Today we are continuing our series entitled “Little Lost Letters”. We began by looking at 2 and 3 John, then last week we began looking at the Letter of Jude. Listen for God’s word to you from Jude 1:5-16…
Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, that the Lord, who once for all saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day. Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Yet in the same way these dreamers also defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed about the body of Moses, he did not dare to bring a condemnation of slander against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” But these people slander whatever they do not understand, and they are destroyed by those things that, like irrational animals, they know by instinct. Woe to them! For they go the way of Cain, and abandon themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain, and perish in Korah’s rebellion. These are blemishes on your love-feasts, while they feast with you without fear, feeding themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.
It was also about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “See, the Lord is coming with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These are grumblers and malcontents; they indulge their own lusts; they are bombastic in speech, flattering people to their own advantage.
With this section of the letter of Jude we stumble across two reasons why this little letter may have been neglected by the church for so long. One reason is because we have a hard time believing that the situation in the early church could have been so bad. Is the problem posed by false teachers really as awful as Jude makes out? Why does he have to be so negative?
In answer to this, let’s think for a moment of one of the great examples of real evil in recent world history: the Nazis. Adolf Hitler led the world into a horrible six-year-long war that cost countless lives and he murdered millions of Jews and others in the Holocaust. It is hard for those of us born after World War II to understand how some people in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere could have failed for so long to understand what was going on. Many refused to believe that anyone could be as evil as Hitler turned out to be.
During the war, stories of German atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish people leaked out to the West. But many people thought these stories must be exaggerated. It wasn’t until the end of the war and the liberation of the death camps that the world began to wake up to the great evil that Hitler and the Nazis had carried out.
As much as we do not want to believe it at times, there is great evil and wickedness in the world. You may say, “Well what Hitler did was so much worse than any false teaching in the church.” Maybe. But consider this, it was what Hitler believed in his heart, and taught with his lips, that led to World War II and the Holocaust. And so, I think we need to pay careful attention when someone like Jude warns us of the enormous dangers that faced the church in his time and still face us in our time because of false teaching.
The other reason why the letter of Jude may so often be neglected is because he refers, with breathtaking speed, to a succession of biblical and non-biblical stories with which his first readers would have been familiar but are increasingly unknown to us in our biblically illiterate age.
There is a simple way that we can correct biblical illiteracy, at least as it exists in ourselves. That is to read the whole Bible. As I am sure you are aware, it is relatively easy to read the Bible all the way through in a year. All you have to do is begin now by reading three or four chapters per day. That single practice could change your entire life and it will equip you to recognize false teaching when you encounter it.
Well, Jude’s first readers were not biblically illiterate like we may be. And so, Jude uses many biblical examples to encourage his readers. Jude’s bottom line in the first paragraph we read today is that God’s judgment is real. God is going to judge the false teachers in the church to which Jude is writing just as he has judged his people, his creation, in the past. In defense of his position, Jude cites three examples from Jewish literature. Jude loves conveying his message in sets of three. In fact, in this passage, Jude has four sets of three, which makes 12, an important number in Jewish literature.
Three Examples
We begin with three examples. The first example comes from the story of the Exodus. Jude looks to Numbers 13 and 14 for this first example. God rescued the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, but then when they did not continue to trust God during their wilderness wanderings, many of them died as a result.
The second example of judgment that Jude offers is that of the angels “who did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling.” Jude tells us that God has kept these angels “in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day.” This story comes from the book of 1 Enoch 6-19. 1 Enoch is a work that is part of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha. The Pseudepigrapha is made up of works of literature attributed to famous biblical characters. It is important to note that the fall of the angels is also mentioned in Genesis 6:1-4, Isaiah 14:12-15, Luke 10:18, and Revelation 12:7-10.
The third example of judgment in the past that Jude offers is that of Sodom and Gomorrah. The story is told in Genesis 19.
Unfortunately, the story in Genesis 19 and the verse in Jude 1:7, along with several other brief verses in Scripture, have been used to clobber gay people.
Is Jude making a connection between Sodom and same-sex behavior? The phrase translated here as “indulged in sexual immorality” is one word in Greek: ἐκπορνεύσασαι. It appears only this one time in the New Testament. The Greek root word, πόρνη, means a prostitute, and is used 12 times in the New Testament. From the Greek word πόρνη developed our English word “pornography”, something the Bible does not talk about at all. Jude also talks about the people of Sodom going after σαρκὸς ἑτέρας, literally “different flesh”. The NRSV translates this phrase as “unnatural lust”. This refers to the fact that the two strangers Lot harbored in his home were angels.
So, even though this verse connects Sodom and sexual sin of some sort, it does not explicitly connect Sodom with same-sex behavior. In fact, the story in Genesis 19 has nothing to do with same-sex behavior as most of us are familiar with it today. Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in a number of other places in the Hebrew Bible. But not one of these references connects the Sodom story to same sex behavior. It should be noted that the first person to associate the sin of Sodom with same sex behavior was the Jewish writer, Philo, who lived in the time of Jesus, centuries after this story was first written down.
Three Wrong Acts
In the second paragraph we read today, Jude makes the point that false teachers in the church are simply ignoring these stories from the past. Jude calls these false teachers “dreamers” presumably because they claim to have ecstatic visionary experiences and seek to justify their doctrines and practices on the strength of these. (J.N.D. Kelly)
Jude lists three things that these false teachers are doing wrong. First, they defile the flesh. Like the people of Sodom, they are guilty of sexual immorality of some sort.
Second, these false teachers reject authority. Perhaps what Jude is thinking of is the fact that these false teachers reject the authority of true teachers like Jude himself. Or this phrase may mean that these false teachers reject the authority of the Lord himself.
Third, these false teachers slander the glorious ones. Jude is talking about angels who hold authority from God. This slandering of the angels is similar to something that happened later among the Gnostics. According to Irenaeus, certain second century “Gnostics despised the angels, believing them to have been the agents of the inferior creator-God in bringing the universe into existence.” (Kelly) So, Jude may be trying to combat some sort of early form of Gnosticism. We have talked about the Gnostics before. Gnosticism was a movement that really got going in the second century. The Gnostics claimed to have some sort of secret knowledge from God and they used this as an excuse to teach a number of things that were contrary to the sort of teachings we see in the New Testament.
As Bible commentator, Tom Wright, has said, this third charge seems remote to us. Most people today either ignore angels or treat them as cute, vaguely religious, feel-good symbols. But for Jude the angels were real, and powerful—and not to be taken lightly as these false teachers were doing.
Jude goes on to recall a story from the apocryphal book, The Assumption (or Testament) of Moses. We find something similar to this story in Zechariah 3 in the Old Testament. In the apocryphal story, the archangel Michael and the devil engage in a legal dispute. The devil accuses Moses of murder. Michael knows this charge is slanderous, but he does not presume to condemn the devil for slander on his own authority. Instead, he refers the matter to the authority of the divine judge. The implication of Jude 1:9 is to contrast Michael’s behavior with that of the false teachers who claim to be exempt from all moral authority and on their own authority reject all moral charges against them. (HarperCollins Study Bible)
This story tells us something very important. I believe it tells us that when we are facing false teaching, when we are facing real evil, we cannot conquer evil in our own power. We need God to handle Satan for us.
Jude goes on to compare the false teachers of his time to Satan who slandered the high priest Joshua in Zechariah 3. He says that these false teachers “slander whatever they do not understand, and they are destroyed by those things that, like irrational animals, they know by instinct.” In other words, these false teachers slander the true teaching about God for they do not understand it, and their bad theology leads to bad behavior which in turn leads to their destruction.
When we do not know God, then we do not know ourselves, and this failure in knowledge leads to our trying to cut the wood of life against the grain. We try to live in ways that God did not design us to live, and that evil leads to death. We always need to remember that evil is “live” spelled backwards. Evil is the opposite of life in all its fullness, and so it always leads to death.
Three Biblical Characters
Jude goes on to compare the false teachers of his day to three other biblical characters. First, Jude says that these false teachers go the way of Cain. As you may recall, Cain was one of the children of Adam and Eve. Cain killed his brother Abel because God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and not his own. The way of Cain was the way of selfishness, greed, hatred, and murder.
J.N.D. Kelly tells us, “There was a second century Gnostic sect … who called themselves Cainites because they regarded the God of the Old Testament as responsible for the evil of the world and therefore exalted those who are recorded as having resisted Him”. In particular, this Gnostic sect exalted Cain, Esau, and Korah. So, in likening the false teachers to Cain, Jude is painting a picture of their godlessness, moral irresponsibility, and ultimate damnation in the most lurid colors he can.
The second biblical character to whom Jude compares the false teachers of his time is Balaam. Balaam’s story is told in Numbers 22-24. The foreign prophet Balaam was bent on cursing the Israelites, even though God told him not to do it. He wanted the money that King Balak offered him for cursing God’s people. Jude seems to be suggesting that the false teachers of his time are falling into Balaam’s error which is a love of money. Perhaps these false teachers were guilty of trying to extract money from naïve listeners.
The other thing Balaam did is told in Numbers 25. Israel was seduced into the worship of the false God Baal. We read in Numbers 31:8,16 that it was Balaam who was responsible for that seduction, and he died miserably because he taught others to sin.
Thirdly, Jude compares the false teachers to Korah. Korah rose up against God’s appointed leadership in Numbers 16. He rebelled against the guidance of Moses when the sons of Aaron and the tribe of Levi were made the priests of the nation. Korah was not willing to accept that decision. He wanted to exercise a ministry that he had no right to exercise. And when he did so, he ended up paying with his life for his sin. Thus, Jude may be suggesting that the false teachers of his day were rebelling against church leadership.
The one thing Cain, Balaam, and Korah have in common is that they all taught others to sin. Jude condemns such behavior without qualification, just as his brother Jesus did. Jesus said in Luke 17:2, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
If we fail, for some reason, to understand some of Jude’s biblical illusions, we can’t help but understand the metaphors Jude uses in verses 12 and 13; they are evocative in a chillingly beautiful manner.
First, Jude says that the false teachers of his time “are blemishes on your love-feasts…” The love feast may have been an extended feast surrounding the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion. It may also have been something akin to our modern church potluck. Jude calls the false teachers, “blemishes”, or more literally “reefs”. The false teachers are like hidden rocks in the ocean that threaten destruction to sailing ships.
Jude goes on to say that while these false teachers feast with you without fear, they are actually “feeding themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.”
The phrase, “wandering stars”, is an interesting one. Jude uses the Greek word πλανῆται from which we get our English word “planet”. The ancients thought of the planets as “wandering” in contrast to the stars which are fixed. Jude uses another form of the same word πλάνῃ back in verse 11 when he talks about the “error” of Balaam. It is the theological and moral error of the false teachers that leads to their behavioral wandering.
All of these metaphors Jude uses have one thing in common: they speak of the false teachers as people who promise something but don’t deliver. The false teachers promise spiritual food, but they only feed themselves. There is “no rain from the clouds, no fruit from the trees, no safe passage on the stormy sea, no regular movement of stars across the sky. The teachers appear to offer a way of life which is exciting, different and liberating; but the only thing they achieve is shame, darkness and chaos.” (Tom Wright)
What is true of these false teachers is always true of Satan, he never delivers on what he promises to us. As Jesus said in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” If you want abundant life, don’t listen to Satan or to any false teachers, turn to Jesus and he will give life in all of its fullness.
The third and final paragraph we are looking at today quotes a text well known in Jude’s time from the book of 1 Enoch 1:9. The text puts into the mouth of the ancient biblical character Enoch, from Genesis 5, many different prophecies, including this one. The prophesy echoes Zechariah 14:5. The Lord is coming with his holy ones. Judgment is on the way. Jude uses the word “ungodly” three times in this paragraph. That gets to the heart of the problem in these false teachers. The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. These false teachers lack God in their hearts.
Thankfully, the New Testament tells us the solution to that problem. In Luke 11:13 Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” And in John 1:12 we read, “But to all who received him (that is Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”
All we have to do is ask God to fill us with his Holy Spirit and he will. All we have to do is receive Jesus and he will live inside of us, making us children of God.
Three Characteristics of the False Teachers
The final verse we are looking at today, verse 16, contains another of Jude’s threesomes. He tells us three characteristics of the false teachers. First, they are grumblers. The words Jude uses to describe these false teachers are reminiscent of the murmuring of the Israelites against Moses in their wilderness wanderings.
C. S. Lewis has a line in his book, The Great Divorce, where one of the characters says, “The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble.”[1]
That’s the potential tragedy any of us could face at any moment, the tragedy of becoming no more than a grumble, or no more than any other sin that overtakes us.
Second, Jude says these false teachers go through life guided almost completely by their lusts, their overweening desires. The word for “lust” in this passage can be translated as “extreme desire”. The problem is not with desire per se, but with the object of our desire, and the extent to which we let our desires control us rather than us controlling them. It is possible to have extreme desires, desires that go too far, for a lot of things. Sex, money and power are just a few of the things we lust after. Think what the world would be like if everyone was guided all the time by lust and never controlled their desires in any way.
The third characteristic of these false teachers is that they speak with arrogance. They pander to the great and powerful if they think they can get anything out of it.
In summary, Tom Wright says of this passage in Jude’s letter that it is…
A horrible catalogue. We would much rather not have to notice such things at all, just as ordinary peace-loving people would much rather not notice that another nation is preparing not only for war but for genocide. But the reality of false teaching, especially the rejection of authority, the denial of the uniqueness of Jesus, and the encouragement of sexual immorality, is with us today every bit as much as it was in the first century. We take a deep sigh for sorrow and pray that Jesus the Messiah will indeed keep us safe. Part of the answer to that prayer will be that we have been alerted to the problem (of false teaching), so when it appears again, as it surely will, we will be able to recognize it for what it is.
What is the best way to deal with false teaching? How do experts identify counterfeit money? They familiarize themselves with true money.
The best way to be able to identify false spiritual teaching is to continue to be in touch with the truth found in Jesus. And the best way to do that is to continue to steep ourselves in the Scriptures, just as Jude, the brother of Jesus, was steeped in them, the Scriptures that point us to Jesus as our only hope.
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