Judgment and Joy (Jude 1-4)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We are starting a new brief book this morning. We're in the book of Jude. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there now.
It will be near the back, just before Revelation. So one of the final books of the Bible. It's on page 594 in the blue Bibles that are around you. You can follow along in one of those Bibles. You can also follow on the screen. If you don't have a Bible at home and you see a blue Bible, take that.
We want you to have a Bible that you can read. That is our gift to you. But we're going to be in Jude the next few weeks. So Jude is one of the smaller letters in the New Testament. It is small, but it packs a punch. It is an aggressive, corrective letter written to Christians who were being led astray.
So one of the things we're going to see in this letter is that it upholds both judgment and joy. It's going to be very blunt about the judgment that is for those that do not trust God and His word. Do not abide by His word. While also upholding joy that is set before us. The joy that we have in Christ. The joy that resounds into eternity.
It's going to uphold both of those together. But with the gospel comes both of those. And He's going to be delivering that in this letter. That's something that I did not understand until I became a believer. I became a believer when I was 17. And in the years leading up to that, I didn't understand the idea of God's judgment.
Nor that the joy that He offered was better. Like I grew up in and around the church. And, you know, it has a general understanding. I think I would have at the time said, yes, I do believe that the Bible teaches about hell. And I do think that's real. But I think I basically understood that that was reserved for the worst.
That was for the worst of people. And that basically I could live my life on my terms. And that God would just kind of wink and nod at my life. So much of my high school years was doing what a lot of high schooler kids fall into. Which is partying and drugs and all the things that I thought was going to bring me joy. I didn't think that it was a big deal that I could pursue those things.
That God was just going to wink at it. And that would be fine. As long as I called myself a Christian, that would be okay. But I also missed out on the fact that God offers something that is better. And by his grace, at the height of getting drunk, at the height of drug use, realizing at 17 that, oh, no, this doesn't satisfy. That what I'm pursuing, the pleasures of this world, doesn't actually bring joy.
And I finally stumbled upon a church where I finally heard the gospel and then believed. And then started to believe this message and see it as beautiful and good. And Jude is going to a very brief, you know, 25 verses uphold both of those. Understanding that there is judgment. But there also is great joy that is offered in Christ.
That's what we're going to see as we walk through this the next few weeks. So what we're going to do today is we're going to walk through the first four verses. And then we're just going to introduce the book as a whole. And then we're going to have the next few weeks to see this theme play out. So let me pray for us and then we'll jump in.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us. Jude is a book that is difficult to hear, but you can prepare our hearts for it. God, there's undoubtedly a lot of thoughts, a lot of goodness. There's just sometimes the weeks are hard. And coming into a Sunday morning where we're going to hear your word, it's hard to hear. But I pray that you would help us receive it.
And that we walk this out in faith and repentance and belief and in worship. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right, starting off in verse 1.
It starts off, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Okay, so let me pause there. There's a long time historical consensus that Jude is the brother of James. The James who wrote the book of James. The James who was a leader in the early New Testament church. James who was the literal brother of Christ.
Which means that Jude is also the literal brother of Christ. Now, if you have any Catholic background, you might say, wait, no, that didn't happen because Mary was always a virgin. That's the doctrine of perpetual virginity of Mary. Now, that doctrine goes back to the 5th century. But it's actually not rooted in its world.
When you look at the New Testament, it's very clear that Mary and Joseph went on to have other children. These are the siblings of Jesus. In Matthew 13 is one of the places where we see this. In Matthew 13, 55, it says, Is not this the carpenter's son? They're questioning Jesus. Is not his mother called Mary?
And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? Which is the author of this letter. But you might go, wait a second. That's not Jude. And yes, you accurately figured that out. He had a name change.
And I think for very obvious reasons, he had a name change. Right? Right? If Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, betrays Jesus, you change your name. Like if you're a kid, you're born in 1930, and your mother says, You know what? I'm going to name you Adolf.
By the time 442 comes around, you're like, I don't know. I think I'm going to go by Aaron. I think I'm taking one for the team here. I'm going to change my name. That's what's happening here. They refer to these verses as Jude historically, and this is what we know him as.
So, we don't know much about Jude. Okay? We don't know much about him from church history. We know generally, we don't know a lot from the scriptures. We know generally that he was a leader in the church. He had authority.
We knew he wrote this letter. We don't know if this letter was written to a specific church or multiple churches. We don't know if it was written to a specific region like Galatia, which was the letter of Galatians, or Corinth, like the letter that was written to the Corinthians. We don't know that either. The one thing we can tell from the letter is that, and most scholars agree, that the audience that he's writing to is predominantly Jewish Christian. Okay?
Because there is a ton of very specific Jewish references, more so than many other books in the New Testament. There's references to the Old Testament in this, but there's also references to Jewish historical books that aren't in the Old Testament, like the book of Enoch that we're going to see later on. So it's abundantly, or I should say it's evidently clear that the audience is probably Jewish Christian. So we at least can tell that from it. It's a brief letter. It's only 25 verses, which means when we say go to Jude, we don't say go to Jude chapter 1, verses 1 through 4.
We just say go to Jude, verses 1 through 4. Also, and this is anecdotal evidence, but I don't think it's preached very often. There's not a lot out there on Jude. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and he's not a part of our church, and I'm just talking. I said, yeah, we're going to be in the book of Jude, then we're going to be in Exodus. And he said, Jude?
Nobody preaches Jude. I said, well, not anymore. Here we stand. We will take them. But it's true.
There's not a lot of people that preach Jude. So why are we walking through Jude? Three reasons. First, all of Scripture is profitable for teaching, for training in righteousness. Okay? So we can pull up any book of the Bible, and it is going to be profitable for us to grow into the likeness of Christ and seeing the gospel displayed.
Second, I think this letter is very helpful for our moment in the American church. As we're going to see, I think it's very helpful for this moment. A failure to not heed the warnings, to not heed the judgment and the joy that is displayed in this letter is to our detriment in the American church. And the third reason, and it's very practical, we just came out of the book of Psalms. Okay? We're going to be in the book of Exodus.
All right? And Exodus, I don't know if you know this, is long. So those of you that love long books, boy, oh, boy, it's coming. And as Chet and I were talking, we said, no, let's do something in the New Testament. Let's do something that's brief.
We were looking through this and said, oh, no, we think Jude is appropriate. We think this is a good, got a New Testament break before we jump back into the Old Testament. So we are going to spend the next few weeks learning from the brother of Jesus. So let's continue to walk through these verses. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. I'll pause.
I'll also note he doesn't say, he doesn't flex and say the brother of Christ. He could have. That would have been accurate. That's not what he says. The humility of saying, and they knew this, they knew who Jude was. But the humility of introducing himself as, I'm a servant of Jesus.
He's going, he's going to, in a few verses, he's going to say his master. To have that type of humility to say, I'm a servant of Christ, I think is telling. He says, to those who were called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Those phrases who were called beloved in God the Father, kept for Jesus Christ. Each one of those, you could write a theological work on those phrases alone. Like the drop down menu on just those phrases is powerful.
And that's what you see in a lot of New Testament letters. They don't write letters like we do. Where it's like, dear John, body. It's like, no, we're going to pack in as much theological encouragement as possible. So when he says, to those who were called.
What's packed into that is the doctrine of election. That God has chosen us in faith. When he goes on to say, beloved in God. That's an incredible encouragement that you are, that beloved is deeply affectionate, sacrificial love. That's the kind of love that God the Father has for his adopted children. That we get to be called sons and daughters of God the Father.
That's the language of Jesus Christ and his bride, the church, the beloved, whom he loves deeply. So much so that he left heaven and came and sought us by his blood. This deeply sacrificial, joyous language being called his beloved. He says, kept for Jesus Christ. That's Philippians. He who began a good work in us will carry it through to completion.
That's 1 Peter, who by God's power being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. That is the idea that when God regenerates us, when he brings us to faith in Christ, the secure promise is that he absolutely will carry us to completion. He will carry us home. We are kept for Jesus Christ. If you have a study Bible, and I would encourage you to absolutely study this. In the next few weeks, spend some time.
It's only 25 verses. Reading this over and over again. Get a study Bible. If you don't have one, come talk to us. If you don't know how to use a study Bible, definitely come talk to us. We'd love to be able to sit down and show you how to use one.
But if you look at a study Bible, you're going to see each one of those phrases. There's a tiny little letter called a footnote that's at the front of it. And it corresponds to some cross-references, which is probably in the middle. And those cross-references are just Bible verses that show. I mean, this is connected to this in Ephesians and this in Philippians. It's incredible how much is packed in just this introduction.
He gives this encouragement. And then he goes on to verse 2. May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. This is a phrasing that shows up in other New Testament letters. May the mercy of God that we don't deserve, but He graciously bestows upon us.
May the peace of God, the peace that surpasses all understanding. The peace that calms and quiets our soul. And the love of God, the love that was perfectly displayed in Christ on our behalf. May all of this be multiplied to you. Very clear that the audience that He's writing to, He's writing to genuine Christians. He wants these blessings, these beautiful truths to be multiplied to them.
So if you are a Christian, you get to receive this letter also to you to hear its beautiful truths that He's going to walk us through. So, that's the introduction. Now we're into the body. Verse 3. 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. He said, And they're starting to lead people astray.
And the tone is going to be completely different because of this. It'd be like if you, if your boss said, listen, we're going to celebrate. Y'all have crushed this quota with your sales. And everyone's excited. It's like, is it going to be, you know, ice cream cake? Is it going to be lunch?
Is it going to be an open tab at Chili's? What is he doing? And then all of a sudden, Gary from accounting sends an inappropriate meme to the office. And now, there is no celebration. The mood has changed. You have to sit through a training now about how that's inappropriate humor.
That makes people uncomfortable. Tina from accounting went home and she's not coming back. Now we've got to talk about this. The mood has completely changed. And now he's got to talk about something different. So, it's becoming increasingly clear that the common salvation that he wanted to celebrate is not so common for everyone who's a part of the church or churches that he is writing to.
And that he's going to have to address what is happening in this. He's going to have to make a different appeal. And the appeal is this. Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Contend. If you came to our spring training weekend, that word should sound familiar.
You might even have a coffee mug that says Mill City Church. On the back it says, contend. And if you're like, word, y'all got coffee mugs? Yes. That's why you should come to training weekends. We've got a fall one coming up.
Sign up. Because there's all kinds of cool swag we give out. Listen, we talked about this word at training weekend. This idea of contending. The word for contending, the Greek, it has the idea of athletic or military aggressive language in it. It's that type of contending.
Contending. It is intense exertion. That type of contending. Contending with everything that you have within you to fight for something. And not just to contend. Contend for the faith that was once in all delivered for the saints.
He says, the faith that Jesus commissioned to us, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. When the church began and started planting churches in North Africa and in the Middle East and in Asia Minor and across Europe. The faith that was delivered to you. Contend for this. Fight for this. With everything in you.
The hope that you have before you fight for this. There's a movie called Children of Men. It's a good movie. And the story is that in the future, there's no more, no one's able to have children anymore. There's 20 years. There's no babies that are born.
And the idea that they're playing on is, is in that type of world, there's no hope. And that civilizations are falling apart. That countries are destroying one another because there's no hope. And then finally, the main character stumbles upon a pregnant woman. And he gives up everything. Because what's inside her is hope.
And there's multiple factions trying to get a hold of her because she represents power. But with everything that he has within him, he lays down his life to fight for that child. Because that child represents hope. And the hope that we have in Christ is eternal. We're called to fight with everything within us to contend for that faith that was delivered to us. So we're called to contend is what he's calling us to.
Contending for faith in the midst of what we have against us is what he's going to highlight in verse 4. 4. Let's break that down phrase by phrase. He says, certain people have crept in unnoticed. There are people who have infiltrated the church of the churches that he is writing to. Now, we don't know if this is false teachers.
Which that would fit the rest of the New Testament. There are multiple letters that are talking about these false teachers who have crept in. And they're promoting a false gospel. We don't know if it's that or if it's just some people who are in love with this present world that are amongst them. That are leading people astray. We don't know exactly what is happening.
But these people have crept in unnoticed. This is deceptively. They have come in. They are leading people astray. We need to receive that. Because there is deception that creeps in and tries to lead us away.
I don't argue. I don't see this as prevalent in our own church family. So you might get comfortable and think, oh, we're okay. But listen, it's not very hard to go very far in your Facebook feed or Instagram feed before you find someone who's promoting a false gospel. Find someone who's rocking $1,000 sneakers and gripping the mic like it's a rap battle. Spitting out all kinds of just ridiculous nonsense that will lead you astray.
They've crept in unnoticed, he says, who long ago were designated for this condemnation. He says they're not of us. They're not Christians. You don't understand. They're designated for condemnation. They aren't Christians.
You need to understand this very clearly. And he goes on to say ungodly people. He says ungodly people that they don't resemble the character of Christ, the values of Christ, the love of Christ. They don't resemble or reflect the character of the goodness of God. They're un, they're not godly. And then he uses a phrase that is used nowhere else in the Bible.
He says, who pervert the grace of our God. That is a strong statement. Now we don't know if what he means there is he's saying that there are people that are abusing the free grace that God has given us. We see that in the New Testament. We see that in the letter to Romans. They are presuming upon the grace of God to sin all the more.
That grace may abound. They don't understand that grace. We see that in the book of James. Where James is writing to Christians who are presuming upon the grace of God to sin all the more. We don't know if it's people that are abusing grace or just living a hedonistic life where they're indulging in the senses and fleshly desires without any fear of God at all. But the picture here is just very generally.
It is people who presume upon the kindness of God who completely ignore that he has wrath towards sin. And do not care what the word of God says. Do not care how the word of God, how the counsel of God, how the scriptures instruct us towards joy. And that is evident. There's a lot of folks in our own culture that embody that type of sentiment. They presume upon the kindness of God, presume upon the grace of God.
Maybe claim to call themselves Christians but are going to live their life on their terms and how they want to. And Jude says that is perverting the grace of our God. Very strong language. And then he goes on to say into sensuality. Into sensuality. Sensuality is self-abandonment to follow the fleshly senses wherever they desire to indulge without constraint.
Let me say that again. Sensuality is self-abandonment to follow the fleshly senses wherever they desire and to indulge without constraint. Sensuality is self-abandonment to follow the fleshly senses wherever they desire to follow the fleshly senses. He says, and deny, that's the next phrase, our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Meaning, they reject Jesus as Lord. There's a lordship of their lives.
They don't care what he has to say. They don't see him as master. They don't see him as Lord. They don't see him as king. They have rejected him. Peter, when you look at 2 Peter, 2 Peter has very common language to Jude.
It seems like they're maybe writing to a very similar context. But Peter in 2 Peter says, chapter 2, verse 1. Verse 1. Not asleep. I think it's the same, similar things. False teachers or people who have rejected the word of God outright will come in and lead you astray.
Why? Because they are not tethered to the authority of God. They're not bound by it. They do not fear the judgment of God. They do not fear the correction. They don't desire the correction of God.
And some of them just use the word of God to justify whatever they would like. Appealing to the basest, most fleshly desires within humanity. So, spending some time on this subject and this letter, okay? Against the backdrop of our current cultural moment. A culture that indulges in anything from exploring sexuality to gender exploration. To a culture that celebrates a wide spectrum of substance use and abuse.
To a widely celebrated freedom to satisfy the senses. Well, reading Jude in the face of that is widely unpopular. But it is unbelievably necessary. It's unbelievably necessary. Because the burning question of Jude. And the burning question of the scriptures.
Is what if Jude is right? What if the scriptures and what they teach are correct? And that satisfying the senses wherever it takes you is not good. And does bring judgment. That is where Jude is going. As he calls Christians to contend for the faith.
In the midst of a false gospel. That plays upon satisfying the senses. And when you hear that. I understand it is nearly impossible to divorce your thought process. From this current cultural counter argument. That the cultural push to enjoy as much sex.
As your senses desire to experiment with who you want to love. To drink as much as you would deem necessary. To dabble in edibles and hallucinogenics. And all the things that our flesh might desire. The cultural push for that is very much against the message of Jude. And reading that with the backdrop of our culture.
It is difficult. And in the coming weeks. We're going to wade more into the arguments that Jude and the rest of the scriptures are making. Before we do that. I just want to plead with you. Don't be too quick to dismiss this.
Don't be too quick to reject the ideas without weighing them. Without investigating them. Without questioning them. Without testing them. Without asking the question. What if Jude is right?
What if the Bible is right on this? An author that I appreciate very deeply. Her name is Vizaria Butterfield. She was a professor at Syracuse. She taught English with a focus on queer studies. As we're going to read in this quote in a moment.
And she lived a life that she thought she was happy. She had a partner. She had a great tenureship at Syracuse. And then all of a sudden some things changed. Let me just give some background. Just in her own words.
Who she was. She said, My historical field in English studies was 19th century literature and culture. My historical interest in 19th century literature were grounded in the philosophical and political worldviews of Freud, Marx, and Darwin. My primary field was critical theory, also known as postmodernism. My specialty was queer theory, a postmodern form of gay and lesbian studies. She goes on to say, As a lesbian activist, I was involved in my gay community.
I had drafted and lobbied for the university's first successful domestic partnership policy, which gives spousal benefits to gay couples. I had to put up with a lot of flack from the conservative Christian community for this. My life was busy and full. And I thought, moral. So, she published this article. I think it was defending, this is in her memoir, which is Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.
She posted this article in the local newspaper defending the policy that she fought for and got established at Syracuse in the late 90s. And then, she got a letter. It was from a Presbyterian pastor. And it was of a small Presbyterian church in the area. And he just said, I'd love to meet you. And I'd love to just hear you out.
I'd love to hear your background, your story. And she was very nervous and didn't like the idea of this at all. But she just felt compelled to hear him out. And what happened was, over the next two years, that family invited her into their home over and over again. They had weekly dinners. And they would talk, and they would get to know each other, but they also would debate.
And she was skilled in the arguments of postmodernism. And they'd go back and forth, and he would read the scriptures. And they would go back and forth and back and forth for over two years. Until finally, she's like, okay, I'm going to read the Bible. And I'm going to see what you're talking about. And as she kept talking and walking with this couple, and as she kept reading the Bible, well, she started to change.
And her partner noticed it. Her friends noticed it. Until finally one night at a house party, one of her friends got in front of her and confronted her on this. She said, she told me point blank that all this Bible reading was changing me. And she wanted to know, before any more pasta could be served or wine glasses filled, what was going on in my life? At first I denied it, but she pressed.
Finally I said, what would you say if I told you that I'm beginning to believe that Jesus is real, is a real and risen and loving and judging Lord and that I am in big trouble? And what eventually happened is she placed her faith in Jesus. It cost her her relationship, eventually cost her her tenureship and her position at Syracuse. She left that all behind. But as you read her memoir, and I encourage you to read it, first of all, she's a great writer and it's a powerful story.
But the thing that she posts up in is not necessarily that her life was miserable. It wasn't. She liked her life. She enjoyed her life. She enjoyed being a professor. She enjoyed being a partner.
She enjoyed being an activist. It was that what if this is true? And if this is true, well then everything has to change. And when she finally submitted to the scriptures and said this is true, this is real, Jesus is real, well then everything has to change. And she gave up her life and she's been following Christ ever since. What if the wisdom of the scriptures that has endured for thousands of years is better than the moral whiplash of the last few decades?
What if Jesus is real and he is a risen and loving and judging God? If that is true, it changes everything. It means that falling in line with the current majority position of the culture, the postmodern pursuit of fulfillment through the senses, well it not only leads to less joy, it ultimately leads to self-destruction. And the next few weeks we're going to wade into this difficult truth to absorb all of this in light of the cultural moment that we are in. But this was also true at their time.
You can look at history, and there definitely has been hundreds and hundreds of years where this wasn't happening. But if you go back to the first century, there's actually a lot of parallels between the first century context of who this is being written to and our moment right now. In fact, Greco-Roman culture, that many of the sensual pursuits that we have in our cultural moment were very true in that time as well. Almost everything you can point to now was happening then. It was a cultural norm in Greco-Roman culture. There is nothing new under the sun.
And my plea is this. As we walk through difficult truths, stick around. Please, engage. Hear the wisdom and the warning in this. The judgment and the joy that you will be reminding us of that is unbelievably important for this moment. And that is difficult.
It is difficult because we're still in a moment where the majority cultural position rages at what the Scriptures teach as backward, archaic, not progressing in the direction it needs to go. You have this while also a very small minority of loud Christians that actually just harp on judgment and never look at actual joy. They just lob grenades but actually don't ever point to the joy that is found in following Christ. That's how Jude ends his letter with this beautiful doxology. He's pleading with them, don't go down this road. Don't pursue the sensual desires.
You've got to see where this is heading but he ends with, 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. There's unbelievable joy in pursuing Christ. There's unbelievable joy that resounds into eternity. He says, 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. There is a God who can present us blameless.
Who does if you're in Christ present you blameless. No matter what is swirling in your soul, no matter what are fleshly pursuits that your sensual desires won't, he says, I will present you blameless before his glory with great joy. There's a God who can keep us from stumbling that if we continuously look to him no matter what is raging in our flesh that he will continue to grow us and keep us from stumbling. There is a God who we can enjoy in all of his glory and his majesty and his dominion and his authority from this time into eternity that is offered to us in Christ but we have to contend for it and that is not easy and it especially is not easy in this moment.
So that is the call as we walk through Jude stick around hear the call to contend no matter how hard it is no matter how much is swirling around us we must contend with everything within us because hope is on the line a hope that is real that resounds into eternity there is far too much at stake not to take this seriously.