Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad. God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. No, alert, he's saying, within your assemblies, there are those who are not attached to this faith. And they do not share this attachment to our God and Savior. They have slipped in among you secretly, but they are godless people. And this is what they do. They change the grace of our God. That is his kindness, his loving kindness, his free salvation into a license for immorality. And they deny Jesus, Messiah Jesus, our only sovereign and Lord. Now that's the heart of this letter. It's up and center at the very beginning. And then what he's going to do in the rest of the letter, he's going to lay it out by examples. He's going to go back in to what we call the Old Testament, which would have simply been the Bible of that day. He's going to go back and look at what God did in the past and how certain people were brought under judgment because they were not true to God. They were not truly, as we would say in our day, converted. They weren't truly attached by a living thing. He says, although you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. He delivered all these people, but among those people, that great multitude, there were only a handful who believed. And in the end, do you know how many people that came out of Egypt went into Canaan? Forty years later, there were only two who crossed over the River Jordan and set foot in the Promised Land. And guess what? They weren't Moses and they weren't Aaron. They were two others, Joshua and Caleb, two of the spies, who had faith when the others did not have faith in God. They were the ones who entered. The others fell in the wilderness. Many of them, by natural death, many of them, but many of them were also, what, under the judgment of God because of their sin. The point is that all those who were delivered initially were not the ones who were brought into the land because there's a weeding process that separates the true from the false. He says, already you know all this, but I want to remind you about what happened to those who were brought out of Egypt, but later, They did not believe. They did not believe. And so they were destroyed in the wilderness because of their unbelief. And then he cites other examples. I'm not going to go through all of those, but as he gives those examples, he comes down to another main point and is found in verse eight. In the very same way, I said in the main point, but that's really not correct. It's, a main application or a main identifier. In the very same way, these dreamers, who are these dreamers? It's these men. These people who slipped into the congregation. These dreamers pollute their own bodies. They reject authority. They slander celestial beings. The particular sins that these people are guilty of. He keeps talking about these people, these people, and he identifies him. So he's not calling them out by name. What he's doing is he's calling them out by their actions, by their teaching that results in contrary actions to the gospel, to living a life, though they're within the assembly of God, but living a life that denies the gospel and that denies the Lord himself. It says in verse 11, another major verse, woe to them. They've taken the way of Cain. They rushed for profit into Balaam's era. They've been destroyed in Korah's rebellion. So to understand, I had to go back to these stories of Cain. and Balaam and Korah that are recorded for us in what we call the Old Testament. And then he goes on to give further descriptions of them. These men, these people, are blemishes at your love feast. You see, it's on this basis, internal basis, that we know these are people within the church. internal enemies, not external, because they're eating with you on the Lord's day at your love feast, and they eat without any qualms. They're not at all concerned about the sin that consumes their lives. On the external, they're just like you, except that internally and in their behavior, they are not living the faith. And though it may be known, not only to them, but even known to others, That just doesn't bother them. They're eating, feasting with you without any qualms whatsoever. He says this in Lexham, despite that, in the same way also these men, because of their dreams to file the flesh, that has to do with their sexual immorality, reject authority, the authority of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that blaspheme, majestic beings are spiritual beings. And there's all kinds of contrast in between these people and correlations between the wicked ways of the Old Testament and their behavior as well. Then it says, Verse 11, woe to them for they traveled in the way of Cain and they have given themselves up to the Arab Balaam for gain. He perished in the rebellion of Korah. They're rebellious. They're self-centered. They're in for the money. They feed themselves and not the people of God. Now some of these are leaders because it calls him about shepherds. So there are false shepherds. There were false shepherds in Israel. Ezekiel and Jeremiah talk about them in their prophetic writings. But there were also false shepherds in the New Testament. People that were raised up into leadership, but they are not living the faith and they are not teaching the truth. Instead, they are leading people astray. And they do so because they're motivated for money, And because they are rebellious at heart, they're traveling the way of Cain. And the way of Cain is that of denying the welfare of your brother, in fact, in ways of spiritually committing murder. But they feast with you without reverence, their hidden wreaths that your love feasts, caring for themselves, waterless clouds carried away by winds and late autumn trees without fruit. So you see what they are? They are spiritually dead and they are fruitless in their spiritual lives. They are within the assemblies. Now, it's not that the assemblies are overrun with them. There are certain ones and they have slipped in unaware. But you must become alert to them by identifying false teaching, and false living contrary to the gospel. Show that you can contend for the faith. And how do we do that? Well, he gets to that later in the letter, in verse 20. But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. So he gives them the positive. This is how you do it. You live this positive Christian life. And in doing so, you must build yourselves up in your most holy faith. Now faith here is the truth. It's the Christian truth about God and Christ. He's talking about the faith, the one that's been given and transmitted to the church, the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. This is why doctrine is so important in the church. We must teach Christian doctrine. We must teach the fundamentals, and not only the fundamentals, but those things that are built on the fundamentals. We must teach the wholeness of our faith and how it holds together. We must build ourselves up on this holy faith by meditating upon it, by teaching it, by rehearsing it, by singing it, et cetera. And by praying, praying in the Holy Spirit, praying under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And we must keep ourselves in the love of God. We must remind ourselves constantly of the love of God, how much he loves us. because it's in light of his love for us that we, out of love for him, can live the Christian life consistently. And we look with an eager forwardness to the return of our Lord Jesus Christ when we shall be ushered into the fullness of eternal life. We shall be resurrected from the dead and live with him and all those who believe in him in the new heaven and the new earth for all eternity. And then he indicates what we must do to those who have been influenced by these false people, these people. Now, some of these people may become converted, so we may pray for them. They may one day awaken and come into the faith. But what about those who are in the faith, but these people, by their false teaching and by their false lifestyle, have encouraged these others to wander away from the right behavior and right belief. Well, he talks about that in verse 22. You're to have mercy on those who doubt. When those are influenced by these false ways or begin to doubt, we must have mercy on them. Deal with their doubts by trying to teach them the truth. The others you must save, you must deliver by snatching them from the fire. This is sort of an allusion to what happened to Lot. It's Sodom, you know. God sent his angel, but Lot and his wife, they had trouble leaving. And so the angel grabbed them up, as it were, and rushed them out of the city. before destruction fell and though the wife she couldn't separate her heart from from it so she looked back and she was caught in the avalanche of of salt that came down into the place and she was turned into a pillar of of salt and have mercy on those on others with fear, hating even the tunic stained by flesh. You see, when you wander away, like if you get engaged in sexual immorality, believers can do that. They can be engaged in behavior that's contrary to the gospel. They may do so for a while. We may wander off from the path, but God will bring us back. And when he brings us back, we may have struggles trying to get reestablished into faith. And so, as he were others, The tunic, our clothing is stained by what we've been through and what we're still struggling with. We must have mercy on these with fear. This is how we're to treat people. We're to treat them in these three ways. This is how we handle, how we contend for the faith. We contend for it individually for ourselves by building ourselves up amongst holy prayer, by praying in the Holy Spirit and keeping ourselves on the love of God. And we deal with it in the lives of others who've been influenced. We do so by having mercy on those who doubt, and giving them the teaching, and showing them the example. Others, we snatch them from the fire, as it were, we drag them away from it. And others, we have mercy on them as though they've come back, but they're still struggling, and their clothing has been stained, their tunics have been stained by what they've been through, and by what they've been exposed to, but we must have mercy with fear, restoring them to the faith. This is what we are to do. Now, he concludes with a glorious doxology. We're so grateful. He began the letter in glory and he ends it in glory, although he had to go down this other pathway in between. This is the glorious doxology. That's a word of praise offered up to God. Now, to the one who is able to protect you from stumbling, and make you to stand before his glory blameless with exaltation. To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, authority before all time and now and for all eternity. Amen. This is the letter of Jude. And I hope just this overview, looking at the forest, might help you as you go back now and read it more carefully, paragraph by paragraph. And think, think as you read, because we're commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ to love the Lord our God with our mind, not just with our emotion, not just with our body, not just with our physical strength, but with our mind, with our emotions, with everything that we are, Engage in God's word. Strenuously study the word of God. In so doing, you're worshiping God with your mind, and that brings him pleasure. In addition, that brings you strength. This has been Wayne Conrad. This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible Insights. Thank you for listening. And if you've been blessed by this broadcast, I invite you to please make a comment on the broadcaster that you're listening to me on. Until the next time, may the blessings of almighty God, the inspirer of his word, be with you.