Serious and Present Dangers

Transcript

GR2298
09/22/2020
Serious and Present Danger
Jude 12-16
Gil Rugh

We are going to get back to our study of Jude, and we are getting near the end of the study of that short book. Where are we going then? Can’t wait to find out! I do want to talk about in the coming days some of the issues that I think are pertinent for our day, so we will be doing some of that perhaps after Jude. And Jude is pertinent for what is going on in our day.

Before you get into Jude, I want to direct your attention to I Timothy 3, just one verse, I Timothy 3: 15, verse 14 for the sentence, “I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long; but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one out to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.” And I think it important for us to not lose sight of the fact, the turmoil of the day and all the things going on that grab our attention, want to be reminded that the church is the household of God. This is God’s family, and what a blessing it is to be a part of God’s family, He is indeed our heavenly Father. And in a local, Bible-believing church we are to be a family under His authority and want to please Him. Paul said he was writing so that we would know how to conduct ourselves in God’s family and as God’s family. It is the church of the living God. It is comprised of those who have entered into the salvation He provided in Jesus Christ. You don’t get into the church, so to speak, through baptism, through communion, through signing a paper to join, or even attending. You are born into God’s family and when you are, you are part of the church. Which is His family, His family meeting in this place as there are other churches meeting in a variety of places around the world and together we comprise God’s family. This is God’s family in this place, and we are the pillar and support of the truth. God is a God of truth, He is the God who cannot lie. So we are a testimony and a pillar to support the truth of God, what God has revealed, what God has made known. We don’t want to lose sight of that in all the ups and downs and turmoil and fears and changes that go on in the world. We have the unchanging God who has established us as His family in this place to be a pillar and support of the truth. To be focused on the truth, to be faithful to the truth, to proclaim the truth which is light in a world of darkness.

I mentioned that as a background because as you come back to the book of Jude, that little one-chapter book just before the book of Revelation at the end of your Bibles, written by the half brother of Jesus Christ, Jude. Think about that, raised in the family with Jesus Christ as your half-brother, the child of Mary but not of Joseph, but raised with Joseph as the physical head of that family. Jude was not saved as we have seen until after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Think of that, you’re raised in the presence of the Son of God who has been born into the human race, you grow to adulthood and you don’t recognize and believe that He is the Savior of the world, the Messiah of Israel. But by God’s grace Jude was saved and now he writes this letter and he writes it as a slave of Jesus Christ, a brother of James (who is also a half-brother), of recognition of the exaltation of Christ. He is writing out of a concern for the spiritual health and well-being of God’s people, God’s family, God’s church, if you will, because serious things are happening.

He said in verse 3 I was planning to write to you about our common salvation, about the things we share together in salvation in Christ, but he was impressed by the Spirit to appeal to them to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” The truth of God, there is a finality to it. Yeah, the culture changes, society alters, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the unchanging God, His character is unchanging, and the truth that he has given is a consistent truth. It is the once for all faith that which we believe, which has been handed down to the saints. Why? Certain persons have crept in unnoticed and we are going to see this emphasized as we pick up in a little bit the portion before us today. They’ve crept in unnoticed, they are ungodly persons, they have never experienced God’s saving grace. These are not Christians who perhaps have stumbled along the way. These have never been born again, but somehow they have infiltrated among believers, as we will see, as they meet together as a local church and local churches, and they haven’t been recognized for what they are and they are doing damage. They “have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons.” We are going to see that when we get down to verse 15, four times in that one verse, verse 15, he’ll call them ungodly. There is nothing about them that identifies them or connects them to the living God, they are God’s enemies, God’s opponents.

They are a danger to God’s people because they have come in among God’s people, they turned the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” That is danger. They have infiltrated unnoticed for what they really are, their true character, and they are undermining the truth of God’s grace provided in Christ. That is becoming the excuse for ungodly living and they deny our only Master and Lord. He uses two words here, different words that emphasizes the lordship of Christ and His absolute authority. And they deny Him, they are not living under His authority but in opposition to His authority.

Come back to a passage we looked at earlier in our study in Jude, 2 Corinthians 11, Paul starts this chapter, he is writing to believers, a church of believers. In his first letter he expresses his confidence that they have placed their faith in Christ, they have been gifted by the Holy Spirit, but the battles along the way have allowed corruption in and this church is facing the same dangers that Jude writes about. He says, “I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but indeed you are bearing with me.” He wants to soften the rebuke, bear with me a little foolishness, I know that I’m repeating myself, I keep telling you what you already know, I know that you bear with me, I appreciate that. Verse 2, “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin”. You see that picture again of a family relationship, here husband and wife. We saw it in the letter to Timothy. God’s family, God’s household, the pictures that show the intimacy of our relationship with God and one another. And we belong to Christ, we have to be faithful to Him.

Verse 3, “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness”. We talked in the previous study about Satan and his authority in the world and he rules in this world under the ultimate authority of God, what Satan told Christ, the kingdoms of this world have been turned over to me. He is the god of this world, the ruler of this world and this age. Paul’s concerned that the influence of Satan has come in among believers, just like the serpent Satan “deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds,” that’s my fear, “will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ”. It’s not that complicated. You know, we say keep it simple stupid, that’s what we are talking about, the pure simplicity of the truth. This was given to God’s people, it should not be allowed to be altered or removed. We are devoted to Him with a pure devotion, a complete devotion. (Verse 4), “For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully”. Something is wrong, you become tolerant, you become opened-minded. You know, that’s the idea, the world loves tolerance, that’s the big key word of today, tolerance, which means accepting the world as the world wants to be, accepting the world and it’s opposition to God. How did the world get into the church? We are not saying unbelievers ought to live like believers, but we should not accept as believers the unbelievers. How do they become tolerant? This is what Jude said isn’t it, you deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. They’re preaching another Jesus, they’re not the same thing as I preach. In Galatians 1 he said I don’t care if an angel would come from heaven and preach another gospel, he is cursed to hell. There is no excuse for getting deluded. You say maybe you received a spirit or maybe had a supernatural experience. It doesn’t matter, truth rules, everything comes to be measured by God’s truth and anything in conflict with that is rejected. That is how it is to be among God’s people, it’s all about truth. It’s not about making you feel good, it’s not about having a good time, it’s not about the church being a place where your emotions can get stirred and ‘oh, I just love that.’ We ought to love the truth, even when it’s harsh, even when it’s difficult. It’s truth, we want to bear that beautifully.

Come down to verse 13, “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workers,” here is the problem, “disguising themselves as apostles of Christ… for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness whose end will be according to their deeds.” Then he goes on in his personal testimony. Come over to the book of Jude. This keeps coming up in scripture, Old and New Testament alike, we as God’s people have to be discerning. We get caught up in all the noises, we say, of the world. You turn on the TV and you watch news and you hear… It is just somehow, sometimes, we get moved off of our foundation and the church becomes open to people and to teaching that has no place there. This is what Jude is concerned about, this is what God’s concerned about with his family. We are all concerned for our families, our physical family. You have one kind of a difficulty or another in your own family, that is a big concern for you. That involves your thinking, it involves your time, you want to give it attention, you want to do what can be done to fix it. This is God’s family, it has be honoring to Him.

So that is what Jude is writing about. He has given examples, we shouldn’t be deluded and deceived, Satan continues to work the same way. Where did Paul take the Corinthians back? I’m concerned that you will be deceived by the serpent, the devil, just like Eve was in the garden. I mean, we are all the way back in the garden of Eden and Satan is doing the same thing millenniums later. The church at Corinth shouldn’t be deluded and deceived, we ought to learn how he works, we have the scriptures. Jude has given examples here, as Paul writes to the Corinthians so Jude here. Verse 5, as we have gone through this, I want to remind you, and he gives examples of Old Testament history and what has been recorded. Learn from that! We get later in Romans to the end, we will be told that the Old Testament scriptures are written for our admonition, we need to learn from them. He then connects it and the examples he gives. Verses 5, 6, and 7, then in verse 8, “Yet in the same way these men”, these who have infiltrated among you, Jude says they operate the same way because Satan operates the same way and these are Satan’s children.

Remember there are only two categories of people in the world. Not the multiple of races and not all that, that gets all the attention. There are the children of God and children of the devil, believers and unbelievers, that is the division that exists, that is the one that is foundational to everything, that matters not only for time it matters for eternity. So these men are the same as those were, then he gives further examples, they are very harsh. You know all my years of ministry, and one of you will probably come up afterwards and fix that for me, but I don’t think I’ve ever had met anyone who said my favorite book in the Bible is the book of Jude. It’s just not that kind of letter. Maybe because it’s so short. Probably it’s not only short, we all love I Corinthians 13, the love chapter, but Jude? He really comes down on people, yes, he does. They don’t even know what they are talking about he says in verse 10, they revile things they don’t understand, they have no spiritual perception and understanding. Then he gave three analogies and connections to the Old Testament in a situation there. “They have gone the way of Cain,” in verse 11, “… they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.” See those Old Testament… they’re just not stories for us, they convey truth from God. If you are in the way of Cain, in other words, your actions are basically the same as Cain’s were, you are in trouble. The error of Balaam, it took a donkey to correct him, but he still didn’t get it straightened out. The rebellion of Korah… Don’t be like these people and don’t accept people into the congregation who are like these people.

So, he is going to pick up in verse 12, where we will pick up today. He is going to drive home the seriousness, the problem is we as believers over time, and it happens little by little, we become more tolerant, more open, less passionate about truth. I think that is one of the most difficult things for the church, the most difficult thing as a pastor, for you as people, for us to remain passionate about the truth. ‘Oh, its just… yeah, I believe the truth, like the Corinthians… I believe the truth.’ But it doesn’t consume them anymore, its purity. Well, we become a little more open, you know, we can’t reach the world if they view us intolerant, we can’t reach the world if they don’t see us as loving. Pretty soon we say what? We have to become more what the world wants? Some of that first love as the prophets had to confront Israel about is gone. God had to say to Israel I remember your first love, that early devotion. Why should our love weaken? Then it gets stronger, deeper, more passionate. That’s what God is having Jude write about.

And maintain your discernment, you have to realize the seriousness of this, verse 12. That he uses examples from the Old Testament in verse 11, the way of Cain, the error of Balaam, the rebellion of Korah. Now to our day Jude says, “these are the men”, so the present, unbelieving apostates, professing but not believing, men who have infiltrated among the believers. You know, there are these Old Testament examples, these are the men you are dealing with, men in the way of Cain, men following the error of Balaam, men in the rebellion of Korah. Do you understand the serious of the situation? How much time do you spend with your children, warning them? In my day my parents… didn’t matter if it was snowing or raining, they put on boots and a snowsuit and sent me out the door to school. Nowadays you have to take them to school and protect them because you don’t know what dangers are along the way and all of that. God’s people need to understand the devil goes about as a roaring lion. He’s sending his children and emissaries out everywhere. And his plan among believers: we ought to pretend we are like them, enough so they will accept us, and then we will corrupt and destroy them. Verse 12, “These are the men who are,” and he has 5 comparisons here, they are hidden reefs verse 12, further toward the end of the verse they are clouds without water, they are autumn trees without fruit, verse 13 they are wild waves of the sea, they are wandering stars, there is nothing good to say about them. You have to recognize them for what they are, they have nothing to offer, they have nothing to give, they are an extreme danger to you.

Starts out, these are the men who are hidden reefs, we are all familiar where boats get caught on a reef as they move towards land. Sailing ships especially are subject to the wind and the waves. I was watching a program on one of those fishing things, since I’m such a good fisherman. They’re big fishing boats, got caught and pulled in, and got on a reef. Then it was a major thing, the ship was coming apart, the waves are beating on it, hard for another ship to get in close enough to rescue the crew, weather such you can’t bring in a helicopter safely. It’s a tragedy, they kept saying the ship is going to break up, the men will be lost. Hidden reefs are a danger. In the days of the sailing ship, they could especially appreciate, but they are hidden reefs.

Remember verse 4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed”, this is the danger. There is enough about them that they have been accepted. They “are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves.” The love feast, that is 1 Corinthians 11, remember the meal the Corinthians were abusing. In early times the believers gathered together as Christ did with his disciples on the last night, remember they had a meal together. Then after the meal He took the bread and the cup, we don’t have the meal any more today in most of our churches, we have just the bread and the cup. But in the early days they did meet together for that fellowship meal, evidence of their love and compassion. That is why Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the abuse of it was serious to God, don’t treat this lightly. So here, you have these false teachers who are turning grace into licentiousness, who are denying the very character and authority of Jesus Christ and they’re joining in with believers and being welcomed and comfortable.

They do it without fear, they aren’t afraid that anyone is going to rebuke them or expose them, they are “caring for themselves.” That word ‘caring,’ we get the word shepherd from it. Pastors are shepherds. They’re caring and shepherding themselves, that is all they care about, looking out for me, it is all about me for them, and they are a hidden reef. You can’t just say well, I don’t know they do any harm. They are harm. When the devil gets his people in close he has them there for a purpose. How often do you warn your children about the right kind of friends. You say I’m not comfortable with you being a close friend of person who is… You don’t want them to be a close friend with someone doing drugs, getting drunk on weekends, who has a lifestyle like that. You say oh, no? What? It might have more effect on you than you realize. But spiritually we don’t want to be too narrow; God’s concern is that His people be narrow, He is concerned for their spiritual condition and purity. Though why would you allow these people in? They are hidden reefs for believers to get spiritual damage. Paul used the same analogy when he wrote to Timothy and said some men have made a shipwreck of the faith, they have had their faith shattered. True believers get off-track, they don’t lose their salvation but their life can become a mess. It is like your physical child. They are still your child but they make a mess of their life, you are concerned for them. This is the danger. God doesn’t want his people in that position. They’re hidden reefs, they don’t belong there, they’re clouds without water carried along by winds. No matter what they say they don’t have anything to offer.

When we go to Colorado we can look out to the mountains and the clouds come over the mountains, Pikes Peak is there and then the range of the mountains. It is spectacular in the evenings when the sun sets, but the clouds that come are always different, we will talk about we have taken so many pictures of clouds but they are amazingly awesome. You know what they are in a drought. These clouds come over the mountains, they look so great but they don’t make it into the city area. The pond on the golf course that we can look at has shrunk from this large pond to this little body of water that you can walk across and get your ankles wet, there is hardly anything in it. Where do the clouds go? You meet people in the elevator, they say, yeah, saw the clouds but they will be gone before they bring any rain to us. Somehow they dissipated, they promise something, you see them coming, boy, we are really going to get a storm. Nothing happens! That is these people spiritually. They are always acting like they bring something, they offer something, maybe enhanced spirituality. But they are “clouds without water, carried along by winds.” They are just going along, we saw that in Ecclesiastes, carried by the wind, the whim of the wind. Here they are gone, they promised but they can’t deliver.

They’re “autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted.” The autumn tree is the picture here, without fruit, is they come through the fruit-bearing season, now the autumn, like we are seeing leaves start to come off and all the fruit season is over. They never did bear any fruit. You now why? They are doubly dead, the point is they are dead as dead can be, there is no life in them, in fact, they are uprooted. He wants you to understand because we look at some of these people and the devil when he makes a counterfeit, make a good one. Remember 2 Corinthians 11, the devil disguises himself as an angel of light, don’t be surprised if his servants do that, and he helps disguise them. So we look at things that draw us to them. Its like I say, you don’t look at what is good, you look at what is bad. Isn’t that what you tell your children? The person. If you send your young child off to grade school and someone pulls up in a nice car with candy, the car may be nice and the candy may be good but the person is bad and the results are bad.

We use the analogy, you put a few drops of powerful poison in a quart of milk and then offer someone a drink. They say it doesn’t matter, it was just a few drops. It’s not good milk with a few drops of poison, it’s poisoned milk. But somehow spiritually, well, I don’t think… we are viewed as we’re the only ones right, we are so narrow. I want to be as narrow as the truth is. I’m not here in a popularity contest. We as a church have been not established here so the world thinks well of us. Why would they think well of us? They are the children of the devil. What makes us think we ought to develop our theology and our conduct around what the world approves of? How do these churches get in this trouble? Jude is writing to believers and he said these people have gotten in among the church or the churches, or whomever he is writing to. Paul had to write to the Corinthians with the same thing. He had to write to the Galatians with the same thing. You want to follow the line go from Jude to Revelation 2 and 3 and read Christ’s last letter to His churches. He is having to deal with the same thing and rebuking for the same errors. They are “autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted,” quit thinking you are going to find something good. They can not bear the fruit of the spirit because they have no life from the Spirit. They’re “wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam.”

Some issues I was involved in many years ago, and some books had been written and men started out and they were acclaimed as evangelical. And I said something is wrong, their teaching is contrary to the Word in key areas. Now that very man is an avid advocate of homosexual lifestyles. Well, we should have picked it up much earlier. Why were we calling him an evangelical? Well, he said he believed some of the things we do and he was in an evangelical school, it gets repeated over and over and over again. They’re wild waves of the sea. We are familiar with it with our televisions today, you get pictures of the storms even if you have never been to the ocean. Some of you have been to the ocean, you go to the ocean after the storm and there is all kind of junk up there. Where did it all come from? It seems to just build it and pull it from wherever. What they’re stirring up like the waves is their own shame like foam. The foam, the white caps, that is what the unbeliever does, he can’t bring anything out of the treasure of his heart because the evil man out of that evil heart brings evil things. He can’t bring good things to the church.

Part of the corruption that has such an impact on evangelical Christianity was the commitment to have an impact and an acceptance in the world because we are scholars. Then they will realize that we have a mind and we can think clearly, and our scholarship should be accepted by the world. They won’t ever be because the issue is not scholarship, the issue is not science, the issue is spiritual. Well, get things from the world, what people have gone through, take a survey in your neighborhood for what people are looking for in a church, then that will help adapt your church to be effective in your neighborhood. How does this stuff get accepted among believers? In the church that is to be the pillar and support of the neighborhood’s ideas? Of the truth! Come back to Isaiah 57, just one verse. Verse 15 is not what we are coming for but is such a great verse I will have to read it to you while we are here, “For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy.” Remember we are called holy saints, holy ones, because He is holy. You shall be holy for I am holy. “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Come down to verse 20, “But the wicked are like tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse and mud. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’ ” Look at our country, look at our society, what’s happening, it’s going crazy, it’s irrational, it’s madness, it’s destructive. There is no peace says my God to the wicked. Well, if you had enough money you would be peaceful and happy. It doesn’t work that way, does it? They find that some of the rioters have come from well-to-do homes. Well, they are rioting for someone else. There is no peace says my God to the wicked. They are like the waves of the sea, same analogy Jude uses, he probably drew it from Isaiah. They are like the wild waves of the sea. Why would we bring them in among us, welcome them? They’re going to bring peace, order? They’re “wandering stars, for whom the black darkness,” the blackness of darkness, “has been reserved forever.” Wandering stars, they are here and they are gone, more like the shooting stars or the comets, they appear in the dark and they are gone. They’re doomed for the darkness. They may come as a light but they come from darkness, they’re going to darkness. It’s not true light. It is just a passing because they have adapted. I’m amazed at how much truth I can read in a person who is clearly an unbeliever, it is startling. You read it and you say wow, they really are clear, then you read something else they write and they are denying the word of God and they are open about it. That’s why we have to be careful, put it together, I could give other examples but I won’t. The blackness of darkness is reserved for them. We saw this with regarding the angels in verse 6, these angels are kept in eternal bonds under darkness. Darkness is a future of unbelieving angels and unbelieving people, humans. That word, you may have it marked as one of the verbs I told you to mark in verse 6, He has ‘kept,’ it’s the same word as you have translated ‘reserved.’ Down at the end of verse 13, the blackness of darkness has been kept, has been reserved, this is the same thing but we have it translated differently.

Remember in Matthew 25, Jesus will say to the unbelievers depart from me cursed ones into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Hell is a place of burning fire and eternal blackness of darkness. Some people may say fire is bright, I don’t know. I shared with you one article I read, I wish I would have kept it, of a firefighter and a suit for going into a fire and said I was shocked, I thought it would be very bright when I got in there but it was pitch black. I don’t know, I have never tried to verify that. All I know is God says hell will be burning fire, an eternal blackness of darkness. You don’t get any darker than that. Some of you live in the country. I said to Marilyn the other night we where out, I said let’s take a ride outside the city to see how dark it is. We turned down a road and you know you turn out the lights. I admire you for living there. I know the city has a lot of bad things that can go on. I’ve traveled in and out of center city Philadelphia day and night for years. but I don’t like the darkness and it’s dark in the country. You know hell is going to be, you feel isolated, you look around, so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face, that is hell! You say all my friends will be there, I don’t doubt that but there isn’t going to be any fellowship in hell. It’s blackness of darkness and how terrible is it with indescribable suffering of fire. Well, I don’t think God would do that. Well, He is the God that cannot lie. I can’t imagine it either anymore than I can imagine all the glories of heaven for eternity but I will take God’s word for both.

Once you begin to deny the truth of God’s word. Of many who profess to be evangelicals for much of their life departed and now it’s become acceptable to deny an eternal hell and still be accepted as evangelical. What part of the Bible can you deny and still be accepted? If there is no eternal hell, well, salvation is good, you will get better things, but the worse that happens to you is nothing. You see the devil finds his way to play on our emotions and pretty soon I make decisions on emotions rather than here is what God says. What can I say? I can’t imagine a place that terrible either but I don’t have to imagine if God tells me it exists and there will be people there. All I know is I sure don’t want to be one of those that are there. Well then, believe in the salvation He has provided and you will be in the glorious place He promised. I understand none of those quote “evangelicals” who now deny hell also deny heaven. You start to pick out and choose. Oh, I don’t like that, I don’t think God could do that. Pretty soon a person’s individual choices becomes sovereign, it is what I agree with and what I think.

The blackness of darkness. Now these are the people that have been accepted at their love feasts without fear of being exposed or rebuked. They have crept in unnoticed and they are a destructive force of Satan to ruin individual believer’s lives and to destroy churches. When Christ comes, this is where he goes in verse 14, “It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied.” So we know who we are talking about, we are talking about the Enoch who is the seventh generation from Adam. We are not going to turn back there because of time, but if you go to chapter 5 of Genesis and you can count the genealogies, I think it is about verse 24, but don’t hold me to that. You come to Enoch and if you count the generations from Adam, and Hebrews has an inclusive counting. In other words, when it says the seventh generation from Adam, that includes Adam, so you count down and you will find number seven is Enoch so we know who we are talking about. He prophesied, we don’t have a record of that prophecy, other than his name and a genealogy, I think in Chronicles, Hebrews 11 is the only other reference to Enoch. What we are being told here, what has Jude been doing? Taking us back, he went all the way back to the garden of Eden, we are back to Cain killing his brother Abel; we are now back to the seventh generation, first man identified as a prophet and it’s Enoch. Now there is an apocryphal book, it is a collection of really five books put together and called 1 Enoch that was in existence some time before Christ, 100 to 200 years, that has been debated over. He has some material similar to what we might have here and other places. Some think Jude probably drew from that and the Spirit of God might have used him having preserved certain truth to select out. Otherwise it could be something it was just passed down orally, or the Spirit of God could have revealed it to him. The point is that it’s prophetic here.

I’m so weary of people, you know, evangelicals, they want to show their scholarship, they are into all the extra-biblical stuff you can find. I’m not sure, I’m not convinced in my mind that fisherman like Peter, James, and John, and when they weren’t fishing you find them mending their nets, were going to the library. Cause remember you just didn’t get on the internet and call up 1 Enoch and you couldn’t go to the bookstore and get a copy. Remember these are on parchment or vellum or animal skin. You go to the library and you’re going to read this, it’s true there were scholarly people who did but I’m not sure everybody was familiar with all this material as I read. Well, all the Jews would have been familiar with this, everybody would have known this. It’s like today, not everybody know things. You might be reading some stuff and you’re really interested into it and you talk to somebody else sitting next to you, he doesn’t have a clue what you are talking about, he hasn’t read that, he doesn’t care. Well, any rate, Enoch was a prophet, how do I know that? God says through Jude, Enoch was a prophet and he prophesied.

What is interesting is what he prophesized, saying “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones.” Remember the Old Testament prophets, there is what we call the prophetic past. Prophetic past, in other words, they often gave their prophecies in the past tense when clearly they were talking about a future event. Why? Because when they spoke what God told them to speak it was as good as done. What God is prophesied that will take place in the future, is just as sure and settled as yesterday’s news, I mean it is done, it just has to be accomplished but there is no doubt about it. So here you have Enoch, you would expect that Old Testament prophet prophesying, “The Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones.” The prime reference would be the angels. Matthew 25, at the second coming of Christ, He comes with myriads of His angels. In 2 Thessalonians 1, Christ comes to mete out vengeance and He comes with thousands of His angels. Then in Revelation 19, the fuller details of His coming, and we find that we will come with Him because we are holy ones as well, we will be part of that. But Enoch the seventh, we are long before Noah here, we are going to get Methuselah, then you are going to get Noah, we got to put some time in here.

But He is prophesying about the coming of the Lord with His angels, so revelation had been given, Not all of it was recorded, we can be thankful for that. How would you like it if I had to tell you next Sunday bring volume number 932 from your Bibles because we will be looking into that? So what God has done has recorded for us what is necessary. That is not all what was known obviously here, we have prophecy being given by Enoch regarding what we would call the second coming of Christ. Cause this world would take the intervention of God to what? Look at verse 15, what is He coming for? ‘To execute judgment.” This is the word, you will have the word ‘all’ used four times in verse 15, and you will have the word ‘ungodly’ used four times. It’s an all-encompassing judgment, it is thorough, it involves all, every ungodly person. That is the focus, “to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly,” reveal them for what they are, there will be no doubt. We had a supreme court justice pass away, she was involved in decisions but you know there is the supreme judge before who the supreme court justice and every other person stands. The unbeliever to be judged and sentenced to hell. The believer has a different judgment, as we have seen in scripture and progressively unfolds, to be rewarded and brought into the presence of God.

He is going to bring “judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” That is complete. Jesus said every word, every careless word, every word against Him, against the living God will be brought into that judgment. Oh, how do you keep track of that? We are talking about God. My finite mind doesn’t have to be able to grasp and fill in all the details of all that God has made known. I know this is going to happen. Well, I can’t see how. Wait a minute, I only know what God has revealed, then I’ve got my hands full getting my finite mind around it. Eternity? I sit sometimes and think God had no beginning, there was never a time when He wasn’t. Gil, think about that! Where do I go with that? Well, I keep going back, back, back, back, back. There is never a back behind God because he always was. I have no way, my mind… I just have to leave it. So here He is going to bring judgment, their deeds have been ungodly. Well, I know people who do good deeds. Remember we talked about the foundation. Did it come out of a heart committed to God, submissive to Him, with a desire to bring glory to Him? No! Then it wasn’t a good deed. I’m not saying there isn’t relative good in the world but as God is going to exercise judgment the unbeliever never does good. That’s what we have in Psalms 14 and Romans 3, there’s none who does good. Oh well, I see unbelievers do good. Yes, I have had unbelievers treat me very nicely but they weren’t doing it out of a heart that was submissive to God, bringing Him honor. It’s not good.

That’s why I talked about we want to be careful we keep out perspective in the world. Doesn’t mean I’m not appreciative of God’s common grace that provides a world where I can be free here and in context to preach the Word. How long will I have that, I don’t know. We are to pray for rulers, those in authority that we might have the opportunity to proclaim the gospel. We are not here to fix the world, we are here to bring redemption to the lost in the world. So judgment is coming, it will come, it will encompass every deed and it will encompass every word. In will encompass every person, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, when its all said and done. With the judgments that are revealed, everyone will have stood before our God. People act like it is a light thing. I’m in awe that a person and people can sit as judges but never give a thought that they will give an account to the judge of all mankind. What a shock! What a thought! Eternity begins, I missed what really matters. We honor people after they’re gone, what matters is any honor they will get after they’re gone, where they are going. Lose that perspective.

All right we have to wrap it up with verse 16, and we will be picking up here, “These are grumblers, finding fault.” Well, that seems like a step down, everybody grumbles, let’s not get carried away Jude. Now these are grumblers, these are the same ones in verse 12, he said these are the men who are. Verse 14, it was about these men. Now he says in verse 16, these are grumblers finding fault. Think about it. Grumbler, ‘goggustes,’ sounds like grumbling, one of those words that its sound conveys what it means, it’s like you are mumbling, it is always something. They are finding fault. This is the problem. This is what Satan does. Then pretty soon, well, you know, there is good here but what I don’t like about here. I don’t agree with, you know, this and this. Think about it, as believers, believers are not to mumble and complain. Israel is the example in the Old Testament, in fact this word is used when they translated the Old Testament into Greek of Israel grumbling. Whom am I grumbling against? I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe that He rules over all and He controls my life, and He directs every day, and He’s brought into my life for today what he chooses and I’m grumbling and complaining. Whom am I complaining about? Well, my wife. Well, who gave you that wife? Well, God. Who planned this day? Don’t try to get her out of it, it is her fault.

Wait a minute, I’m really complaining about God. Maybe God brought even unfair things into my life because He wants me to mature and grow and handle it properly. Isn’t that what happened to Job? Yeah, but I don’t want it to happen to me. So mumbling, grumbling, finding fault. Well, you want to be careful, that’s not pointing out error that is in conflict of the Word, of course we do. But they are grumblers, they find fault. We will get to (not today) verse 19, these are the ones who cause division. How do churches get split so much? Maybe we ought to consider Jude, grumbling, finding fault causes division. Every person has to examine their own heart. What’s the problem here, is it theological? No, it’s not theological. Well, we’ve got a spiritual problem here, if it’s not theological, yet you are making an issue causing division. I had someone come to visit me not long ago from another church, I said what are you here for, your intention to cause division in that church? Well, it's a doctrinal issue. It’s not a doctrinal issue. What are they telling you to do that’s not? Well, they’re not. Then why don’t you go home, thank God that you have a church where the word of God, by your own testimony, is being preached, and mind your own business. And to his credit with my great advice which is just biblical, he sent me a note and thanked me, he has gone on. Good!

Why do we have mumbles and grumbles for? Stop It! You know where I can stop it? I’m not open to hear it. “Finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.” So you find out how they got in, they are good at working people. That is how con men are, isn’t it? That is how they get people to give their money to schemes that aren’t solid and sound investments, or any other con schemes. That is what they are, driven by their own lust. They’re selfish, but they know how to work people. We want to be careful. We want to be a church that is faithful, we start individually, that’s my commitment, and that’s our commitment together as God’s family in this place.

Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the riches and clarity of your Word, we want to take it to heart. Lord, may we examine ourselves personally, our relationship with You, our conduct, our commitment to truth. May we as a church be honoring to You in all our activities and all are teaching. We pray in Christ’s name, amen.