Title: Jude – God’s Judgement
Theme: To show what happens when false prophets step in.
Text: Jude 1:5 - 7
Note: This message was taken from Daniel Akin messages on Jude. I used the outline and material. I wanted to add it. I don't claim the thoughts to be my own. https://ftc.co/resource-library/ftc-preaching-guides/preaching-guide-jude/
Jude 1:3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
• Verse 5-7 flow directly from Jude’s warning in v. 4 about false teachers. Indeed judgment opens and closes the literary unit of vs. 5-16. The false teachers were “marked out,” designated for judgment long ago because their sin resembles the
sin of 3 well known events in Old Testament history:
1. God’s judgment of Israel for unbelief,
2. God’s judgment of fallen angels for rebellion,
3. and God’s judgment of Sodom & Gomorrah for immorality.
I. Remember the danger of unbelief v. 5
Jude 1:5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
He begins with Israel because: 1) they were God’s chosen people and 2) because unbelief is at the heart of all sin.
• He tells them, “I want to remind you, though you once knew this” (NKJV). This reading connects his reminder to the “once for all delivered faith” of v. 3. These historical events are not new news to them anymore than the gospel was now new to them. Still, in our human sinfulness, we are prone to forget, to neglect lessons and truths from the past. This can be fatal as Jude makes clear, so he sounds the call: “remember!” Jude begins with his first of 7
Old Testament references in this epistle.
1) Do not forget what God has done
• Verse 5 reads literally, “The Lord a people out of Egypt saved (NIV,
delivered).”
Out of Egypt
1. God saw the plight of His chosen people and He rescued
them out of Egypt.
2. He sent plagues on Egypt,
3. parted the Red Sea,
4. destroyed Pharaoh’s army,
5. provided manna, quails and water.
6. He was their glory cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. They had an
incredible past, a marvelous legacy.
2) Trust God for the future – Numbers 14 – 12 spies
• Jude says “afterwards” (subsequently, later) the Lord destroyed, wiped out “those who did not believe.” Jude has in mind Numbers 14 when the 12 spies returned from their reconnaissance mission into the Promised Land. The majority report of 10 said we can’t do this. They are giants and we are grasshoppers. The minority report of 2 (Joshua and Caleb) said no problem. After all Grasshoppers plus God can beat any Giants! However, the people who had seen God do so much now in unbelief said, “well He can’t do this.” The result: every person 20 and over died. All of them! They missed the promise land. They missed God’s best. Forgetting God’s grace and greatness, they dug their graves in the wilderness in sight of the land God had promised.
Personal Application: Have you forgotten what God has done to get you where you are? Do you trust God to continue?
II. Remember the dishonor of rebellion. v. 6
6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
• One of the most difficult verses in the Bible to interpret is right here. Who is Jude talking about? Who was Peter talking about in the parallel text in 2 Peter 2:4?
• However, let’s not lose sight of the plain meaning in terms of application of the text. There are two principles for life we should respect that these fallen angels rejected.
1) Accept God’s plan for your life.
• These angels were not satisfied with God’s plan for them. They were convinced there was something better and God’s way was not the best way.
• First, they did not keep their proper domain (NIV, “positions of authority”). Second, “they left their own abode” (they deserted and abandoned their own homes). Their place and position in God’s plan was not enough. They want something more, a different position of prominence, a better place of activity. Sound too much like too many ministers today! Through self-deception men, like these angels, rationalize their lust for position, power, prestige and possessions.
With an inflated sense of self-worth and importance, they cannot trust in the providence of God and rest in His plan.
• Personal Application: Are you content with and confident that God knows what He is doing in your life? Or is your heart gripped by a spirit of rebellion, especially if you suspect what God has for you is not what you want for yourself!
2) Respect God’s power over you.
• Not content with heaven, these angels get hell! Absolutely unbelievable. They would not keep their home in heaven, so God keeps their home in hell.
• Think about what their rebellion cost them:
Heaven or hell
Servant God or slave of Satan
Light or darkness
Freedom or chains
Joy in His presence or judgment in perdition
Awesome privilege or awesome punishment
Great honor or incredible disgrace
• Revelation brings responsibility. Their responsibility was greater than any. Our responsibility is greater than most. God is God and we are not! Accept His plan for your life. Respect His power over your life. You will . . . one way or another.
• Personal Application: Are you submitting to God?
III. Remember the destiny of the immoral. v. 7
(7) as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
• No story impacted the people of God like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is referenced one way or another more than 20 times in the Bible.
The devastation of these cities, along with Admah and Zeboiim (note “the cities around them”) was so horrific they stand as a perpetual reminder (“example”) of the just judgment of God on sin, especially sexual sin.
Sodom and Gomorrah issues
1) were known for their pride and disregard for the poor (Ezekiel 16:49),
2) their arrogance, injustice, and bigotry.
3) it was their sexual perversion that marked them. Finally there came a time when God’s grace said “enough!”
Genesis 19 records the cataclysmic judgment as “the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens” (Genesis 19:24).
• Jude is specific in his brief analysis of the judgment God brought.
Two telling truths scream for our attention.
1) Sexual perversion can consume you.
• Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities acted in a manner similar to the fallen angels of v. 6. They committed sexual immorality (ekporneuo) and went after sarkos heteras. This reference to strange flesh is not the flesh of angels (they did not know the persons in Lot’s house were actually men), but the flesh of other men. Their sin was homosexuality. In this context let me say several things:
1) The Bible is clear in its denunciation of homosexuality as sin. This is made plain in text like Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10.
2) The Bible is equally clear that any sexual activity , heterosexual or homosexual, outside the marriage covenant between a man and a woman is sin. Jesus Himself said a man and woman in marriage become one flesh. Jesus was clear on the sex question.
3) Those in slavery to sexual sin need to be loved, including homosexuals, lesbians and any others. We do not hatefully bash them, we graciously speak the truth in love and reach out to them with grace, mercy and kindness.
4) Rampant sexual sin is not the worst sin, but it is the clearest evidence of a society that has rejected God’s truth and has been given over to His judgment (Romans 1:24, 26, 28).
2) Eternal punishment can claim you.
• The cities of the plains are a perpetual reminder that sin is serious to God
and that God will judge it.
The Bible tells us in Matthew 25:41 that Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. Jude 6 backs this up. Jude 7, however, affirms that unbelieving, rebellious and immoral humans will also be there.
• Hell is real and hell is eternal. It is a place of suffering, sadness and separation. It helps explain the necessity of the cross, and why of the 12 times the word Gehenna (Hell) appears in the Bible, 11 are on the lips of Jesus. So terrible is its reality that Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-30 it would be better to ender the kingdom with only one eye or one hand that to have
your whole body cast into hell.
• Hell is a bad place. Eternity is a long, long time. The unbelieving,
rebellious, and immoral will unfortunately find their destiny in this place.
Conclusion: Let me close on a positive note. It is found in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. If any New Testament city approached the wickedness and immorality of Sodom and Gomorrah it was Corinth. Idolatry, greed, pagan philosophy and immorality was the air it breathed. But Paul brought the gospel, determining “not to know anything among [them] except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). What was the result? What happened? Listen to what Paul wrote:
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Yes, God will judge unbelief, rebellion and the immoral. But He will also forgive the
same and much more if they are washed in the cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus
Brian’s opening scripture:
Romans 8:14-17 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (15) For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father." (16) The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (17) and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
Note: some studies done from sermons on https://www.sabc.org/ in sermons in Jude, also https://ftc.co/resource-library/ftc-preaching-guides/preaching-guide-jude/ and other commentaries
