A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on January 21, 2024.
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones (Jude 5–8).
Jude begins the body of his epistle with a reminder, something they “once fully knew,” or “already know.”[1] Jude is introducing nothing new but reminding them, and us, of what we are prone to forget. What is it? The answer is found in this fifth verse, in one proper noun and two past tense verbs: “Jesus … saved … [and] destroyed.” Jude will elaborate, providing historical examples, but the essence of what we are to remember is in these three words, describing what our Lord has done, and so telling us what he also will do. He has been and continues to be the Savior of his people, but he who is our Savior will also judge the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31) at the last day.
Writing to a church that had fallen prey to ungodly people, deceivers who had crept into the church unnoticed and were perverting the gospel, promoting antinomianism, and undermining Christ’s authority in the church, Jude found it necessary to write appealing to the church to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (3). So powerful was the deception, gullible believers and unbelievers were being led astray, as they are today. Such strife would make us wonder why Christ would let such evil enter his church, except to include us in the battle, and so he has, that he might be glorified in our perseverance. Such are the mysteries of God then and now, but as “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” but against “spiritual forces of evil” (Eph. 6:12), we must remember that our defense is the faith. What we believe about Jesus, who he is and what he has done, really does matter.
Jesus, Savior
When the angel appeared to the virgin Mary, not only was she told of God’s favor, her forthcoming conception, her birth of a son, but also his given name. The divine imperative was: “you shall call his name Jesus” (Luke 1:31). The name is so common to us that it is easy to forget its Hebrew meaning, “Yahweh (or the LORD) saves.” The name of God revealed to his covenant people coupled with his saving purpose in coming was his given name. And so, Mary’s Magnificat begins,
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (Luke 1:46-47).
He in whom she rejoiced she carried in her womb.
That Jesus saves is central to the gospel, but Jude uses the past tense to point us back before his incarnation to a saving act of his pre-incarnation, “Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt” (5). He who was in the beginning, he through whom all things were made, he without whom “was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3), redeemed Israel out of bondage. This may sound strange to evangelical ears, but it is consistent with what Scripture reveals about our triune God and what we confess: “There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.”[2]
Describing our redemption, we say what God the Father ordained, God the Son accomplished, and God the Holy Spirit applies, but God the Son and God the Holy Spirit did not abstain from working until Christ’s incarnation. God says to Israel in the prologue to the Decalogue, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2), to which Jude elaborates: It was “Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt” (5). How could his given name at birth have been anything else than Jesus, the Lord saves?
It is no wonder that in writing to the Philippians the apostle Paul, after describing Christ’s humiliation, proceeds to his exaltation, saying,
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11).
The name of Jesus is precious to those who have been saved, but it not the name above every name but just another name to “ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (4). It means nothing to those who are perishing and so “designated for this condemnation” (4). The world would have us believe that Jesus our Savior is not the Lord of glory but, in our day, an all-accepting pacifist, whose concern is not the holiness of God but patronizing our fleshly pleasures. This falsehood Jude quickly corrects, for he is indeed Jesus “who saved” but also Jesus who “afterward destroyed those who did not believe” (5).
Jesus, Judge
The world would have us believe that since all mankind has life and breath, sunshine and rain, indeed everything to live and move and have our being,[3] God’s judgment is merely an idle threat. And while we know differently, it is easy amidst God’s gracious blessings to be lulled into a lapse of remembering that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Pet. 3:10). That judgment does not come this minute is not owing to divine absence or indifference but patience. Not wishing that any of his elect should perish, final judgment is mercifully delayed (2 Pet. 3:9). But not forever.
To remind us of the certain “day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Pet. 3:7), Jude gives us three examples of God’s judgment in history. The first example is God’s judgment upon Israel in the wilderness. When Israel arrived at the border of Canaan, despite witnessing numerous supernatural acts of God in their deliverance, they fell to fearmongering. Rather than trusting the Lord and proceeding in his miraculous provision, they were sent away from the Promised Land to wander in the wilderness for forty years and die. None but one and the next generation would enter into their inheritance. It was a case all too common throughout church history: The fearful words of a few led an entire generation into unbelief.
The second example Jude gives possibly refers to an event in the sixth chapter of Genesis, where we read,
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And … the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them (Gen. 6:1-4).
These “sons of God” probably refers to angels, who were assigned heavenly responsibility and ministry but “did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling” (6). In short, they chose heavenly desertion for human copulation. What followed for mankind was the flood. What followed for the fallen angels was eternal bondage in the darkness of hell, awaiting Judgment Day and eternal torment.
The third example Jude gives is the sexual immorality, notably the unnatural desire of homosexuality, of the inhabitants of the region of Sodom and Gomorrah. The angelic messengers witnessed first-hand the perversion of the people, who lusted not for Lot’s daughters but visiting men. Same-sex attraction and activity is not a birthright but a perversion of God’s natural design and so judged by Jesus with destruction. In an act of mercy for Abraham’s nephew, the Lord delayed destruction for a moment but then rained down sulfur and fire out of heaven. Men, women, children, animals, all the way down to the weeds on the ground were incinerated, leaving no evidence of civilization but for the rising smoke (Gen. 19:24-28). Gone were the people and their perversion, serving “as an example,” Jude says, of judgment to come.
In each of these three examples, Jude describes a sinful behavior, whether unbelief, rebellion, or sexual perversion, accompanied by its consequences. In each example, a divine verdict was made and executed upon. But Jude is not giving a history lesson but teaching by way of analogy, like unbelieving Israel, like the fallen angels, like the nefarious sodomites “a punishment of eternal fire” is due all who will not trust in and submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, notably those who intentionally deceive Christ’s church. The sulphur and fire that rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah ceased on earth but does not in the lake of fire, where sinners with Satan “will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).
On Judgment Day, he who saved will judge, and those who do not believe the gospel and “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (4) will be found guilty of sin and disobedience and perish to their eternal punishment. But those whose names are written in the book of life,[4] those who have been made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ, those who by the Spirit have been persuaded and enabled to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered in the gospel,[5] shall be “openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.”[6] For, Jesus the Judge is Jesus our Savior, who once offered up himself “a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and reconcile us to God.”[7] He is our Judge but also our Justifier; we are sinners saved only by God’s grace through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus, Lord
Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 7:21a). Just because someone claims to be a Christian, just because someone uses the right terminology, just because someone calls Jesus Lord doesn’t mean it’s true. It could be due to confusion or self-deception or for political purposes, but intentional deception is equally possible. This is why it is so important for us to be grounded in God’s Word, to know it not only for our growth in grace but to discern the truth. We are a people of the Word and so must know it, and how to handle it rightly.[8]
What would you say, for example, if someone in the church comes to you and says, “I had a dream last night in which God spoke to me. I have a word from the Lord!” What would you say? (I would say, if the Lord spoke to you, I need chapter and verse…) But this is how Satan works, disguised as an angel of light, he uses the right words, even the Scriptures to deceive, such as when he tempted our Lord Jesus. This calls for biblically-saturated discernment from all us.
For example, how do we discern deception in the church? Jude provides three characteristics to look for: defilement, rejection, and dishonor. First, do those who claim spiritual insight, whether by dreams or otherwise, defile the flesh, meaning do they accept, advocate, or engage in sexual immorality? Jude’s previous example of Sodom and Gomorrah is intentional. Sexual activity can take on a myriad of perversions, as we see in our own day, but God’s Word classifies everything as sin except between one man and one woman in covenant union for life. Everything else is defilement.
Second, do those who claim spiritual insight reject authority, meaning Christ’s authority over their life and Christ’s ordained authority in the church. The Lordship of Christ is not an optional add-on to Christian conversion. We all confess with the apostle, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Jesus Christ is Lord over every aspect of our lives, we hold nothing back, we separate nothing from his authority. To reject Christ’s authority, even in the seemingly insignificant, reveals a heart of rebellion, that when sparked can burn a church down.
Third, do those who claim spiritual insight “blaspheme the glorious ones,” which could also be translated “dishonor God’s angels.”[9] Jude’s expression is difficult to interpret, but what he is probably referring to is a disregard for the supernatural, such as the reality and activity of angels. In his second epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul explains that as Christians, “we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). Christians are supernaturalists.
C.S. Lewis warned,
Do not attempt to water Christianity down. There must be no pretence that you can have it with the Supernatural left out. …The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.[10]
When a church degenerates into merely a meeting place for moral improvement or a gathering for social justice, or the like, there is nothing “specifically Christian left.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ not only died a human death but through his death atoned for our sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ did indeed die but also resurrected from the dead, through it conquering sin and death. Our Lord Jesus Christ who resurrected did not remain here but ascended up into heaven, where he is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ came the first time as a Savior, but when he returns, with glory, he shall return to judge both the living and the dead. For, he is Jesus, Savior, Judge, and Lord.
[1] Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 46.
[2] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 6, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 360-361.
[3] Matt. 5:45; Acts 17:24-28
[4] Rev. 20:12-15
[5] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 31, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 374-375.
[6] Ibid., Q. 38, 378.
[7] Ibid., Q. 25, 371.
[8] 2 Tim. 2:15
[9] Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 57.
[10] https://ponderingprinciples.com/2013/02/09/c-s-lewis-christianity-demands-the-supernaturalJesus
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