It’s not often we get a single sermon covering an entire epistle. But when the epistle is only 25 verses long, that’s not such a tall order. Yes, of course, it would be quite possible to do a “sermon series” even on a short epistle like “Jude”, pulling each verse apart concept by concept, syllable by syllable, drawing all sorts of extrapolations and scriptural cross-references (not to mention a colorful and preacherly illustration or two). I feel, however, that that sort of thing is done so much that we actually lose something of profound worth. We lose the good, clean, solid punch of the particular, unique idea of a single epistle, the way it would have hit the first hearers when it was read out loud to them (all at once, not over a year). The problem with the sermon-series-approach to working-through-an-epistle is this: after a church has spent a year or two on, say, Ephesians, and the church folks are marveling over how the pastor could “get so much out of it”, if you ask the church folks, “So... tell me what Ephesians is about!”, you may get blank stares in return. “About?” Well, it’s “about” everything the pastor talked about for the last two years, of course, which was... pretty much everything. Problem with that is, when something is about everything, it tends to be about nothing in particular. And an epistle actually tends to be about something in particular. This is why I enjoy preaching epistles in large chunks – if it’s a short epistle, then the whole thing in one sermon. If it’s a long one like Romans, then at least a chapter at a time, to really try and encapsulate the key idea or two the apostle was working out. By the way, I will post a series of sermons I delivered on Romans here a bit later, where I take this approach.
(Begin by reading the whole epistle of Jude.)
Jude wanted to write the believers about the holy faith “delivered once and for all to the saints”. That is, his initial plan was just to write and teach them about the truths of the faith, perhaps to write about Jesus’ atoning death and about the resurrection, perhaps about the Holy Spirit, maybe about the second coming of Christ and the coming judgment. But here is the fascinating thing: something changed Jude’s plans. He changed his mind. Why?
Jude recognizes a grave danger in the church, and feels compelled to address it, to deal with it. So he devotes this whole letter to the problem. What is the problem? It is people inside the Church who are distorting and denying the gospel by their teaching and their lifestyle. They show no real repentance or faith, and their main goal seems to be to recruit admiration clubs around themselves. In short, they have never understood that the Church is the Lord’s. They think of the Church as their own private little playground.
Jude attacks this problem by giving the believers a quick history lesson, reminding them that all this is nothing new. God has always known about these people, He always judged such people in the past, and He told us through the prophets that such people would arise in the end times. Jude goes on to say that we who truly devote ourselves to Jesus Christ must beware of such people – yes, certainly, pray and hope for their salvation, but also be careful. And the best response to the danger they pose is to purify ourselves and live in the true power of the Holy Spirit, with overflowing confidence that God is going to perfectly complete His eternal plan for us in Christ. Which reminds me of the apostle Paul’s words: (Philippians 1:6) “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” The lesson in Jude is that the antidote to spiritual corruption in the Church is not timidity or denial. The only antidote is the “the most holy faith delivered once for all to the saints” – the very faith Jude originally wanted to write about. That faith is the victory over every lie and temptation.
Jude was probably a brother of Jesus – that is, one of Joseph and Mary’s children. If so, consider how meaningful the first few words of this letter are: “Jude – brother of James, slave of Christ.” In the early days of Jesus’ ministry, his brothers and sisters didn’t believe in him, and now, here, Jude calls himself a slave of Christ. Consider the spiritual earthquake that had to happen in Jude’s life for him to recognize who Jesus really was. Just think about the total transformation God brought into Jude’s life, and how much that meant to him. If you can grasp that, it will help you understand, too, why Jude was so furious over seeing the real meaning of Jesus get manipulated and distorted in the Church.
It’s precisely because of how deeply Jude treasures this Church that he starts by addressing the “called”. “Called”! Believers are the “called” of Jesus Christ: “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” What great comfort that must have meant for Jude: the assurance of God’s calling, of God’s choosing, of God’s love graciously poured out, as life’s bedrock reality. How important it was for Jude, then, that believers should really understand the meaning of this calling, and have the joy of living it out.
Remember that at that time the Church didn’t use the word “Christian”; they had to refer to themselves, as a group, with other words. We read these words in scripture: such words as “saints”, “brothers and sisters” and “the called”. These words tell us something about how they saw themselves and how they grasped God’s work of salvation. Now as for us, we often refer to ourselves as believers or Christians. But how often do we call ourselves “the called”? It’s worth meditating over, because that’s what we are! It’s both a high honor and a high responsibility. There is no greater love than the love God shows by calling us and giving us life in His Son. There is no higher calling than to serve Him.
Some people learn from their mistakes; others simply repeat them or even make them worse. Obviously, Jude is not going to repeat his mistake of disbelief. He is going to fight for the faith, for the truth that was revealed in Christ. And his letter makes it clear that he means we all should be joining this spiritual battle to defend the purity of the truth. That’s also what it means to be called.
Jude first planned to write a “teaching letter”, but it turned more into a “warning letter”. Nevertheless, Jude hasn’t completely abandoned his teaching instincts. He gives the readers a history lesson in the sorts of sins that are now raising their ugly heads in the Church.
The sin of disbelief was an old story with plenty of examples. Jude reminds the Church about the generation of Israelites who never made it to the promised land because of disbelief. The sin of pride is even older; Jude reminds them of the angels who refused to be content with their assigned place in God’s order. Jude ironically uses the same verb “keep” twice: the angels refused to “keep” the place God made them for; therefore, God is now “keeping” them in a place they weren't made for. It reminds us that God’s judgment is righteous. It is not God who rejects people or angels; it is they who reject God. Finally, in this terrible trio of sins, Jude reminds the Church about Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin of sexual immorality and how the fire from the sky foreshadowed the eternal fire of judgment on sin.
So this is the “terrible trio” Jude is compelled to warn the Church about, precisely because he has gotten wind of the fact that there’s some sort of group going around in the Church acting like these are perfectly acceptable: disbelief, pride, sexual immorality. If Jude were simply warning the Church that such things can be found in the world, it wouldn’t surprise us in the least. But he’s talking about people who have joined the Church and are spreading this among believers! This is what’s so horrifying, almost unbelievable, to Jude the slave of Christ.
To make the point even stronger, Jude contrasts these people with the great archangel Michael who, if anybody might be excused for acting high and mighty, perhaps Michael the Archangel could. But even Michael kept his place. Knew his place. Loved his place in God’s glorious plan. Never showed arrogance, faithfully followed God’s perfect will.
“But these”, Jude says, “but these”; in your English Bible it may say, “But these men” or “But these people”, but actually in the original Jude didn’t even waste that many words on them: he just says, “But these...”. These are dreamers, living in a world of fantasy, puffing themselves up with imagined spiritual power. There’s a lot of this around us today, too. You only need to turn on your television to watch it. Their great boast is that they have the Spirit of God and can do many miracles, and they’ll even send you a miracle in the mail as an expression of gratitude for your “love gift”. These boast about the way that they exercise power over the devil and demons. Instead of genuine faith in the person Jesus, they sell the name of Jesus like a magic amulet guaranteed to protect you from everything bad. The concept seems to be that the louder you shout it, the better it works.
I have noticed that such people often lose the ability to think coherently. They don’t even seem to believe they should think. Instead, it’s like they really believe their heads should be constantly buzzing with direct verbal transmissions from the Spirit, which leaves no room for anything so “unspiritual” as thinking, of course. And I’m sure you see what that leads to: if you disagree with such a person, he’ll tell you you’re disagreeing with God. After all, all his thoughts are God’s thoughts. So how can he be wrong? What a horrible state for any person to come to. He is a danger to the weak, the naïve and trusting and, even more, he is his own worst enemy, because he believes every lie he tells himself... since he thinks it’s all coming from God.
Jude gives the Church several illustrations of this kind of person: There was Cain, who wasn’t content with second place; it had to be his way or no way. There was Balaam, who was willing to sell “ministry” to the highest bidder, promising to “loose” the power of the spirit world any way he wanted. There was Korah, who decided with his friends that nobody had a right to authority that they couldn’t have, and that Truth was defined by opinion poll. You could call Korah a very early post-modernist!
Jude gives a few more illustrations: these people are like shepherds who feed only themselves; picture the poor flock of hungry, distressed, helpless sheep, watching the shepherds feed themselves! If those poor sheep really understood, then they would know these shepherds have nothing to give them.
We, however, are not literally sheep; God has given us understanding – yes, even the mind of Christ. So Jude calls us to exercise intelligent discernment regarding such people. They are empty clouds blown by the wind. They are blown along by the wind of their own caprice, their own fantasy, saying it is all from the Lord, but there is nothing substantial in it, nothing that can truly nourish the soul. They are like fruitless and rootless trees. Their so-called fruit is false: it is not from God. If you dig deeper, you discover they have no roots: no faith, no relationship with Christ, no obedience. Though they may present an image of great spirituality, though their faces may seem to radiate peace and joy, on the inside they are actually like roaring ocean waves in a storm or like wandering stars that have no home.
Though they are spiritually fruitless, they do bear a certain fruit, a particular concrete result, in the Church: division. Division begins when such people start distinguishing between the so-called spiritual and the so-called unspiritual in the church. Not surprisingly, the “spiritual” are the ones who agree with them. Which is really amazing because, as Jude says, “They are devoid of the Spirit.” When this game starts in a church, it is like a cancer; if it is not removed, it will destroy a church.
So what is the answer? What measures must the Church take to see that this sort of disease doesn’t take root? Start an Inquisition? Hunt for heretics? No. Jude says, “Build yourselves up.” Build ourselves up in what? In joy? In power? In worship? No. Build yourselves up “on your most holy faith.” It goes right back to the first sentences of Jude’s letter: he wants the believers to stand up for the true, pure faith which was “once delivered to the saints”. In the NT, “the faith” is, before all else, the central historical message about Christ which was preached by the apostles – the message of God’s great act and the saving power of that message. “The faith” is also the way of life that grows out of new birth in Christ – a life formed by holiness, love, self-control, humility, wisdom and faithfulness to the scriptures. Jude calls this faith “most holy” and it is holy because it is faith in God’s “holy servant Jesus.” Christians build themselves up by having fellowship with the Lord and his people, by adhering to the gospel and the Word of God, and by worship in spirit and truth – especially by remembering the Lord at his table. This is the way of life which shows who belongs to Jesus Christ.
Now, to some that sounds dry and uninteresting, even unspiritual. Where are the fireworks? Where’s all the shouting and jumping? How do you show your spirituality? I have to ask: why is that spirituality? It looks physical to me. What makes it “spiritual”? I’ve seen people act that way at football games; does that make them spiritual? Please don’t misunderstand me: I have nothing against joy or emotion. But we make a big mistake when we equate outward, visible manifestations with spirituality. Such spirituality is too easy to fake. Jude doesn’t say “build yourselves up in spirituality”; he says “build yourselves up on the most holy faith.” It is the faith that will make you spiritual in the truest way.
A key element in building ourselves up in this most holy faith, Jude say, is to pray in the Spirit. How do we do that? Well, I think the testimony of the New Testament is clear and unambiguous: we pray in the Spirit when we pray from a heart of faith that yearns only for Christ’s exaltation. We pray in faith in the name of Jesus; we pray out of the same whole, childlike faith in which we first invited Christ into our hearts. We pray in the same faith by which we received baptism, when we confessed Christ before the world as our Lord and Savior. We pray in the same faith we have when we receive communion, remembering the body and blood of the Lord. The prayer of faith in Christ is prayer in the Spirit. Such prayer will not often accompanied by ecstatic feelings or supernatural manifestations. Often, it will be difficult and require perseverance. It will always, always require faith. And it will always reach the throne of God.
I began by saying how Jude wanted to write the believers about this most holy faith delivered once for all to the saints, and how it turned instead into an “emergency letter”. I mentioned that the emergency was the great danger Jude saw in the Church – the invasion of disbelief, pride, immorality – and also how Jude started off by reminding the believers that God saw everything beforehand, how it was all an old story already. Well, now at the close of this letter, Jude says it again: this was all predicted; none of this throws God’s plan off-kilter; you just hold on to the most holy faith, to the glorious expectation of Jesus’ coming and his total victory, and you'll be all right! Just hold on. You don’t have to fix everything; you only need to hold on to the One Who does.
That’s what makes this most holy faith so glorious. That’s what makes this good news so great. It is great and glorious news not just about what God has done, perfectly, wonderfully for us in the past. No, it’s news and a faith that swallows up our whole past, present and future in one single sweep in absolutely perfect completeness. The “good news” isn’t only that “Jesus died for your sins on the cross and rose from the dead”. The good news is also that He’s coming again with victory in his hand, that our life is hidden and kept in Him to the very end – and the very end will be a beginning, in Jesus, that never, ever ends again. Such grace, such perfect-ness and absoluteness of hope! Cain, Balaam and Korah couldn’t grasp grace like that; their pride wouldn’t let them. Same thing with their partners in disbelief in the days of Jude and the early church.
When you can’t grasp grace, you’ll grasp something else: pride, immorality. But when you can grasp and embrace God’s grace, and gaze in awe at the glory of Jesus’ salvation, then the Cains, Balaams and Korahs in the world will never defeat you, and they will never defeat the Church.
“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
