Throughout Church history, there have been people who professed faith in Jesus, who believe in Jesus, and yet suggest that God's laws are somehow ancient or outdated, and that Christians now have freedom to live however they choose.
Is that the case? How should we respond when we hear things like this? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg takes us to the book of Jude for answers. The Gentiles, 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 position 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. Father, we come to you, as it were, on bended knee, asking that you will help us to say what the Bible says, to say nothing more than it says, and say nothing less, and help us to pay attention to its warnings and to trust its promises. For we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen. Last month, our friends at All Souls Church in London—that's All Souls Langham Place, where John Stott was for many years the minister, and where Rico Tice, who has been with us here on a couple of occasions, serves, at least for another few months, on the pastoral team—that congregation challenged the decision that had been made by the House of Bishops in the Anglican Communion, a decision that they took to bless couples in same-sex unions. The church said, We do not feel that we can go along with this, because such blessings, and I quote, are a departure from biblical Christianity, and make clear that in doing these things we are abandoning confidence in the goodness and authority of God's Word.
Well, what were they actually doing? Well, in terms of Jude, they were contending for the faith—for the faith which Jude says has once and for all been committed to those who belong to Christ. And they had every legitimate reason for doing so, because as part of that assembly of congregations within the framework of Anglicanism, they understood exactly what it was for people to be ordained as ministers or as presbyters or, in their structure, as bishops. And when the bishop is set to his responsibility, it is the archbishop who stands there or sits there initially in the consecration, and certain questions are put to the person who's going to exercise a leadership role in the church. For example, they begin by asking them, Do you believe that the holy Scriptures point the way of salvation?
I do. Are you ready with all faithful diligence to teach the holy Scriptures, to banish and drive away from the church all erroneous and strange doctrine, contrary to God's Word, and both privately and biblically to call—privately and publicly, I should say—to call upon others and encourage them to do the same? Now, let's just read that again. Are you ready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away from the church all erroneous and strange doctrine, contrary to God's Word, and both privately and publicly to call upon others and encourage them to do the same? And the answer that is to be given by the newly appointed bishop, I am ready, the Lord being my helper. So we might ask, Well, then, what has happened?
What has happened? And it would appear, to quote from Jude, that certain people have crept in unnoticed. These certain people that we've already been introduced to by Jude, who are troubling the congregations or the congregation to which he writes, he identifies them not by their names but by their characteristics.
And they are there in verse 4, ungodly people who abuse the grace of God and use it as an opportunity for immorality—the kind of immorality that is represented, for example, in same-sex unions. And in doing so, they deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Jude, you see, is not concerned the way many contemporary pastors in our day are concerned—to find out, What are we going to do? What am I going to tell people that is new, that is novel?
What strategy can we come up with in order to try and force back the tides of secularism in our world? It's interesting that none of the apostles, none of the gospel writers have anything to say along those lines. Is that because we shouldn't be thinking imaginatively and creatively?
No, not at all. But Jude, in keeping with the rest, is not writing to introduce his readers to something that they have never known but is writing to remind them of something that they must never forget. And in short order, he's saying to them, You will never escape the judgment of God.
God will always have the last word. And he says, And I'm going to show you that as we go through the letter. When the Bible calls us to remember, incidentally, it's not suggesting that we should try our best not to forget certain things—which, of course, we should—but it is a call to our wills. It is a call to duty. It is a call to do something, to remember. In the same way, if we think about it in terms of marriage vows—remember your vows—doesn't mean go in the bathroom and see if you can remember all the things you said.
It means live in the light of those vows. Every so often, probably like me, you come across an Orthodox Jewish man, either in the airport or perhaps in a cafeteria or whatever it might be. And I have a very vivid picture of one in one of those little booths in the—what was the Continental Club in Hopkins. And I remember, I heard the noise, first of all, and then I saw the person, and I saw that he had a Torah, and he was going through his prayers. And then I noticed that he had on not only his suit clothes for his business responsibilities, but his suit clothes were actually accompanied by his robe. And on his robe there were those blue lines which attached to the tassels at the corners of his robe.
And you stand there, and you say to yourself, My, my, what is that all about? And then you go to Numbers chapter 15, and the instruction is given to his people, and it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember the commandments of the Lord, to do them, and not to follow after your own heart or follow after your own eyes, which you are inclined to do. Now, you have the same thing, don't you, when we talk about it in Deuteronomy chapter 6? These things are to be upon your heart. You shall teach them to your children when you walk along the road, when you rise, when you get up, when you're going about your business. You shall… But we didn't read the part that goes on and say, You shall bind them around your wrists, you shall fit them on your forehead. It's a reference to these very expressions.
They were given to the people in order that they would not go astray, in order that they might remember. And Jude here is reminding them that what is currently happening— what he's referred to in verses 1–4—has always led to God's judgment. What is going on here, he says, and the reason that I'm writing to you, appealing to you to contend for the faith, you need to understand that this is not new. This has been written about long before. The condemnation that attaches to this in the judgment of God is written about through the entire Bible.
And then he says, I'm going to give you a number of illustrations or recollections, if you like. And here in verses 5, 6, and 7, he provides three Old Testament warnings showing that rebellion against God is always met by judgment—a judgment that is entirely righteous and is entirely necessary. Now, if you've been reading ahead this week, you've said, Oh, dear, this looks to get a little difficult here. Yes, I think I said to my friends, you know, verses 1–4 were okay, but now it falls off a cliff here at verse 5.
What are we going to do? Well, here we are. First of all, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, you see, you know this, that Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe. So in other words, he brings to them the reminder of the people who came out but who didn't go in.
The people who came out but didn't go in. The going out, of course, is recorded for us in Exodus. Remember this day? Moses says to the people this day when the Lord by a strong hand brought you out. Remember this.
This is a day that you must never forget. And you will notice that Jesus here is the one who brought them out. You say, But Jesus, we don't have Jesus. Jesus, we have to wait for Christmas for Jesus.
Well, I'll leave you to work through all these things on your own. But the second person of the Trinity is all through the Old Testament, from the very beginning, in preincarnate form—sometimes mysteriously, sometimes referred to as the angel, whatever it might be. But you can see this, that who could bring them out? Only the Savior. Who is the only Savior? Jesus. Who can execute the judgment?
Only one person. Jesus. So he says, Out they came, and out they all arrived, and they were all excited about it for so long. And then when time came for them to go into Canaan, they started to grumble and complain, Now you're in Numbers chapter 13 and 14.
Make a note of it so you can read it on your own and see if that is there. And what we discover is, in the story that we all knew from Sunday school, if we had the benefit of a good Sunday school, here we are at, "'Twelve men went to spy in Canaan. Ten were bad, two were good.'" Right? The ten said, No, you can't possibly go in there.
It's full of giants. It's a bad spot. It's not the kind of thing that we would like. And they began to spill the beans amongst the congregation, beginning to create the murmuring to one another, Oh, we should never have come out. What a bad idea this was! You said you would do this, but it doesn't look like you're doing this.
And so it goes on and runs all the way through. And so the word is as follows, None of those who have seen my glory and yet have put me to the test shall enter the land. You must read it on your own at home and be clear about this. They did not believe that God would do what he promised he would do. They were unbelievers.
Now, this is so significant that not only does Jude make reference to it, but for example, we read 2 Corinthians 11, but if we had gone, as I'm about to do now, to 1 Corinthians 10, you discover that this is the great warning that Paul issues. I don't want you to be unaware, brothers or sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. He's talking about the exodus. They all drank of the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ's.
That's for your homework as well. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now, just one other reference, just so we've got this very clear, that the writers of the New Testament make reference to this because it is so significant. Hebrews 3.12. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Oh, I can't fall away from the living God. Who told you that? You got an evil, unbelieving heart? I got an evil, unbelieving heart? There's no same where you'll be by Tuesday.
By six o'clock this evening. Exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence to the end, as it is said. For those who heard and yet rebelled was it not all of those who left Egypt led by Moses, and with whom God was provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned and whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Unbelief will keep you from Christ. Unbelief will keep you from heaven.
That's the point that he's making. Being part of the visible people of God is no guarantee of eternal security unless it is combined with a living, personal faith in the Lord Jesus. The way in which we continue and keep ourselves in the love of God in short order is that we heed the warnings and we trust the promises. And you must allow the warnings to be warnings. Every time you come across a warning, you say, Well, that couldn't possibly be me.
Of course it could. The warnings are there, and the promises are there. And when we neglect them, then we neglect the means that God has appointed in order to keep us all the way to the end of the journey. So we are not like those who perished in the wilderness. People want to comment on whether they were lost eternally or whether they only died physically.
Whichever way, it doesn't really matter in one sense, because Jude is applying it to the reality that is confronting them in the present time—namely, not all those who say to me, Lord, Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do this? Did I not preach all those sermons? Did I do all this? I would say to them, Depart from me.
I never even knew you. Sober, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Well, that's the first one.
It gets worse from there. Now we go to the angels who didn't stay in their place, the angels who jumped out of their angelic box, as it were. Verse 5, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling—the proper dwelling, the place of God's appointing—came out of their place, came out of the plan of God for them.
He's kept them now in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. You see what he's saying here? He's saying, Listen, all of this is in light of that.
I appeal to you, he says, that you will not allow this kind of thing to take a hold within your congregation. Certain people have crept in unnoticed—flattering people, attractive people, undermining people, surreptitious people. And if the angels ended in this way, don't you think you ought to pay attention? That's what he's saying. Now, Jude's initial readers would be immediately okay with this.
We find this particularly difficult—at least, I found it difficult. But his initial readers would get the point immediately, because they were aware not only of the material that is represented in the Holy Scriptures, but they were also aware of Jewish tradition. And, for example, come on later to talk about Enoch. And the book of Enoch, which is a noncanonical book, references many of these things. And it seems absolutely clear, then, that what he's referring to here is what took place in Genesis and chapter 6.
And you may want just to turn there, in case you're unfamiliar with it. When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God—and I'm not going to delay on this, you can use a commentary, and you can follow this up on your own—but the sons of God, you find, for example, in Job, at the beginning of Job, chapter 1 and chapter 2, it's a reference to the angelic throng. You find the same thing, for example, in Psalm 29. So trust me, and then do your homework.
What happened? And the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for his flesh, his days, shall be a hundred and twenty years. And the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. So you have this cross breeding, and you have these giants that are created, and these giants begin to exercise their influence, leading to what God does in the flood.
So they left their proper place, their assigned spot. They crossed the divinely appointed boundaries to engage in sexual immorality. Remember, he says, the people that are in your thing now, they will take the grace of God, and they will corrupt it and make it a mechanism for all kinds of sexual deviance. He says, remember what happened to the people who were left in the wilderness, and remember what happened to the sons of God, to the angels, who used their privileged position as a springboard for perverse activity.
Surely that was what was happening. Think about this. Think about the dreadful stuff that happens in local churches where men—usually men—in God-given positions of authority use their position of authority by a means of manipulation to engage in that which runs entirely contrary to everything God has ordained. We don't have to look far for these illustrations. And what you're dealing with here is something that really stretches our minds— preternatural, angelic beings, those who exist beyond the ordinary course of nature. Think, for example, later on in Genesis, when Abraham entertains the three angels.
They're not all flapping around like this. He gives them the meal, they have the meal, they're eating their thing. You say, well, I don't know how that works. Welcome to the club.
I don't know how it works either. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. We'll hear more tomorrow. Well, if you have ever thought to yourself, I wish Alistair Begg would write a children's book, something I could read to my kids.
Well, we have good news for you. Alistair has just released his first book that takes children ages five and up through the wonderful benefits and joys of being a Christian. The book is titled C is for Christian. Alistair teaches about different aspects of our identity in Jesus using words that begin with each letter of the alphabet. So here's an example of what your children will learn as you read this book to them.
Alistair recorded an excerpt he's reading here from the beginning of the book. A is for adopted. You might know some children who've been adopted. You might have been adopted yourself. Your parents chose to make you part of their family. One of the ways the Bible describes people who trust in Jesus as their king and savior is adopted. God is kind and generous and he chooses to love us and make us a member of his family.
If you trust in Jesus, God has adopted you into his family and you can feel joyful and loved. Your children will love this book just as much when they hear you reading it to them. Ask for your copy of the book C is for Christian when you donate to Truth for Life today through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate or if you'd prefer you can call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd like extra copies of the book C is for Christian for your church or to share with young families in your neighborhood, the books are available for purchase at our cost of only six dollars.
That is significantly below the retail cost. You'll find them in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we'll hear how no one escapes God's judgment, not even angels. I hope you'll join us for an important warning and a word of encouragement. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
