So turn with me in your Bibles once again to the book of Jude, the book of Jude, chapter one. I always wanted to say that, right? I mean, there is only one chapter, but I feel funny saying Jude verses, you know, eight through 16, but we're gonna read verses eight through 16 in just a minute. Let me just give you a, little brief bit of context here as I pointed out last week. In this section Jude is actually returning to his thoughts concerning these certain persons that he first mentioned in verse 4 as having crept into the church unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for condemnation, ungodly persons who turned the grace of God into licentiousness and deny the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You'll recall from our last study that Jude gave three examples from history that were intended to prove that such deeds will in fact be judged by God. He then continues in verse eight saying this, yet in the same way these men also by dreaming defile the flesh and reject authority and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you. But these men revile the things which they do not understand, and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts, when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these men that Enoch and the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts. They speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage." In our last study, you'll recall, we talked about these certain men these men that the KJV renders as filthy dreamers. Those who continue to defile the flesh, Jude says, and to reject authority, even to the extent of being so bold as to revile angelic majesties. As Jude tells us, even Michael the archangel, the most powerful, the highest ranking of all the angelic realm, was not so naive as to think that he could get away with this sort of thing. In his dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, Michael would not pronounce a railing judgment against Satan, but said, the Lord rebuke you. Now, before we pick up where we left off last week, let me just say a couple of things about Michael, the archangel, because he does seem to be misunderstood by many. First of all, what is an archangel? The word Archangel itself denotes an angel who exceeds all others in terms of rank or precedence. The word itself is used here and it's also used in only two other places in the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians 4.16 where Paul exclaims for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. Now notice what Paul says there. He refers to the archangel as the archangel. He uses the definite article. He doesn't say an archangel. This is one of the reasons we believe that there is only one archangel. And we do know that scripturally speaking, there is only one archangel who is called by name and that's the angel Michael. A lot of people will say, well, what about Gabriel? Well, Gabriel is undoubtedly one of the highest ranking angels. He's at least mentioned by name and we see his mighty deeds, but he's not called an archangel in scripture. Only Michael is called the archangel in scripture. As a matter of fact, the other mention of Archangel actually comes from the book of Revelation where once again we recognize that there's something unique about him in terms of his preeminence, in terms of his being the highest ranking angel. Now here's the question I left you with last week. If the highest ranking among the angels was careful not to personally rebuke Satan, what makes these certain men who had crept into the church unnoticed? What makes them think that they can revile angelic majesties? Where does that kind of attitude come from? What makes these kinds of false teachers think that they're any match for Satan and or his demons? Well, Jude tells us in verses 10 through 16. Consider what he says first in verse 10. He says, but these men revile the things which they do not understand, and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. That's the key phrase. That's the answer to the question of who these men think they are in reviling angelic majesties. These men are who they are because they don't understand. They just don't understand. But the real problem runs much deeper than that if you think about it. Ignorance is one thing, right? I mean, we're all ignorant to some degree about a great number of things. None of us understands perfectly, especially in the context in which we're speaking tonight, none of us understands perfectly the word of God. There are mysteries there. And so to some degree, we're all ignorant. So ignorance is one thing, but it's an entirely different thing to consistently act upon that ignorance as if you're not ignorant at all. To try to cancel out one's ignorance with arrogance and pride and conceit is exactly what these false teachers were attempting to do. They were saying that everyone else around them was ignorant. They were the sole possessors of the truth and they tried to lead as many astray as possible instead of acknowledging their ignorance in certain respects and learning and growing in their knowledge of the things of God. This type of ignorance, this unchecked, prideful, arrogant ignorance invariably leads to destruction. Here Jude likens these individuals to unreasoning animals. What does that mean? Well, I think we see a very humorous example of this in the small little loud mouth Chihuahua who thinks he can take on the great day, right? Have you ever wondered about that? You put a Chihuahua in the room with a Rottweiler, And that little Chihuahua will act as if he's able to tear that Rottweiler up. That Chihuahua has no idea that he's basically just an hors d'oeuvre. An hors d'oeuvre, a chew toy, an appetizer for the larger dog. Why does he act that way? He acts that way because that's in accordance with his animal instincts. You know, he doesn't know what he doesn't know until it's proven to him that he doesn't know it. These false teachers were the same way. They were acting according to their flesh. They were acting according to their prideful animalistic instincts. And they did so as demonstrated by their reviling of angelic majesties despite the fact that they did not know what kind of power they were actually dealing with. Even in many charismatic churches today, YouTube is full of examples of this, where you'll see people in charismatic churches running around casting demons out of each other, not in the name of Christ, but because they feel like they've been given this power and authority. Remember, a lot of charismatics today insist that the apostolic gifts are available to every believer. And they take very seriously this permission as they see it, to go out into the world and cast out demons, right? If you ask them about doing it in Jesus' name, they'll simply argue, well, you don't have to say that you're doing it in Jesus' name, you just have to do it with the power and authority of Christ that's yours. Folks, that's dangerous. They have no idea what they're, attempting to confront, right? It's a very serious thing. Look at Acts chapter 19. What many people are ignorant of is the fact that in doing these kinds of things, they run the risk of suffering irreparable harm. Acts chapter 19. Here in verses 11 through 16, we read this. God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out. But also some of the Jewish exorcists who went from place to place attempting to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus saying, I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches. See, they were playing the part of something they had not been called to. They were trying to mimic what the Apostle Paul was doing. They wanted the fame. They wanted the notoriety. They wanted the attention of those around them as being at least on Paul's level with these powers. Read on. Seven sons of one Sceva, Jewish chief priests, were doing this. And the evil spirit answered and said to them, I recognize Jesus. And I know about Paul, but who are you? And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them and subdued all of them and overpowered them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded." They didn't understand what kind of power they were confronting. They had no idea. that if these demons would have been of a mind to do it, they could have very well killed the sons of Sceva. These seven sons were attempting, again, to mimic the Apostle Paul, who had been given certain apostolic authority to do the same sorts of things Jesus himself had done. The problem was that they lacked both the personal relationship with Christ and his commission to do those sorts of things. Their ignorance nearly cost them their lives. Now, what does Jude say should be our response to such individuals? Jude says in verse 11, going back to our text, woe to them. For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah." Anytime this word woe is used, it's used to indicate or to remind the one to whom it is pronounced that God's judgment is certain. Whenever you hear in scripture someone saying woe to you, it's a pronouncement of the coming judgment of God. Right? You might recall from Matthew chapter 23 verses 13 and following where Jesus himself pronounces eight woes against the Pharisees. If you're not familiar with that, I would encourage you to look at that. Of course, Jesus is pointing out the many sins that they had committed, unrepentant sins that were sure to result in God's eternal judgment. And Jude is announcing the same fate for these false teachers. Why? Well, he cites three particular infractions or types of infractions that correspond to actual historical events. First, he says that these false teachers had gone the way of Cain Now, when we think about this, we automatically think of Cain's most notorious act, and that was killing his brother Abel. But is that what Jude is talking about? No. No, that's not what Jude is talking about. Yes, Cain did kill his brother Abel, but Jude's talking about something entirely different here. What does the context fit more exactly the murdering of Abel or something else. I think it actually fits better what happened before and what actually resulted in the murder of Abel. What was Cain trying to do? What was his main sin? Does anybody know? If you were to put a heading over it, what would that sin have been? Presumption? That's close, yeah. Pride, that's close. Close. If you were to put a heading on this, Cain's sin was one of attempting to establish his own rules in religion. He thought he knew better. He thought that he could do something and literally pull the wool over God's eyes. He thought he could take matters into his own hands, circumvent what God required, and supply his own method to religion. You'll recall our studies of Hebrews 11 in verse 4, we're told that by faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. And if you look back at Genesis 4, you'll see that when it came time for Cain and Abel, to bring sacrificial offerings to the Lord. Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. That's all it tells us. The fruit of the ground. That is an intentionally blasé passage. Because look how Abel's sacrificial gift is described. What did Abel bring? We're told that Abel brought the firstlings of his flock, and the fat portions as well." So Abel's offering was sacrificial. He brought the firstling of his flock, that is the preeminent animal from his flock. And not only did he bring the firstling of his flock, he also included the fat portions, which would have been extremely valuable. What did they do with the fat portion of their meat? They made soap out of it, they made... Yep, they would burn it in the sacrifice. But aside from the sacrifice, what made it so precious? Why was Abel's gift so sacrificial? It was sacrificial because that fat could be used for a number of purposes. They could have made soap with it. They could have made oil to burn their lambs with it. They could have done numerous things with that fat. So an example of the sacrificial aspect of Abel's offering over that of Cain was that he gave not only the animal, he didn't keep anything back. He gave all of it to God. And what are we told again about Cain's offering? He brought from the fruit of the ground. Now the interesting thing here, another aspect of the sacrificial offering of Abel is that Abel gave that which could never be replaced. Right? I mean, once you give that animal away, you'll never have that animal again. But what can Cain do? You give of the fruit of the ground, what happens? You just grow more. So you see the value of Abel's gift was far and away above that of Cain. Now there's a lesson here in terms of something we can relate to today. What does this tell us about what God demands of all of His followers, all of His true followers. He demands that we give Him our all. He demands that we give Him our all sacrificially. In other words, our worship of the Most High God should be committed to Him as those who love Him with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, all our mind, As Romans 12, 1 says, we are to give ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto him, which is our reasonable service. Abel's offering pictured that. And not only that, Abel's offering was an offering that required the loss of a life. indicating in a lot of commentators' minds that Abel at least had a rudimentary form of faith which conveyed to him that there must be a sacrifice made and that sacrifice must include the loss of life. Some people even speculate that he was able to see beyond. in much the same way as Abraham did. Remember what Jesus said about Abraham. Abraham saw my day and he was glad. Well, in what way did Abraham see his day? Well, when Abraham went to sacrifice his son and God instead provided a lamb for the sacrifice, what did Abraham name that place? Jehovah Jireh. The Lord will provide. and his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. A lot of people think that in the same way even that early on Abel understood that what he was giving was in some way that which was required of God to stay in God's continued good graces. Now whether or not he saw that as Having an ultimate fulfillment later, we don't know. But he at least recognized that in order to appease the wrath of the thrice holy God, somebody had to die. Something had to die. Cain, not so much. So, how do we relate this back to our text tonight? What connection can we make? How had these false teachers that Jude speaks of, how had they gone the way of Cain? Anybody know? In the same way they had begun to set up their own rules. They began to disregard what God says about how he is to be worshipped, and they established their own parameters, they established their own way of worshipping. Instead of worshipping God in accordance with his word, they more or less made things up as they went along in order to make worship more palatable, more acceptable. Now let me ask you this, are there not the same kind of people in the church today who do this very thing. This is kind of why I am always talking about the need to be with the saints during worship. Because so many people today Don't come to church because they wish to be consistent in showing forth their love for... Hey, mic still works. Recorder still works. Ah, look at that. See, that's God emphasizing my point. The point is that a lot of people today, and I don't know, again, I don't know if this applies to anybody here. It might not. But you see it all the time. A lot of people go to church just to fill a square. They go to church to feel better about themselves. They go to church because of what they can get in terms of preaching, in terms of feel-good fellowship, in terms of any number of things that help them feel better or more fulfilled about themselves. That's not the object of our worship. Our worship is such that this is the place where we come to show God, that's what the word worthship means, to show God how worthy He is to receive our worship. We come to give, not to receive. And when we come to give, we've been commanded to come and give of ourselves in a sacrificial way. And that means that coming to church even could be a sacrifice for some people. It could hurt. Sacrifice means doing that which is not convenient all the time. It means doing that which, you know, oftentimes you'd rather be doing something else. And yet I wonder how many come just out of a sense of duty or obligation or, again, in need of personal fulfillment. And this is true of some in this church. Some see nothing wrong with routinely forsaking the assembly. And in doing that, what you're doing, you're making up your own rules. If you develop an attitude in which church is optional, You've made up your own rules because God says in his word that worship is not optional. The corporate worship of the body of Christ is not optional. That's why we're told so many times in scripture that this is our duty, this is our responsibility, this is our sacrificial offering to God. And if you've created this paradigm in which church attendance is optional, you've gone the way of Cain. I'll extend that even further. If you make any decision about anything relating to your conduct as a believer that doesn't square with this, I don't care what it is, you've gone the way of Cain. And if you've gone the way of Cain, Jude would say to you and me, woe to you. It's that serious. Well, pastor, you make, you know, you make it sound like missing church is the end of the world. It is. Or maybe the beginning of the end for you. That's why I'm always harping on that. And I don't think I'll ever stop harping on it until we have years and years of consistent attendance by a people of God who love Him with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind, and are intent on coming here even when it's inconvenient, even when it hurts, even when it's impractical. to make that sacrifice. And yet there are many all over who insist on following the internal leading of the flesh as opposed to the Holy Spirit. Make sure that you don't go the way of Cain in your own worship. If you say you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, you better mean it. And if you find that you're deficient in any one of those areas, heart, soul, strength, and mind, go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him, as David did, Lord, search my heart and find out if there be any hurtful way in me, anything that might detract from what should be pure and undefiled worship. Well, it doesn't get any better. That's just the first characteristic of these false teachers. Not only had they gone the way of Cain, secondly Jude writes, for pay they had rushed headlong into the error of Balaam. Now what does that refer to? Do what? Yeah, it's not good. That's an understatement. Balaam is mentioned three times in the New Testament. Each time he's mentioned in the context of error or deceit. In 2 Peter 2.15, Peter writes of the way of Balaam. Revelation 2.14, Jesus speaks of the doctrine of Balaam. Now what was Balaam's error? Balaam believed that the illusion of godliness could be the source of great gain, financial gain, personal gain. And not only did he believe in this personally, he led others astray with the same philosophy. The same was true of the false teachers of Jude's day. They had begun to accumulate wealth through their deceptive teaching, and they were teaching others to do the same. I went online today to figure out the answer to a question that I've had for years now. I want to know, how much is the Roman Catholic Church worth? I read several articles in which the reporters were trying to figure this out. Every one of them said that the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church is inestimable. Nobody knows. It's beyond anything in your wildest imagination. I mean, we could see this most prominently in the Middle Ages. Remember when the Pope started gathering, confiscating all the lands around Europe as papal lands? It's called the Great Papal Land Grab. Much of Europe today is owned by the Roman Catholic Church, the land at least, that churches sit on, that their places of higher learning sit on, and so on and so forth. They're engaged in all kinds of industry and business, the stock market and so on and so forth. Now, how did they make their money? They made most of it through those papal land grabs. They made a lot of it through forced tithing, the sale of indulgences. Do you know that the sale of indulgences The proceeds from the sale of indulgences were used to build St. Peter's Basilica. I don't know if you've seen that. Look at it sometime on the internet. It's unfathomable to think that so many people were duped into believing, at great expense I might add, that if they just paid money to the Roman Catholic Church, they could actually spring their loved ones out of purgatory or bypass purgatory altogether. You could buy an indulgence, a plenary indulgence for yourself and ensure that you would not pass go, you would not collect $200. You'd skip purgatory altogether and go straight to heaven. I've got a method that would have cost them nothing, become a Protestant. Right? But again, they're among the wealthiest conglomerates on the earth. But we dare not be so hard on them because all you have to do is look around even in the evangelical world and you see the same sorts of things, right? You see pastors making multi-million dollar salaries. I believe at last count, who was it? Who's the guy who's now a billionaire? No. Kenneth Copeland. Kenneth Copeland. Yeah, with the big Gulf Stream or whatever it is. He's worth over a billion dollars. And how did he get that? He got it by not paying the electric bill. He hoarded all that money for the electric bill. No. No, he did it off the backs of the people who support that kind of ministry, convincing them that they too can be just as wealthy as he is. I even heard him say one time that God wants certain people of his anointing to be wealthy while the others have to do without. Yeah, it's just a fact of life. Yeah, he deserves it because of his stature. Those people have gone the way of Balaam. That's exactly what Jude is talking about here. These are people who are in it for no other reason than the possibility of a lucrative lifestyle. And I'll leave it to the Lord to decide who those individuals are, but it's not hard to tell who some of them are, right? Yeah, Steve. It's interesting that 1 Thessalonians talks about the brute beasts. Yeah. Yeah. You know, anytime the Lord chooses to speak to you through a donkey, you might be in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, this is a danger that these false teachers found themselves in and they were also promoting. in others to follow in their footsteps. There's a third indictment. Not only had these individuals who had crept into the church unnoticed gone the way of Cain and fallen hook, line, and sinker into Balaam's error, we're also told that many of them had also perished in the rebellion of Korah. Now that's not literal, right? You know the story of Korah? Korah and Abiram. decided that there was nothing really special about Moses and Aaron. Korah told Moses, all of God's people are consecrated. All of God's people are holy. And therefore it's not just you and Aaron who are able to go into the holy place. We can go too. And what did Moses say? He said, well, that's well and good. Get your own incense, light it on fire. You take it in there. He offered strange fire to God, and what happened? The ground opened up and swallowed them. Now he had managed to convince 250 Israelites to join his cause, and the ground didn't open up and swallow them, but guess what happened immediately thereafter? Fire came from heaven and devoured all of them, right? Now there's a happy end to that story. You've read of the sons of Korah. They are much celebrated in scripture as having learned a lesson from their father and made good decisions about worshiping the Lord. So in what way did these false teachers of Jude's day do the same sort of thing? Well, it should be easy given that we've just talked about the way of Cain and the error of Balaam. In much like The same way Korah set himself up as something he wasn't, the false teachers in Jude's day were doing the same thing. They were setting themselves up as God's anointed. They were setting themselves up as genuine believers. They were setting themselves up as those called by the Lord to teach when that was not the case. And so what does Jude say? Their fate is the same as the fate of Korah after his rebellion. So again, they would pay the ultimate price for being phony professors of that to which they were not entitled. Well, Jude goes on to present six additional metaphors, verses 12 and 13, describing these false teachers. We're going to cover those in our next time together. Until then, let me just throw this out as a discussion question. What parallels Do you see between these certain men who had made inroads into the church of Jude's day and what you see in the church at large today?