So turn with me once again this evening to the book of Jude. Read with me as I read verses five through seven. While you're turning there, let me just say that Jude has just warned his readers that just as it has been foretold by Jesus, Peter, and others, there were certain persons who had crept into the church unnoticed in an effort to lead others astray. These individuals, or as Jude refers to them, these ungodly persons had long beforehand been marked out for condemnation. Why? Because they had turned the grace of God into licentiousness and had denied the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe these two errors are connected. In other words, they had begun spreading the idea in the church that a person can be a Christian and still live in such a way as their lives are reflected more by their immorality than they are by their Christianity. And we see this in the church at large, don't we? We see this among those who profess Christ. There are a good number of people in this country who profess Christ and yet their lives don't indicate any substantial change at all from the old man to what should be the new creation in Jesus Christ. We've talked before about the various movements that are afoot that actually validate this sort of thinking, the carnal Christian heresy, the so-called free grace movement and so on and so forth. all of those movements which say that it doesn't matter how you live your life, as long as you can point to a time when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, there's really nothing more beyond that that should characterize you as what you are claiming to be. Well, in verses five through seven, Jude goes on to give his readers a quick history lesson. And this history lesson is actually intended to prove two things. Number one, it was intended to prove that this was not something new among the people of God, right? That's the value of history. And number two, it was intended to show them that God's judgment against these types of sins is certain. God's judgment against all forms of immorality, all forms of licentiousness, all forms of denying Christ as Lord These things will be judged in due time. Read with me what Jude writes. He says, Though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Now notice, first of all, that Jude begins this section of his letter by saying this, now, I desire to remind you, though, you know, all things once for all. Now, let me ask you something. Why does he find the need to remind them of something that he's in the same sentence saying that they knew once for all? What's the need for the reminder? Well, actually, this is not a very good translation. This is the New American Standard translation. Normally, it's pretty accurate, but I believe the ESV gives a more accurate translation here, gives much more of the sense of what Jude is actually saying. The ESV says this, now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it. So what's Jude saying here? He's actually expressing the same sentiment as that which is attributed to a man named George Santayana. Anybody familiar with George Santayana? What's he most famous for saying? There you go. There you go. George Santayana most famously said, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Or those, it's been said variously, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Those who don't study history or know history are doomed to repeat it. The meaning's the same. And it's a pretty true sentiment, is it not? I mean, I thought immediately of Einstein's definition of insanity. What did Einstein say about insanity, allegedly? He said insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results. The person who doesn't study history is guilty of the same sort of fallacy. What they're doing, they're doing the same thing that history has pointed out time and time again does not work, does not bode well for them. does not escape the notice of God in this case, right? And the false teachers, those who are creeping in unnoticed, were not doing anything new. They were simply repeating the same things that had happened among the collected people of God forever. The church has always been plagued with false teachers. Old Testament Israel was always plagued with false prophets. It's nothing new. But the thing that could have prevented them from being plagued by this would be to remember how it happens, why it happens, and be on the lookout for it happening in their midst, right? It's kind of what Jude is saying here. As a history buff myself, I couldn't help but think of where we're at today in this country. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined years ago Someone like Bernie Sanders being a credible contender for the nomination of any party. Why? Yes, because my generation and generations before me, going all the way back to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, We learned early on that communism and socialism just don't work. And this is not a political message. Please understand where I'm going with this. It's demonstrably true. It's verifiable in any credible history of these United States that socialist tactics and communist approaches to things just don't work in a free market economy. Matter of fact, They don't work anywhere. I mean, the only way Russia is halfway solvent today is because they've adopted a sort of free market economy. It's not completely so, no, but they've leaned more that direction. China's in the same boat. China has adopted more capitalist means of growing their economy than ever thought imaginable in a communist country. But on the flip side, just look at Venezuela. You know, Venezuela was once one of the most oil-rich, wealthy nations on this earth. In the 70s, I think their GDP was somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 billion. And they had surpluses of oil. And they had a free market economy. And then this man named Hugo Chavez gets elected. And what does he do? He immediately begins to redistribute wealth and resources. Level the playing field. He says, you know, we're going to take everything the rich have. We're going to make them on the same footing. We're going to bring the poor up, bring the rich down, and we'll have a level playing field. What happened? Venezuela is literally in the toilet, economically. I mean, if they haven't already, they're that close to complete collapse. Why? Because of the introduction of socialist policies. And yet, in this country, we have a disturbing number of young people who are saying that we need the same things to happen here. Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because it's a prime example of the failure to remember history. If you're ignorant of history or if you've been spoon-fed this revisionist history that's so common in public schools today, if you've been fed the lie and you've adopted that as your own philosophy, we're condemned to suffer the same consequences. So Santiago was right. Those who fail to remember history are condemned to repeat it. What are we supposed to do with history? We're supposed to learn from it. We're supposed to grow from it. And some of you young people now can't envision a time when that was actually happening in this country. How many of you remember when this country was largely patriotic? How many of you remember when policemen were respected? and obeyed. Right? What's happened? That's it. But I say a lot of that sin is attributed to the failure to remember or to even be taught accurately the history of the world. Because these things are not new. This can be demonstrated again from a historical viewpoint. if you just care to look. Well, this is the same thing Jude's saying here. He's saying, look, I know you're aware of this. I know you're aware of the things I'm about to bring up to you, but let me just remind you. Now let me pause here for just a second to provide a small word of application that I think we would all do well to understand. We all have a tendency to forget things, don't we? Right? I mean, the older you get, especially, I can walk into a room now and forget completely why I'm there. I can dial the phone, you know, well, not so much now with a smartphone, but you know, I can see myself dialing an old rotary phone or push button phone and forgetting completely who I'm trying to call. How many times do you older people, and some of you younger people might do this, but how many times do you call somebody and you look at the, thing to see who it is you're calling. Yeah, see? You young people think we're crazy? It's partially true. But we all have a tendency to forget things. You know, kids, how many stupid things have you done in your life? Yeah, just the one. Let me ask you this. Kids, how many stupid things have you done in your life more than once? How many times have you done something and you've either gotten a spanking or you've been grounded for it and you do it again later? Why do you do that? Because you failed to learn from history. You failed to learn. You forgot the message that was behind the discipline that you received. And this can be a huge problem even for Christians. We know a lot from the word of God. But don't we still need to be reminded of those precious truths every step along the way? Ligon Duncan, I was reading a message of his where he made an excellent point on this very subject. This thing about our having to rehearse in our minds those things that we know. in order to keep them fresh, in order to not forget those important things. Listen to what he said. And he says this in regard to preaching. He says, good preaching doesn't always tell you something new about the Bible. There are those glorious occasions in Sunday school classes and Bible studies and in sermons where you're brought to an awareness of a biblical truth that's always been there, but you've never quite seen it like that before. And it explodes in your heart and it's a great joy to learn it. And that's good. But that doesn't happen in every sermon of Bible study or in Sunday school class. No, oftentimes what God's servants are doing is they are reminding you of the truth of God's word that you already know. They're putting you into remembrance of it. They're calling to your mind things that you have forgotten. They're helping you to relearn the truth of God's word. And so preaching is not designed always to teach us something new in every sermon, but very often to reinforce the truth which we have already learned. I think that's a good observation. Because how many times have you sat in sermons only to be thinking, well, I know this. I know what he's saying. I think we do that because in this entertainment culture that we've all grown accustomed to, we always want the new thing. And one of the pitfalls, especially for young pastors, I believe, is that they have a tendency, sometimes even a preoccupation, to want to constantly be uncovering those previously hidden nuggets of truth. As a matter of fact, they go into their study thinking, what can I tell these people that they don't know? What can I tell these people that will make them think that, you know, I'm the Indiana Jones of exegesis. I'm going to go deeply into these caves and bring out these nuggets of truth that nobody's ever seen before, you know, to the oohs and ahs. of their dazzled disciples. I mean, those things can be exciting, right? But what's needed more than anything is a return to and an emphasis on the old paths, a renewed focus on those things which we all know to be true. And at the same time, we need to remind ourselves of over and over again. And this is what Jude is calling his readers to consider. He's like, I'm not telling you anything new, but what I'm about to tell you, you need to look at in a different light. You need to understand that what I'm about to tell you about history, you need to now apply those same lessons to what I'm telling you about these false teachers. And what exactly did he want to remind them of? Well, he wanted them to recall the tremendous price that's to be paid by those who conduct themselves in the same way as these certain persons who had crept into the church unnoticed. He wanted them to stop and think, where has this happened before? Where has this type of activity happened before? And what were the consequences? And he does this by referring to three separate historical events. What's the first one? He mentions those who had been led out of Egypt, the Jews. Now again, you'll notice that Jew doesn't go into any historical detail here, right? This is proof positive that he's sure that they know what he's talking about, right? God had sovereignly led an entire captive people out of Egypt, but even among those who were so delivered physically, A great number of them did not believe. And what did God do to them? He destroyed them. He destroyed them for their unbelief. Now I realize there are some who attempt to use this as one of their examples of what they call the capriciousness of God. In other words, you know, God was content to lead them all out of Egypt, but then some of them, you know, changed his mood. You know, he all of a sudden rebelled against some of them that he had so graciously let out of captivity and he destroyed them. If that's not a capricious God, I don't know what is, they'll say, right? Well, they missed the point entirely. They have this idea that when God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, that he had promised to each and every one of them delivery to the promised land. It's not true. It's not true. They'll say, well, he promised them this land flowing with milk and honey, then he reneged on that promise by destroying the majority of them. But again, it's just not true. God gives us this example And I'll go one step further. God actually orchestrated the events of history as a means of displaying yet again, that his favor toward the Israelites was not in any way to be misunderstood as salvific favor. Does that make sense? This is proof positive that just because you were an Israelite, in captivity, in bondage to the Egyptians, and you were delivered from that bondage, that doesn't equate to salvation. It doesn't equate to election. If it equates to anything, it equates to God's common grace. Why did He pull any out? to save the remnant. He did it on behalf of the remnant. He pulled them all out just so that his remnant, the elect from among them, would be saved. Yes, there were those who benefited from that in much the same way as the unsaved farmer benefits from the same rain as the saved farmer. Again, it's speaking to God's omnibenevolence. He's good to those that he has no plan to save. As one commentator noted, the Israelites were physically delivered from bondage, not by their faith as a nation, but by God's covenant love and mercy toward the elect among them. And again, this is actually further proof of what Paul said regarding the true nature of Israel as children, not according to the flesh, but according to what? The promise. All of them were children of Israel by the flesh. But what did that merit them? Nothing. Who enjoyed the benefits of salvation? Only the remnant, only the elect among them. Think about this. This also is a statement about the hardness of the human heart without regeneration. Had all of them experienced physical delivery from Egypt? Yes. Had all of them during their wilderness wanderings experienced the providential care of God? Yes. They all had the same pillar of fire to keep them company at night. They all had the same pillar of smoke to lead them through the wilderness during the day. They all ate of the same manna. They all drank of the same water. All of them benefited in some way. And yet many of them still refuse to believe. How hard must the human heart be in its innate condition to look beyond all of those providences and still refuse to believe? Now we can take the hyper-Calvinistic approach and say, well, you know, they were condemned because God didn't elect them. But we know both things are true, don't we? Yes, they wouldn't believe because they couldn't believe, but that doesn't negate the fact that they would not believe. Well, how does that work? I don't know. Only God knows. As I've said countless times before, every man who is hell bound will stand before God on that day of judgment and know perfectly well that the reason they are hell bound is because of their refusal to believe. There's only one sin that condemns any man to hell. And that's what? Unbelief. Everything else spins from that. Well, the second example Jude gives is that of the angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode. Now the angels were created to serve one purpose. What's that? To serve. Who? God. Where? Heaven, right? But what happened to a third of them? They fell. When Satan rebelled, he took a third of them with him. Now, we don't know how that happened, really. We don't know when that happened, really. You know, I mean, this gets into that whole infralapsarianism versus superlapsarianism. Forget all that. It happened. And what did a lot of them do to seal their own fate as it were? We're told in Genesis six, that some of them, you can turn there, Genesis six, verse four. We're told there the Nephilim were on the earth in those days. and also afterward, when the sons of God, which is another name for angels, came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Not every fallen angel did this, of course. This was just some of them. These are the ones that Jude describes as being kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. The other fallen angels are believed to be the demons, that still prowl about with Satan and seek to tempt us and so on and so forth, right? But this particular subset of the angelic realm, this one third that fell, this subset of them came to this earth, cohabitated with the women of the earth and created this offspring called the Nephilim. What does the word Nephilim mean? Giant. Giant. Now let me just say this, giant is a relative term. I mean, I'm 5'9", but if I go to China, I'm a giant. Right? Because most of those guys are 5'2", 5'3". I mean, I can only think if some of you guys are really tall. You know, Bob Clark goes to China, and he's really probably going to be branded a Nephilim. You know, especially if you've never seen, some of these villages have never seen anybody over 5'2", and somebody 6'5 walks in, right? So just bear that in mind. When we see the word Nephilim, I don't want you to conjure up in your mind these like 14 feet tall Jack and the Beanstalk type of giants. We just don't know, right? But if you read Genesis 6 very carefully, you can see that this event, whatever it was, was one of the culminating events that led to God's destroying the earth and the flood. It was at this precise point, when this happened, that God said, enough, enough. Now, how is it that scholars have concluded that this is likely what Jude is referring to? Well, Jude himself gives us a clue. If you look down in verse 14, Jude makes a reference to a prophecy made by Enoch. Enoch. Most scholars believe that during the intertestamental period, when there were no prophets speaking, that one of the most commonly used works for historical reference, for theological reference, was this book called the Book of Enoch. It's called one of the pseudepigraphal books. Right? Doubtful that it was written by Enoch himself, but it bears his name. So there's really uncertainty as to the author. But this book was popular during the intertestamental period. It was also popular with the early church fathers, many of whom quote from the book of Enoch. So it's quite possible that Jude got his understanding of this particular event from the book of Enoch because guess what the book of Enoch spends a great deal of time talking about? About the angels who fell and why God destroyed the earth. Now am I advocating that you go and find a copy of the book of Enoch and study that on a par with scripture? No. No, it's not part of the canon, it's not meant to be understood as carrying equal weight to the other scriptures, but it is interesting that Jude himself would make reference to this, at least in terms of citing a prophecy, and then possibly carrying over some of what that book has to say about these angels. Just call it a reliable commentary of what they understood to be scriptural at that time. So that's the second example Jude gives of the consequences of disobedience and rebellion against God. Okay, in the first place, what do we have? What's the first example? Huh? Yes, children of Israel who were led out of bondage in Egypt, many of them rebelled, disobeyed, and died in disbelief. Second example, again, we have this this debacle with the fallen angels, and they too are kept in eternal bonds, Jude said, under darkness for the judgment of the great day. The third example Jude gives us is the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. And he actually makes a connection between the type of sin exhibited by the fallen angels and the sins committed by those living in Sodom and Gomorrah. Look again at what he writes. He says, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they, they who? the people mentioned just previously, the angels, right? Or it could be saying that the people in Sodom and Gomorrah behaved in the same way as the angels, right? They, in the same way as these, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, much in the same way as the angels before them, indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. And what was the fate of those in Sodom and Gomorrah? What price did they pay for their gross rebellion and disobedience against God? Yeah. What can only be described as a nuclear holocaust, basically. I mean, that's what a lot of commentators have equated that to. Lot's wife, you know, turned around and looked when she wasn't supposed to and not shielded from whatever it was, it turned her into what? Pillar of salt. It's kind of interesting that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they actually found people who had died in place and they were crystallized. They were so close to the blast that when it happened, they were actually crystallized. Have you ever seen Mount Vesuvius? the pictures of Pompeii, when that explosion happened, and everybody was encased in this crystalline structure. It's very haunting. I mean, go out on the internet and look up Pompeii. You'll see these, it's P-O-M-P-E-I-I, I believe, or E-I. I don't think there's two I's, yeah. But anyway, go look at some of those pictures, and it's fascinating. You know, there's a lady sitting there holding her baby, and she's just like, you know, like she's talking to the baby, She's made of what looks like salt. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah for their disobedience to God and their disbelief in His statutes as being intended to govern their behavior and their morality. What did that get them? Poof! And what happened to the souls of those who were in rebellion and disbelief? Well, the same as the rest. They were thrown into utter darkness to await God's eternal consequences for their behavior. It's very telling when one considers just how much God will tolerate. How much sin, let me ask you this, how much sin does it take to merit the same eternal punishment? One. How big a one? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We're going to look at this in verses 8-16 next week. We're going to talk about how Jude connects the dots by insisting that those certain men who had crept into the church unnoticed to spread error and to sow seeds of discord, how they will suffer the same fate as the notorious unrepentant sinners that we've just looked at. Now, again, we'll get to that study next week, Lord willing. But with the time that remains, let me just make a couple of important points of application concerning what we've looked at. What I just brought up was the first point I want to make. We live in a world where people People think that as long as I'm overall a good person, I should be able to get into heaven, right? You hear people talk all the time about so-and-so who has passed away, you know, whether they were a believer or not. Well, I don't know, but they were a really good person. You know, you'll hear other people even more insistent saying, well, you know, I have no doubt they're in heaven because they're just really good people. But what are even good, so-called good people condemned for? Is it those sins that they commit? It's the singular sin of unbelief. And I think, you know, we're reluctant or just uncomfortable with placing the simple garden variety unbeliever, who might be a really good person, and lumping them in with the heinous sinners of our day. We need to stop doing that. We need to sound the alarm, as it were. We need to tell people that it's not the heinous nature of their sins that separates them from God, it's their one sin of unbelief that will condemn them one day. I mean, think about how the children of Israel are categorized there in that one passage. They're categorized as either being saved or destroyed. And what's the litmus test there? What's the tipping point? Whether you're a believer or an unbeliever. Same thing's true of all mankind today. You'll fall into one of two camps. You're either believer, by God's grace, you're a believer unto salvation, or you're not. If you are, heaven awaits you. If you're not, you'll be destroyed. That's tough, isn't it? I mean, we just, even seasoned believers have a hard time, I think, wrapping their brains around the reality of that stark juxtaposition. It's an either or thing. You're not almost saved ever in your life. You either are or you aren't. Now my second point is related to the first. And it's this. Let me just ask you a question. Are we or are we not living in a day very similar to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah? I mean, look at what passes for pride these days. They have these pride festivals. I don't even have to say who they are. But in the name of being proud, they have these festivals where they go out and celebrate unrepentant sin. And the world just watches. The Christian world just watches. I'm not saying we're all to be militantly involved in activism against those sort of things. Sometimes that's more harmful than it is good. But do you really pray for the trajectory of this country? Seriously? Or do we kind of isolate ourselves in our little cocoons and, you know, we're kind of comfortable with where we're at and so that's good. I tend to agree with something someone once said, and of course this is tongue-in-cheek, but if God doesn't very soon judge this country, He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah. And again, I say that tongue-in-cheek, He doesn't owe anybody an apology. But the important thing to take away from that is we need to realize, we need to look around us and see what's going on and how much of an affront it is to a thrice holy God. And we need to sound the alarm. We need to be much more fervent in carrying the gospel out beyond these four walls to a people who are literally dying. many of them unaware even of the seriousness of the conditions that are happening right now. We should be disseminating the gospel at a fevered pitch. We should be loving one another with a love that's unrecognizable by the outside world. We should be seeking to be accountable to one another to such a degree that there's not one thing that we don't know intimately about each other that might help us feed each other and grow each other. But are we doing that? On a smaller scale, when we sense that someone might be trying to infiltrate this church, trying to spread seeds of doubt and sow disunity and discord among us. What do we do? Do we sound the alarm? Folks, that's not gossip. I mean, I can't imagine a flock of sheep into which a ravenous wolf enters and all the other sheep just kind of stare at it and say, well, it's not my place. It's not my place to sound the alarm. What happens before long? It'll be your place. You'll be the wolf's place setting, right? These are all serious conditions, serious warnings. We're told repeatedly in Scripture, we see it throughout church history, the dangers, the little telltale things that can literally bring a church down. And my question is, how are we at avoiding a repeat of history? Don't rest on your laurels. Don't live under this false notion that everything's as good as it can be, because it's not. I mean, I don't have any alarms to ring or any horror stories to tell. Don't get me wrong. Objectively speaking, we're in a good place. I think we are. But the minute we let our guard down and stop noticing certain things, we do so to our own demise. Be on the alert. Don't just look out for those certain persons. Look out for those certain scenarios. You all heard the horror stories about what causes a lot of churches to implode. Start looking around and asking yourselves, does this body mean enough to me to help prevent that? And I'm not, it's not an accusation. I'm not saying you're not doing that. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm just saying, don't drop your guard. Be vigilant. Be on the lookout. And neither am I saying to suspect everybody, right? Don't be looking under every rock to find a heretic. I mean, we're not going to engage in heresy hunting per se. But just be aware. Be aware. Well, again, we'll pick this up next week. Same chapter. There's only one. different set of verses.