Disobedience Results in Judgment

Transcript

GR 2294
07/05/2020
Disobedience Results in Judgment
Jude 5-6
Gil Rugh

We are in the book of Jude. We’re going to look at three verses together today, and there’s some controversy associated with these verses. I met with some of my first hour class and I think what I’m going to do is just walk you through these three verses that I want to look at with you. Then we will probably take our next study together and I will look at the issues that are involved in Genesis chapter 6 and the issue of the sons of God looking and being sexually involved with the daughters of men and the consequences of that and the related passages. There’s too much to go into that and I know it is an interest. So we’re going to deal with Jude just like we just had the book of Jude; we’re going to walk through Jude, these verses. But I will take time and I plan… (and I’m only good for one day at a time so if it changes I’ll tell you next week) …my plan is to take the sermon next week and look at the issues related to Genesis 6, the sons of God and the daughters of men, angels co-habiting with women, and so on. But we’re going to look at Jude as though we just have Jude. Now I will tell you ahead of time that I don’t see angels involved in the book of Jude. A number of commentators I checked don’t see it either, even those who do see angels involved in Genesis chapter 6 do not see them involved in Jude. But we’ll talk about Jude as we move along.

Remember the focus in Jude is to stir God’s people up. Something happens to us over time, we settle down, we settle in and we perhaps lose some of our heart for conflict. I remember reading one Christian writer several years ago and he said we need Christians who have the gift of battle. They’re willing to battle, to battle for the truth, and that’s what Jude is writing for. In verse 3 he said that he felt necessary to appeal, that word to exhort them, to come alongside, to encourage and challenge them to contend earnestly for the faith. ‘The faith’ is a reference to the truth that we believe, so this is what we place our faith in, so it becomes what we refer to as ‘the faith.’ It’s the object of what we believe centering in the person and work of Christ, but the truth that God has entrusted to us. Contend earnestly for it, we noted that word ‘to contend,’ we get the English word ‘agonize’ from it, the verb is ‘agonizo,’ you can hear it, agonize, it’s an intense struggle. It’s what Paul said characterized his life as he got to the end of his life. In his last letter as he faces execution he says I have fought the good fight, I have agonized the good agony if we were going to just take it as it is. His life has been an intense battle for the truth right up to the end, he’ll give his life in that battle.

Jude is concerned that the saints have settled down. You know how we begin to say, look, we don’t want to offend people, we don’t want to be viewed as too narrow, we don’t want to be always having a conflict over one thing or another. They had settled in. Even these worst of false teachers, apostates, were sitting in the communion service, in their fellowship meals, and just accepted as good fellow-believers. The truth got pushed into the background, the emotions get pushed forward. Well, they seem like good people, I’ve known them, you know, we get along well. And all of a sudden the truth isn’t at the center of who we are and what we do. Remember the truth, the faith, is what the church is about, we are the pillar and support of the truth, which is another word for the faith, the word of God that has been entrusted to us. It’s what Paul tells Timothy is a treasure that has been entrusted to us. We must hold it tightly and guard it carefully.

So, the reason, verse 4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation.” They have never been believers, they manifest it by not believing the truth, not obeying it, and conducting themselves contrary to it. They turn the grace of God into licentiousness, grace means now we are without restraint. Don’t tell me that I can’t do this, or I must do that. It’s my life. I live under grace. But that does not apply to a life of licentiousness. And they “…deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” And it goes together, you deny the authority, the absolute sovereignty of God over your life, that’s what we’re doing when we rebel, we’re denying God’s sovereignty. And that comes back to we’re not believing the truth. As we’re going to see as we come into this section before us, disobedience and unbelief are just used interchangeably.

You have people who claim, oh no, I put my faith in Christ. I’ve had numerous conversations with people in this position, they’re living a life of ungodliness and they want to tell me they’re a believer. Wait a minute, you’re living a life of disobedience by your own testimony, your own admission! And yet you say you’re a believer in Jesus Christ? How do you put that together? Oh well, I know I trusted Him, I’m just not living for Him, I’m not obeying Him. For Jude this kind of people need to be marked out for what they are, they are ungodly people. Now I realize I can’t see the heart, I can’t tell in every person whether it’s a person going through a time like David did of rebellion against God. Jude says you deal with them as they are. We begin to make excuses, then the corruption. Then we get weak on the truth because we don’t want to present the truth as the truth and require that people submit to the authority of our Lord and Master. Pretty soon we have nothing, we just become a social club or organization.

The seriousness of this can begin to get away from us, because one thing people don’t like to talk about is sin and its consequences, God’s judgment. So what he’s going to do is bring three examples from the scripture, of the sin of individuals and the consequential judgment of sin and remind them that God has not changed in His character, in His attributes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is a loving God, a kind God, a merciful God, a righteous God, a holy God, a God who will judge and does judge sin. We have three examples, we have Israel, we have angels, and we have Gentiles. I could summarize it, three categories encompasses it all, he’ll deal with the Jews, he’ll deal with the angels, and then he’ll deal with Gentiles. Different sins, but the issue is judgment. When we as believers go soft on sin and judgment, soon the grace of God no longer is understood in the context of the word of God. You just can’t contain the corruption. Once you let it in here (places hand in one spot), it spreads to here (places hand in another spot). We’ve talked about this and seen it in scripture.

So in verse 5 he’s going to use the Israelites as an example, the serious judgment that God brought on them for sin. In verse 6 he’ll use the angels who sinned and the serious judgment brought for their sin. Then verse 7 he’ll talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities associated with them, and the serious consequences and judgment God brought on their sin. The point we can’t forget, we get soft on the issue of sin and its consequences and we fail to appreciate the grace of God. We want to be careful we don’t fall off on either side. Charles Ryrie wrote a book many years ago, Balancing the Christian Life. We want to be careful, don’t want to exclude the grace of God, the love of God, the mercy of God. Nor can we exclude the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the wrath of God. We don’t want to push one out under the guise of obeying the other. The word of God brings the balance. We want to have the balance that the word of God brings.

So we come to verse 5, “Now I desire to remind you,” we’ve talked about this. Peter does the same thing, I want to remind you, that importance of constantly having the word of God brought to our attention. That’s why the reading through the scripture is of such importance and value. You say, well, I’ve been through it a number of times. Yes, but we need to be constantly reminded. Much of what we do when we study the word of God, the longer you are a believer, the more reminders you get, because yes, I studied that before, yes, now I remember that. What he wants to do is not saying I want to tell you something you’ve never known. I want to remind you so that you are sure you are putting it into practice and it’s governing your life. “Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all.” Now that’s not sarcasm, he’s not saying you know everything, you’re a ‘know it all,’ but I’m going to remind you of what I don’t think you really know. These are people that use that same word, ‘once for all.’ “I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all.” That word, if you’ve taken Greek, ‘hapax,’ one word, it is ‘once,’ and carries that idea of ‘once for all,’ was used up in verse 3, at the end of the verse, “You contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.”

And you are the saints, you know these things once for all because you know the truth. Now you haven’t exhaustively come to know and understand fully everything that God has revealed but saints are those who know the truth. How did you become a holy one, a saint? Because you came to know the truth, you believed the gospel of Jesus Christ and that truth opened your eyes to the wonder of God’s salvation and you’ve been growing in that. That doesn’t change, that’s why he says that ‘once for all.’ Believers begin to drift when they get the idea that evangelicalism is changing because God is changing. This has not changed! This is God’s truth and as believers, true believers, we hold this truth with a finality. The problem is the church gets infiltrated with those who don’t hold it with finality as ‘once for all.’ They begin to weaken and want to weaken our hold on the truth. Well, yes, but they are good people and I think they’re believers and they hold it differently. Well, where does that stop? What matters to me is what God says, and He says I’ll be accountable to it, that’s where we are. I want to remind you and I know you hold to this truth, it’s what you believed.

“That the Lord,” and now he’s going to go on. What I like to do, and I think it’s helpful in your Bible study, because like us we can have long involved sentences. I was reading, he’s not an old writer, he’s a recent writer and he’s got a tome of a book, but I have a hard time making it through, some of his sentences go on for twenty-five lines of small print. I was thinking, now what is he saying? This is a sentence so what I like to do is go find the main verb. After many hours of study I found the three main verbs in these verses. You wonder what I was doing all week. Not quite that hard. In verse 5, you can mark your Bible, and we’ll put up a slide of the main verbs in verses 5, 6, and 7.

The first verb is ‘destroyed,’ you find that at the end of verse 5. That’s where we’re picking up after that first line which was really just an introduction here. Where I want to remind you, remind you of these things once for all. Now here begins the first thing he’s reminding them of, the Lord destroyed, so destroyed is the main verb. I don’t know what you do, I have a red circle around that in my Bible, it reminds me that’s the verb there. Then you come down to verse 6, you have the second verb, it’s ‘has kept,’ that’s in verse 6. That’s the number I have the verse alongside of these. So underline, circle it, highlight it, that will help you, that’s the main verb we’re going to build around in that verse. Then verse 7, down toward the end of the verse, ‘are exhibited,’ ‘are exhibited,’ that’s the main verb. So in each of these we have built around the main verb. Going back to grade school, I didn’t get it in grade school, I didn’t get it in high school, but when I went and took Greek in college they started talking about subjects, verbs, objects, modifiers, and participles and then they said we’re going to diagram this. You know what I was doing? Reading my English grammar, I even found a Greek grammar, the first half was in English, they knew there were people like me. So the verbs here, whether you’re in Greek, English, that’s the way it is. So we’re going to look and see what the main sentence is, I’m going to help you. I put that in so take that next slide where we do the main verbs and we’ll do this a step at a time, we’ll go to verse 5, ‘the Lord destroyed the unbelieving,’ that’s the main line and ‘the Lord’ would be the subject, ‘be destroyed,’ that’s the verb, those who did not believe, I just put in the ‘the unbelieving’ we got it on easier, ‘the unbeliever.’ So that’s the main sentence. Now the other things are developing or elaborating on that. But ‘the Lord destroyed.’ This will help us because the people He destroyed were destroyed subsequently, secondly. What did He do before that? Well, after saving a people He destroyed those people. So you see, now I begin to see this is where his emphasis is going to be, on judgment.

So we’ll come back to this but look at verse 6, just to get the sentence, ‘He has kept the angels.’ ‘He has kept angels,’ ‘He has kept,’ so ‘He has kept angels.’ Sometimes they reword the English, sometimes in Greek it’s reworded. In Greek the words have different endings so you can tell where they belong even if they’re not in a word order. Then when we bring them into English they’ll rearrange them. The key statement here, ‘He has kept angels,’ and I put ‘for judgment’ there. If you were going to diagram it you would put under ‘for judgment’ that prepositional phrase or statement ‘for judgment.’ The basic statement “He has kept angels.” I wanted you to get more complete idea here.

Then thirdly, he’ll say ‘Sodom and Gomorrah and those cities.’ So you have three compounded subjects here, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities are exhibited, and again, as examples. So those are the basic statements in these three verses that we basically have the idea what God is talking about. He destroyed the unbelievers, He kept the angels, and He exhibited Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now there’ll be elaboration here on what they did, but you’ll see the emphasis will be on judgment in each of these. The sins will vary but it will all be sin. All be rebellion against God, refusal to trust Him, which is inseparable from being connected to obedience as we will see. But the main idea is here are the examples of judgment for disobedience or unbelief, that’s what Jude wants them to grasp. The unbelief, the disobedience being manifest by those in verse 4 who “have crept in unnoticed,” who have been appointed down through the history of God’s revelation for judgment, condemnation. They’re ungodly persons, I’m reminding you this brings judgment, if you continue in disobedience in not dealing with them what can you expect? Judgment. That’s where he’s taking them.

So let’s pick up the first example, the children of Israel, the first example of God’s judging sin, unbelief, disobedience, are the Israelites. He had destroyed, He had saved then He had destroyed, that connection is crucial. “The Lord after saving a people out of the land of Egypt,” so we don’t have any question what he’s talking about. He saved them then He destroyed them. The salvation here is obviously a physical salvation, He delivered them from Egypt. But you’ll note the point, the fact that He acted to save them did not mean now they could do whatever they wanted. They disobeyed, they did not believe, He destroyed them.

Come back to Numbers, chapter 13 and 14, Numbers chapter 13 and 14, Numbers chapter 13. What we have is Israel has been brought out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt, now they’re under the leadership and oversight of Moses and Aaron. They anticipate going into the promised land, this is what they were promised, a land flowing with milk and honey. So they arrive and in preparation for going into the land Moses has them select leaders from each of the tribes and they’re going to go over into the land to scout it out. Just come back because it’s not a place that they know anything firsthand. They’ve been four hundred years as slaves in Egypt. Now we’re going in to take over a land and there will be fighting, there will be battles. We want to just find out what kind of land it is, what kind of food sources will we have. We’ve got two million people that we’re moving along here, this is a vast undertaking in that sense so you send the spies into the land to spy it out. You’re familiar with the account, they go in and they come back with their report, their report begins in verse 25. And they even bring back samples of the fruits of the land, put it on poles that they can carry between them showing they say, at the end of verse 27 of chapter 13, “it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” That’s just what God said! So it’s flowing with milk and honey and it’ll be abundance for you.

But there’s a problem, there are all kinds of bad people living in this land and if bad people aren’t enough they are big, bad people in this land. In fact down in verse 33 “we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak” and we looked “like grasshoppers.” You know what a grasshopper is like compared to you. I’m mean, they’re really trying to drive home ‘I don’t think we can do this.’ It’s a great land but they’re not going to give it up without a fight. And if you’re a grasshopper we’re just going to get stomped. And you know what? “All the congregation,” chapter 14, “lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. All the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron.” Here we go again, “would that we had died in the land of Egypt,” oh, it was so good in Egypt, or “that we had died in the wilderness!” The Lord is bringing us into this land to fall by the sword, our wives, our little children, they’ll become plunder. Oh if we could only be in Egypt. Let’s appoint a leader and go back to Egypt. If you’re a pastor you read this often for encouragement. No, it’s not quite that bad.

There’s some exception here, Joshua and Caleb, no, it’s not that bad. I mean, what do they say? Verse 7, “The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us -- a land which flows with milk and honey. Only don’t rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” You know what the congregation wants to do? Stone them, it’s not what we want to hear. They’re telling the truth. And now God’s been listening, now things are serious. “How long will this people spurn Me,” reject Me? “How long will they not believe in Me?” You see this is the issue, the rebellion is an evidence of unbelief. Unbelief manifests itself in rebellion. That will be true we will see in New Testament passages, time permitting. In spite of all that I’ve done. What about all the miracles in Egypt? What about the death of the first born? What about the overwhelming of the armies of Egypt after Israel walked through the waters on dry land? What do I have to fear with the people in the land that God has promised to give us? They had forgotten it all. We are to be building. This is why Jude reminded them, you know all these things, once for all, they haven’t changed, this is settled truth, you build your life on this.

You know, some Christians are constantly going back, looking backwards. It’s hard to run forward when you’re looking backwards, this is Israel. Oh, Egypt. What do you mean ‘oh, Egypt?’ You wanted to get out of Egypt, you called on the Lord to deliver you out of all of that. Boy, the grace of Moses. You know, God says I’m going to destroy them. “I will smite them,” verse 12 of chapter 14, “with pestilence and dispossess them and I will make you a nation greater and mightier than they.” I don’t want to do my confessions here, but I would have probably said, ok, that’s a good idea, Lord, I agree with You, they’re impossible, it’s just You and me, Lord. But you know, these are God’s people. He knows God, God has made commitments to these people, he takes God at His word. You made promises to them God, I know You can’t go back. He’s not giving God instructions. Our prayers ought to be consistent with the character of God. God, You promised. The nations have seen this, if all Your people die in the wilderness, they’ll say the God of the Israelites was a weak God, He couldn’t get them through. Moses is more concerned that the character of God be properly represented than he is what could come to him. Amazing. We easily lose that perspective.

So verse 17, “Now I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared. The Lord is slow to anger.” See how his prayer is? I pray consistently with the character of God. “Just as You have declared, the Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children… Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people from Egypt even until now.” He doesn’t say they don’t deserve to be punished and judged but he asks that God not destroy them in his prayer. The Lord responds, “I have pardoned them,” verse 20, “according to your word.” That’s why Moses is listed as one of the great intercessors in the Old Testament. One of those God marks out for their intercessory power. They don’t come to tell God what to do. They come though to pray and ask Him, like Abraham, You won’t destroy the righteous with the unrighteous, and he keeps coming back with that. No, God wouldn’t. You pray according to the character of God. You don’t tell God what to do, but you can come and say you come because I come reminded of Your character. God doesn’t need to be reminded He’s a merciful God, He doesn’t forget anything, He knows who He is. But I’ve been reminded, and Moses is reminded and he’s asking God to act according to His character. And Moses is becoming the instrument that God will use to answer his prayer and spare Israel.

But there’s punishment, there’s discipline. We just have to come down, verse 28, here’s My word to them, “ ‘As I live,’ declares the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you.’ ” He heard the Israelites desire, “would that we had died in this wilderness.” Prayer answered, you’re going to die in this wilderness. Our children will die in this wilderness. No, they won’t, you’re wrong on that, I’m going to spare the children, just the opposite of what you think. The children, they’re going to be spared but you are going to die, “Your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men.” They were numbered and I didn’t go back to refresh my mind but I think in the opening portion of Numbers the numbered men, men twenty years old and older who were fitted for military service, number something like six hundred thousand. We’re going to have a lot of funerals in the coming years because all your numbered men are going to die, all those twenty years old and upward who have grumbled against Me, they won’t come into the land.

Caleb and Joshua will because they believed in Me, they were the ones arguing, no, we can take the land, we can do it. “Your children, however,” verse 31, whom you said will become a prey -- I will bring them in.” Verse 34, “According to the number of days which you spied out the land.” You were forty days in their spying out the land, you’re going to spend one year for every day, it will take forty years of going nowhere. Think about it, you’re here on the brink of being able to crossover and go into the land, now you’re going to turn around and you’re going to just walk around going nowhere for forty years. And it’s going to be an object lesson. And during that forty years there’ll be six hundred thousand numbered men who will pass away. And when the last one is gone then we’ll come up to enter into the land. Boy, the judgment of God is serious.

You know what? Then Israel says, oh my, we made a terrible mistake. You can’t always fix what you broke. So the people down in verse 39 are mourning greatly. So the next morning they get up and decide we changed our mind, we’re going into the land. Remember you don’t tell God. We’ll go in. We have sinned, they say at the end of verse 40, but we’re going to go up to the land the Lord has promised. Wait a minute. Do you believe the Lord? He’s already told you now, the judgment’s been meted out. It’s another act of transgression. Verse 41, “Why then are you transgressing the commandment of the Lord, when it will not succeed?” I mean, if you really believed you’d accept, submit to what the Lord said, we sinned. I accept the consequences of my sin, from this point on I will obey Him. We have examples of believers who sin in the Bible, David being one we constantly refer to. And God’s not done with him, there’s consequences he will bear but God continued to use. But Israel? So there goes some of the soldiers out, charge into the land, and they are killed. But God’s promises are good because chapter 15 God gives Moses instructions of what He’ll do when they do enter the land but that’s forty years away.

Ok, that’s the first example. Come over to Hebrews chapter 3, Hebrews chapter 3 because this truth emphasized here you appreciate why Jude says you know all these things. The writer to the Hebrews is doing the same thing. Hebrews chapter 3 verse 6, he’s warning the Jewish readers, Jews who have professed faith in Christ, but the intensity, the pressures of the day, are causing some of them to think we’re going to go back to Judaism. You have to understand. A commitment of faith in Jesus Christ is an irrevocable commitment, you cannot go back and it’s a serious matter. If you do go back, you manifest you never did make a true commitment. Only God can search the heart but I have to take it, what He says.

Look at verse 6 of Hebrews 3. “Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are,” these believers now, “if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.” How you finish determines whether how you started was genuine. I understand, God can discipline for sin, in 1 Corinthians 11 some of those believers in the church at Corinth had died for unfaithfulness. But we want to be careful, my big concern is are they truly believers. “If we hold fast,” we are part of His house “if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.” That’s the perseverance of the saints we talk about theologically. True believers, those truly saved will persevere. He gives the example here of those who did not persevere and it’s the very examples we have from the Old Testament. He builds a lot of this on Psalm 95 which builds on where we were in Numbers. You are not to harden your heart. These words, ‘they tested the Lord’ and then for forty years in the wilderness they further tested Him, they didn’t learn. “As I swore in My wrath,” verse 11 quoting there from Psalm 95 as the psalmist shows the consequences. We want to bring the full character of God in, “I swore.” God doesn’t have to take an oath, His word is fixed. When He takes an oath it is so that we humans understand the absolute seriousness of what God is saying, when God speaks that’s it. But when He takes an oath, He’s making clear how absolutely fixed and unchangeable this is. “They shall not enter My rest.”

And now note the warning here, “Take care,” verse 12, “brethren,” my professing believers, “that there not be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another.” There’s that word ‘encouraging.’ I wrote to encourage you to contend earnestly. It’s that same word we’re talking about in Jude, why he is writing to them. “Encourage one another.” That’s what he’s doing to them. “Contend for the faith.” You don’t close up and go back. I’m sure you have a firm commitment, but it will have to be demonstrated. Encourage one another. Verse 14, “We have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end,” it’s the evidence of a genuine faith. Now only God searches the heart, only He will do the final judgment. But all I can do, these words of warning, are given repeatedly. Don’t want somebody to be depending on a profession they made some time in the past. Oh, I know I’m going to heaven, I remember when I was in sixth grade I trusted Christ with my Sunday School teacher. To those people I say, well, how are you living now? You seem to have no interest in the things. Now I’ve drifted away but I know I’m saved. How do you know when by your own admission you’ve drifted away, you’re not living in obedience to the Lord, you’re not living with your faith in Him as the God you serve? But somehow you’re saying you belong to Him. Someone’s not telling the truth and God cannot lie so I have to say you’re a liar. What else is your answer?

He keeps saying, now today, here he quotes again, “if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.” That’s what Jude is saying, I’m reminding you, don’t forget, don’t go that way, you cannot leave if you truly believed. Are you provoking God like those who came out of Egypt? He keeps coming back to that example. With whom He was angry for forty years, whose bodies fell in the wilderness, to whom He swore they would not enter His rest, to those who were disobedient. You know, they have an unbelieving heart, they’re disobedient, they weren’t able to enter because of unbelief. You see disobedience and unbelief. We begin to tolerate. People say, oh I know I placed my faith in Christ, I’m just living disobediently. Well, wait a minute, the Bible says the two are inseparably joined, unbelief is an evidence of disobedience, disobedience evidences unbelief. This is why Jude is writing but the church begins to say, well (we get emotionally involved) I think they mean well, you know, they don’t have to agree with us on every detail. Then I become God’s editor. Well, here the next thing I find out they’re out here(motions with hand), then they’re out here (motions with hand further away). And I could give numerous examples and many of you could as well, of churches and of schools. Well, it just starts out, chapter 4 opens up, have a healthy fear, “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.” He’s concerned for them. The course you seem to be talking about and thinking of taking, you need to examine yourself, you may have come short of what you’re claiming was true. Oh, I trusted Christ. You may have had an emotional experience, you may have gone forward at the altar call. And I’ve shared I did many years ago with my cousin who just passed away and by his own testimony years later, when he finally got saved, no, I wasn’t saved when I went through there. I just went up, you were going up and others were going up, I did everything everybody else did. Everybody thought I was saved. But his life became a testimony to himself that he wasn’t. He stopped short. Evidence. Verse 2, “we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest.” You can sit in this church, be here from nursery up, and die and go to hell. Be able to quote Bible verses, do all that, and have stopped short of faith in Christ. No, this is not to sow seeds of doubt. The scripture is written to give confirmation, to tell us how you know your faith is genuine. It changed your life, it made you new, it transformed you.

Ok, come back to Jude. You know we have to get through Jude, because I’ll be going on vacation and I don’t like to come back to the same, since it’s a short book. I have plans if I want to go longer. Look at this example. We won’t get done with these, but that’s alright, we’ll come back, I’ll see what happens. Look at verse 6, because we have to connect this, God saved them, God destroyed them. Now, don’t’ get confused, it doesn’t say people can lose their salvation. We saw in Hebrews they never had it. Their unbelief culminated with that event in Numbers 13 and 14, been manifested all along the way, and continued to be manifested through their 40 years of testing God in the wilderness. That’s the first example. So, don’t say, because God’s done things, now I’m sure I’m good to go. God destroyed them. I mean, there were no believers there even that suffer, they get caught up in things that God will have to sort out. But the point is, don’t think you can sin, rebel, be disobedient and not experience judgment, it will come one way or another.

The second example is the angels, the angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. And remember the key verb here is ‘has kept,’ He has kept angels under judgment, for judgment of the great day, that’s the key idea. Here’s another example of judgment. We start out with angels created perfect, created to serve the living God in His presence. We end up with them ‘kept,’ you note the first line, they did not keep their own domain. Same basic word, God has kept them. They didn’t remain where they belonged, now God keeps them where He wants them, condemned to judgment. So the key idea is angels He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. He’s kept them for judgment, that’s basically the basic idea here. Another example, the angels, up here they’re created, now they’re down here. Created for the realm of the glory of heaven, now doomed and destined to the eternity of hell. Like the Israelites, saved out of the slavery of Egypt, condemned to die in the wilderness. You see, you have to be careful, you start out well but they didn’t finish well.

The angels did not keep their own domain. There’s discussion about this, I take it, just with Jude, I just mention it. We’re going to have to come back to this for our next study and then we’ll fit in Genesis along the way, too. They did not keep their own domain. Let me say a couple of things about some of these words and then you can do your study on them. That word ‘domain,’ it’s a good translation of it, It means their position, their area or sphere of authority. Arcane. Some of you have taken Greek. Arcane. Their domain, their realm in which they were created for, the realm in which they were to serve, to exercise their authority, or position of rulership. Rather, they abandoned their proper abode, their own dwelling place, the basic word in that word translated ‘abode’ is the word we have for house in Greek. They have abandoned their own, at this point, residence or home, their own place to reside, to live. And for that, He has kept them in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. So they had a realm, they had a sphere of authority and a residence where they were to live. But they didn’t hold on to that, they did not keep that, they were disobedient, so God has kept them bound and in darkness for the ultimate judgment of hell.

And we’re aware, as Jesus talked about judgment in Matthew 25, He says hell was prepared for the devil and his angels, but all unbelievers will join him in that hell. I think what he is talking about here is the original rebellion of the angels. So that’s why I say we’re going to do this through the book of Jude, then we’ll go back and look at Genesis, we’ll have to do it in a subsequent study. But I don’t think Jude is talking about Genesis 6 at all. Whether it’s angels or men, we can talk about that. And I’ve been encouraged to note that a number of the recent commentaries have observed grammatically in the text here, there is no connection made with the activity of Genesis 6. Now some commentators hold that, but not all do. I think their domain, their sphere of authority, the realm in which they rule was in heaven, that’s where their abode was. That’s not the normal word you would talk about, where angels are going to take on themselves a physical. Their proper residence was heaven.

Satan lost his position in heaven when he sinned against God. Come back to Isaiah 14, look at these two references, and I don’t think we’ll have time for the other. Isaiah 14, and note how this is put in verse 12. “How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn!” I think there you see he did not keep his residence, his home. He has access back, but that’s no longer the sphere in which he exercised rulership under God, we’ll see as we go on. “You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above.’ ” See, he was going to move out of the position of authority, the domain he had, he tried to usurp God’s place, it was an act of rebellion. The result, verse 15, “You will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit.” Come over to Ezekiel 28. These are the two passages on Satan’s fall, clearly in the Old Testament. You remember it, Isaiah 14, you double 14 and you get Ezekiel 28, those are the two chapters, 14 and 28, one in Isaiah, one in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 28, God, I take it, He’s here speaking beyond the King of Tyre, the middle of verse 12, “you had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God,” and further description of him. Verse 14, “You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there, you were on the holy mountain of God… You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you.” You come down to the end of verse 16, “I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire” because “you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.” So you see that realm of rulership, that domain, and the residence where he was, was serving in that unique position as the anointed cherub who covered the throne of God. That was a position of rule and authority. It was in the presence of God in heaven. He’s been cast down from all of that, now he’s in the realm of darkness which Jude refers to. I take it the bondage pictures he cannot escape this now and there is no going back for him, he’s in the realm of darkness. He’s bound in the sense he is doomed to an eternal hell, the hell that has been prepared for the devil and his angels.

Come over to Ephesians. You would appreciate more if you knew how many verses I have left out. Ephesians 6 and there are a number preceding it in Ephesians 6 that talk about the darkness. Look at verse 12, Ephesians 6:12. The readers of Jude need to keep this kind of stuff in mind. Verse 12 “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness.” You see where they are now? They don’t serve ruling in the realm of heaven as their home. They’re now rulers, they are behind this darkness of this world. What’s driving the world? The rulers of this world, Satan and his forces, “against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God.” The Bible knows about the war we are in. Some believers are going along like, well, it’s all about get saved and be comfortable. It’s a war, it’s a constant conflict, it is a struggle, it can be one day of agony followed by another day of agony. That’s why Paul says I fought the good fight, I’ve agonized the good agony, and I’m going to end my life this way, at the hands of an executioner. But you see, these are the world forces of this darkness. Now he is cast down, now out of the realm of darkness living in a realm of continual rebellion against God. He can never go back to the way it was, where it was, he can never again be the anointed cherub that covers. He can never dwell in the presence, eternally serving the God who is light, the one in whom there is no darkness at all. That’s the realm of darkness. They are an example. We have more to say about them but we’ll have to leave that to our next study, and our next study. And if I’m not careful we’ll pick up Jude when I get back from vacation, but we will finish Jude. But we have to work through these verses then we have to tie Genesis 6, 2 Peter 2 in particular, into this.

We want to pick up. God is serious about judgment. You sit here and think I’m okay. Examine yourself, as Paul told the Corinthians, to see if you are in the faith. Am I going through putting on a show for people? Am I just doing what’s necessary to conform to be like what they say a Christian ought to be? Am I an unbeliever disguised as a believer? This is not to cast doubt on everybody’s salvation. I had one dear person who left and they told me, every time I come to church I feel like I’m unsaved. My question was, are you? Why? I don’t feel like I’m unsaved and I have to study it and teach it. God brings a confirmation to our hearts and an evidence in our life. There is a salvation. It is the only salvation from hell and it results now in that your life is not your own, it belongs to him. By His grace you will persevere. I’m not saying you won’t stumble, we all stumble in many ways, some stumbles are bigger than others. But as 1 John makes clear, you can’t live out there in persistent, unrelenting rebellion against God. You don’t belong to Him. He changes a life, He makes you new and that’s the salvation we have. That’s the salvation we live and that’s the only salvation there is.

Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for Your grace, how patient You are. Lord, we read about Your judgment as judgment that comes after what seems like endless patience, mercy shown. You continue to offer salvation, forgiveness, and cleansing. Lord, I pray for any who are here, any who are watching or listening. Lord, we would not be fools who fool ourselves. We cannot fool You. Lord, the greatness of Your salvation changes us from the inside out, makes us new, we are not the same person. We are new creations, the old things pass away, new things come. How wonderful that is! We can live in a world of misery and hurt and pain and suffering and not lose our hope. We can be encouraged, we can be strengthened, we can have peace because of what you have promised. Our faith is in You and in Your word, in the salvation You have provided for us. We give You praise in Christ’s name, amen.