Teaching Tuesday: Jude

Series: Through the Storm
Sermon: Jude (9.8.24)

Happy Tuesday, all.

I enjoyed studying and preaching from Jude this past Sunday, but I have to say, a particular recurring theme in this letter put me in a somber mood.

Like many of the New Testament epistles (letters), part of Jude’s theme is to warn faithful believers against false teachers.

In most of Paul’s writings, the false teachers he’s combatting are those who wanted circumcision and other religious laws to factor into Christian faith; they wanted works to be part of salvation. In 2nd Peter, the false teachers Peter is dealing with are engaged in teaching inaccurate doctrine. Specifically, they are denying the second coming of Jesus.  

Here in Jude, the false teachers are modeling some combination of bad teaching and debauched living.

What’s interesting - and sobering - about these false teachers in Jude is that they’ve been accepted into the Christian community, the church:

For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (v. 4)

These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. (v. 12)

Did you catch that? These people who “follow their own evil desires” (v. 16) have “secretly slipped in among you” and share meals with the faithful without any hesitation.

These aren’t just outsiders who oppose the faith, they are insiders who are distorting the faith. Yikes! That’s even more dangerous.

For those of you who have been around MCC or churches in general for awhile, think about what most often causes division, factions, church splits, and serious disputes; it’s not often someone from the outside, but someone or a group of people from within the church community itself.

There are exceptions, but at least for American Christians I think the greatest threat to the health and growth of the church is not outside opposition but inside disunity; not unbelief but misbelief.  

External challenges are usually more obvious and more easily resisted, but if Satan gets us to self-destruct through distorting the faith, that’s more subtle and difficult to identify and resist.

This is why we have to be united on the doctrines and practices - right thinking and right living - that matter most. Otherwise, we will not be able to guard against sin and evil, both personally and as a church family. We won’t be able to stop those who believe and live for their own glory rather than God’s…These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit. (v. 19).

These misleaders have the self-centered goal of satisfying their basest pleasures. Rather than living lives focused on holiness guided and empowered by the Spirit, they choose to follow their “natural instincts.” They fashion a faith and theology of their own choosing, creating a religion that conveniently justifies their sin.

In short, they substitute themselves for God.

Does this sound like our world today? Apparently it was Jude’s world, too. The human condition doesn’t change.

I invite you to join me in praying this prayer this week:

Father God,

You breathed life into the world and into humans you created in your image.
We so often do not live up to that image.

Please forgive us, God, for our rebellion against you and our misrepresentation of your glory and goodness.

Thank you for the gift of salvation from this rebellion through the atoning sacrifice of your son, Jesus. Thank you for providing us freedom from death, and an eternity in life with you.

Please help us, with the wisdom and discernment provided by your Spirit, identify and avoid bad teaching and bad living. Help us earnestly desire to grow closer to you in knowledge and in our actions. Help us think as you would have us think. Help us love as you would have us love.  

Amen.

Study for this coming Sunday: John

Know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady