Jude

Discussion Questions

1. When seeking to discern between the two, what are some of the key differences we can look for between authentic & merely nominal faith?
2. What are some practical things we can do to support and nurture a robust faith?
3. How should we balance between standing strong against false teaching while still showing mercy to those who doubt?

Transcript

Well, we study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and if you’d like a paper copy to follow along with, raise your hand and someone will deliver it to you. Greetings on this 4th of July weekend. We’re so glad you’re here to worship with us, whether it’s in person or online. If you’re worshiping with us online and you’re not from the United States, it’s just the first weekend of July, isn’t it? But we’re glad you’re here with us and, hey, it’s a great excuse to shoot off some fireworks and eat some watermelon.

Well, as Kim was saying, a little bit of housekeeping. As you know, we’ve done some pivoting the last couple of weeks. Jim stepped in with about 30 minutes’ notice last week and taught on Ephesians. Well done, my friend. And, Tommy, I’m just saying that, God willing, next week, when you teach 2 John, bro, you’re going to have that thing down.

Well, okay, so we are going to go through Jude. Oh, and if you want to hop on Wi-Fi, there’s the info [on the screen]. You can scan the QR code and get our notes and quotes. As we get into an overview of Jude, let’s just go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name Jude? (singing Hey, Jude) Yes. I mean we could go through the whole song.  Anyway, I will say this: extra credit if you can tell me after the service who the song was written for. No cheating, who the song was written for and what the original title might possibly have been.

So here we go. Hey, Jude. Let’s look at a little overview of Jude. We’re doing the whole book series in one week. The Faith Once Delivered is the title of the sermon series and the title for today’s sermon is Earnestly Contending for the Faith. See how we did both of those together? Okay, so here we go, an overview of Jude: It is an epistle, a letter, an ancient letter. It’s written either to a person or a church or a number of churches, and the author is most likely Jude. He names himself, and there’s no reason to expect that it’s not him.

He only identifies himself in two ways. The first way, he says, “I’m a doulos, a bondservant to Jesus Christ.” Then he identifies himself as a brother of James, who we know is a half-brother of Jesus. Same mother, different father. Half-brother of James who wrote the Epistle of James and was the head of the Jerusalem church. Isn’t it interesting that Jude doesn’t refer to himself as a brother of Jesus, but as his bondservant? That is stunning. We know from the Gospels that Jesus had at least four half-brothers, because they’re men mentioned, James, Jude, Joseph, and Simon, and a number of sisters.

Here’s something that just blows me away. The brothers, while Jesus was alive on earth and in His earthly ministry, they regarded Him one way. Post-resurrection, they regard Him very differently. We read in the third chapter of Mark that Jesus had returned home. He’s teaching, large crowds gather, and His family goes to seize Him because they think He is out of His mind. Basically, they’re going to stage an intervention because they think He’s out of His mind, and He escapes. Then, post-resurrection, Jude refers to Him as, “My master and Lord.” What’s the difference? The difference is the resurrection. The resurrection changes everything. Amen.

Well, when was the letter written? We don’t know for sure. Most likely between 60 and 80 AD. I encourage you to go read 2 Peter chapter 2 this week. These two men obviously talked with each other because those two, the second chapter of 2 Peter and Jude are very similar. So probably written around the same time, most likely the mid to late 60s.

Who was the letter written for, what recipients? Well, that’d be an open letter because there’s no addresses named, but we can tell that he’s including Jewish Christians in his audience. Maybe some gentiles too, but definitely Jewish Christians, because in this letter, he uses a lot of Old Testament scriptural and historical references. We’re going to see a lot of references to how God dealt with unbelief in the Old Testament.

Then Jude also uses some Old Testament-era literature outside the canon. He makes references to a story from non-biblical history about the Archangel Michael interacting with the devil. That’s probably from a book called The Testament of Moses. Then Jude also quotes from another book called First Enoch. This doesn’t mean necessarily that Jude thought these were divinely inspired, because they weren’t in the canon. However, he knew that his audience was very familiar with these books. Like when we quote C. S. Lewis or Tim Keller, we know that you all are going to be familiar with those authors. Same thing with Jude. He’s going to quote some of these books.

The purpose of the letter: Jude says that he was going to originally write a letter to them about their common salvation. But then at the last minute, he becomes aware of these false teachers that have crept into the church unnoticed. Now Jude writes to this church because he wants to appeal to them to earnestly contend for the faith that was once and for all given to the saints. That’s his purpose now for writing this letter.

So, the letter follows a general template of epistles. There’s a greeting, then it’s followed by a body, and then followed by the conclusion, which in this case is this lovely benediction, which we’ll get to in just a minute. Within the body of the letter, there are two parts. The first part is a very pointed description and judgment of these false teachers, their character, and their actions. Then the second part is the Christian antidote to these false teachers. How do believers respond to this false teaching and how do believers respond to those around them who are drifting away and being deceived?

Frankly, I don’t know about you, but that’s an issue that is top of mind for me, and I would think for many of us too, how do we respond to our culture? How do we respond to false teaching? How do we respond to those around us who are being deceived or are drifting away? Jude’s letter, especially in his judgment of these false teachers, is definitely the sharp tip of the sword. It is uncomfortable and it makes me squirm every time I read it because it’s uncomfortable. I’d like to say that before we knew Christ, I think each one of us can find ourselves somewhere in this book. But Jesus came to die for us while we were still far off, while we were still sinners. That’s what this letter points to. There is so much hope in this letter. In Christ we are called, we are beloved, we are kept.

1. N. T. Wright, along with Michael F. Bird, has written a book called The New Testament in Its World. It is a fantastic book. It’s part commentary, part history, part theology. In this book, Wright comments on the letter of Jude, and I think he hits the nail right on the head comparing it to our current culture. He says, “Parts of the Christian church today seem ideationally vacuous, with little or no confessional content to their faith. They tend also to be places where manifold forms of immorality are permitted and even celebrated.

“In such a context, we are to contend for the faith without being contentious over tertiary matters. In such an environment, we are to embrace and embody the moral implications of the gospel. In such a time, we are to rescue those who are blown about by false teaching and who get flustered over what they should actually believe. To keep ourselves in God’s love, we must keep the faith, and keep ourselves from being seduced by bad characters masquerading as teachers.” Wow. Way to go, N. T.

Well, let’s pray, church, and then let’s read through our text. I’ll try and keep my comments to a minimum. I know I say that every week, but it’s communion Sunday. So, let’s see how we do. I’d like to pray for us. I thought this prayer from Evelyn Underhill would be just the right way to start our study. So, let’s pray, church.

“Oh, Holy Spirit of God, we ask You to quicken our minds and hearts during these days of quiet. Grant that we may see ourselves as we are and also as You would have us to be, and give us such a vision of God, our Father as revealed to us by Jesus Christ, that we may be more completely devoted to Him, more faithful in His service, and more earnest in our endeavor to do always the things that please Him for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

Well, let’s read the book of Jude together. So, verse one, “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.” Boy, what a beautiful way to start this letter. Friends, you are called, you are beloved, you are kept. Then he says, “May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.”

Right away he gets into the body, the judgment. “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” It is fixed, delivered once and for all. “For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people,” and he’s going to use that phrase quite often, “who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.” He calls his big brother his only master and Lord. That is just amazing.

“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” Some translations say “the Lord saved the people out of the land of Egypt.” But some of the early manuscripts say “Jesus.” What an interesting thing that Jude already has such a handle on the theology of the Trinity, that Jesus was not just born 30 or 40 years prior, that He existed, that He was existing in the Trinity when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt.

“And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”

Then he compares the Old Testament to these false teachers. “Yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.” Here he’s referring to this testimony of Moses. “But when the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, He did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you,'” which I think is really interesting. Michael could have pronounced a judgment against the devil, but instead he said, “I’m going to let the Lord do that.”

Again, referring to these false teachers, “But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all, that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.” In other words, they are following their passions and letting their passions rule them.

“Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.” Pay attention. Coming up, there are just some amazing word pictures that Jude paints here. “These,” meaning these false teachers, “they are hidden reefs at your love feasts.” They are waiting out of sight trying to wreck the ships of these churches with their false doctrine. Just like a hidden reef, if you’re not aware of it, you’re going to run aground.

“As they feast with you, without fear, shepherds feeding themselves.” Then look at what he says here. There’s three or four of these things where he’s pointing out things that promise and don’t deliver, things that are not operating as they are created and meant to do. The first is shepherds feeding themselves, not feeding their flock. “Waterless clouds, swept along by winds,” no rain, “fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead and uprooted.” No fruit-bearing from these trees. “Wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars.” A wandering star is not going to light the night or provide navigation, is it?

“Wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.” Boy, what pictures he’s painted. “It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’ These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.” Jude is not pulling punches here, is he?

Verse 17: “But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.” But here’s the antidote, here’s our response: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.”

In other words, be merciful to those who are doubting. If you see somebody drifting away, reach out to them. Then if you see somebody that is fully entrenched in self-destructive behavior, have mercy on them, but with fear and trembling. Theme: Have mercy.

Now this beautiful doxology. “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” Wow. That is short and snappy, isn’t it? Oh, my goodness. There are four things that have stood out to me from this text. How do we incorporate what we’ve just read there, both the warnings and the encouragement? What does this have to do with us?

There are four things that have stood out. First of all, Judah reminds us that false teachers, scoffers, and willing unbelievers exist in every age and culture. It’s easy in our current climate to think that the wheels are coming off, the train’s getting ready to derail, that things are worse than they’ve ever been. And there’s plenty to be discouraged about if all we’re looking at is culture and society. We are addicted to anger and outrage.

As a culture, we’re bobbing up and down. We are lost at sea, lost in this sea of postmodernism, post-Christian, post-truth, post-reality, post-everything. We are, as a culture, lost at sea, and yet we’re insistent on building a life raft out of our truth and our identity with no real building materials of real truth or substance. Therefore, there we are just bobbing about on the wild wave, every wild wave of the sea, as Jude describes it. Our culture is not basing its identity or its function on anything real and substantive.

But Jude reminds us that every culture, every age has had to deal with these same problems, because this letter is about 2,000 years old. But we see so much of our current issues encompassed in the body of this letter. Even then, 2,000 years ago, he’s referring back a thousand years or more into the past, pulling from these Old Testament references of people dealing with the same issues. It’s enough to make us marvel at the long-suffering patience of God, isn’t it? In dealing with the sinfulness of man and, frankly, in terms of the progressiveness of humankind. We’re just not very impressive, are we? I mean, we are not.

Gene Green wrote a commentary on 2 Peter and Jude, and he says this, “The themes that emerge from that ancient milieu are surprisingly familiar and linger with us today as the church seeks to live out its faith in a postmodern world which has lost all sense of absolutes and embraces hedonism in the extreme.” Well, without a sense of absolutes, bobbing on the ocean, and with this tendency towards embracing hedonism as a means of expressing our identity. And by that, I mean if I feel or desire something, I’m not naming it as a feeling or desire. It’s who I am. It’s my identity and, therefore, I must express it.

Well, what happens if that’s our tendency? Joni Eareckson Tada sums it up this way. She says, “Gradually, though no one remembers exactly how it happened, the unthinkable becomes tolerable. And then acceptable. And then legal. And then applaudable.” Again, I want to point out that this is not just an issue for the 21st century. I think Jude has made it very clear that this was an issue 2,000 years ago.

So how do we live out our faith in this context? Knowing this, how do we live out our faith? Well, I think that the second thing that occurred to me from this passage is that Jude exhorts us to understand the difference between a nominal faith and an authentic faith, because both versions will look like something. Do we know what a nominal faith looks like—one that is just clinging to the fringes, slouching towards apathy, towards a faith without substance?

Jude gives us a pretty good idea of what that looks like. Again, sadly, it’s so relevant to our current culture. Here’s a list of 12 characteristics of nominal faith, and I’ll go through it pretty quickly.

It creeps in unnoticed. I’ve got to say, we typically don’t creep and drift towards a robust faith, do we? That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is no. Another thing that was in the letter, ungodly persons who turn the grace of God into sensuality. Are we using the grace of God for licentiousness, to give us license to live as we please instead of what pleases God? Nominal faith denies our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. It reviles the things that it doesn’t understand.

Nominal faith ends up being grumblers. I don’t know if that’s painful to anybody. I’m a grumbler sometimes. Following their own sinful desires, who’s in charge? Are we in charge or our desires, our passions? Who’s driving the ship? They speak arrogantly. They show favoritism to gain advantage. They are scoffers. They cause divisions. They’re worldly-minded and devoid of the Spirit. If you’re good at math, if you’re awake and paying attention, you’ll notice it’s really a baker’s dozen. I just had to sneak an extra one in because I counted 13 and I just wanted to call it a dozen.

Well, as I said earlier, we don’t typically drift towards a robust faith, do we? C. S. Lewis tells us, “Left to oneself, one could easily slide away from ‘the faith once given’ [once delivered] into a phantom called ‘my religion.’” This book, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, was published posthumously in 1964. 1964. And yet how relevant is that statement to 2023? If we aren’t watchful, we drift away from authentic faith towards something Lewis calls “my religion” and, nowadays, we call it “my truth,” and it’s something that our culture celebrates. Friends, we need to see nominal faith for what it is. We need to be wise and discerning. If someone is bringing in something that isn’t actual truth, just because they say it doesn’t make it true. What is our worldview? What is our filter?

Jude talked about being worldly-minded as a sign of nominal faith. Well, what does our worldview look like? What lens do we see the world through? Is it the lens of the Gospel? Is it the lens of the current culture? Something can sound good, it can make a good sound bite, it can look good, it can be acceptable in today’s culture, and still not be the truth. Look at the way the serpent twisted the truth in the garden, and the way the devil twisted the truth when he was tempting Jesus in the wilderness.

So, what does authentic faith look like compared to that list that we just read through? Before I got up here, Jim led us through the Apostles’ Creed, which is an ancient and succinct stating of our core beliefs. That’s authentic faith right there. Bible commentator J. C. Ryle explains it this way:

“It costs something to be a true Christian. Let that never be forgotten. To be a mere nominal Christian, and go to church, that is cheap and easy work. But to hear Christ’s voice, and follow Christ, and believe in Christ, and confess Christ, requires much self-denial. It will cost us our sins, and our self-righteousness, and our ease, and our worldliness. All – all must be given up.”

Our culture tells us follow your heart, and Jesus says, “Take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow me.” Well, as we understand that difference between a nominal and authentic faith, Jude now explains to us how we can persevere in this authentic faith. That’s the antidote to false teachers and untruth in a nominal faith. In verse 20, in our passage, he gives us four things that we can do to counteract spiritual drift. He says, “Build yourself up in your faith. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Wait for the mercy of Jesus.”

So, persevering in the faith looks an awful lot like waiting and trusting, doesn’t it? Are we patiently waiting for God to do His work in us, that seems slow and tedious, small and ordinary? Tish Harrison Warren talks about this kind of quiet growth. She says,

“The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive and ordinary. I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith. But it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith – the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small – that God’s transformation takes root and grows.”
Tish Harrison Warren

Well, lastly in this text, Jude calls us to extend the healing, helping hand of mercy, and not the angry, closed fist of self-righteousness. How do we respond to the darkness? How do we interact with culture when our paths seem so divergent? Friends, we are not the Holy Spirit. We’re not called to convict the world of sin. We are called to be salt and light, hands and feet of Jesus. We’re called to reflect the Father to this broken world.

Jude’s emphasis is on mercy, not self-righteousness, because our righteousness is not ours anyway, is it? It is Christ’s righteousness worked out in our lives, lived out in us. We don’t have to be threatened by someone else’s nominal faith or untruth or cultural trends. We don’t have to be threatened by that. In Christ, we are able to be a non-anxious presence. In Christ, we can see the longing behind the broken behavior.

Oswald Chambers rightly points out,

“There is only one being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Oswald Chambers

Ooh, that is so good. Guys, all that aches within us, all that aches of longings unfulfilled, of wrongs imposed on us or wrongs that we’ve imposed on others, all that aches of chasms and canyons in relationships that just can’t be traversed, all that aches in us for others’ suffering, which we can’t help, or that we could help and we don’t, all that aches within us – only one person can satisfy that last aching abyss, and that person is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so, we extend the hand of mercy, not the fist of self-righteousness. Then what’s the result of that? What kind of trail do we leave in the dirt when we live like that? Dane Ortlund says it like this in his book Gentle and Lowly. I just want to say that I could have used that Madeleine L’Engle quote again today, but I’m using some self-control. This is a great quote.

“Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.”
Madeleine L’Engle

That is what the world will see when we respond with mercy and love. We aren’t asked to be the Holy Spirit swinging the sharp blade of judgment. We are asked to be pointers to Jesus’ signposts. As Steve Garber says,

“He has asked us to be signposts of the world that will someday be, even as we live all day long in the world that is.”
Steve Garber

That’s what Jesus is asking us to do, and that is what earnestly contending for the faith can look like. Amen.

I’d like to close with this last slide. The theme for our men’s retreat coming up in October is Stand Firm. It’s based on these two verses from 1 Corinthians, which I think sum up nicely what contending for the faith means in total. “Be watchful.” Be aware. “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men,” and women, “be strong,” and follow that up with, “Let all that you do be done in love.” Amen. Let’s pray, church:

God, we are grateful, grateful that You call us, grateful that we are Your beloved. Grateful that You keep us. Lord, we wait on You. We trust You. You are our protection. You are the light. Nothing can separate us from Your love. Your goodness is beyond all we can imagine. Your steadfast love is truly better than life. Thank You. In Jesus’ name, amen.