LETTERS THAT BURN
Jude
Part 19
“The Footprints of Apostasy”
Last time we covered the first 4 verses of Jude and closed by looking at how the apostates Jude warns against are ungodly, even going so far as to deny the Lord Jesus Himself.
This time we’ll pick it up with Jude pointing out the apostasy that began in his day, and that he says will overwhelm the church in the Last Days.
He uses three illustrations to highlight apostasy—first the PILGRIM age, tracing the judgment of Israel as God’s pilgrim people in the wilderness; then the PRIMEVAL age, going back to God’s judgment in the days of Noah; and finally the PRESENT age as he foresees the decadence of the end-times.
He starts with the PRIMEVAL age and the wilderness wanderers:
1:5 “But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
Two kinds of people came out of Egypt. First, those who were soundly saved. It says, “…the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt.” So Jude begins with the genuinely saved. God put them under the blood, and brought them through the water (the Red Sea).
They were saved by the blood—the blood of the lamb placed in obedience on their doorposts. The death angel passed over them when he saw the blood. So they are a type of the NT church, saved by the Blood of the Lamb—Jesus Christ!
But at the same time there were those who were supposedly saved. It says that God “afterward destroyed those that believed not.” Among the saved were the phonies, the tares growing next to the wheat. The Bible calls those that followed Moses out of Egypt “a mixed multitude” (Ex. 12:38).
These were the people that caused the most trouble. They criticized and complained, attacked Moses and Aaron, and refused to enter the Promised Land.
This mixed multitude had joined the ranks of Israel after the overthrow of Pharaoh. They were unbelievers who knew nothing about redemption by the blood of the lamb. They simply decided to join the winning team at the time.
Jude is drawing a comparison between this mixed multitude and the apostates of the church. They are among us, but not of us. John writes,
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us” (1 John 2:19).
The mixed multitude of Israel perished in the wilderness under the judgment of God—“Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness” (Numbers 14:28-29). Jude’s point is that, as it happened to the apostates in the wilderness, so shall it happen to Last Days apostates.
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Jude’s next illustration is of the PRIMEVAL age and the fall of the angels:
1:6 “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;”
We know that, before the creation of the world, there was a great rebellion in heaven. Lucifer, a mighty archangel of God, along with one third of the heavenly host, rebelled against God.
When they rebelled, Jude says they left their “proper domain,” which means they didn’t stay within the limits of the authority God originally gave them. They broke out in rebellion and thought to literally overthrow God!
Isaiah describes Satan’s rebellion:
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
13 For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit” (Isa.14:12-15).
We know that Satan also took a third of the angels with him in his rebellion by two passages in Revelation that read, “Suddenly a red Dragon appeared, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail drew along behind him a third of the stars, which he plunged to the earth” (12:3).
And then:
“So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (12:9).
This is what Jude means by saying the angels “kept not their first estate.”
This apparently happened before the Creation because Eve is approached by an already fallen Tempter.
Jude’s point is that just as there were two types of people delivered from Egypt—the saved and the supposedly but not truly saved, there are also two types of angels—those who remained true to God, and those that rejected Him and are being reserved in chains awaiting the Judgment.
The apostates Jude is exposing in his letter are like them. They are like the mixed multitude that hitched a ride out of Egypt with the truly saved, and like the angels that left their place of obedience to rebel against God.
They have a “form of godliness” but it is only form. They do not know Christ.
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And next, Jude turns his attention to the people of Sodom:
1:7 “as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Jude says that, as the angels did not stay within their God-given place but broke out in rebellion to go where they had no business going, this is what the people of Sodom did on the moral plane.
God has given sexual boundaries that are crystal clear in Scripture. Man is to be with woman, and woman to be with man. The sins of homosexuality and lesbianism are forbidden in Scripture, as are other sexual sins like adultery, fornication, pedophilia, bestiality, prostitution, and so on. To go there is to transgress a forbidden sexual barrier given by God Himself. God’s judgment of the twin cities makes crystal clear what He thinks of this sin.
Commentator John Phillips writes, “In Sodom and Gomorrah, a homosexual lifestyle was not only practiced but also permitted and promoted; it was not only permitted but also protected by law…In Sodom, the unnatural became the natural, the rule rather than the exception.”
He continues, “When a society passes laws to protect the “rights” of people to practice these perversions, society becomes partner to their vileness and is, therefore, ripe for judgment.”
And Sodom certainly did fall under God’s judgment. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah now lie buried in the depths of the Dead Sea! While in their heyday they were important trade routes and very prosperous, they are a mute reminder that God will not wait forever for a people to repent.
So…Jude makes the case that the apostates of his day—and those we will encounter in abundance in the last days—are similar to the mixed multitude that followed Moses, the fallen angels that left their place, and the people of Sodom that crossed the moral line in the sand and fell into judgment. They are “set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
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Next, he shows how these apostates (as we are witnessing abundantly in our society today) scorn the moral structures of a healthy society and rail against authority:
1:8 “Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.”
Notice how the apostates in Jude’s crosshairs “reject authority.” This means they cast aside the authorities God has put in place—parental, governmental, civic, law enforcement, the authority of Scripture. They hate God-given authority wherever it appears.
They “speak evil of dignitaries.” I have been struck by a change in our culture. There is a growing willingness to openly mock and speak evil of heavenly beings and that which is sacred; especially amongst those in the entertainment industry. We regularly hear them curse Christianity, mock Christians, and blaspheme God.
They readily speak evil of people of honor, people of character and faith. And they even speak evil of heavenly dignitaries—including angels, Christ, and God Himself.
Nothing is more characteristic of our age than the way people verbally abuse those in high places. It is one of the indicators of our tragic drift from God. So-called “stars” and “starlets” routinely take the name of Christ in vain and have even blasphemed Him on national television when receiving their awards at awards shows. Sadly, no one says a word. The networks let it fly.
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Let’s pick up the next few verses out of the LB, starting again with verse 8, for it’s very self-explanatory:
“Yet these false teachers carelessly go right on living their evil, immoral lives, degrading their bodies and laughing at those in authority over them, even scoffing at the Glorious Ones. 9 Yet Michael, one of the mightiest of the angels, when he was arguing with Satan about Moses’ body, did not dare to accuse even Satan, or jeer at him, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” 10 But these men mock and curse at anything they do not understand, and like animals, they do whatever they feel like, thereby ruining their souls.’”
Jude points out that even the mighty archangel Michael, when Satan was somehow attempting to attack the deceased body of Moses, refused to rail against him, probably due to Satan’s former dignity as Lucifer, the light-bearer.
In submission to God Michael simply said, “The Lord rebuke you” as if to say, “I will not stoop to your level by railing against a dignitary, even a fallen one.”
Unlike Michael, these rebel apostates do not understand the value of heavenly things and do whatever they like, “ruining their own souls” in the process.
Next, Jude mentions 3 men to further illustrate the apostates, and by implication an apostate culture: Cain, Balaam, and Korah.
1:11 “Woe upon them! For they follow the example of Cain who killed his brother; and like Balaam, they will do anything for money; and like Korah, they have disobeyed God and will die under his curse.”
CAIN illustrates how apostasy attacks the means of salvation revealed by God to Adam and Eve—the shedding of blood. Cain was the first person born on this planet, and the Bible says he was unteachable. He refused to approach God on God’s terms—the terms of the shed blood of a lamb. When he brought his offering to God, it was of vegetables.
In essence, Cain is the father of all false religion that insists on approaching God its own way, and rejects the slain blood of God’s Lamb, Jesus Christ. So are the apostates and our apostate culture.
BALAAM illustrates how apostasy attacks the sovereignty of God. Balaam was a soothsayer, what we would call today a psychic. He was all about money, ruled by greed. When Balak, the king of Moab, wanted Balaam to curse God’s people who were crossing the Wilderness under God’s sovereign plan, Balaam succumbed for a price.
While he wound up pronouncing blessing on Israel instead, he eventually advised Balak to destroy the Israelites by corruption, thus securing his payday. He said, “My lord king, there’s more than one way to accomplish your goal. Since you cannot curse them, I suggest you corrupt them. Use the temple harlots. I guarantee you that their God will judge them if you entangle them in immorality.”
His evil suggestion was completely successful. Israel fell and came under judgment. We see that Balaam was later killed under the avenging sword of Joshua. But he is held up throughout Scripture as a type of apostate that puts money above God.
And finally, KORAH illustrates how apostasy attacks the service of God. Korah was a cousin of Moses and Aaron. He was a leader amongst the people of Israel. Jude accuses him of “gainsaying” which means “to contradict” or “to cause strife.”
Korah, along with two other leaders, Dathan and Abiram, one day stood up against Moses and Aaron, challenging their authority in the wilderness. He was jealous of their position in God’s service.
When these 3 men stood up against Moses and Aaron, they hindered the work of God and threatened the spiritual authority God had established in them. God’s judgment was swift. The next day at the Tent of Meeting, the ground opened up and swallowed them, their families, and their belongings whole, then closed back up!
Apostates, like Cain that attack God’s way of salvation, Balaam, that are all about the money, and Korah, that attack God’s servants and sow discord, are alive and well today. They innfiltrate churches and religious institutions, as well as the entertainment industry and other key parts of society. Chillingly, Jude says that God has reserved for them “the blackness of darkness forever.”