll maybe touch on. He says in verse 17, But beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Although they told you before, they told you that there should be mockers at the last time. He may be referred to Peter. He may be referred to Paul and other aspects of his writings.

There should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly less. These be they who separate themselves or they make separations. They're sensual, they're natural, having not the spirit.

But ye, in contrast to these, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Verse 24, unto him who is able to keep you from falling or without stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and ever.

Amen. I can tell I need one of these. You may read this little epistle of Jude and you think really it's pretty disconnected.

Actually, there's a perfect balance in this book of 25 verses. A perfect balance, if you were to outline it, you'd be able to discern that. You notice that he begins by speaking to them to give them assurance in verse 1 and verse 2. He assures them because they're genuine believers.

He wants to encourage them. He doesn't want them to think he's trying to undermine their faith. He isn't trying to counteract their enjoyment of the things of God.

He's simply seeking to build them up and strengthen them and preserve them. He gives them assurance. He says, first of all, you're beloved of God.

What a tremendous thing. Beloved of God and you could say set apart unto God, unto the Father. You have a relationship with the Father in heaven.

You enjoy the blessedness of a position that is yours, that is perfectly attained and given to you by the grace of God. Beloved by God. They were facing a world and circumstances that were very unloving, very much inclined toward robbing them of the joy of that sense of the love that God had for them.

He says you're beloved of God. And not only that, you're being kept in the midst of all these detractions and all this disturbance and all this degenerations that you're being kept. You're preserved.

And you're supported by the hand of God upon you. You're preserved for the Lord Jesus Christ. For his honor, for his glory, for his enjoyment, for his pleasure.

He says that's who you are. You're being kept by the power for the Lord Jesus. Then he says last of all you've been called.

You've been set apart. You've been brought into the good purposes of God. God has great things for you.

His purpose is the great future that lies before you. So he looks back to when they were sanctified. They've been beloved of God and salvation.

They're being kept presently. And he says you have a future as well. You're elect.

You're called of God for a great future that lies beyond. He gives them assurance. And I've been receiving a lot of assurance for the word of God today.

I've appreciated the ministry that we've been given. And I trust it will reside in my heart and continue to bless. But listen, he closes the epistle with assurance.

He begins with assurance and he ends with assurance. He says now unto him who is able to keep you. Notice that again.

He began by saying you're kept for Jesus Christ. Now he says he's able to keep you. It's not that you have to keep yourselves.

He says you are being kept. You are being preserved. You're being upheld.

You'll be maintained right to the final hour. He says you're kept. He's able to keep you.

Even from stumbling. Not just falling out. Not just losing your salvation as some would think.

No, from even stumbling along the way. You won't even be detracted by these things. You can be maintained in a steady path.

He's able to keep you. We can go away from this Saturday conference and say, Thank God there's one that's able to keep me and preserve me along his pathway despite all the conditions that exist. He's able to keep you or preserve you from falling, from stumbling, and ultimately present you faultless before the throne of his glory with exceeding joy.

So he's looking down to the future. First verse, he looks to the future. The last verse, he looks on to the future.

There's a balance in the epistle. You come to the next section, you find that he speaks about the believer and his faith in verse 3. He says, I want to write to you about the common salvation that we all enjoy, the result of faith in Christ, the assurance of knowing the Savior, the absolute certainty of God's salvation that I enjoy. He says, I want to write to you about your faith.

But now you come to the end of it and verse 22, verse 23, and he speaks about the faith again. So if you go from the end to the beginning to the end and you come back and back and back to the middle, you'll find there's a balance. There's almost a mathematical certainty about the way this epistle is arranged.

And the middle verse is verse 11. He gives three men who are examples of apostates. He says, you know what God did to them.

Take a warning. There are six men from the Old Testament, six individuals, I should say, from the Old Testament that are in this epistle. Six of them, there are eight.

Sorry, there are eight. There are six bad examples. There are two good ones.

Six bad ones. He talks about Israel, a company of believers brought out of Egypt. He says, just remember, they were brought out into a place of privilege, near to the point of God's meeting with them, enjoying what God had for them, and they failed in the wilderness.

They refused to enter in. He says, there were the angels also that sinned. And by the way, I don't link this with Genesis chapter 6. You can do so if you want to.

I think I have good reasons not to. Never does it say in the New Testament that they link with this in Genesis 6. But regardless, he says, all that innumerable company of angels that enjoyed such a high exalted position, and all that they had in relation to God, he says, they sinned. And they're guarded under chains of darkness until the judgment of the last day.

And he says, there are also, remember, there are also those like Sodom and Gomorrah. They were marked by marked immorality, gross immorality. Those that he generated into a kind of evil that God could not tolerate any longer.

I'm going to back up a minute. He also has three, I'll mention there, three also, three individuals, Cain, Balaam, and Korah, down in the chapter of verse 11. Someone was so generous with me at Manchester Conference, they gave me their cold.

I'm still recovering. The people of God are very generous. It's the first meeting I've been to for two weeks.

But anyway, where was I? He says, I wanted to write to you. There's three things I want you to notice about the reason in writing. This man has a very definite purpose.

He's writing to encourage them. He's going to write an epistle that's very clear. It's right to the point, it's succinct.

It's very definite. He's making it very clear what he's dealing with. He's dealing with issues that believers need to be aware of.

There's a lot of discussion, you know, if you read commentaries. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they're not. If you read a lot of commentaries, you'll find there's a lot of discussion whether he copied from 2 Peter chapter 2 or whether Peter copied from Jude.

Well, I don't know. They're both written about the same time. It would have to be rapid communication to copy from one or the other, I think.

And the second thing is, of course, when I read that kind of thing, it makes me wonder, where's the Spirit of God in all this? I just don't feel comfortable with men that handle the Word of God as if, you know, Matthew copied from Mark or Mark copied from Matthew or whatever it might be in the order of the Gospels. I think and believe that the conditions that they saw existed in that day were moved on by the Spirit of God to write similar things concerning the same problem. But you'll notice that in 2 Peter chapter 2, Peter says that there shall be few false prophets among you.

There shall be. But James says they're already there. They're already there.

If you look at the time factor so far as these epistles were written, very similar, very close in time. So maybe Jude was seeing something that Peter didn't see. But nevertheless, what is being very clearly expressed in this is the fact that the Spirit of God directed this man exactly what to write.

He said, I was going to write to you about the common salvation. I would have just enjoyed sitting down and writing a nice epistle to you to describe the salvation we all enjoy, the blessings of salvation, the truths of knowing the Savior, and all the enjoyment of what we have. He says, I was constrained.

I was just put into a vice, you might say. I was put into a condition where I could not even continue to write the way I was going to. He says, obligated.

I was obligated to write to you and to warn you to earnestly contend for the faith that was once for all delivered unto the saints. Some people have related this to the book of Nehemiah. You remember the Nehemiah.

They were occupied with building a wall to defend and to guard entrance into the city, to defend it against enemies, against those who would ruin the work, those who would defile the temple, those who would ruin the enjoyment of God's people and fellowship with the Lord. They had to fight. They had a sword in one hand.

They had a trowel in the other. So if you look at the epistle of Jude, you find that the first part is using the sword. He's talking about why they need to be earnestly contending for the faith.

Verses 1 through 10. And then he says, I want you to build yourselves up on your most holy faith. Brethren, you and I are living in a day where we need to learn how to do like our brother Scott has been doing.

Learn how to defend the faith. Defend the truth of God. Faith has two aspects in the New Testament.

There's a faith that you and I have placed to the Lord Jesus when we trusted him as Savior. My mind goes back time and time again to that afternoon on June the 9th in 1954 when I first realized Christ died for me. That's what gave me peace.

And I can tell you, brethren, it still does. The verse that gave me that peace that assured me of it is the same one that says the same thing today. That's faith put in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The response of the individual to what God says and dependent upon it entirely. But he's speaking about the faith, the body of doctrine, the truth that has been entrusted to us. Some people seem to think that the truth will defend itself.

I wonder why Jude says we need to defend it. Because it's under attack. It's been under attack from the very beginning.

Ever since the apostles' pen, the ink dried on the parchment, it's been under attack. In the New Testament time, the truth of the word of God was under attack. The person of Christ has been attacked.

And all the basic doctrines that are so essential for the confidence of a believer. Your faith, dear child of God, rests upon the faith, the word of God. And we need to teach it.

I think in our assemblies, and I don't want to be critical, but I believe oftentimes we fail to teach doctrine. We fail to emphasize the need for going over and over and over the truths of the word of God in such a way that younger believers can appreciate them and grasp them and have something to build upon and to establish themselves in. So, Jude says I want you to earnestly contend, fight for the faith that once were all delivered unto the saints because he says this, there have been men that have crept in by the side door.

You notice they didn't come in the front door with banners and horns blazing and announcements being made. They didn't say here I am, I'm here to corrupt the word of God. I'm here to destroy the truth of God.

I want to undermine the faith of God. They didn't do that. He says they came in by the side door.

And the like person wanted to get to the circus. And they lift the flap over on the back side. They slip under that.

I don't know if that's a proper application or not, but they didn't come through the gate. They didn't come the right way. He says these people didn't want to be recognized.

They wanted to come in as if they're sheep. But in reality they're wolves. And you remember in Acts chapter 20, Paul warns the believers in Ephesus, the elders, after my departure shall grieve us wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

So we have those warnings. We have the warnings that Peter gave. He says I want to warn you again.

Earnestly contend for the faith was once for all delivered unto the saints. You know, dear brethren, the faith is something very precious. It's something that is costly.

It's a treasure. It reminds me of what was entrusted to those who were going to carry the sacred vessels of the temple from Babylon back to Jerusalem. Those vessels were weighed when they began that journey.

It was a journey full of treacherous events. It was a journey that was fraught with many enemies, many possibilities for failure. They had to weigh the vessels in again when they arrived in Jerusalem after the third day.

Brethren and sisters, you and I have been entrusted with truth, entrusted with the faith. We're responsible for it. You look at the world around us, you look at the world around us and ask yourself where is the faith being upheld and taught and maintained and expressed? You and I need to be men and sisters, brethren of the book, studying the word of God and understand it clearly.

But let me quickly go on because I want to leave time, and I'm going to sit down very quickly, but he says there's these examples. Three examples of groups of individuals. These people, he says, what was the problem with them? As he's speaking about apostates, he says they're characterized by unbelief.

Remember Israel in the wilderness? They came right up to the border of the land. They had seen the miracles of God, His preserving care. He had brought them to the Red Sea.

He had delivered them to Egypt. Now they're brought to the place where Moses says to go in. They would not.

Hebrews chapter 3 and chapter 4 says they would not because of unbelief. Here they are in such a place, and here are people that have been brought right up to the border, right up to the edge of the blessing of God's salvation to enjoy all that they could have had in Christ, and they refuse to enter. They refuse to believe.

But he says what about these angels? These are angels that weren't satisfied. Whatever took place when they sinned, they left their first estate. He says they're bound under chains of darkness, Peter says.

He says here that they are reserved in everlasting chains under darkness until the judgment of the great day. There were those who were not satisfied with the position God had given them. There were those who were denying the authority of the Lord God as he speaks about them in verse 4. He says he's turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

He says that's the danger of them. They're not only characterized by unbelief, but they're also characterized by dissatisfaction and desire for something different. And last of all, in Sodom and Gomorrah, he says, these were people that were marked by gross immorality.

If you look at this, you'll find that there's a downward direction. There's a downward trend. Beginning with unbelief, he says, is going to result in denial of authority, the denial of the authority of God.

He says the next thing that results is a life of gross immorality, lasciviousness. I leave that because he talks about three individuals. He says there was Cain.

Cain rejected the way that God had for approach unto him. He had his own way. We have Balaam.

He was a man who disregarded the things that were so vital in terms of the worship of God. And he comes because he wants to gain something for himself. I'm just going quickly over these.

And last of all, he says there's Korah. He was marked by rebellion. You can link all these together.

But I leave all these examples. He has four descriptions in his epistle of these men. Four times he describes them and talks about what they're like.

In verse eight, he describes their actions. And in verse 10, we find that he describes other things about them, what they do in their speech and what they're doing in their ignorance like brute beasts. And in verse 12 and 13, he also describes more about them.

But I want to sit down. I want to close on a positive note. He says, but brethren, remember.

You know, warnings are given to you and me, brethren and sisters, because God loves us. He wants to preserve us. It's easy to fall into a trap if you're not aware of it.

You know, those that are involved in trapping animals and so on are even seeking to do so for men. They do so in a manner so that people don't know there's a trap. He says, the apostles that have gone before have warned us.

I ask myself sometimes, do I take the warnings to heart? The things that are written before time are written for our learning. They're written to preserve us, brethren. If you and I don't hold to the word of God and maintain it tenaciously, if we don't seek to put it into practice obediently, then we're going to fail to see the dangers.

The danger is that we can minimize the word of God. The danger is that we can also disregard the word of God. The danger is also that we can get far away from God.

He says, be careful. Remember the warnings that have been given by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They told you these were going to come.

Dear brethren, don't be alarmed and don't be upset. Don't be surprised at the rampant evil that exists in the religious world around us. There's so much ignorance.

I read, was it yesterday, some legislature in Virginia, they want to make it a crime for parents to say anything to their children contrary to transgenderism if they decide to go that direction. It would be a parental crime that you could end up in prison. The thing that grabbed my attention was the last paragraph.

She said if you're a Christian and you do that kind of thing, you need to be careful about having to meet God because you'll have to give account to God for that kind of an attitude. I drive by a church nearby. On the bottom line of their sign board it says an open and affirming church.

If you don't know what that means, you can go look it up. But that's a perversion that has entered into our religious world around us. Don't be surprised.

It existed in the New Testament time it began. It's gone right down the years ever since. That's why you and I need to know what the Word of God says and hold to it and maintain it and proclaim it and teach it clearly.

He not only says that, but he says as well, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. That faith, that doctrine is the foundation and you and I are to build ourselves up upon it. Building up in terms of putting into practice.

Building up in terms of teaching and upholding it and practicing it and enjoying the fullness of it. He says build up yourselves. You don't have to be torn down.

You don't have to be limited. You don't have to be those who will be overwhelmed. He says build yourselves up.

You know one thing about a child of God that's a genuine believer, they have life and they can go against the current. They can swim up against the stream. And brother, the stream is going down.

You and I are supposed to go up. And we are going up. He says not only that, but he says there are those that you can be occupied with in helping, but he says most of all just keep yourselves in the love of God.

Thank God that you and I are loved by God. My earnest desire personally is that I might know in a very real way every day that I'm in a place where I can enjoy the love of God in my soul. Keep your heart fresh.

Keep your heart near to the one that loves you. And never forget he wants to have you and keep you for himself. We're living in a world of perversion, degeneration, and ruin.

We've heard about it from others. God has given us every resource to maintain us. And not only maintain us, but build us up and strengthen us.

Help us to arrive into his presence kept by his power with exceeding joy. God enable us to go away to the conference reinforced in our souls.