Message In Jude – The Enoch Passage – Jude 1 V 13-16 Series

MESSAGE IN JUDE – THE ENOCH PASSAGE – Jude 1 v 13-16

We are steadily working through the book of Jude who was the half brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is defending the faith being destroyed by false teachers. Much of his letter is spent exposing these reprobate men who preach false doctrine and make shambles of the faith once delivered to the saints.

{{Jude 1 v 13 wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. Jude 1:14 About these also, Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones Jude 1:15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” Jude 1:16 These are grumblers following after their own lusts, finding fault. They speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage,}}

This message today will be in 4 sections and they will be - The “wandering stars” or “comets”; “The Book of Enoch”; “The Second Coming”; “the ungodly”. In the last message we covered “wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam”. Next time we do the wild waves of the sea.

We are continuing the series through Jude which has great emphasis on false teachers. Jude describes them in various and pointed ways. This is one of the smallest books of the bible but it has a great impact.

[1]. THE WANDERING STARS

This is the last of the metaphors Jude uses to describe the false teachers. The Greek word is the description for “planets” - “p?a??ta?” (planatai). It was used because the planets seem to have a very irregular motion, being sometimes stationary and sometimes retrograde. “Wandering stars” is a very proper emblem of persons unsettled in their principles, and irregular in their behaviour, such as these men were. The word for planets comes from the idea of “wanderers” as they come and go. The planets, which shine for a time, have no light in themselves False teachers are to expect the worst punishments in this world and in that to come. They glare like meteors, or falling stars, and then sink into the blackness of darkness forever. The word can also be used of comets and meteors that come and fade away. The false teachers had nothing enduring or substantial in the values of heaven. They wandered in location. They wandered in doctrine. They wandered in behaviour. They wandered in spiritual blackness.

Christians are not expected to have a failing light or to be wanderers with no fixed purpose. We are to remain steady, unmovable, with our feet fixed on the Rock of Ages. We must not wander around doctrine, coming and going, believing and disbelieving; or believing one thing, then another. We are to be consistent. False teachers are always the opposite of God’s declared righteousness.

[2]. THE BOOK OF ENOCH

We come now to the second point. This description of wandering stars or comets, most likely came from an ancient document that Jude used, called “The Book of Enoch”. ?st??e? (asteres). This is borrowed from Enoch (chapters 43 and 44.) where it is said that some of the stars become lightnings and cannot part with their new form, [[ib. lxxx, “In the days of the sinners, many chiefs of the stars will err, and will alter their orbits and tasks, ib. lxxxvi,]] where the fall of the angels is described as the falling of stars,

{{CHAPTER 44 – “Also, other things I saw in reference to the flashes of lightning; how they arise from the stars, and become lightning and can leave nothing behind with them.”}}

Now, what is the Book of Enoch? It was composed around 150 to 200 BC by an author who sought to hide its authorship, and the period of composition, and the object of writing, among other things. It is known as an Apocryphal book. The book has 108 chapters, and some of those are very small, like just two sentences. The Church Fathers all, with the possible exception of Tertullian, deny the canonicity of the Book, and regard it as apocryphal, some of them even denying the canonicity of Jude because he dared quote from it.

After the time of Augustine, the period of literary death robbed the church of many of her noblest monuments of literature. Most of the great writings were destroyed. The Book of Enoch, too, was lost, and later investigations had to be content with references in the Church Fathers. No one knew of it except from the odd mention of it. In Jewish literature, the Book of Enoch did not stand in such high regard as it did among Christian writers, and consequently, was not so extensively used.