book of Jude, we won't finish Jude, but I want to start. How many of you have ever been in a study on Jude? Three or two, four people. Okay, how many of you ever heard of Sermon on Jude? Two people. Okay, Jude is a neglected book of the New Testament A, and you know I think actually I told you at the beginning of this course we weren't going to study Jude didn't I? And then I said we might. Well I said might and what I meant was we probably wouldn't. But then I began to feel bad about what I'd said, and I began to reflect on my lectures and how I'd said we should pay attention to all the books. So this you don't have a handout in this, you're going to have to take a few notes yourself. How do you make sense of a book like Jude? I want to tell you the book of Jude is a difficult one. I'm going to give you a little bit of a piece of advice about how to read difficult books. First you sit down with your most favorite version like the NIV or whatever you like, and you read it in that. And then you get a version that's really different like today's English version or the New Living Bible or the King James if you don't read King James and read it in that. See what happens then. Then go back and read it again. Read it three or four or five times until it starts to sink into you. Do you realize, hey I'm reading this, repeated and I'm beginning to see some patterns here. Jod a few notes down to yourself. Read a good introduction to it. If you have a study Bible or a Bible dictionary, that's a good thing to do too. It's easy to make mistakes about Jude. Some people say that Jude is a book that's all against heresy. And it's a harsh book denouncing false teachers, trying to repudiate some heresy and trying to do it by threatening the judgment of God on unbelievers. And it was written by somebody, this again would be a critic now, written by somebody who had very little of the love and the tenderness of Christ and was simply insisting on Christian orthodoxy and was getting angry at groups that were deviating. That's a critic. Even even pretty conservative Christians can view Jude essentially as a negative book that denounces heretics. Now, it's certainly true that there is warning and even denunciation of falsehood in the book of Jude. But there's a lot more to it than that. Would you look at verse three with me, in which he says, 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 what he's saying is, essentially almost, I want to write you a really positive letter of encouragement. But now this trouble has come up and so still because I care about you, dear friends, I'm now writing to urge you to fight for the faith that has been delivered over to you. And why does he have to do this? Because, verse four says, certain men whose condemnation was written about one ago have infiltrated among you. They're godless. Now what's their godlessness? What's their heresy? The answer is that they're changing the grace of our god into a license for immorality. And deny Jesus Christ are only sovereign and lord. But here's the central charge that we're going to notice throughout the book of Jude. The central charge is that they are perverting the grace of God. They are denying the practical implications of the lordship of Christ. And here's a profile of these false teachers, of these men who are condemned and are driving us away from the true faith that's been entrusted to us. Their main problem is that they see the generous grace of God as an occasion for license, self-indulgence, and sensuality. And they take that license, given to them by the grace of God, and they say, because of Christ's grace, we can live any way we wish, which amounts to, verse four says, a rejection of the lordship of Christ. It's something pretty contemporary. The idea that some people have, even now, that Christ can be your savior, but not your lord. He delivers you. This is too good to be true. Christ washes away all of our sins, all we have to do is say, we're sorry, we're forgiven. That means I can live any way I want. In other words, the heresy that he describes here is not a heresy of some defective Christology or some doctrine they got wrong. It's just the basic idea that Christ is lord. Look at the way he describes them. He compares in verse seven their lusts to the lusts of Sodom and Gomorrah in a similar way Sodom and Gomorrah, verse seven in the surrounding towns, gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. Verse eight he says, they defile their flesh, they pollute their bodies. They, here's another one, verse 12, their blemishes at your love feast eating without the slightest qualm as if when they go to love feast would be the lord's supper. When they go to love feast, the lord's supper, they think, hey, fellowship dinner. Let's shout out. Let's grab some, let's grab some serious food here. They indulge their lusts. Verse 16 and verse 18, they fall their instincts. Chapter one, there's only one chapter. Chapter one, verse 10 says, they do by instinct, they act by instinct. They're like unreasoning animals. They're malcontents, they're divisive, they lack the spirit. Verse 19 says, they only understand the things of the flesh. There's a little, a little teaching in verse 12 that may get at it as well. They go to those love feasts that eat without the slightest qualms. The NIV says, shepherd's who feed only themselves. Literally it says, they shepherd themselves. And that can mean two or three things. It may mean that they were their leaders who are only interested in their own well-being. I don't think that's probably it. I think what it means is shepherds or shepherding means take care of the sheep, give them food and so forth. Their desire is to feed themselves well. And they shepherd themselves, what also mean, they don't have any shepherds over them. They don't have Christ, the great shepherd over them. They don't have any under-shepherds in the church over them. They've rejected authority. They're interested simply in taking care of themselves. They're going to be punished. Jude says, they're going to be punished verses 5, 6, and 7. The way that self-indulgent generation, verse 5, that came out of Egypt, you know, the ones that always wanted meat, always wanted more to eat and drink. The way they were punished, they'll be punished. Verse 6, they'll be punished the way rebellious angels were punished. Verse 7, they'll be punished the way Sodom and Gomorrah were punished by eternal fire. They've left their place. They've perverted religion. But that's not all there is to it. The church has a responsibility. These false teachers and the church isn't responsible. It's not simply the warning about judgment. The church needs also to be prepared by building itself up in the faith, verses 7, guard yourselves against them. He says, there is also a path. That's our responsibility to be prepared. Those who are in doubt. All the textual variants. You know what the textual variant is? We talked about this before. Yes, no. No. A textual variant is when you get two words that are real close to each other, and they both work to make sense. And as they, you know, they copied the New Testament out by hand. You get two words that are very close to each other, but they have different meanings like dov and die or something. But somehow they would both work in the sentence. Now, here's the deal. There's one word that means have mercy, and there's another word that means rebuke. And they're very, very close enough in the Greek that the copies, the old copies of the Greek New Testament, are about 50-50 of each of them half and half close to that. And I believe, as do many other people, that the better one for verse 22 is not be merciful, but rather reproof those who doubt. In other words, as you deal with heretics, these people who live this way, they're not all hardened in it. Some of them may not be entirely sure they're living the right way and work with them to reproof them is what he says. That's one group. The second group he says, you should snatch from the fire and save them. Again, the idea is that some of them may be very open to being corrected and brought back. So we'll just denounce them, win them. And to others now, you see the word mercy here does belong, and that's one reason why I think the word be merciful doesn't belong in the first one because he already says be merciful a little bit later. He says to others show mercy mixed with fear, hitting even the clothing stained by their corrupted flesh, which means some of them, the act of mercy is to show them their mistake, reproof them, rebuke them, show them their error. With others, they'll be very open to being corrected, snatch them out of the difficulty. With others, you want to have mercy that's mixed with fear. And what he means is, as you mercifully try to bring them back, be careful and beware because they may try to persuade you too. And their corruption may corrupt you. So be merciful but don't go in overconfident in your ability to win them back. Go in with fear and trembling. Go in realizing that you could be weakened and you yourself are prone to error and could possibly fall. So go in resolving to hate their sin. You know the saying, hate the sin, love the sinner. If there's if there's one verse in the Bible that that seems to come from, it's this one right here, the book of Jude. There's no place in the Bible where it actually says, hate the sin, love the sinner, but this comes close. Be afraid of it. But don't be too afraid because of verse 21, sorry verse 24 and 25, even though you're responsible to keep yourself and not fall, this beautiful doxology to him was able to keep you from falling, you won't fall. And to present you before his glorious presence without fall, come a great joy. There's a place for fear, but remember God keeps you to the only God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before our ages now and forevermore. Thus the message of Jude.