In the book of Jude, false teachers are described as masters of disguise.
They might seem fine at first, but they are ultimately dangerous and destructive to the church. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg helps us recognize some of their disguises. We begin today in the book of Revelation to get some background on Balaam, a character mentioned in today's study.
Here's Alistair. In the book of Revelation, he shows up. Revelation chapter 2, to the church at Pergamon, Jesus writes, I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food, sacrifice to idols, and practice sexual immorality. So when Jude says, the problem that you have in these characters is a really significant problem, Balaam was prevented from cursing the people which he wanted to do, but he managed somehow or another to make it work so that he could get Moab's king to seduce them into both sexual and spiritual adultery. And don't for a moment imagine that the word error there might be regarded as a little slip—you know, Balaam just made a little bit of a mistake.
No, it's not a casual mistake he made. It was deliberate, it was deceitful, and its objective was to bring about the downfall of the people of God. That's what he wanted to do. And Jude is saying, when these characters emerge, you should know that that's their objective. Ungodly individuals, causing havoc among God's people, they walk, they rush, and they finally perish. No wonder he began, Whoa! Whoa! It's a mixture of condemnation, consternation, regret, sadness.
Now, taken together, these three examples highlight greed, rebellion, immorality, jealousy, selfish ambition. Do you know how many times people say, Oh, but he's a very nice person? I mean, do you ever see the pilot when you get on? I always look to see who she is or who he is. I'm not really concerned how nice they are.
I'm really concerned about getting there safely. Oh, he's such a nice man. He's a dangerous man. These people are. These people are. Verse 12. These people are what? Now he provides six pictures to leave us in no doubt as to recognize those who pervert God's grace. They use the wonderful gospel of the grace of God as an excuse for ungodly living. By their fruits you shall know them.
That's what Jesus said. You'll know them by their fruits. You won't necessarily know them by the things they say. They may be able to spin a good story.
They may be able to intrigue you and excite you and do all kinds of things for you. But it's their fruits. These are, number one, hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear. In other words, they're masters of disguise. They're masters of hypocrisy. Superficially, it would appear that they are entirely engaged. After all, they're coming to the family meals.
They're enjoying the opportunity to drink the wine and to eat the food in the recollection of who Jesus is and what he has done. And yet underneath the surface of it all, they are deadly reefs. They're deadly reefs. You see, there's signs every so often when you perhaps are sailing somewhere, and it says, Stay away from the rocks. Stay away from this area.
Contemporary vessels, of course, have all kinds of radar and sonic capacity to identify where you don't want to go. And he says, These people are there. They cause division and disruption. Now, the word is an interesting word, which may be translated in your version, these are blemishes. Blemishes.
Because that is exactly the terminology that Peter uses to describe the same situation. Again, back in Peter 2 and in 13, they count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions. While they feast with you, they have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin, they entice unsteady souls, they have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. Wow.
I think we got it. Choose the word you wish. Reefs under the surface, creating danger, blemishes on the surface, making a mockery of what they profess. They are at the same time, you will notice, greedy shepherds. Greedy shepherds. And the wonderful thing about the Bible, of course, is that it is such a cohesive book, written—sixty-six books written over a period of a very long time by different authors from different backgrounds under the superintendency of the Holy Spirit—and yet when we come on things like this, in our minds we're saying to ourselves, Oh, but I've read about this before, this idea of greedy shepherds. The word of the LORD came to me, writes Ezekiel 34, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the LORD God, Ah, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep. And we need say no more than that.
What they were doing was seeing it as an opportunity, driven by a greedy heart and insatiable lust for things, to make it an occasion of their own benefit, instead of providing for those under their care. Thirdly, they are waterless clouds. Waterless clouds. The arrival of clouds with which we are relatively familiar here may cause us to anticipate the prospect of rain. We may look up, and usually, depending on where we're coming from, we find ourselves saying, Oh, I hope that it doesn't rain. But if you're a farmer, in many occasions I'm sure you're saying, Oh, I look forward to it raining. And then, as the morning unfolds and the winds move the clouds, it suddenly becomes apparent that there isn't going to be a drop of rain come out of these clouds at all. They are waterless clouds.
You get the picture? These individuals promise what they don't deliver. They promise refreshment. They promise enlightenment. In many cases, they promise that their view of things is the real view of things. If you would only listen to us and not listen to some of those strident tones that call for obedience and so on, come with us.
Enjoy with us the freedom. And the unsteady souls, the susceptible people, are prepared to say, Well, that seems like a far more attractive place. I mean, you might actually say, if someone says, Well, you don't want to go to Parkside. They're studying the book of Jude there, for goodness' sake.
You should come somewhere else. It's much easier. It's much nicer.
People are far more pleasant. They don't believe that stuff. Solomon says, Like clouds and wind without rain is one who boasts of gifts never given. They are fruitless trees. Fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted.
I've been watching what would happen to this huge big pine tree along here on Pettibone Road each day as I've been driving back and forth. And it was lying there, such a sad picture, off on its side, all of its roots uprooted. And I wondered how long it would be before somebody did something with it. Well, they did something with it. They took the large majority of it down, and it's just a stump. It's just sitting there. We shouldn't expect anything from it at all.
You could put a plant pot on it, I suppose, but in terms of producing leaves or fruit or anything at all, there's no chance. That's the picture. These individuals produce no harvest. They're useless individuals. They are uprooted, like trees that have been uprooted, providing no fruit so that they will not be tolerated for another generation by the farmer. He says, Take them up and take them out, and let's put trees in place that will give to us fruit.
The picture is clear. These ungodly people bear no spiritual fruit in their lives. And the picture of being twice dead is a graphic picture. It's what the Bible talks about in Revelation, that on Judgment Day, those who have been fruitless, those who have been deceptive, those who have undermined all that God desired, who have died physically, will experience the second death in a final irrevocable separation from the God who made us to know him, to love him, and to follow him.
There is no possibility of heaven without the reality of hell. It is to this that he directs his reader's attention. Wild waves. Wild waves. Again, the prophet spoke of this, didn't he? Isaiah 57, The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and muck. It's a very interesting use of terminology, isn't it? Wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame.
So he's combining in the metaphor both the physical and the moral. So the picture is understandable, for we've ever stood on the shore or we've seen the waves come crashing in, perhaps up there on the East Coast. You've maybe stood there at Cape Cod or wherever it might be, somewhere in Massachusetts, and someone had said to you, Don't get too close, because that stuff could spray all over you, and there's no saying what it might bring. A lot of crashing.
Entirely unpredictable and leaving behind a dreadful mess. That's the picture. Go back into Spurgeon's day and see what it was that he was concerned about.
And fast-forward a hundred-plus years later and stand and beat your breast and say, Look at what the tide brought in. You see, that is what Jude is doing. He's saying, Peter said it was going to happen.
I'm telling you it's happened, and I want you to be alert. And finally, they are—these are—go back to verse 12 so we don't lose our place—these people are, certain people are, here they are—they are wandering stars. Once again, now notice this, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. For those of you who are interested, error in verse 11—that word—derives from the verb to wander here in verse 13. So they are wanderers.
Each of us has turned to his own way, if you like. Clearly, in Jude's day, there was no radar. There wasn't a sextant until a bright soul developed it in the tenth century. So in Jude's day, navigation depended entirely on setting a course against the pole star.
From that fixed point, people would then make deductions. However, when they looked up into the night sky, they realized that there were things—actually planets—that apparently were simply wandering through the Milky Way. They just appeared to be wandering. And so, if they were determined to try and navigate their future on the strength of these wandering stars, there was no guarantee that they could get anywhere that they hoped to arrive. These false teachers can only ultimately lead you astray.
That's what he's saying. They will lead you astray. The longer a traveler through life seeks to chart their course by the deviations from the faith once delivered to the saints that is prepared to wander along that pathway, the further and further away men and women will become from the truth. And the closer they do, the greater the danger that they will share the destiny of these individuals.
Okay. We've got a moment or two to transition to a more positive response, moving, if you like, from the negative to the positive. There is no question here, loved ones, that this woe and this warning is tough. And it's important—I keep reminding myself—that Jude, the servant of the Lord Jesus, is addressing the matter in the awareness that God wants his people… God wants his people to be the reverse of these things. He wants the shepherds of the church to be totally unlike these six pictures. In other words, it is the negative that provides us with the positive. God's plan for his people is that we might be healthy, joyful, fruitful, and enduring. God will not allow—writes Thomas Manton a long time ago—God will not allow his people to be snatched from him by a rival claimant. For souls are a precious commodity. Christ thought them worthy of his own blood. But seducers count them cheap ware.
For their own gain and worldly interests, they care not how they betray souls. One of the things that I dabbled with at about the age of twelve was photography. I'm not sure I had much of an idea of what was really going on, especially when it came to the technical parts of it. I remember the dark room, and I remember all that fluid, and dipping it in and being amazed at what came out.
And I remember those who were teaching me, trying to explain that inverting a traditional black-and-white film negative turns the dark areas light, transforms the negative into a positive, and creates a recognizable image. Now, as I've studied it this week, I said there's got to be something in that idea in helping me to close. So, for example, the negative—the hidden reefs—turns us to Jesus, who always tells the truth. The greedy shepherd, the bread of life, clouds without rain, living water, fruitless trees, fruit that remains, wandering stars—fixed point.
Fixed point. Don't go down that pathway. Stay with Jesus. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Navigate by he who is the light of the world. Have you thought about paint the wagon while I was speaking? Anybody? Paint your wagon. You did? Yeah, see, every so often there's a bright one in the class.
You want to always be immediately obvious, but there you have it. Yeah, as soon as I got to wandering stars, I was right with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon. Paint Your Wagon was a stage play in 1951. The lyrics of it were so good, the music so strong that in 69 it became a movie, which most of you have got no idea about at all.
But how was it possible for Lee Marvin to have a huge hit doing what he was doing that can scarcely be called singing, if you remember? Right? Remember? But I went back to it, and I said, you know, fascinatingly, in the midst of this song, all of a sudden it goes, Do I know where hell is? Hell is in hell. Heaven is goodbye forever. It's time for me to go. Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try. Do I know where hell is? Hell is in hell. Hell.
Hello. When I googled this, I discovered—and I'm not on Facebook or Instagram or any of the things that you get the good stuff from, but at least people tell me—but there were a number of questions raised about this, some asked about this song, and one of the questions was, Is this a Christmas song? I thought, Isn't that intriguing? Why would it be a Christmas song? Because of the star. Wise men following the star. Not a wandering star. The star.
And when they saw the star, they rejoiced. Because it brought them to the one before whom they would bow down their lives and offer their gifts. The only one who is a Savior, the only one who is a shepherd, the only one to whom we make all and entrust our lives and rest in him. As for God, his way is perfect.
The Lord's Word is flawless. He shields all who take refuge in him. Some of you are here this morning, and frankly, if you were dead honest, you're following wandering stars. You may have just wandered in here as well as another possibility. We have nothing to offer save the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the truth.
Turn to him. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg, helping us discern between false teaching and biblical truth. Like Jude, all of us are servants of Christ, and here at Truth for Life, our mission is to teach the Bible and only the Bible every day so that you will be grounded in God's truth and prepared to recognize false teaching. That's the mission you support every time you pray for or donate to Truth for Life.
And when you support the ministry with a donation today, we have something very special we want to send to you as our way of saying thanks. It's a new children's book written by Alistair titled, See is for Christian. In this book, Alistair presents 26 words, one for each letter of the alphabet, that teach young children how being a Christian is, in Alistair's words, the most wonderful, exciting, life-changing thing that anyone can be. Now, I'm guessing some of you are thinking, what words does he come up with for Z or for Q? Well, with Q, the good news is God qualifies us to be part of his perfect world. The word are teaches that when we repent and turn from our sins, they are forever blotted out.
And here's Alistair reading an excerpt from the book for the letter S. S is for sent. When Jesus spoke to his disciples, he said that he would send them to be fishers of men. Usually, fishers catch fish. And that's the job a lot of Jesus' first followers had. But Jesus had a different job for them to do, a job he gives all his followers. He wanted them to fish for people. What did he mean? He meant that he was sending them to speak words about him that would bring people to see the truth about him.
You probably talk to lots of people in a week. Jesus is sending you to tell people the truth about him. We would love to send you a copy of Alistair's new book, See is for Christian. It's available when you give a donation through the Truth for Life mobile app online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. Thanks for listening today. False teachers will sometimes suggest they know a better way, an easier way, a more fun way to get to heaven. Tomorrow we'll find out where they're actually leading their followers. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
