Jude I


MINISTER, Rev. Thomas O. Scarborough.

Jude. Introduction.


Today I am going to begin a series on an unusual little book in the New Testament. This is the book of Jude. We find the book of Jude just before the final book of Revelation.

Once again, we shall be doing an exegetical series -- that means that we shall be going through the book of Jude verse by verse, and we shall treat it as God's Word, and try to understand what God is saying to us -- without modifying it -- without subtracting from it -- and simply letting the Lord speak through this book.

This morning I am just going to do an introduction of Jude -- we shall be looking at who wrote it, when they wrote it, and also what the central themes of the book of Jude are.

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Now the book of Jude was written by a man called -- Jude. He introduces himself in verse 1 as the brother of James -- note also that he introduces himself as a servant of Jesus Christ -- or as a slave of Jesus Christ. Now this is unusual, because he is in fact the brother of Jesus Christ. And this is partly why this little book found its way into the Bible -- it was written by the brother of Jesus.

If we go back to Matthew 13 verse 55, we read there how the people said concerning Jesus: "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't His mother's name Mary, and aren't His brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude?"

Now Jude was not a prominent person. It was James who was really well known, and it was James who became one of the leading lights in the early Church.

Jude was also a leader -- but without any real claim to fame. He wasn't a leading light. He seems to have lived a simple life, without being at the centre of events in the New Testament.

We know very little about Jude himself -- but there is an interesting story from history, that reflects upon him. That is that during the reign of the emperor Domitian, who reigned at the end of the first century, and wanted to destroy the Christian Church.

And someone reported to emperor Domitian that some of the family of Jesus were still alive -- the decendants of Jude -- not Jude himself, but probably his sons and his grandsons. So Domitian ordered that these descendants of Jude should be summoned to appear before the Roman courts. It is said that he was worried that these relatives of Jesus might become the centre of a revolution -- that people might gather behind them.

But when these men were brought before the court, they were dressed as labourers -- and their hands were hardened by work in the fields -- and the Roman authorities saw that these men were all just harmless labourers, and so they were dismissed.

That probably tells us something about Jude also. As far as we know, he was a simple man.

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Now we see this simplicity, in fact, in this book of Jude. His plainness and his straightforwardness come through very clearly in the book of Jude.

Now Jude speaks about issues of great importance in this little book -- but unlike many of the other writers of the New Testament, Jude does not enter into finer theological details. He doesn't write a treatise. But in this letter of his, he simply speaks from the heart.

The famous commentator William Barclay said: "(Jude) was not a theologian, but... (he was) a plain honest leader of the Church."

Another commentator (Moffatt) said about him: "(Jude) does not seek to argue and to refute, for he writes as one who knows when round indignation is more telling than argument."

So there is a moral authority about Jude that does not in fact need any sophisticated arguments, or any carefully crafted words. Jude is a man who writes in spiritual power, but he does not come with any great intellectual persuasion.

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And there is a lesson here for us today as well.

When we are dealing as Christians with untruth around us, or with immorality, we don't need to be clever -- we don't need to have all the right words, or the perfect arguments. That is what lawyers do. It is good enough to have a good heart -- as Jude did -- and to deal with matters from a position of spiritual strength, and spiritual peace.

The Bible tells us: "Test the spirits." (1 John 4:1). It doesn't say: "Test the statements -- or even, test the words, or test the arguments." It says: "Test the spirits." What is the spirit we are dealing with here? What is this spirit? So basically what Jude does in this little book is to test the spirits. And he does it in a powerful way.

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Now the book itself is written fairly late in relation to the other books of the New Testament. It is a latecomer to the New Testament. There are hints in this book of Jude that it comes at the end of the first generation of the Church.

Let us look at verse 17: "But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold." Notice that this verse is in the past tense. It is talking about the apostles as though they are now history. Most of them, by this time, are dead and gone.

We do know that the apostle Peter was still alive when Jude wrote this letter -- because Peter quotes from this book of Jude -- if we look back at the second letter of Peter, Peter borrows quite a lot of the powerful language of Jude in a small section of that second letter of Peter.

Peter was martyred when he was 70 years old, in the year A.D. 69 -- so the book of Jude was written of course before the year A.D. 69.

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Another interesting thing about the book of Jude -- now looking back over Christian history -- is that this little book went through phases of popularity. It went through times of neglect, where hardly anybody paid attention to it -- but it also went through times of great popularity.

And what is particularly interesting is that this book became most popular during the great revivals of the Church. Wherever the Holy Spirit was doing a great work in the Church, and shaking the Church out of its complacency, that is where this little book of Jude became very popular.

The commentator William Barclay says: "There have indeed been times in the history of the Church, and especially in the revivals of the Church, when Jude was not far off from being the most relevant book in the New Testament."

And another commentator (Moffatt) says that Jude has "been a fiery cross to rouse the Churches".

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An interesting point about the book of Jude is that Jude never planned to write it. In fact he planned to write something else. Jude writes in verse 3: "Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."

So Jude was intending to write about salvation -- instead he felt compelled to write about some people who had slipped into the Church -- in verse 4, they secretly slipped in -- and it seems that Jude never again got the chance to write that letter that he planned -- in verse 3.

But the fact is, Jude did more for the Church by writing this urgent little letter than he probably would have done by writing a long and scholarly treatise. This little letter, as I said, has been a bombshell in Church revivals.

And we learn something important here. Sometimes the things that you and I have planned are not the things that are going to bring the greatest blessing to the kingdom of God. The things that I have planned are not necessarily the things that are going to bring the greatest glory to God.

While Jude thought he had been sidetracked here, with his letter of Jude -- he had to write about something that he had not planned to write about -- that thing he hadn't planned to do became the one thing that God used most mightily of all the things he ever did.

There are many examples of this happening in the Christian Church. God often does His greatest work, not with what we have in mind -- but with something completely different. There are so many examples from history, I just wouldn't know where to begin.

And the same applies to your life and mine. What I achieve for God's kingdom doesn't depend on my plans -- it depends on what God is going to do with me, by His grace.

If you are going to touch your family, or touch your community, or touch your Church, it may very well not come about through what you have planned -- it may very well come about through something completely different -- something that the Lord has planned instead.

Also, your effectiveness for God's Kingdom does not depend on your position in life. You don't need to be in a certain position to be used mightily for God. When we reach heaven one day, we will quite likely find that some of us who were in the humblest positions brought about by far the greatest things for God's Kingdom.

The main thing is that you and I should remain people whom the Lord can use -- people who are in step with the Lord -- who will be filled with His Spirit when that moment comes that the Lord will use us.

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Now this morning I am not going to go into any great detail in the book of Jude -- this morning we shall simply be taking an overview of the book of Jude, to see what Jude's concerns are as a whole.

And let us begin by looking at Jude's introduction in verse 4: "For certain men, whose condemnation was written about long ago, have slipped in among you."

Verse 4 then summarises the whole thrust of this book of Jude. Certain men have entered the Church -- they have insinuated their way into the Church -- that means that these were men who seemed to be fine Christians at first -- they said all the right words -- they seemed to be wonderful Christian people -- but as Jude says here, they are reefs under the water.

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So it is possible for people to say all the right words, and seem to be wonderful Christian people -- but still there is something fundamentally wrong.

And there are two things specifically that these men have brought with them into the Church -- two things specifically which are wrong, which Jude pinpoints.

Let us read the second part of verse 4 -- and let us notice that word "and", which shows us that there are two main points here. The second part of verse 4: "They are godless men, who exchange the grace of our God into a licence for immorality -- and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord."

There are the two points -- we shall expand on them only briefly this morning, just to try and gain a general understanding as to what the book of Jude is about.

Let us also read verse 5: "Though you already know this," says Jude, "I want to remind you that the Lord delivered His people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe."
 
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Let us look at the first problem that Jude addresses. He is talking here about men who seem to have understood the grace of God -- but he says, in verse 4, that they have turned this grace into a licence for immorality.

And then verse 5 underlines this -- the Lord delivered His people out of Egypt -- and that deliverance was an act of God's grace -- an act of God's undeserved mercy -- but after the deliverance, the Israelites did not believe, and so they were barred from the Promised Land.

Notice that these verses are talking about a kind of half-way state in a person's spiritual life.

They are talking about people who have come out of Egypt -- they people who know all about God's saving grace -- but these people have not reached a point where will be allowed to enter the Promised Land -- that is eternal life.

What is missing?

The fact is that many people today have understood the wonderful grace of God -- and because of this, they seem to be perfect Christians.

They can talk about God's undeserved mercy -- they can talk about His saving grace -- about His forgiveness through Jesus -- but there is something absolutely crucial that is missing -- and that something is true repentance.

You find many Christians -- even ministers -- who say that God's loves everybody -- who say even that it all right to live a lifestyle of licence, to use the word we find here in verse 4.

But they have not understood repentance.

They have not come to that point where they have understood that they are dead in their sins and their trespasses -- that point where, as I said two weeks ago -- they realise that only God can now raise me up from such a condition of death -- where they come before the Lord with repentance, and cry to Him to have mercy on them.

They have understood God's grace, but there never came a point in their lives where they repented. And I am not talking about those everyday prayers that we say for the forgiveness of our sins -- but about a place in your life where your whole life is changed -- where suddenly the whole of your position before God becomes clear, and you understand that you need to enter into a new relationship with Him -- that grace is not enough -- you need repentance.

That is why the apostle Peter said on the day of Pentecost: "Repent, and be baptised every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins."

Here we have the word forgiveness -- it is related to grace -- but it comes at the end of the apostle's message. His first word is "repent".

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Let us look at the second problem that Jude addresses -- at the end of verse 4.

"And -- these people deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord."

How exactly do they deny the Lord?

As we go through this book of Jude, we discover that these men are part of the Church fellowship -- they take part in Holy Communion -- they speak beautiful words in the Church -- Jude says they are flattering with their beautiful words -- they even give messages from the Lord.

We have already seen that they deny the Lord Jesus by their license -- by their immoral behaviour -- "immoral" here means morality that is not in line with God's Word. The popular understanding of immorality is not the same as the Biblical
understanding of immorality -- it is easy to confuse the two.

But there is another clue here in the words of Jude -- an important clue, that is repeated in the book of Jude -- Jude says: "They deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord."
 
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One of the characteristics of people who have understood God's grace, but not the need for true repentance -- and for the atoning death of Jesus Christ -- is that such people believe that God's grace will lead everybody to heaven. All they see is grace.

And what these men in the book of Jude were probably saying is that there were other prophets and teachers who could show the way to heaven. If we look at the history books, we know that there were men at that time who were teaching this.

Jude says here that Jesus Christ is our only Sovereign and Lord. God is not merciful to those who have not come to know Him. 

And here we return again to the important point of repentance.

One of the things that clearly separates Christianity from every other religion in the world is that the other religions don't know the concept of repentance. There is no clear teaching of repentance. They sometimes use the word repentance -- but it is not at all the same as Christian repentance.

The other religions say that you can still please God by the things that you do -- and that if you do enough good, God can overlook the evil. And as long as God can overlook some of the evil, there is no need for total repentance.

The reason why Jesus is our only Sovereign and Lord is that only He died on the cross to make atonement for our sins. Only He requires repentance before He covers us with His saving blood. 

God is not only a God of grace, but He is a God of holiness and of wrath, who requires a moment in our lives where we come before Him with repentance, and ask Him for mercy through Jesus Christ.

These are the two points that the whole of the book of Jude is based upon -- of course the book of Jude will tell us far more than this -- what I have said this morning is just a very brief introduction.

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Do you believe in God's grace -- in His undeserved mercy towards the sinner?

If so, have you also come to a point of complete repentance, and surrender in your life? Can you look back and say: "I came to repentance?" Or do you look back and all you see is that God is a God of grace? Then you need to go back to base, and see whether you have truly understood the salvation message.

If you would like to know this morning just how to commit your life to the Lord, I shall have -- as usual -- some booklets in my hand at the door. Please ask me for a copy, and you can have one with our compliments.

This will explain to you exactly what to do to come before the Lord with true repentance.

AMEN.

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