Result Of Disobedience Series

A Study of the Letter of Jude

JUDE v. 4-8

Teaching Lesson 4

June 6, 2012

Ok let’s review where we are just to get us back up to speed with what we have studied so far in the book of Jude.

We have established that this book was written by Judas, or Jude, the brother of James, who we believe to be the half brother of Jesus. Making Jude, Jesus’ ½ brother as well. We discussed how the brothers of Jesus were NOT believers until probably AFTER the resurrection.

We have discussed how influential James became within the church, especially the church in Jerusalem, and that Jude would have had similar influence being his brother…

Here we find Jude writing a letter to a set of believers. We do NOT know where these believers are or who they are, but what we do know is that this particular set of believers is in spiritual peril as they are under a stealth attack by those who are portraying themselves to be believers but are promoting a different gospel…

Jude wanted to write a letter of encouragement to these believers about the common salvation they shared and presumably the wonders of that salvation and how to share it with others…

But Jude was prevented from writing that letter… prevented by the Holy Spirit and led to write the letter we have today in Scripture. This letter is a letter of admonition… a word of warning against falling prey to a false gospel and what has happened in the past to those who have strayed away from the TRUTH.

Tonight we are going to look at v.4-7 to see how Jude sets up his argument against those who are spreading this false gospel. Let’s look at what the Bible has to say tonight…

4I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Here we find Jude clarifying the mission of his letter to these believers. He says “…I say this because…” What had he ‘said’? He had challenged them to “…contend for [or defend] the faith…”. Why would they have to defend or contend for the faith?

Jude tells them the reason for his letter… the reason for his trepidation for their fellowship… the REASON behind his challenge for them to ‘contend for the faith…’ was simple: There are wolves among the sheep!Here in the NLT we find these people described as ‘ungodly people’… A couple of weeks ago we discussed about the people Jude was warning against. We learned that we did not know exactly WHO Jude was warning these believers against, but he only describes them as ‘ungodly’ people.

However, we learned by viewing some of the characteristics that Jude seemed to understand them quite well… He describes them as ‘some people’ or in other translations it is listed as ‘certain people’… this a very generic description!

But this is the heinous nature of these people, they blend in with the fellowship and are NOT distinct but generic in their appearance. These certain people are deceptive in that they have snuck into the fellowship with the fellowship totally unaware of who they truly are…

In the NLT it says they have ‘wormed’ their way into the churches… They have successfully intertwined themselves into the very fabric of these churches, becoming intimately involved and intertwined with the people and the teaching of the churches. These were NOT fringe type people but people who had come in and were now beginning to assert influence upon the fellowship!

But what were they teaching? Well we read that they were teaching that God’s grace was SO WONDERFUL that they did not have to worry about sin… IN THE LEAST! In fact, they could live as they wanted… morality of choice was totally up to them! They could live as they please because they were now under the all encompassing grace of Christ!

Where have we heard this before? In Rom 6 Paul wrote about this very argument. It could be that the same people who were espousing Paul’s problem were the same people here causing Jude’s concern. Paul wrote:

1Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? 2Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? 3Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? 4For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.