Gooding, David: 1 - Introduction to Jude

When I had passed on to me your kind invitation, it was suggested to me that one of the things that you would be interested to hear about would be signs of the last times. And having only three sessions to be with you, my mind went to the epistle by Jude, and in particular to that feature which he says already marked his own day. He was one of the last writings of the New Testament, of course. The feature, one of the features that not only marked his own day, but would come to mark the end times very especially. That is the infiltration into Christendom and into the church of false heretical teachings. So let's turn now to the epistle by Jude and read some of its verses. Jude, beginning in verse 1. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. Mercy unto you, and peace, and love be multiplied. Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in privily, even they who were of old set forth unto this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Verse eleven: Woe unto them, for they went in the way of Cain and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire and perished in the gainsaying of Korah. Verse twenty. But you, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have mercy, who are in doubt, and some save, snatching them out of the fire. And on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling and to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power before all time and now and forevermore. Amen. And may God give us good understanding of his holy word. There is no denying the fact, I suppose, that a great deal of the Jude forms a very solemn epistle indeed. And as I begin to address you on the topics that he raises, the coward in me would apologize, you'll see, and seek to remind you that if you find this epistle very gloomy, I didn't write it. It was another who wrote it. So then it's not my fault that it is gloomy, and you will have mercy upon me. But then, of course, I mustn't do that, may I, because we deal here with inspired word of God, and what an impertinence it would be on my part if I dare apologize for the holy word of God. It is, of course, gloomy. Jude tells us that he sat down originally to write to us about our common salvation. And when he started to write about our common salvation, then who knows what it was that intervened, but something or other constrained him. Perhaps it was some news that he received from some Christian visitors from other parts, bringing news of sad things that were happening in some of the assemblies. Or perhaps it was the direct voice of the Holy Spirit that constrained him, however it was he was constrained. Instead of talking to us about our common salvation, to exhort us to contend for the faith earnestly, the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. There are some people who wish he hadn't been constrained, for they say, you know, if only he had talked about salvation, what a glorious topic would it would have been, expounded to us by a brother of the Lord Jesus himself, all the marvelous glories of our common salvation that would have lifted us in spirit to the very pinnacle of heaven. Oh, what a pity he didn't carry on with his original intention, and instead of that he turned aside to talk about these gloomy things of heresy in the church. Well, I take that point. But of course, there are times in life, are there not, when we must face gloomy things? In the world outside, it is very distressing and gloomy to read about, uh, the disease called AIDS, is it not? Very gloomy to think and to see pictures of young people injecting themselves with dirty needles, with life-killing drugs. Very gloomy. But we should be less than realist and less than adult, shouldn't we, if because it was gloomy we decided to shut our eyes to the realities of life and concentrate merely on the pleasant things. Perhaps by looking for a time at gloomy things, who knows, we might be able the more efficiently to have influence with our young people in our schools and colleges, and save them from these modern plagues that haunt our schools and universities and our young people. And so it is, of course, with, uh, things spiritual. It is nice to concentrate on the glories of salvation, but sometimes we must face the gloomy things. To open our eyes to what is going on in Christendom. What could avai- invade assemblies as we have known them. For we are solemnly told by Jude, and not only by Jude, but by other New Testament writers, that in the last days we shall find the times marked by this amongst other things, an eruption of false teachers and false doctrine. That we must expect in the last days that opposition to the faith will come not merely from the outside world, the atheist, the agnostic. We must expect that opposition to the true faith and to the gospel will come from within Christianity, from men who would call themselves Christian teachers and teachers of Christian theology. That we are straightforwardly told by Jude amongst other people. Therefore, if we in our day feel secure and not necessary to think about those things for ourselves, yet there are growing up around us a new generation, of course, of young people, are surely to be concerned for them, that we might, uh, properly train them in the wholesome things of the faith and get into their systems antidotes against the false teaching that Holy Scripture tells us will arise in the last time. So then we must gird ourselves with all the courage we possess to face these gloomy things about false doctrines in the last day. Well, we mustn't get too gloomy, may we? Because, you see, as I say, when Jude turned from talking about our common salvation to exhorting us to contend for the faith, he wasn't talking about two altogether different things. You see, it isn't a question, is it, that, uh, our great common salvation is one thing over here, and these false doctrines are other things completely over here and nothing to do with our common salvation. The fact is that these false doctrines will overthrow the very foundations of our salvation if we let them. And therefore, of course, as much as we prize our common salvation, so we must be concerned to have the answer to the false doctrines that will undermine people's faith in salvation. And secondly, of course, gloomy might though these things may be, and distressing if we discover in our own generation evidences of the widespread false doctrine of the last times. Nonetheless, it carries a glorious, uh, note of ha- happiness with it, doesn't it? Because if false doctrine marks the end time, and you begin to see around you specimens spreading and, uh, increasing of such false doctrine, why, my brother, my sister, lift up your heart and rejoice. Lift up your head, for your salvation draweth nigh. If this be one of the signs of the end times, and the signs are around us. I repeat, here is cause in our heart of hearts for rejoicing. The Lord is coming, and we wait impatiently for him so to do. So now we come to the, uh, general description of the false teachers, according to Jude. And he tells us in his verse four, gives us in his verse four what you might say is a general description of these false teachers. There are, says he, certain men crept in privily, even they who were of old set forth unto this condemnation. Ungodly men. That is the first thing that marks them, ungodliness. The word in Greek means someone who has lost reverence. It can be used in all sorts of contexts, people that have no reverence any longer for their parents, for instance. But is commonly used of people who have lost reverence for God. Ungodly, therefore, in that sense. You mustn't suppose that the word ungodly here is describing men that would be seen of a Saturday night rolling homewards from the pub. Worldly, godless men. These men could in fact be theologians in a faculty of theology. There is one famous such theologian in the University of Cambridge. He is, I repeat, a theologian. And he teaches the nation, as he teaches his, his pupils, that there is no God. How he manages to be a theo-logian, a thinker who studies God, when his conclusion and his teaching is there is no God, I don't know. And how he manages to get paid for it into the bargain. I wonder the Trades Description Act people haven't caught up with him. But there he is, and the BBC rejoices from time to time to give him ample coverage of his views, as in the name of theology he tells the world at large there is no God. A man who has lost not only respect for, but even faith in God, teaching theology. And the second point is this, uh, some of these people are marked by ungodliness, therefore, and lack of reverence for God. In the second place, some of them, and I say that because presumably not all of them are tarred with exactly the same. Some of them, so we're told, turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness. That is, they take the lovely doctrines of the love and grace of God, who will talk, who will, um, tell sinners that they may be saved utterly by his grace. The grace of God that would stand incarnate before the woman taken in adultery and say, neither do I condemn you. Who will take that doctrine and turn it into an excuse, indeed into an advocacy of permissive immorality. I was listening the other week, I don't know what program it was being aired once more by BBC Radio, and some good lady, if good she was, came on and gave us an exposition of the story of the woman in Simon's house. The woman, of course, was a notorious character according to the standards of the time, she said, you'll say. But our Lord Jesus had no impa- no patience with these Pharisaical tides. He welcomed everybody, and when she came in, a virtual prostitute off the street, he did a huge grin and indicated that he approved of this. Who would condemn them anyway? This is a part of life. And the love and grace of God includes everybody. Ah, that is another, that is a, a, a, an example of what precisely he said here. Taking the grace of God that, yes, gives repentant and believing sinners complete pardon. The grace of God that will go out and seek the lost. The grace of God that will send the Savior to eat at the same table with publicans and sinners. But the grace of God, when it's true, that will call those sinners to repentance and faith, and only grant them forgiveness when they have believed, and will demand that they be born again and will encourage them with the thought that they can be born again and must be born again. That's a very different thing from its perversion that says that it doesn't matter, carry on living in your sinfulness and immorality, and God is so loving and kind he wouldn't judge anybody. This, of course, has been an age-old heresy. It will come to the fore in later times, says J- Jesju. Twenty years ago, it made a stir in America and in the United Kingdom, with the writings of people like the late Bishop of Woolley, who taught his pupils that on times, you'll say, even fornication could be right and a beautiful thing, if only it is performed, motivated by love. And thereby bishop of the church. You will have read or heard that last year there came a motion before the Synod of the Anglican Church in England. I am not telling tales out of school. When one good evangelical and faithful man put a motion before the Synod, very carefully worded, to the effect that the practice of adultery and homosexuality is always sinful. Deliberately thus phrased, not saying homosexuality itself is sinful, but saying the practice of homosexuality and adultery is always sinful. But the Senate wouldn't pass the motion thus put. And substituted for it a motion that says that the practice of these things falls short of the ideal. Yeah. So I suppose next murder will be regarded as, well, not necessarily sinful, but falling short of the ideal, I suppose. And child abuse won't be sinful anymore, it will be falling short of the ideal. Oh, my brothers, lift up your heads, my sisters, lift up your hearts, the Lord comes. We'll see these are signs, says James, of the last times, perversions of the gospel, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. And then denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Lord and Master because he has crown rights and the rights of redemption upon everybody that professes his name. To exercise his lordship not merely over our behavior, but over our thinking. So that he expects us to be not only morally loyal to him, but intellectually loyal to him. Yet, and yet, in the name of Christ himself, generations now of young students in universities and colleges have been taught that Jesus Christ is not always right, sometimes he's positively wrong. So, uh, young students have been taught that when it comes to what our Lord said about the second coming, he made a mistake because he didn't know any better. He said that he would return very shortly, and of course he didn't return shortly, and they say, there you are, you'll see, he got it all wrong. Some years ago, I suppose it was twenty years ago at least, I was invited to a teacher training college in Belfast. In that teacher training college, there was a department of of scripture where young people could be taught how to teach scripture in school and thus fulfill the government requirement that, uh, religious education shall be taught in the schools. And of course, there were many young Christian men and women that took advantage of that. They went and they studied and got their certificates, so now they could go into the schools and, uh, teach their children, uh, Bible and scripture. And we who live in this much favored promi- province may thank God for this. If you were an Englishman, and you'll never be that, you'll say, and I'm glad, I reckon that every night you thank the Lord that you won't be, you'll say, but if you were an Englishman and you lived in England and you saw how many multitudes of schools there are and not one Christian in the whole school, you would thank God for schools in Ulster, where not only are there often many believing children, but on the staff there are real genuine believing teachers. What a great blessing that has been to generations of people. However, on this particular occasion, these students in this training college asked the head of the department would he put on a seminar, and would he get a Roman Catholic teacher and a Protestant teacher to come along, and each one to spend five or ten minutes giving what they believe to be the teaching of Holy Scripture on what happens after death. And would you believe it, I was, uh, the Protestant that was pitched upon to come and talk upon this matter in this learned institution. So I went along. My dear Roman Catholic friend, uh, turned out to be a lady. She taught in one of the leading teacher training colleges in the city. She was, in fact, head of the teaching of Bible, eh, to to school teachers. She was the lady that taught them how to teach the Bible in schools. Said she to me, uh, now I'd like you to go first because I myself said, see, I don't want to be held down to any particular point of view. So I went first and said what you would have said, the simple things from the New Testament about what happens first to a believer after death, and then to an unbeliever after death. I didn't lose the opportunity to point out, in that kind of context, that for a believer to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord without any purgatory in between. And when I had finished and had my five minutes, you'll say, then she began to have her five. She spent the first five telling everybody what the traditional doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church was. And after that five minutes, she said, and now we know that it's all wrong anyway, and we don't believe a word of it. We all pricked up our ears and listened as for the next twenty five minutes. She went on to tell us why they didn't believe it anymore, or at least why she didn't. She said, you see, actually we know nothing about what happens after death. Because, yes, the Lord Jesus did talk about these things, and his apostles talked about these things. But she said, you see, they lived in a pre-scientific world where people believed that there this universe is in three decks, so to speak. There's heaven above and earth in the middle and hell below. And so the Lord Jesus, according to her, and the apostles talked about him coming down from the top deck, heaven, down to our world, then dying and go down underneath and coming back again and then going back to heaven. And she says, you know, that was what they did, they they thought in those pre-scientific days. Nowadays, we know that it isn't true. So nothing that the Lord Jesus said or his apostles on this matter is of any use. And we know now that we know nothing as to what happens after death, and what a marvelous thing it is, she said, to to know that we know nothing. And she was in charge of teaching the students how to teach Bible in the schools of this province. Denying the Lord and Master in this sense, that though doubtless she would have professed allegiance to him and said she believed in him, when it came to what he taught, there came points when she was prepared to deny his authority and to say what he said was completely mistaken. And of course, when one hears senior ecclesiastics like the Bishop of Durham telling the nation that he cannot believe in a bodily resurrection, you have but a tip of an enormous iceberg. For generations, for this last fifty years, our theological students have in many places been taught these same notions, such as that, uh, uh, Teacher Training College lecturer was trying to put across to us on that morning twenty years ago. This, then, is the general description that Jude gives in these verses. Now let's cast our eye down the epistle to see how he musters his arguments. In verse five he, he, he says, I desire to put you in remembrance, though you know all things once for all, how that the Lord, and then he gives three examples from Old Testament history of the severe and cataclysmic judgments of God. First of all, he mentions the people that the Lord saved out of the land of Egypt, and then afterward destroyed them that believed not. Well, the fact is that though multitudes came out of Egypt, the vast majority of them turned out, in the course of their journey, never to have been true believers at all, professing to be the people of God, but they were not believers, and therefore the Lord eventually destroyed them. Number one example of the judgments of God. Number two example, verse six: and the angels which kept not their own principality but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds unto darkness, unto the judgment of the great day. Another Old Testament example that bids us think back into the book of Genesis and to the eruption into our world of these evil angels that kept not their proper habitations, that is the kind of body that is given to angels to have. They kept not those habitations, but came down and by their interminglings brought our human race to the verge of perversion and in irreparable harm. So that God himself was obliged to intervene, to save the human race by blotting out the vast majority of its gene pool and taking a man who was perfect in his generation, starting from him to make a new start for the human race, without which judgment the human race might have been condemned to its end of its times, to the end physical enfeeblements and perversions that these dark spirits had instituted. Third judgment in verse seven: even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, having in like manner with these given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh. Another example, as you will see, of perversion. To profess to be one of the people of God and to be an unbeliever, that is a perversion. In the angels and their tampering with the human race, there was yet another perversion of a different kind. A similar perversion, though not exactly the same thing, was to be found in Sodom and Gomorrah, and God intervened, Jude reminds us, to destroy those cities. Three examples, then, from the Old Testament of God's catastrophic intervention in judgment on our planet. Verse eight says Jude, and yet, and in spite of it, and knowing these things, these false teachers both do themselves and teach to people. The very things that these ancient, uh, people were judged for, they perpetuate them in spite of these historical warnings of God's judgment in olden time. And if you ask me why these people have the nerve to, to do the very things for which these ancient civilizations were judged, I would probably hazard the guess that they do it because if you were to put in front of them these stories from the Old Testament, they would dismiss them as legend with a superior smile upon their face. In verse uh eleven, Jude turns to another citation from the Old Testament, and now not merely three examples of God's judgment on perversions and perverse doctrines, but three actual examples of men who, in their different way, were false in the area of religion. There was Cain, there was Balaam, and there was Korah. uh Three actual examples of false people in religion from the ancient world. And Jude is going to argue with us that they have counterparts even to this present day. There are people that still take the same attitude of Cor- as Korah, still take the same attitude as Balaam, still do the very same things as Cain. And from verse twelve um onward, he says as much. Three examples from the Old Testament. Now he reminds us that in his own day there were already false teachers who carried on these same attitudes. And in verses twelve and thirteen, he gives us a whole series of metaphors, so that we shall feel in our very hearts the evil of these systems of false doctrines. By the metaphorical descriptions he gives of them. Take just one of them. You're out on the loch may one afternoon, and it's a beautiful afternoon. There isn't a whisper, not a whisper of breeze anywhere. The face of the lake is like the most polished mirror that a woman ever had in her boudoir, you see. And you are going along in your little rowboat, so calm and contented, thinking all is safe, when the bottom of the boat is ripped out by a hidden rock underneath the water. And you come to see not only you are in mortal danger, but you think come to think of a hideous danger this was, lurking so s- in such a sinister fashion under the deceptive calm and apparent beauty and purity of the mirror-like surface of the lock. Yes, and if you can feel the deceit in it. Then you're beginning to feel somehow how we ought to feel about perversions of the gospel that are dressed up to look so nice and to be talk- appear to be talking about lovely things such as the grace of God. But to move on quickly as we can, come down, if you please, to verse fourteen. And now, for a third time, he quotes his Old Testament. And to these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied. And Enoch prophesied of the coming of the Lord, the coming of the Lord to in power and great glory with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon ungodly men. So we're here way back in the Old Testament, not only examples of God's judgment, not only examples of religious, uh, uh, frauds, but there was an actual prophecy of the coming of the Lord to deal with such perversions of the truth. And yet in verse seven— sixteen says Jude, these, these false teachers persist in doing the very things that the Bible has announced the Lord Jesus will judge when he comes again. And if once more you should ask, but why have they the courage to do the things that the Bible says the Lord Jesus will judge when he comes, the answer you will discover is they don't believe he's coming anyway. They dismiss that as a legend too. And finally, verse seventeen, but you, beloved, remember the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus, how that they said to you in the last time, there shall be mockers walking after their own ungodly lusts. So we have had three things from the Old Testament, and now Jude turns to one from the new, the words of the apostles of the Lord Jesus. He puts them, you see, at the same rank as the inspired Holy Scripture, because in Jude times, the writings and speeches of the apostles were regarded already as inspired scripture on a level of authority with the sacred writings of the Old Testament. And he reminds his fellow believers, calls on them to remember the words of the apostles of the Lord Jesus. They said in the last time there shall come these mockers. And says Jude in verse nineteen, and here they are. These are they who. If they were already beginning to creep into the churches in that day, how much more must we expect them in our own time? Gloomy, you say. And yes, it would be a bad job in one sense if it didn't happen, wouldn't it? Because the Bible, the apostles said it would happen. And if things went swimmingly until the Lord comes, then the apostles would be wrong, wouldn't they? They said it would happen. If it is happening, well, it's the last time, my brothers, my sisters, lift up your heads, your redemption draws nigh. Oh, what a wonderful comfort it is against the background of these gloomy perversions to embrace the beginning and the end of Jude's epistle. You, each one of you, if you are believers in the Lord Jesus, you're not only saved, but personally and individually called. Oh, what a magnificent thing it is. Ponder it, my brother, again this evening in these quiet moments as you sit before the Lord. You, Nancy Smith and Bridget O'Brien, you, Sir Thomas Othea, whatever your name might be, and you're a believer in the Lord Jesus, know this, that you only became that because the transcendent Lord of heaven and earth bowed down to you and personally caused you to hear his voice, like little Samuel in the temple, and called you, and called you by name, known to God himself, personally and individually called by God himself. And he shall keep you. Now unto him that's able to keep you from falling and to present you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy. I love those words that our Lord uttered in his prayer before the shades of Gethsemane closed in upon them. Reviewing his life's ministry and the handful of men that were around him, said he to his father, of all you have given me, I have lost not one. Say the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But of all those that were genuine believers, I have lost not one. And then, with very deep poignancy, he turns to his father and says, but now I'm no longer in the world, and I must hand to you the task of keeping them. Now I come to thee, Holy Father, keep them. You keep them. I say to my little self, I say, my good man, ponder a moment. If the Lord Jesus in his ministry could say, I have kept them and not one of them is lost. Shall the Father do less than the Son? And shall the Father not keep them with all that same devotion and with all that same effectiveness and success as the blessed Lord Jesus kept them in the days of his flesh. Ah, he shall indeed, and he shall present you before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. And the time draws near. The Lord grant us strength from that prospect, so that as realists now we may face the solemn lessons of his word. And if we feel that we do not need them ourselves, God give us sight to see there are many young folks around us who desperately need it, and who need to be prepared before they go out into this godless and perverse world at large.