At the end of the Bible, the revelation is read.
Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved
in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy and peace and love be multiplied
to you.
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt
the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which
was once for all delivered to the saints.
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed those who were long beforehand marked out
for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness
and deny the only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Now I desire to remind you, 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.
But in the same manner 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 that 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 the pay they have rushed ahead
long into the air of Balaam and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
These men are those 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.
And about these also Enoch, in 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.
But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, In the last time there shall be mockers
following after their own ungodly lusts.
These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy
Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord
Jesus Christ to eternal life.
And have mercy on some who are doubting, save others, snatching them out of the fire.
And on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his
glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
the glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.
Amen.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for Jude, that he was willing to follow the Lord Jesus and to faithfully
serve him.
And we thank you that he was an instrument of the Holy Spirit to write your inerrant
precious word.
Our desire tonight is that we might think with Jude as he writes, and that the Holy
Spirit would illuminate our hearts to understand the meaning so that we may know the word of
God, understand that, and apply it to our lives.
In Jesus' name that we pray.
Amen.
One of the things that we immediately observe as we come to this book is the redemption
of a name.
There's probably no name in history that is filled with more shame than the name Judas.
There are not many people today who name their children Judas, you will notice.
The reason is the identification with Judas Iscariot, and yet the name of this man is
Judas.
It was a familiar name in that day.
Judas would be the Greek word.
The Hebrew equivalent would be Judah.
Jude is how it's brought into the English, and perhaps the English translators translated
it Jude because they did not want to write the letter of Judas.
I don't know.
But Jude is the English name that we get from Judas or Judah.
An interesting note also is that he calls himself the brother of James.
James is the English equivalent of the Hebrew name Jacob, another very common name in that
day.
Jude says that he is the bond slave or bond servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of
James.
That is the only way he identifies himself, but it seems to be sufficient to tell us who
he was.
This man Jude was the brother, undoubtedly, of James who was the leader of the church
in Jerusalem.
That is not James the brother of John, the son of Zebedee.
After this is James who was a half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ.
After his conversion, he was a leader in the church in Jerusalem.
He was the chief elder of that church.
In Acts 15, we see James in action as he calls together this church council, which made a
deliberate and important decision regarding the Gentiles and their relationship to the
family of God.
Now this man, Jude, identifies himself as a brother of James, and therefore we understand
him also to be one of the half-brothers of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I want you to turn back to the book of Mark for a moment and see the list that is given
here.
Mark chapter 6, and look in verse 3.
Some of those in Nazareth speak and say, Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the
brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?
Probably that Judas, or Jude, mentioned here in verse 3, is the author of this book of
Jude toward the end of the New Testament.
He also calls himself a bond servant of Jesus Christ.
He does not try to impress anyone with the fact that he was, in fact, the half-brother
of Christ.
But rather, he prefers to identify himself as simply a servant, a slave, one who does
what his master wills.
Jude was not always in that position.
In fact, in John 7, it very clearly says that his brothers were not believing on him, referring
to Jesus.
They did not accept him at that point in his ministry as who he claimed to be.
Indeed, they seemed to have looked upon him as a rather strange kind of person.
They were without understanding.
But later, after his death and resurrection, they came to a personal faith in this one
with whom they had grown up and recognized that he was, in fact, the Christ of God.
And now Jude simply identifies himself as—we would identify ourselves, I hope—as a servant
of Jesus the Christ.
They have a relationship that really goes beyond that of being half-brothers, but rather
one that involves a spiritual relationship.
Now, this epistle was not penned, you note, to any particular group of people.
That's why it is called one of the general epistles.
It is written to the church at large.
It may be that Jude had in mind a particular assembly when he wrote it, but he did not
say so.
Thus, it is called a general epistle.
We're going to look tonight, as time permits, at the first four verses and divide them this
way.
In verse one, the description of the believer.
Verses two and three, the desire of the writer.
And verse four, the deception of the apostates.
First let's notice how he describes believers.
He says, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.
Three important thoughts in verse one describing you as a believer in Jesus Christ.
First he says, those who are the called.
That is a term synonymous with the name Christian.
Those who are the called refers to those that God, in a sovereign sense, has summoned from
the world to be his own.
The called refers to every person who has come to faith in Jesus Christ.
Not to a select few of them, but to each one of the saved.
If you belong to Jesus Christ tonight by faith in him, then you are among those that are
addressed here, really, as the called.
This concept of the calling of God is one that is found throughout the New Testament.
Our calling is said to be a high calling.
It's said to be a holy calling.
It's said to be a heavenly calling.
Perhaps one of the key verses regarding the call of God upon the sinner is found in Romans
chapter eight.
Now we're going to get to that eventually as we go through Romans, but let's jump ahead
now and just look at that one verse that deals with it.
Perhaps to get the context, it would be good for us to back up to verse 29 of Romans eight
where he says, For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image
of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Whom he predestined, these he also called, and whom he called, these he also justified,
and whom he justified, these he also glorified.
There are five works of God in salvation as delineated here.
Predestination, or rather foreknowledge, predestination, the call of God, justification, and glorification.
The call of God is the work of God, the Holy Spirit.
In calling a sinner out of his sins to be a believer, this emphasizes the sovereignty
of God.
Now there is also the other truth, and that is man's responsibility, but this particular
word emphasizes God's part in that, his calling.
You and I were not saved because we stumbled upon Jesus Christ, or even because we diligently
sought him out.
The truth is that he sought us out and called us to himself.
And that's why we are saved tonight.
We are not able to boast in the fact that we found Jesus, but rather we boast in the
fact that he, by his grace, has found us and called us to be his own.
This word called here was a common word in that day used of those who were invited to
an event.
And I tell you, have we ever been invited to something?
We have been invited by God sovereignly into his family and invited by his grace to share
in his eternal glory.
And there is no doubt but that every person who is called is someday going to inherit
that glory.
For, if you will notice, in Romans chapter 8, all of those verbs are in the past tense.
In our experience and time, the first four of them are past tense.
We have not yet been glorified in time.
But as far as God is concerned, it is so sure that we shall be glorified that he puts it
in the past tense.
And he said, those who are called are also justified and glorified past tense.
There is no doubt, my friend, if you belong to Jesus Christ that someday you are going
to be with him.
And Jude emphasizes this truth as he closes his epistle when he says that he is able to
make you stand in the presence of his glory blameless with great joy.
That is your destiny.
Now, he also says here that those who are called are the beloved in God the Father,
loved in God.
That is in a particular tense in the Greek, a perfect tense, which means that it is a
past action that has an effect that carries on to this present time.
Kenneth Weist, who for years taught Greek at Moody Bible Institute, said it could be
translated this way, to those who by God the Father have been loved and are in the state
of being the permanent objects of his love.
That's the emphasis in what he says here.
In other words, right now, at this very moment, you are the object of God's love.
Jesus Christ went to Calvary for us when we were unlovely.
Now that we are in him, God the Father will do nothing whatsoever for our damage, but
rather it is all for our good, for our sakes.
He loves you just as much as he loves his dear Son, Jesus Christ.
You say, I'm not sure God loves me that much.
Yes, my friend, he does.
And Jesus himself said that.
Turn back to John chapter 17.
You may want to keep your finger here because we'll be coming back to it in a moment, but
in John chapter 17, Jesus tells us that very thing.
Verse 23 says, I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world
may know that thou didst send me, and didst love them even as thou didst love me.
In other words, Jesus is saying, Father, I want them to be perfected in unity, that the
world may know that you sent me, and that the world may also know that you have loved
them even as, just as, to the same degree as you have loved me.
How much do you think God the Father loves his Son?
Why don't you know that the whole delight of his heart, if I may express it that way,
is focused upon his Son?
He calls him his beloved Son.
In Colossians, it is the Son of his love.
How much do you love your children?
It's difficult to describe and to measure, isn't it, the love that you feel for your
child or for your grandchild?
Your heart's affection is focused entirely upon that child or those children.
You love them, and you are willing to do whatever is necessary for them, for their good.
You see, my friend, it is that way in God's love for you.
God loves his Son so much that he wants a whole heaven full of people just like him,
and he's going to have that someday.
If you're in Jesus Christ, you're going to be a part of that.
Now let's go back again to Jude.
You may want to keep your finger in John 17.
But notice that the final phrase describing the believer in verse 1 is that we are kept
for Jesus Christ or preserved for Jesus Christ.
The idea means to guard or to hold firmly, to watch, to keep.
And again, it's in the same verb tense that the previous phrase, and it can be translated
this way.
Angels who have been guarded and are in a permanent state of being carefully watched.
Perhaps involved here is the thought of Hebrews 1.14 where it says that angels are ministering
spirits sent forth to those who are to be the heirs of salvation.
I believe in what some call guardian angels.
Not that God has to have an angel to keep us any more than God has to use you or me
to declare his word.
But I believe that part of the outworking of God's sovereign purposes involves angelic
beings who are given charge to watch over his children in this world.
It may well be that the moment we die that we are aware of these spirit beings, and it
is they who usher us into the presence of God, taking us safe to our home as is their
charge.
Whether you agree with me on that or not, there is no doubt that those who are in Jesus
Christ are those who are kept for him.
This is the same Greek verb as is found back in John 17 again in verse 11 where he says,
And I am no more in the world, yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to thee, Holy
Father, keep, there is that word, keep or guard, preserve them in thy name, the name
which thou hast given me, that they may be one even as we are.
The very same word that Jesus uses in his high priestly prayer is the word that Jude
uses to describe how you and I are kept by God for Jesus Christ.
And I notice that some translations put this a different way.
There is no preposition in the original here, but I think that what it says in the NASV
captures the thought of it, that we are kept for Jesus Christ, for we are God's gift to
him.
We are a part of the bride that God is calling out for his son.
We are being kept until that time that we are with him, and in a further sense than
that, we are being kept until that day of the rapture when our glorification is going
to be consummated and we will then be forever with the Lord.
We won't need to be kept for him then because we, at that time, will be with him.
So we have a marvelous verse here describing our position in Christ.
We are those who are the called, those who are loved in God the Father, and those who
are kept for Jesus Christ.
So when you feel lonely or you feel down and you feel blue, you remember what you are in
Jesus Christ, how the Bible describes you.
When you are tempted to think that you have failed so badly that God doesn't love you
or doesn't want you anymore, that you have no longer a place in God's purposes, you
look at this verse and remember that if you have trusted Jesus Christ, however badly you
may have failed since that time, you are still one of God's called.
God still loves you as much as he loves his son, Jesus Christ, and he is keeping you by
his faithfulness and his power until that day that you will stand in his presence blameless
with exceeding joy.
Now we want to go on to verses 2 and 3 as we talk about the desire of the writer.
Verse 2 is really a prayer, it's a salutation or a greeting, a common one from that day.
He says, may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.
God's mercy involves his compassion, his forgiveness, which precedes the work of his
grace.
His mercy, as someone has said, is God not giving to us what we deserve.
His grace is his giving to us what we do not deserve.
Here we have God's mercy acting toward us and God's peace is that rest of soul that
comes from knowing him.
It is that peace with God and the peace of God that accompanies that.
And then he talks about love being multiplied to us.
God's love is his motive for all of his dealings with you.
It may be that there's a parallel between these words and what is said in verse 1.
For instance, the calling of God is based upon his mercy, isn't it?
And it mentions his love here.
In verse 1, his love is mentioned.
And in verse 1, it talks about our being kept for Jesus Christ.
That keeping of God brings peace.
I remember when I, as a teenager, came to an understanding that I didn't have to keep
calling out for God to save me over and over again.
That the first time I said that and meant it, God saved me and saved me forever.
When I understood that that keeping power of God was active in my life, it brought a
peace to my soul I had never known to that point.
And you may be here tonight and you're not sure that you've been saved.
Well, can you look back at a time in your life when you understood your lostness, the
fact of your sin, that you were separated from God.
Did you realize that?
Did you understand that Jesus Christ, God's son, died for your sin and rose again?
Did you understand at some point in your life that by personally inviting Him into your
life you would be saved from sin and given eternal life?
You say, well, I'm not sure I understood all of that.
Well, you know, sometimes we don't understand all of that.
We don't understand all of the theological ramifications of it.
But if we understand the essence of that gospel truth, that's all it takes for our salvation.
God doesn't say we have to be theologians to be saved, but we do have to understand
the gospel to be saved.
You say, I'm not sure if I've been saved.
Well, did you understand the essence of the gospel?
Did you receive Jesus Christ?
If so, then understand that you should have a life of peace.
That peace of God should be yours because God is keeping you.
God is keeping you.
He's guarding your soul until that day that you'll be with Christ.
If you're not sure that you did understand the gospel, then what you should do, I believe,
to settle the issue once and for all is tonight to receive Jesus Christ.
To realize tonight that you're a sinner, that you need to receive Christ into your
heart, to believe on Him.
Make that decision tonight, and from now on rest upon the fact that you have made that
decision.
Satan likes to use doubt as a whip for us, to confuse us and to depress us.
But you can settle it once and for all tonight.
If you're not sure that you trusted Christ, then do it tonight and rest upon it from this
point on that you are being kept by God, that you may know as peace.
James' desire is that that mercy and peace and love may be a multiplied experience to
us.
Then he gives us the purpose for his writing in verse 3.
He says, beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation,
I felt the necessity to write to you about a different subject.
You see, originally Jude wanted to write to believers in general regarding the salvation
that we share in common.
When he says common here, he doesn't mean an ordinary salvation as though it's something
cheap.
But he's simply saying it's something that we share in common.
We are partners in this salvation.
He said, I wanted to write a treatise to you describing the salvation of God.
But he said something constrained me.
Undoubtedly, he's referring to the Holy Spirit.
He said, I felt it a necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for
the faith.
And so what started out to be an epistle about salvation now becomes an exhortation regarding
the faith.
Now when he says the faith, he's not talking about the act of believing on Christ.
He's talking about that body of truth that God has revealed to us.
He says, brothers, I am writing to you to appeal that you contend earnestly for the
faith, the truth that God has given once and for all.
That is, His completed revelation, the final, full revelation that God has given to us.
He says, contend earnestly for that.
Before the living in a day when there are people who think that God is still giving revelation,
that is not true.
God's revelation ceased at the end of the first century.
And as that revelation was completed with the book of the revelation of Jesus Christ,
as we call it, there is a warning written to anyone who would add to or delete from
this book that is completed by the revelation.
Those today who are claiming to have additional revelations from God are liars.
That is not too strong a term to use because God is no longer revealing truth.
God may give us additional insight into truth He has already revealed, but God is not giving
new truth these days.
That's just not His work at this part of this age.
The truth, the faith has been delivered once and for all to us.
And notice that He says that in such a way that reminds us of stewardship.
He says, which was once for all delivered to the saints and trusted to us.
That's the same thought that we were talking about this morning in stewardship.
You and I have received from God a revelation, a body of truth that is here called the faith.
Now, regarding that, He says we are to contend earnestly for it.
An interesting word there, contend earnestly.
It's a verb that is found only here in the New Testament in this form.
There are related words used elsewhere.
But it's a word that was used in that day of an athlete who was involved in an agonizing
contest.
It refers to a vigorous, intense struggle.
It is a word that would be particularly appropriate for a wrestler, one who was involved in a
face-to-face contest to see who the winner would be.
And what Jude is implying here is that even at that time there were those who were wrestling
with believers regarding the truth.
There were those who were trying to deny it, as he goes on to say in verse 4.
And so he says that we who know the truth need to be involved in wrestling on its behalf,
earnestly contending for it.
Now, he doesn't say that we're to do that in a contentious, or perhaps a better word
would be, a cantankerous way.
There are some people who excuse their cantankerous attitude by using this verse that we are to
contend earnestly.
That is not the point here.
We are to have a sweet, loving spirit.
But at the same time, when it comes to the body of the faith, we are not to give an inch
in the contest with those who are opposing it.
We are to stand up for it, whatever the cost.
That's the point.
It will involve agony.
It will involve struggle.
It will involve effort.
But we are commanded to earnestly contend on behalf of doctrine of the truth.
That is the desire of Jude for those who read this epistle.
That's God's desire for you and for me, that with a right spirit, with a balanced attitude,
we be unashamed in our wrestling for the faith.
Now, the reason that that is so important is because of what Jude says in verse 4, and
we find today, and that's because of the deception of apostates.
Something's work is always involved in some way in deceit.
That's the reason that the fall occurred because of deceit.
He deceived Eve, the Bible says, and today he is still deceiving the minds of people.
A person who is a false teacher or an apostate, and by the word that word means one who has
fallen away from something.
In other words, fallen away from the truth.
A person who is a false teacher does not make a neon sign and say, I am a false teacher.
He's not going to advertise it.
But with the very deception of Satan himself, he will hide his falseness under a cover of
something else.
Satan's method is always in some way entangled with deceit.
By the way, that's why we as Christians are to have nothing to do with deceit.
We should avoid in any way trying to deceive people for any reason.
We are to be transparent or sincere.
We are to completely avoid deceit because that is the tactic of the devil.
Now James talks here about certain persons.
He doesn't choose to name them at this point, but apparently they were well known to his
readers.
He says certain persons have crept in unnoticed.
That word means to enter alongside.
It means to slip in the door with somebody else.
As he goes on in this epistle, he explains that there are people who have slipped into
their fellowships, even observing love feasts with them who were false teachers.
He says they have crept in unnoticed.
Perhaps that says something about the alertness, the vigilance of those believers.
But it certainly says something about the deceit of Satan and of these people involved.
He says certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out
for this condemnation.
That does not mean that God somehow in the past looked down to the future and chose certain
men and said, now you are going to be condemned as false teachers.
The idea that Jude is conveying here is that God long beforehand, it could mean in a previous
epistle too or in a previous writing, but probably long beforehand, God has warned that
those who are false teachers are going to be condemned.
I believe that is the point that Jude is making here.
He describes them furthermore as ungodly persons.
Of course that term ungodly is used generously later on in verse.
But even at this point he says that these false teachers, these apostates are destitute
of any reverence for God.
They are ungodly.
God doesn't have a place in them.
They talked about God.
James was talking about Gnostics in that day, which is a rather difficult to define sect
that developed because it evolved into several forms in the first and second centuries.
But these people did talk about God.
They talked about Jesus Christ, but behind their language was false doctrine.
So even though they talked about God here, Jude says they were ungodly.
Why?
Because they had no sense of awe toward God.
And then he gives us some insight into what they were like.
He says they turned the grace of our God into licentiousness.
What does he mean here?
Well he is saying that they take the teaching about God's grace, which is so precious to
us, and they stretch it out to an extreme that is outside of the faith.
The Gnostics basically felt that the body is evil, but the spirit is good.
So whatever the body does, forget about that.
The thing is to concentrate on the spirit.
That was what they taught.
Therefore if your body, with your body you committed immorality, no difference.
So what?
Licentiousness or lasciviousness didn't make any difference.
That was physical.
That was a part of the body that was going to be condemned anyway.
Just center your attention on the inner, the spiritual.
And that is what Jude condemns.
He says this idea of living without any regulation or restriction morally is not the grace of
God.
It is a lie.
What we learn from this is that along with false teaching inevitably will come immorality.
You mark it down that when there is wrong doctrine, either at that point or eventually
there will be immorality involved with it.
The two go together.
And then he gives us a further insight.
He says not only do they turn the grace of our God into licentiousness, but he says they
deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
He uses a particular word here in Master.
It's the word despot.
It's only used in one other place in the writings of Peter regarding Jesus.
Most of the time it's a word that refers to God the Father.
But it's a word that describes the absolute sovereignty of the one spoken about.
And so he says here they deny the sovereignty, the Master, Jesus Christ.
They deny His Lordship.
So he emphasizes their wrong doctrine as well.
They deny the teachings of the faith.
So what are the characteristics of an apostate?
Wrong doctrine coupled with wrong living.
Now we today are faced with apostates.
We are living in a day of deceit when people use language that we recognize, but they give
different definitions to those terms.
And consequently there are many people who are being deceived.
I'd like to tell you about a couple of camps that you need to be alert to.
Back in the 17th century they were developed as a result of rationalism, a theological
camp which is today called liberalism.
Those who are liberals, and I'm not thinking now of political liberals, I'm thinking of
theological liberals.
Theological liberals deny the faith as it was once for all delivered to us.
For example, they do deny that Jesus is deity.
I could bring before you tonight writings, even popular writings from today.
Books that are being published and bought by the public in general.
Books penned by religious figures.
Those who call themselves Christians, which at the same time deny the person of Jesus
Christ, that is that he is God come in the flesh.
Likewise there are those who are religious, who promote immorality even in the name of
Christianity.
A good example of that would be the statement three or four weeks ago now by the Minnesota
Council of Churches in which they said that homosexuality is an approved lifestyle and
that we in Christian love should accept these people as being part of the Christian faith.
That kind of teaching reveals liberal theology and it reveals apostasy within that organization.
And though they call themselves Christians, they are not a part of the faith.
They are not a part of the orthodox doctrine that God has delivered to us.
We need to contend earnestly with those who are in the liberal camp.
Frankly, today liberalism is somewhat stagnant, if not on the decline.
Back in the early part of this century there was a great controversy that raged in our
country between the liberals and the fundamentalists.
Some of that battle took place right here in Minneapolis.
Dr. W.B.
Riley was one of those who was on the front line of that battle.
There were others, mighty men of God who stood for the faith and as Jude commands here, they
earnestly contended, they wrestled in an agonizing way for the truth.
And today liberal theology basically has lost its impetus and its power as it is expressed
in example, for example, in the World Council of Churches and in the National Council of
Churches.
Today we find that liberal theology is adopting something new which they call liberation theology,
which is a marriage between Christian terms and Marxist teaching and doctrine.
It's very interesting that this is even now being recognized by the secular press as being
something outside the stream of biblical theology.
Today we have a lot of missionaries, even in the Roman Catholic Church, which are in
Central and South America and also in liberal denominations, which are spreading the, quote,
gospel of liberation theology, close quote.
It is not the saving message of Jesus Christ, but rather it is the message that oppressed
people need to be released from the oppression of capitalism.
That is the salvation that is being declared by liberation theology.
And of course we contend earnestly against it and deny it.
Then there is another camp that you need to be aware of, a camp that is more prominent
perhaps in these days.
It started as a reaction to the liberal camp.
It was founded pretty much by a man in Germany by the name of Karl Barth.
The camp is called neo-Orthodoxy.
You see the term orthodox in there.
And although Barth and his followers used some of the orthodox terms, they gave new
definitions to those terms.
So that a person today who is neo-orthodox will talk about the inspiration of the Bible,
but they do not mean what we mean when we say that.
When we say that the Bible is inspired, we mean that God superintended the writing of
it so that what was written was the very word of God.
What they mean when they say the Bible is inspired is that as a person reads it and
it suddenly makes sense to them that that at that point becomes inspired to them.
So they say the Bible contains the word of God and it is inspired to you when it becomes
meaningful to you.
That's a lie.
The Bible doesn't contain the word of God.
The Bible is the word of God.
And if it never says a thing to a person, it doesn't change the fact that it is the inspired
word of the living God.
It is a movement that perhaps is on the increase in these days, particularly in some of the
older seminaries that have not gone the liberal route.
When you think of a seminary like at the Divinity School at Harvard and some of those Ivy League
universities, they've gone the liberal route pretty much.
Though there's a sprinkling of neo-orthodoxy there and maybe you can find an occasional
orthodox person, but pretty much they've gone the liberal route.
But these days some of the schools and colleges and seminaries that in the past have stood
for the faith have now started to slide into neo-orthodoxy.
And the tragedy is that young men and women that are coming out of good, sound churches
are being sent to some seminaries and colleges where they are being taught doctrine that
is the opposite of what they were raised on, the same kinds of words being used but a different
content to the theology.
And the consequence of that is that they come out of the colleges and universities and seminaries
messed up completely, wrecked spiritually.
We must beware of the movement of neo-orthodoxy.
Those would be completely outside the realm of the faith.
But even within the faith there are those who take extreme positions that we must be
alert to.
And I will just mention in passing a couple of these camps and then I'm going to be finished.
But this is very practical because you see this today within the evangelical fundamentalist
world.
There are those that I would call and others would call neo-fundamentalists.
These people would agree with us theologically in doctrine, they believe what the Bible says
from cover to cover, no question about that.
But their spirit, their heart is an unloving spirit and heart.
There is a militancy about them that goes beyond the point of what Jude says here to
the point of lacking balance.
There are those today who would call themselves fundamentalists that actually I would put
in a neo-fundamentalist category because of an extreme hard-line position that they
would take.
Their position almost is that no one teaches the truth but us.
They would say, I don't trust anybody but you and sometimes I wonder about you.
Their circle gets very small and it gets smaller all the time.
And one of the things that characterizes the neo-fundamentalist group is that it continually
fractures and divides within itself.
I thank God that there are some who were tending to be in that group who today are coming back
more to the center and becoming more balanced about things.
On the other hand, there are still those who are within the umbrella of orthodoxy that I
would call neo-evangelicals.
Now that is a term that we hear these days and sometimes it is used so broadly that it
loses its significance, its meaning.
I asked a friend of mine who was a college president one time, what is a neo-evangelical?
And with tongue in cheek he said, well that's anybody who doesn't agree with me.
And sometimes you get the impression that that term is used that generally and that
sloppily.
But I would suggest to you that there is a legitimate camp or group today that could
be called neo-evangelical and it would be characterized by some of these things.
First of all, by a questioning at least regarding the inerrancy of the Bible.
Again a willingness to talk about the authority of the Bible, but when you come to the point
of saying that the Bible is inerrant in all that it talks about, whether theology or science
or whatever or history, they would question whether the Bible really is inerrant in all
of those areas.
Now I would call that a neo-evangelical position and it's a dangerous position because it
can lead to neo-orthodoxy.
That is out of the camp.
Secondly, those who would be a part of this neo-evangelical group would support what I
would call ecumenical evangelism.
I did not say cooperative evangelism.
I believe in cooperating with other people and preaching the gospel, other people who
are believers.
But there are some who are Christians who believe that it's okay to cooperate with
apostates or unbelievers in preaching the gospel and having evangelistic campaigns.
And my friend, sanction for doing that cannot be found in the word of God.
Indeed, just the opposite is commanded of us.
We are to have nothing to do with those who deny the Lord Jesus Christ.
Nothing to do with them.
And there are arguments used and I've heard them for having large ecumenical evangelistic
campaigns and frankly when it embraces unbelievers and apostates, it's beyond what the Bible
says is okay.
Neo-evangelicals would say yes, that's all right to do that.
A third way to describe a neo-evangelical would be found in a willingness to compromise
what the Bible says and subject it to man's science.
In other words, if science today has proof, quote unquote, that evolution is true, then
we accept the first chapters of Genesis as being only myths or as being nice stories
that are intended to communicate some kind of a deeper truth.
But we would say that science has proven this and therefore the Bible must be wrong.
That kind of thinking too is at best neo-evangelical.
A willingness to subject the Bible to the findings of science.
Indeed, I believe that we must do just the opposite.
If there's a difference between what science says and what the Bible says, and there's
no question about which we accept as being true.
The Bible is true, there's no question about that, and science has yet to catch up to that
point.
That's how I would describe a neo-evangelical.
There may be other ways to describe people who would be categorized that way.
And I suppose that we could name names tonight.
I don't intend to do that.
I'm going to simply do what Jude does here and say certain persons fit into these camps.
Where do we fit?
Well, where we fit is in a position that I would like to describe as Bibliscists.
That is, we accept the Bible as God's inherent revelation to us.
We accept this Bible as a revelation of the faith.
And we are committed to what the Bible says.
And it is our purpose by the grace of God to preach this book, to represent the God
of this book, to declare the saving gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world,
and to do that in obedience to what the Word of God says.
And so we find ourselves in a theological maze at times, and as those who lived in the
days of Jude, we too must earnestly contend for the faith, the body of doctrine that God
has once for all delivered to us.
May God help us to be right in spirit as well as right in doctrine.
The two go together, don't they?
I think there's nothing wrong with the word balance.
There's some people who think there is something wrong with that word, but I believe we need
to be balanced people who believe the book with all of their hearts and are committed
to it to death, but at the same time love people, love sinners, want to see them saved
and brought to Jesus Christ.
May God help us to find that balance individually as a church and to stay in it.
Let's bow together in prayer.
Would you stand with me please as we close our service?
Father, I thank you for what you have said to us from Jude, and I pray that as we look
at the remainder of this short epistle that you would instruct us further regarding the
danger of apostates.
I pray that we may be better equipped so that we can contend earnestly for the faith.
May our hearts rejoice in what we are as the called, the beloved, the kept ones for Jesus
Christ.
May we find that balance, that warmth in orthodoxy and truth that will enable us to accurately
represent you to a lost and dying world and to a confused church in general in our nation.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.