Welcome to Truth for Life where today we begin a brand new study in the book of Jude.
Alistair Begg will be taking us through this brief letter that warns about the chaos that false teachers cause. But before that, we are reminded why genuine believers can be encouraged and remain confident in their faith, even in the midst of confusing times. I invite you to turn with me to the letter of Jude, which is the second-last book of our New Testament, and to follow along as I read from here. The letter of Jude—there is only one chapter.
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own positions of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner are these people also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment but said, The LORD rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion.
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved for ever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the LORD comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their 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, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.
They are loudmouth boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, In the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.
It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt.
Save others by snatching them out of the fire, to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. We humbly pray, take your Word, take the food of your Word, plant it deep in us, shape and fashion us in your likeness, Lord Jesus Christ, we pray.
Amen. When I was last in the United Kingdom, I noticed, while I was riding on the tube on the underground, a whole series of announcements or guides or warnings, whatever you might call it, that ran all the way along the place where you could see where the various stops were and so on amongst various advertisements. And it simply says on the notice, see it, say it, sort it. See it, say it, sort it.
And I just thought to myself, now, what is this that we've started here? And I realized that it was there, because I saw the insignia, it was put up there by the British transport police. And what they were saying was, in order to safeguard ourselves, in order to keep ourselves secure as we travel around the city, that if we see things that are unusual, if we, for example, see somebody sitting with a bomb on their lap, it might be a good idea to say something about it. And then the encouragement is that if you see it and you say it, it will be sorted.
In Britain, they use that verb frequently—did you sort it, have you fixed it, and so on. And actually, as I researched it a little more, the advice that was given was as follows. Please remain vigilant for anything that seems out of place or unusual. Now, of course, security at every level in our world is a matter of great significance. It is important to us all at just about every level, and not least of all here at Parkside. Because at Parkside, I think unobtrusively and yet very directly, we are seeking to ensure that no one who might cause harm will be able to creep in unnoticed. And if your Bible is open, you will see that that is the very terminology that is used here in verse 4.
For certain people have crept in unnoticed. Jude, he tells us, had been planning to write to them expressly about the wonder of salvation. You will see that in verse 3. I was keen to write to you about our common salvation. But he says, I have found myself compelled to change track.
I am going on, now, he says, to another course. It is, he says, a matter of some urgency, and I'm going to address it very clearly with you. Now, you may well be asking this morning, how did we get to Jude? And now, by means of this introduction, some of you who are not very alert to what's going on here are immediately saying to yourself, well, there must be somebody creeping around Parkside or whatever it is, and he's found it out, and so he wants to… Instead of going to the person directly, he thought he would tell everybody, that there's nothing… They may well be, but I know nothing of it.
That's what I want you to know. In actual fact, we came very, very close to beginning a series on Revelation. And if I had paid attention to some of my colleagues, that's where we would be this morning.
For those of you who are disappointed, there's another crowd that are breathing a sigh of relief and saying, Oh, good, I'm glad he didn't start that. I guess it's somewhere still out there in the future. But no, we have arrived at this this morning by default rather than by design. I didn't want to go into a long study, but I wanted to study, I wanted to be expositional, and here we have these twenty-five verses. It was a matter of urgency for Jude, and it really is a matter of urgency in every generation. Because we become aware of those who, by their conflicting voices, plunge God's people into confusion and into chaos. The issue that he's addressing here is not the issue of secularism. He's not talking about all that is coming from outside of the church, buffeting it, and so on.
No, it is something far more sinister than that. And that is the confusion and the chaos that emerges from the collapse of conviction in the hearts and minds of those who once believed these things but have lost their confidence in them. It's not uncommon for me to receive letters from folks via Truth for Life, people who sometimes have actually been in our church fellowship and have moved to another part of the nation and have gone with our blessing and gone with our encouragement, that they will find a place where the Bible is clearly taught, where the authority of Scripture is clearly unfolded, and where convictions concerning all that God has revealed of himself are made plain. Actually, this is from one such couple.
You would know them, but I won't embarrass them by using their names. But they wrote, and in the midst of the letter—and I made a note of this, because I said, we must pray for this—quotes, The struggle to find solid teaching and a high view of God and his Word is very real. We visited over ten churches, and rarely did one begin with the opening of the Word of God. That is not an unusual letter. That comes on a weekly basis, and it folds one upon another upon another. It is true throughout our Western world particularly. And for those of you who have been following the events in the United Kingdom vis-à-vis the Anglican churches voting on various things, you will know too that the African bishops particularly have turned their backs on the Archbishop of Canterbury Welby because of his willingness to allow the blessing of same-sex unions.
The African bishops speak for about seventy-five percent of the Anglican Communion—the largest part of those who are under the jurisdiction of Anglican thought and under the rubric of the Thirty-Nine Articles. They were unhappy to continue on that basis. And what has happened is that the people who have decided that they are not going to go with the Scriptures are now accusing the people who have decided that we will go with the Scriptures—they are accusing them of being schismatic and of being disruptive and of destroying the unity. These people are saying, I think you've got this upside down. I think we are the ones who are saying, the Bible is the Bible, the truth is the truth, and we continue under that, and you are turning from it.
Well, whatever way you want to look at it. In every generation, it's vital, along with Jude, to recognize the threat, to heed the warning, and to keep the faith. And so that's really what we're going to be doing as we consider this letter. We'll only deal with verses 1 and 2 this morning, noting, first of all, the greeting, this initial greeting, as with normal letter writing of the time. We're familiar with it as we read the letters of the New Testament, and we're introduced, first of all, to the writer, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Now, there is only one Jude in the New Testament who has a brother called James. And you will find him when you read in the Gospels.
And particularly, I can quote to you from chapter 13 of Matthew's Gospel—you will find it there—verse 53, and when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there. Coming into his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue so that they were astonished and said, Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Note, Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James, Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And here in Jude, the name is shortened, I think, so as to make sure that nobody is going to assume that the Judas that we are receiving this letter from could be the very one who denied the Lord Jesus Christ? Are not all his sisters with us?
Where then did this man get these things? It is this Jude who identifies himself, notably, by his family relationship with James. All right? If you want to know who I am, I am the brother of James, he says. Because James was famous. James is the one who, in Acts 15, is giving leadership to the Jerusalem church. James is the one who has given us his letter, the five chapters that some of us have studied, in the course of things.
But wait a minute, you must say to yourself. If he was the brother of James, that means that he was the half-brother of Jesus. Because James was the half-brother of Jesus. So if Jude was the brother of James, then surely the key relationship that he had was with Jesus. Now, just think for a minute.
If it had been you or me, don't you think we would have played that card? I'm Jude. You've heard of Jesus. Well, actually, I am his half-brother. But not Jude.
That isn't what he does. I am a brother of James, he says, and I am a servant of Jesus Christ. A brother of James and a servant of Jesus Christ. We read again in the Gospels that the brothers of Jesus did not actually believe in Jesus during his earthly ministry. On one occasion in the Gospels, when the family of Jesus hear the things that Jesus is saying, they go to get him believing that he's out of his mind, that he's saying all these things. So it was the resurrection that brought about this great transformation. And as a result of that, he introduces himself, as you will note, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ.
Look down at verse 4. And our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Dick Lucas says it very well when in just a sentence he says, this is pointing out that no one is too privileged to be exempt from the need to be converted.
No one is too privileged. The fact that he grew up in the same house as Jesus doesn't mean that he gets a pass. The same is true of Mary, the mother of Jesus—although I know that's very offensive to our Catholic friends. She needed to be converted.
We all need to be converted. And Jude is pointing this out as he introduces himself. I am the brother of James, but I am a servant—or a slave, actually, the word doulos—of Jesus Christ. So from the writer to the readers, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. Unlike some letters, there is no indication of who these people are. No names are mentioned concerning the readers.
There's no indication, actually, of where they are—no geographical pointers to help us with that. But they are all described in terms of what they are. And Jude is actually one of, really, seven letters which are regarded as general epistles—or, depending on where you come from, Catholic epistles, in the sense of Catholic universal being general. In other words, not actually addressed to a specific geographical locale and to a specific group of people—at least not in the greeting. These designations that we're about to consider are true of people who are the followers of the Lord Jesus. But of course, with that said, we recognize that the specifics of the letter and their very specific aspects, they point to the fact that Jude is actually addressing, without identifying it, a particular church or a particular group of churches or of congregations. And he addresses them in these three words—called, beloved, and kept. In order to remind myself of this this week, I wrote down in my notes, Central Bank of Kenya. And then I couldn't remember why I wrote that down. But it was in order that I would remember these three words—called, beloved, and kept.
Let's just look at them. The Bible refers frequently to Christians in all kinds of ways. But one of the ways in which it addresses the believer is someone whom God has called.
And the word that is used here means something more than simply invited. Because when a person actually comes to faith in Jesus, when somebody comes out of whatever religious or irreligious background to an understanding of who God is and what he has done in the Lord Jesus Christ, then that individual immediately finds themselves standing in a long succession of individuals stretching way out behind me and stretching out beyond me of those whom God has called—the call that goes all the way back to Abraham himself. If you've been reading through Exodus, as in McShane's readings, you know that again we're seeing this call of God upon his people, so that in many ways the story of the Bible is the story of God's free decision to call out for himself a people that are his very own. And those he predestined he also called.
Now here's the question. When the call of God goes out—when, for example, we study the Bible together, and perhaps we end by singing the hymn, Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest, or, Come unto me, you wanderers, come unto me, you fainting. And we have the great affirmation that comes in the chorus, And whosoever cometh, I will not cast him out. O welcome voice of Jesus, which drives away our doubt, which calls us very sinners, unworthy though we be of love, so free and boundless to come, O LORD, to thee.
All right. So that is a general call that goes out. It goes out in the preaching of the gospel. It goes out in the singing of a hymn like that.
But that doesn't mean that everybody who heard that call came. And there may well be people here this morning for whom this designation does not immediately fit, because you have never actually come to Christ in that way. You're listening to Truth for Life, and that is Alistair Begg beginning a study in Jude.
We'll hear more tomorrow. As Alistair reminded us today, each one of us as believers is called. We are set apart from the world by God and for God. He is putting together a people who are his very own possession. And if you'd like to know more about what that means for you and for me, let me recommend to you a book called Remade, Embracing Your Complete Identity in Christ. In this book, you will take a close up look at yourself as a believer being remade in the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus. You'll learn to see yourself in three ways, first as a sinner resting in Jesus' provision, then as a sufferer united with Christ, and finally as a saint redeemed and born again to a living hope. The author of this book, Paul Touches, assures us that we're not left to our own efforts to become like Christ. He says we need to take every stray thought captive and remember that the God who began a good work in us is the same God who will continue that work. You have been set apart by God, for God, and to God. Your new standing before God is all by God's doing. It's all of grace. God sees you as a saint now. We're offering the book Remade for just a few more days, so ask for your copy when you donate to support the Bible Teaching Ministry of Truth for Life. You can give a gift through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Thanks for listening today. Tomorrow we'll hear the conclusion of today's message and we'll learn why our disappointments and regrets are safe with God. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
