MINISTER, Rev. Thomas
O. Scarborough.
Jude. Verses 4-16.
One
of the most important things we have said over the last few Sundays
is that Jude -- in the book of Jude -- writes against
people who have a false view of God's grace
-- people who think that because God is gracious
-- He is gracious to all
people on the face of the earth, or He has mercy on any and every
sin.
There
are some people -- and these are the people Jude writes
about -- people who only see grace, grace, grace. God is gracious,
they say, so everybody
goes to heaven. God is gracious,
so God forgives every sinner.
The
Bible,
however, shows us that God's grace always goes together with
a
very deep sense of sin
-- and of course, it always goes together with faith in Jesus Christ,
who is God’s solution
for sin.
There
is a kind of thinking today
-- just as there was in Jude's day -- that says: "I deserve
God's grace." God is a wonderful God, and therefore I deserve to
receive mercy
from Him.
You
have people living in all sorts of sin today, who have the attitude:
"I deserve God's mercy." Or -- "God's mercy is my
right."
And there’s a condition that is related
to that, which says, “I’ve had God’s mercy since I was born.
God’s grace has been mine all the length of my life.”
But
the Bible shows us that God's grace and mercy apply
to those who have recognised their sin -- and have recognised it so
clearly that they understand that they have lost
eternal life -- they are lost before a holy God -- forever -- and all
that can save me now is God's grace and mercy through His Son Jesus
Christ.
In
verse 4, Jude talks about people -- these are people within
the Church -- who have turned the grace
of God into licence. That word "grace" is very similar to
the word mercy -- and it means God's undeserved favour. They have
taken God's undeserved favour, and turned it into licence.
*
* * * * * * * * *
This
morning we have reached verse 4
of the book of Jude, and this morning I’m going to speed up
tremendously -- we are going to cover a whole nine verses
in this book -- all the way through to verse 12.
Verse
4 introduces
what follows, so let’s just read verse 4: “For certain men whose
condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in
among you. They are godless
men, who change the grace of God into a license for immorality and
deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”
Two
key words are "godless"
and "immoral".
The
word "godless"
refers to their spiritual
condition -- these men are simply God-less
-- they just don't have
God in their lives. They talk
about God, and they move among the people
of God, the Church
of God -- we read here that they attend Holy Communion,
and they speak fine words in the fellowship -- but God is not there,
in their lives.
How
does one tell the difference between such people and someone who does
have God in his or her life? I hope that we’ll find answer in Jude
this morning.
Secondly,
these people who have slipped into the Church are immoral,
in verse 4 -- their behaviour does not reflect the kind of behaviour
that is part of a Spirit-filled life.
Now
that can be a misleading word
-- immoral.
When we hear the word immoral
today, we tend to think of sexual
immorality, or serious corruption
-- and that is certainly included
under the word “immoral”. But Jude includes certain things under
that word “immoral” that we might not expect
-- such as grumbling and faultfinding and boasting.
* * * * * * * * * *
Now
before we get into what it means
that these men in the book of Jude were godless and immoral -- let’s
look at a rather obvious
truth that we might easily overlook.
Certain
men have secretly
slipped in among
you -- in verse 4. And that word “secretly” means that no one
would have noticed.
They just blended in so well
-- they slipped
into the Church. But
-- still they were godless and immoral.
The
basic truth here is that you might be in the Church -- but that does
not necessarily mean that you really know God, or that you have
really understood true Christian behaviour.
You might be involved in the Church life -- your name might be on
the membership roll -- or you might have been baptised and confirmed
-- but that doesn’t necessarily
mean that you have eternal salvation.
Let’s
translate Jude’s words “godless” and “immoral” into today’s
terms -- and let’s remember again that Jude is talking about people
within
the Church.
Firstly,
you get what is sometimes called the "career
Christian" -- that is their career
in life, to be a Christian -- whether to be a churchgoer or even a
minister
-- but even though they call
themselves Christian, they have not come to a personal understanding
of God's grace.
Sometimes such Christians are called "nominal"
Christians. There wasn’t a point in their lives where they
received Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour.
Secondly,
you get the immoral
Christian -- perhaps not immoral by the standards of the world today
-- but immoral from Jude’s point of view, and from the Bible’s
point of view -- Christians who claim the right to live as
the world
lives. They say that the Church is judgemental
-- and what right does it have to judge personal behaviours that
don’t -- according to them -- do anybody any harm?
* * * * * * * * * *
Jude
shows us that there is one basic problem with both
of these categories of people in the Church -- and he makes this
problem very clear
in this little book -- he spells out
the roots
of the trouble
-- the spiritual
roots. We’ll take a look at those roots, and then we’ll look at
some of the specific
things that were happening in the Church.
Firstly,
in verse 5,
Jude says: "I want to remind
you that the Lord delivered His people out of Egypt
-- but later destroyed those who did not believe."
By
God's mercy and grace, He delivered His people from the land of Egypt
-- and yet
-- and yet they never made it to the promised Land.
They
had the great privilege of being called God’s people -- they had
the privilege of being part of God’s deliverance from Egypt -- from
the world -- by God’s power and grace -- and yet their salvation
was never completed.
They never made it to the Promised Land.
They died in the desert.
Why was that?
The
reason that is given here in Jude
is unbelief.
There was no saving faith.
They knew all about God's grace
-- they knew all about His mighty acts of love -- they knew all about
it -- but they never came to that moment of personal faith.
Jude
is saying that there are people who have the amazing privilege of
belonging to the Church of Christ, but they have not come to saving
faith.
Let
us look next at verse 6.
In
verse 6, Jude speaks about the angels
who did not keep their positions of authority.
These
were angels
-- angels in heaven -- and yet, despite their status and privilege as
angels -- they are now bound for eternal judgement on the great Day
-- on the final Day of Judgement.
The
reason that is given here is that they did not keep their positions
-- their positions of authority -- but they abandoned
their own home. And what this means
is that they were no longer in submission
to God, in the positions they should have been
in -- but they rebelled against Him.
So
Jude is saying that salvation includes submission to God.
You can’t have salvation if you still want your own way.
Then
in verse 7
-- in verse 7, Jude describes how Sodom and Gomorrah, and the
surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and
perversion. And as a result of this, they came under eternal
punishment.
They
gave themselves up
-- they handed themselves over.
And this talks about the direction
of their lives. They demanded the right to sin,
and refused to take a new
direction -- and so they came under God's eternal judgement.
In
this third case, what is missing is repentance
-- a turning away from sin.
So there may be people who belong to the Church, says Jude, who have
not turned their lives around.
In
verse 11,
these men have taken the way of Cain.
Now Jude is not referring to Cain’s murder
here, so he has to be referring to the way of Cain in worshiping God.
Cain
is the classic example of someone who worshipped God in the wrong
way
-- as far as we can tell, Cain decided to worship God in his own
way, and not the way that God required.
And
then lastly -- the last of the spiritual
problems with these men in the book of Jude -- also in verse 11 --
they have rushed for profit into Balaam's
error.
Balaam
was a prophet in the Old Testament who was summoned
by a certain king -- the king demanded to see
him. And Balaam inquired of the Lord: "Lord should I go?"
-- and the Lord told Balaam not to go. But then that king offered
him money -- and so Balaam disobeyed the Lord,
and he went to see the king.
In
other words, Balaam, as a prophet, was meant to serve God
-- single-mindedly.
But he was getting waylaid by the desire for personal gain.
This was causing him to change the word of God.
Jude also says -- in verse 12 -- that these are shepherds who feed
only themselves.
It’s not the flock
they are interested in -- they do things not for God’s flock, but
to benefit themselves.
Perhaps to make themselves popular
-- or perhaps to make themselves rich.
We
don't know how
these men in the book of Jude were doing things for personal gain --
but one thing is for sure -- as soon as a Christian -- and especially
a Christian minister
-- starts doing things not because of God’s will and the good of
God’s work, but for personal advantage
-- then you have a serious spiritual problem
at the heart of the Church.
* * * * * * * * * *
Let’s
just sum
up
what Jude is saying through these five examples.
He is saying that people have got into the Church who do not have
-- saving faith,
or submission
to God, or repentance
from sin.
Also, they do not worship God as God
requires, and they are compromising God’s will and God’s Word for
some kind of personal advantage.
Those
are the spiritual
problems which Jude is addressing in the book of Jude.
Let
us notice in verse 10 that these are men who do not understand.
We know that these men
had no spiritual understanding -- they were unsaved, and therefore
their spiritual eyes were closed. They had no spiritual sight.
Basically,
everything we have seen can be summed up as an absence
of repentance and faith.
Again we have seen a description of career
Christians, or nominal
Christians, who are very much part of the Church -- but have failed
to be convicted of sin, have failed to surrender
their lives to God, have failed repent
of their own way -- who continue to come to God on their own
terms -- and not only that, they are turning the gospel to their own
advantage
in some way -- perhaps for popularity and acceptance -- perhaps for
financial gain.
* * * * * * * * * *
Now
as always, such spiritual
problems lead to moral
problems, or behavioural
problems -- and that is what we shall look at next.
The
next
thing that Jude says is that these spiritual
deficiencies -- these spiritual
problems -- further lead to a number of behavioural
problems. There are certain behaviours
that show that a person is ot the genuine article in the Church.
And
Jude goes on to list five
things that characterise
the person who is not the genuine article
-- I picked up five things that seem to have been going on in the
Church at that time
-- and every one of them just
as relevant today.
In
verse 8,
we read firstly that these men -- or some
of these men -- pollute their own bodies
-- and usually such words refer to sexual immorality. That was also
referred to in the previous verse, verse 7.
Their lifestyle
was immoral.
We
are not told how
-- and it is unlikely that they were doing things that were
shockingly
immoral -- perhaps it was practices that were more or less accepted
in that day and age, but were not acceptable according to the Word of
God.
The reference to Sodom and Gomorrah
may refer to same-sex liaisons.
Secondly,
these men reject
authority.
That is a very common mark of an unsaved person, because they just
don't understand authority.
If you are not under the authority of God
-- if you have not submitted
yourself to Him,
and said, “Lord, you can have
every part
of my life -- I’ll give anything up
for you, I’ll take anything on
for you”, then you can hardly do that for any lesser
reason in this world.
There’s
another reference to such a problem in verse 11.
Verse 11 speaks about Korah's rebellion.
Korah
was a man who challenged the spiritual authority of Moses
-- he led a rebellion
against Moses, in the Old Testament. The Bible tells us that he
became "insolent"
-- and he went to Moses to challenge
Moses.
The
Bible tells us that there was no other person on earth who was as
humble as Moses. (Numbers 12:3). And when Korah challenged Moses,
Moses fell with his face upon the ground.
And
to cut a long story short, Korah and all his people -- as we read in
verse 11 -- were destroyed, because they rebelled against the
spiritual authority of Moses.
Perhaps
these men who had secretly slipped into the Church were challenging
the spiritual authority of the leaders
of the Church -- perhaps they were challenging the spiritual
authority of Paul.
And notice also the reference in verse 16
to grumblers and faultfinders.
They were grumblers and faultfinders.
In
the world out there, you choose somebody because they have the best
C.V., or because they have the greatest intelligence, or the best
skills, or the most drive, or the biggest clout.
In
the Church, it is people God has anointed
-- in the Church, God places those people He thinks He can use. God
says: "This is the servant I am going to use in this place, by
my power" -- whether that is the minister, or a deacon, or a
group leader. And if God's
anointing is upon a person, it is at your peril that you become
insolent towards them, as did Korah in the Old Testament.
Thirdly
-- in verse 8 -- these men in the time of Jude slander celestial
beings
-- and a little further down, we read that they speak abusively
of whatever they do not understand.
There
is a reference here to the archangel Michael here -- and what Jude is
saying
is that even the archangel Michael -- the highest
of the angels -- did not speak abusively to Satan
-- nor did he speak by his own authority,
but he spoke on God’s
authority. He said: "The Lord
rebuke you."
These
men in the book of Jude obviously must have been doing it differently
-- instead of acting within
the authority of God,
and the authority of the Word
-- instead of being in submission
to God’s will -- they were just using their own
authority, and probably they did not have the respect that the
archangel Michael
had. They were slanderous
and degrading
in the way that they dealt with people.
And
then a final problem with these men who are mentioned in the book of
Jude -- they are blemishes at the love
feasts -- which is Holy Communion.
In
those days, Holy Communion was not simply a brief service as we have
it today, but it was a feast
-- a feast of joy and fellowship and spiritual encouragement -- maybe
more like our own Church Suppers.
The
original Greek does not speak about these people being blemishes
at the love feasts -- rather it describes them as reefs
underneath the love feasts.
Everything
seemed to be going fine at the love feasts -- the ship seemed to be
sailing along beautifully -- when suddenly it would hit this reef
underneath. These men were reefs
among the brothers and sisters -- they spoiled
the fellowship -- they put something into it that jarred
-- something that grated,
or aggravated
the fellowship.
Let’s
just sum up again. Jude mentions four specific behaviours
of people who were ruining the Church. They were leading an immoral
lifestyle
-- they were not respectful of spiritual authority
in the Church -- they used authority
in a way that was not just faithfully acting on God’s
behalf, but was arrogant and probably degrading
-- and they just grated or aggravated the fellowship
when the Church got together for its love
feasts.
* * * * * * * * * *
This might seem a
strange place to end this morning -- but I have run out of time.
If you feel this morning
that you are ready for a change of mind about your sin -- and about
God -- and about your need for Jesus Christ in your life -- I have a
little booklet which we want to offer you with our compliments -- it
will explain to you just how to do that. Please ask me for a copy at
the door.
AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment