Book: Jude

In this sermon, Pastor Joe Babij considers the third description of false apostate teachers according to Jude: the portraits of deception false teachers exemplify. In Jude 12-13, Jude provides five metaphors that expose the destructive and empty ministries of false teachers: hidden reefs (v. 12a), waterless clouds (v. 12b), fruitless trees (v. 12c), storms that dump dirt (v. 13a), and pathways that lead to darkness (v. 13b). Christians must both know the enemy and know God’s word to be able to escape from false teaching’s enslaving and destructive power.

Full Transcript:

Let’s take our Bibles again this morning and turn to Jude. And Jude is right before Revelation. Verse number three,

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing to you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.

Now that is the verse of the whole book. That’s the purpose of why he’s writing. He originally intended to write a treatise on salvation, but when he heard the news of supposed Christian teachers denying Christ and using the grace of God to justify immoral behavior, he had to change the direction in which he was going to write. So he is writing now to motivate Christians to wake up and be discerning in order to battle against and recognize false teaching when they hear it.

So Jude was calling for the faithful to go to war against anyone who would teach other than the word of God and the proper understanding and handling of the word of God. So if we are to contend for the faith, we must grow in discernment. And in these latter days in which we live, when apostasy is blowing through our land in a very significant way, we must grow to successfully identify false teachers whenever and wherever they or their teaching may show up.

So I’ve been looking at five characteristics of false teachers mentioned in the epistle of Jude, verses 8 through 16. The first one we looked at is the pride of the apostate teacher. The second one we looked at is the profound resemblance of Old Testament apostates, how they are similar to today’s false teachers.

And so this Lord’s Day, I want to examine the portraits that exemplify false teachers in verses 12 and 13. But before I do that, I do want to just recap and review where we were and where we’re going. And this is very important. When I was in the military, one of the things that we used to teach our young Marines, and that was taught to me too, was that if you’re going to go into battle, you have to know your enemy. And so we would begin to look at silhouettes of ships to see what the ships that we own and the ships that the enemy uses look like. We were looking at their planes and how they look in silhouette form, and then also their weapons, and then finally how the soldiers would look and the equipment that they would have. We would be studying the enemy to see what their strategies were, what their plans were, what their motives were, all those things we were studying so we can fight the best battle possible against them and identify them when we came in contact with them.

So that’s an important thing that we ought to be doing. And so, just by way of review, the first thing is the pride of apostate teachers in verse number 8. Their sinful pride really is depicted in their rebellion. Verse 8 says,

Yet in the same way these men also by dreaming defile the flesh, reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.

So they are promoting deluded teachings through false dreams that they actually claim are from the Lord, but they are not. They fantasize and they dream up things. They are actually filthy dreamers that really do not struggle very much at all with wanting to have pure and clean thoughts and thoughts that are honoring before the Lord.

Their sinful pride is depicted in their arrogance. Everything they do is about themselves and their self-interest. That’s what they’re ruled by, and it was a contrast against the archangel Michael. Michael’s interest was the Lord’s interest. False teachers’ interest is their own interest.

Their sinful pride is also depicted in their ignorance. In verse 10 it 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 they are destroyed.

So that means that these things they do understand, they revile, they go against, they speak against. The things that they do not know by instinct, they follow to their own destruction.

False teachers really follow not biblical thinking but natural thinking. They know bodily appetites and what makes them happy. They know how to satisfy their fleshly desires because their desires rise no higher than the instincts of animals because their mind is not being transformed by the Word of God. Their reasoning and actions are off base. In other words, their minds are not being renewed and being bent toward knowing the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God.

Another thing about these false teachers is that they respond instinctively to things, not biblically to things. In verse number 10 it says these false teachers may claim to be in the know concerning the Christian life. However, when they speak, they speak out of their own ignorance. They have abandoned divine revelation for human reasoning, even forsaking sense and logic. All that is left if you do that is to do things like an animal would do them, out of instinct, naturally, what you desire. So they’re slaves. They’re slaves to their own animal instincts. And the basic drives of all animals are that of eating and drinking and mating and survival.

So these apostate teachers have passions and drives for eating and drinking and sex and all which are really all out of balance and inflamed by the sinful desires just to gratify self and their indulgent flesh. They’re earthbound to the max. They’re not thinking about eternity. They’re not looking towards anything that would go past this earth.

And also we see here that these false teachers, they really have no sanctifying effect on people. They actually have a destructive effect. And that’s why it says in the passage in verse number 10 they’re destroyed by these things. So their corruption will destroy them and those who follow them. 2 Peter calls them

born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed.

So these false teachers do not promote the conduct of holiness and godliness. These false teachers actually cannot do that. They’re unable to do that. They do not have the spirit of God in them to do that. They could have somewhat of a head knowledge of the truth, but there is no regeneration of the heart. There is no supernatural work of grace having been formed in their souls. So then the lusts and the temptations of the world and what the world desires proves to be way too strong for them. And that’s what they’re controlled by. That’s where they go.

A second thing, a second characteristic was that they had a profound resemblance of the Old Testament apostates. In verse number 11, it says,

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.

So there’s three people mentioned there, these Old Testament personalities. The first one was Cain. And what did he do? He decided to go the wrong way. Cain went off the rails or the right path when he strayed from God’s word, when God spoke to him about how to approach Him.

And then the second person was Balaam. And what did Balaam do? He rushed ahead without thinking of the consequences. As long as there was money to be made, that’s where he was. So he decided everything based on how much he could make. And then of course Korah is mentioned and Korah’s sin was rebelling against God and God’s chosen order of leadership. He didn’t want to do it God’s way; he wanted to do it his way.

So if we are to contend for the faith, we must grow in discernment. We must be able to know what is God’s way and what is every other way. We have to know the difference between what is holy and what is unholy, what is godly and what is ungodliness, what pleases God and what doesn’t please God. Those are all areas of discernment that rise up out of the word of God once we start to understand it.

So in these latter days, as the spirit of apostasy blows not only through our country but through the church, we must be able to successfully identify false apostate teachers whenever and wherever they show up. So today what Jude is doing and what is being communicated to us in scripture is how to do that. This is how they look. And he really does focus in on specific details about even the inner motive of what’s going on with these false teachers.

So this third point, the portraits of deception that they exemplify, that’s where scripture is pointing us now, to certain pictures that we can visualize in our mind about how they are. Before we do that, let me pray.

Lord, this morning as we look at the word of God again, Lord, teach us, grow us in discernment that, Lord, we would not be duped by every wind of teaching that is out there, whether it be in the church or outside the church, but, Lord, we would be steadfast disciples of the word of God, knowing what You’ve spoken in truth in the word of God, so Lord, when we hear something other than that, we can identify it quickly. Lord, make us discerning Christians that we can know these things because we are growing in our knowledge and wisdom of the word of God. And I pray this in Your name. Amen.

So the first thing underneath this title is the unsuspected dangers that lead to destruction. In verse number 12, notice what it says,

These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves;

Now, that’s the first part there. There remains really a stealth nature of false apostate teachers. There are some that are easily identifiable, but others are not so easily identified, and the best strategy of any enemy is to blend in in order to remain unidentifiable. However, they are planted for the destruction of the persons that they infiltrate. They have no good motive for doing what they do.

So if you look at scripture in verse 12, this is what scripture calls them. It calls them hidden reefs, in other words, rocky hazards hidden beneath the water. Hidden rocks are really the greatest fear of any seaman or sailor because these are dangerous reefs that can shipwreck a seaworthy vessel. And just as these rocks can tear the bottom out of a ship or out of a boat, if we are talking about false teachers, their teaching can rip the bottom out of the church and cause it to take on too much water, making it unstable and even sinkable.

Now, who are those who can wreck churches? Well, it could be those who wreck the unity and the peace of a church by rejecting the faith, by questioning the word of God to the point of not finding out what it says, but the other side of actually causing doubt in people’s minds. In fact, just take your Bible and turn back to 1 Timothy for a moment, because Paul uses the same language when describing those who ultimately reject the faith. Notice in 1 Timothy 1:18-20, it says:

This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.

So again, here in this passage, they disrupt the unity and the peace in the church by rejecting the truth of the word of God and therefore causing trouble. And then there are those who would prevent the gospel by evil deeds. 2 Timothy 4:14-15, again Paul mentions in verse 14,

Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Be on guard against him yourself too, for he vigorously opposed our teaching.

Now, of course, he was an idol maker, and because he was an idol maker and people were getting saved and hearing the gospel and no longer buying the product, it inflamed him and he went against those who were preaching and teaching the word of God, and to evil ends, he wanted to destroy what they were saying.

Now, why is confronting error so important? Well, there’s one word, actually two words: the gospel. Failing to engage against false teaching will lead to the dissolution of the gospel. If you allow error to creep in, it will eventually corrupt that which is central to all of us as believers. If the Bible does not provide the definition of the gospel, then something else will. There will never be a void; something will always fill the void and consequently, something will either be added to the gospel, like, for example, works-based salvation, that you have to do something to get saved, or it will be subtracted from the gospel, like people saying, "Well, there’s really no such thing as sin so bad that God will judge you for it and send you to hell," or "God’s judgment will be upon all people." All those things will go by the wayside. Something will be subtracted from the gospel.

So a faulty view of scripture allows for an alternative authority to scripture and thereby an alternate gospel, which we know is no gospel at all. So the errors we face today operate the same way. We already dealt with it, that those who deny the essential doctrines of the faith. Peter dealt with it: the lordship of Christ is a very essential doctrine, that we are to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Yet people deny the lordship of Christ. We have the doctrine of creation – reinterpreting or ignoring the theology of Genesis 1-3. If these are reinterpreted or ignored, we will actually lose the gospel. How can you have a second Adam without a first Adam? Well, Paul brings that up in Romans 5. How is the gospel effective if death happened before the fall and sin was not the cause of death?

So you’ve got to go back to the doctrines of scripture to get the gospel right. If you reinterpret those things, you lose the gospel. What about a faulty eschatology? Peter dealt with it: "Where is the promise of his coming? He’s not coming back. Look, things have been the same all along. There’s no second coming of Christ." Or that the day of the Lord possibly has come already, like it says in Thessalonians. See, we need to know these things so we’re not thrown off track.

What about marriage? Marriage in scripture is one man, one woman, right? Well, today that’s not the case, is it? There’s same-sex marriage. People are marrying their animals. They’re marrying themselves. They’re marrying their robots. Crazy stuff going on out there. And it’s being propagated and normalized, and that’s the danger of it. It’s being normalized in people’s minds. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody’s doing that. There’s no problem there in that area. And, of course, that does lead to homosexuality. The incorrect thinking on the issue of homosexuality can result in the corruption of the gospel.

Now, just take your Bibles and look at 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. The reason why I want you to look here is because of this, because God sanctified people from sins like homosexuality. That’s not the only thing he sanctifies them from. So if we redefine and end or dismiss the doctrine of conversion and sanctification, which really go together, then if somebody says homosexuality is never wrong, then some may conclude that the gospel made a mistake. But look at what it says here in verse number 9:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And then in verse 11:

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Saying this, that all sinners need conversion. All sinners need conversion. It doesn’t matter what sin that you were bent to when you came out of the womb. You need conversion. And without conversion, you will not enter the kingdom of God. That’s pretty clear in Scripture.

Now, I’m sure you have all heard about the House of Commons in Canada just passing the bill called the C-4 bill. It was passed without any opposition whatsoever on the conservative or the liberal bent in their government. And did you know that on January 8th, which was yesterday, it is against the law in Canada today to preach, teach, or counsel regarding God’s design for marriage and sexuality. We prayed about it. We mentioned it in the prayer list on Wednesday. But they’re not very far north of us. As a matter of fact, they’re our border country.

See, the bill will criminalize anyone who what they call will engage in conversion therapy, convincing someone, whether it’s a sexual orientation that they want to pursue or somebody who wants to become a Christian, or in any counseling situation that you’re giving the gospel to lead someone to Christ, that now is a criminal activity in Canada. And according to Canadian law, the belief in God’s design for marriage and sexuality will now be seen as a myth. Now everyone who knowingly promotes or advertises conversion therapy, whether you’re preaching it, teaching it, counseling it, is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a prison term up to two years. And all you have to do is promote it. If you teach it, I think it’s a prison term up to five years.

What about in the USA? The Senate Bill 1172 was dealt with in 2012, banning gay conversion, banning trying to convert gay people to Christ. Also in the Democratic Convention in 2020, they declared that they will ban harmful conversion practices, the same thing as Canada.

So we’re dealing with things that are going on, but I’m saying this, that all sinners need conversion. So how can we avoid that? We can’t. None of us can. I can’t. You can’t. If we want people to come to Christ, if we want people to be delivered from their sin, we have to preach the gospel. I can’t save people. You can’t save people. God saves people.

But see, we’re swimming upstream, and the current’s getting quite violent, but we cannot stop. We cannot go along with these particular things. These are the times where we have to disobey laws that are coming out. So it’s not going to be very long before that trickles down into the central part of our country, it’s already on the coast, and just squeezes us all in there, that there’ll be the same kind of laws coming up too.

The reason for that is because of the wokeness ideology that is in our country that is really undoing what is usually normal. Feminizing men, there’s a lot of talk about toxic masculinity. Wokeness comes down to this, that it’s really not as the Bible describes humanity as being divided into two groups, the saved and the unsaved, but as being in the group of the oppressed and those who are the oppressors. And it doesn’t mean there’s not some truth that they’re trying to get out there, or some injustices that they’re trying to present that maybe has been buried, but ultimately it is a false gospel. It will destroy the gospel.

So fighting against error for the sake of truth is the task of every Christian thinker. We must engage error in order to preserve the gospel, not only for our generation, but for the next, and the next is going to have a tough time. The next generation, we need to pray and make them ready for what’s coming.

And some really struggle with the idea that we need to think and learn and discern. They might not believe thinking is a priority, since everything or most things in our culture are about emotions, not about truth. In our time, the church is being seduced from historic orthodoxy with feel-good theology, Christianity light, Jesus made to order.

So the Word of God not only demands that we think though, it also determines how we are to think because the Word of God explains the totality of what things are actually real. These are real. Sin is real. The judgment of God is real. The creation mentioned in Genesis is real. These are real things that actually took place. Jesus coming back again is also real and will take place based on everything that’s happened before that. So, the Word of God is the only place that we are going to get the real scoop about life.

The first step in knowing how to think rightly is always to anchor our thinking only in what is right and what is true – that is the inerrant, infallible Word of God which we hold in our hands. Thank the Lord for that, that we have it. We are then to devote our thinking to engage false ideologies, exploit error, and defend sound doctrine wherever it comes up. It’s not always easily identifiable. We’re to beware of dangerous teaching hidden below the surface, for the purpose of perverting the Gospel, distorting the Gospel, and ignoring the Gospel.

Now if you look back in Jude, verse 12 says this about these false teachers:

And men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts, when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves…

So these false teachers carry out their solicitations at a particular time, at the very time the church is commemorating the Lord’s demonstration of love for His people in the Gospel elements, which we’re going to do today, the bread and the fruit of the vine. They are using that fellowship time for a recruitment meal. At these meals, false teachers are able to carouse with people, to spread their teaching and their agenda with the possibility of undermining the faith of some. These teachers are submerged reefs that wreck seaworthy vessels.

It was supposed to be, and it still should be, on the Lord’s Day, a very simple meal. The body of Christ gathered together, both rich and poor, and shared a plentiful meal that partook together with others, demonstrating our commonality. What do we have in common? We’re one with the truth. We’re one in faith. We’re one in the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what makes us one. What Christ has done and now we’re children of God. We’re in the family of God, so that makes us a big family and we’re all in common with that. But these teachers brought in probably a lot of luxurious food, like it says in Corinthians 11, destroying the simplicity of this ordinance and causing division because the poor people probably were being set aside and not being taken care of.

So Jude refers to the feasting of the false teachers as during the Lord’s table. Historically, the Lord’s supper was a full meal. It was a solemn and joyful time of celebrating the presence of the Lord and it focused on the two elements of the Gospel. The bread is Jesus’ incarnation and the fruit of the vine is Jesus’ death. It was not a time to indulge oneself in gluttonous eating or drunkenness, or to disturb the unity of God’s people and the commonality that people had together because of Christ.

Eating together was a way for them to fellowship, to demonstrate common concern for one another. Biblical fellowship really encompasses something vital because when we become Christians, we become one. We enter into a community that is united with certain bonds that are not able to be broken. They’re permanent. Christians are not only devoted, as it says in Acts chapter 2, to the apostles’ doctrine, they desire to hear it and to know it, but they are devoted to fellowship. And Christian fellowship is much deeper and sweeter than secular fellowship. Biblical fellowship means a spiritual communion with one another, a joint partnership with one another, a joint sharing with one another.

So it is because we enter into a new family relationship and when we’re born again into God’s family and we’re quickened by the Holy Spirit and made alive to the things of God, there’s spiritual movement, there’s spiritual life, there’s spiritual growth. So we can have fellowship with those who possess the same life, but with those who don’t, we can’t. So these false teachers cannot have fellowship with real believers. They could only carry on their dastardly deeds.

It was Jerry Bridges who said the idea of biblical fellowship is the idea of an active partnership in the promotion of the gospel and the building up of believers. That’s what it is. I get saved, the Spirit of God is in me, I have the Word of God, now we are going to learn more of what the gospel has done for us, and then together as a church we build up other believers in the faith so we become strong and unmovable.

So the false teachers were turning the Lord’s table into something deceitful. They in turn destroy the whole purpose of the fellowship meal. And if you notice in verse number 12 what it says, they do it without fear, and then notice a little phrase, caring for themselves. That’s the same thing that was the indictment in Ezekiel chapter 34 that was read this morning. They don’t fear God, they don’t revere God, they don’t respect God. It says they care for themselves. The word there is actually the word for shepherding. It literally means they shepherd themselves. Rather than tending to and feeding the flock, these men are concerned only for their own interests, not caring for the church’s welfare and edification. As it says in Ezekiel, “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock?”

So now back to Jude, we see here that he zooms in the camera on the characteristics of false teachers in verse number 12, and he gives us this – the promises that they give actually disappoint. So Jude further uses four metaphors to portray false teachers’ effect on the community of the faithful, that these false teachers are all show and have nothing to give to those who foolishly listen to them and follow them. Look at verse number 12. What does it say at the end of the verse? They’re waterless clouds carried along by the wind. Now maybe at first these individuals gave some promise of a fresh gain for the church because they tend to be very strong, large personalities, very engaging people, but end up as disappointing as clouds who give a promise of rain but do not deliver. These false teachers’ words promises refreshment but brings none. In other words, all thunder and wind, no rain. They promise refreshment but they leave their followers parched.

Now just imagine in the east, this would be a most grievous disappointment, in a desert area, right? Just imagine a farmer’s disappointment when the wind brings in clouds but without a drop of water falling on their land. That’s disappointing. Well, that’s what false teachers are with their teaching. It doesn’t produce anything. It doesn’t give any kind of refreshment. The false teachers provide no useful doctrine for the spiritual health and well-being of the gathered church. And being too familiar with their teaching could actually shipwreck the faith and leave one spiritually parched.

I remember years ago I was down in Florida and I was watching TV. I was watching a TV preacher who really was a good showman and had a forceful convincing voice. And he promised that if you reposition your life, that you will open yourself up to all kinds of blessings. I don’t remember if he referred to any particular scripture. I was listening for it but didn’t hear it. He could have mentioned it in passing. He was a good storyteller, very engaging. Then it ended. And the listening TV audience, which I was one, was given the unique opportunity of a lifetime to purchase a hat or a T-shirt with the saying, reposition yourself. So his promises were vague and empty. And there was no substance at all. He was an advertisement to sell product and to gain money.

Now, if you took that same person and you dug a little bit deeper on what he believed, he also taught that the Godhead was three modes of one person and not three persons. He was a modalist. And those doctrines are dangerous and yet they have control of the airways and many people watch them faithfully thinking this is the truth and it is not.

So you see, we need the reign of God’s word upon us, not the arid clouds of false teachers. That’s what Deuteronomy chapter 32 says. Just listen to what it says:

Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Let my teaching drip as rain, my speech distill as the dew, as the droplets on the fresh grass, as the showers on the herb. For I proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to God!

See, we need the life-giving, transforming word of God. And brethren, that’s all we need.

So that’s the first picture. The second picture is in verse number 12 at the end of the verse, that they’re described as fruitless trees. Notice what it says,

Autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted.

Now, a certain calendar is used in this historical period, I believe it’s the Julian calendar, between the dates of August 11th and November 10th, there would always be the hope of fruit. There would always be the hope of the harvest of olives or the harvest of figs or the harvest of pomegranates or dates. But if there is no fruit, there’s a problem. Fruitless trees.

Now the possible reason for no fruit, there could be several reasons. It could be just a bad tree. And so what you do with a bad tree, you tear it out. It could be that there is defective soil, like in the parables of the sower. There could be the shallow soil or the rocky soil or the thorn-infested soil or drawing from the wrong source, like self and the world and Satan, not from Christ or His word or His spirit.

It could also be a bad atmosphere in the sense of taking on toxic materials, reading books that are toxic, visiting media sites that are just spewing out falsehoods, or having relationships with people that are completely the opposite of the way you’re going and they begin to influence you in their way, not the way you ought to be going as a believer. So all of these could be poisonous influences or they can be influences for good.

It could be a lack of attention, no prayer, no Bible reading, no study, no faithful attendance, no diligent hearing and doing the word of God. Or it could be really the lack of use. You know, fruit decays if not used as a proper time, right? Everybody has bananas, usually during the season of buying food, and if bananas are not eaten, they go bad quick. So you have to do something with them. You have to eat them or you have to freeze them, and then you use them somewhere else.

But here, this is not backsliding. This is apostasy. Look what it says again in verse number 12. It says,

Autumn trees without fruit, and then it says this,

doubly dead, uprooted.

That means that this tree is dead first because it bears no fruit, and secondly, doubly dead because it’s pulled up by the roots, incapable of being revived. That’s apostasy.

Then there’s a difference between a backslider and an apostate. A backslider, most likely, could be a genuine believer, but gets away from the Lord, gets caught in sin for a period of time. And they’re convicted of that sin finally, and because they’re miserable in their worldly sinful environment, they repent and come back. Or the Lord has to discipline them to come back, but they come back. An apostate is someone, despite their profession of faith, has never been saved. So if he or she leaves the faith, they have nothing in their desires to turn them back to the true gospel. They just don’t.

So the solution and remedy for the backslider would be return, repent, and resolve to walk, to pray, to be diligent, to advance in godliness and holiness.

But the apostate tree, there’s no way this tree could be connected to any soil in which is able to produce life or produce fruit. These false teachers are not connected to the spiritual life-giving source of Jesus Christ. Remember what Jesus says,

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so it may bear more fruit.

He goes on to say in John,

As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

And this is a common theme in scripture, that every tree, like it says in Matthew, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. It says then in Matthew 7,

So then you will know them by their fruits.

They have either bad fruit or they have no fruit. But I tell you this, that all Christians have fruit. All Christians have fruit. The fruit of godliness and holiness are going to manifest in many different ways. Even the Old Testament example of judgment where it says in Proverbs,

But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be uprooted from it.

So these false teachers just have no ability to bear fruit in themselves or those who hear them. And then the next thing in verse number 13, a third picture, storms that dump dirt. It says in verse number 13,

Wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam.

These seas are unstable, and so are false teachers. They are like the troubled sea that cannot be quieted. The dirty foam that ends up on the crest of the wave is dumped on the beach, which is what false teachers have to offer to those who follow them. In other words, what do they have to offer? Dirt. That’s what they have to offer, dirt. They dump dirt and ungodliness into the lives of their followers. Isaiah 57:20 tells us this,

But the wicked are like the tossing sea for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse and mud. There is no peace, says God, for the wicked.

In our passage in Jude, it says they’re casting up their own shame. Their own shame is their shameful ways, their dishonorable deeds that flow out of their lifestyle, filthy words, lives that are filthy. And they cause trouble to the church by their own pride, by their own vanity, by the loss of any restraint of modesty or morality. And they rage in their own opinions and their practices. So false teachers, really what they do is they exploit people in their base fleshly desires, and they blur the lines between right and wrong. The physical drives become the motivating force in a person’s life, and false teachers do not help people put boundaries on their physical drives and appetites. The Spirit of God will do that through the Word of God. Feelings, not truth, play a dominant role in deciding what is right and wrong. They say stuff like this, “If you ask Jesus into your heart, you are forgiven and free to live as you please. If it makes you happy and it feels right, then do it.”

False teaching leads feelings astray and leads ultimately to shameful thinking and shameful living with no repentance, with no transformation. It was the same thing that 2 Peter said, that these false teachers are like a dog that returns to its vomit, who repeats its folly, like a pig that just goes right back into the slop. So these teachers are really foul within, they’re filthy without, they have perverted appetites and they feel at home in the mud. Rather than cleansing the saints with the Word of God, they pollute them with false philosophies and arrogant justifications for personal sin.

But I think here’s the last thing and maybe the saddest of all of the picture that Jude gives for these false teachers. It’s a disturbing one. Notice what it said, because they lead to directionless paths. Verse number 13, it says this, they are

wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

Most scholars refer to wandering stars as comets and meteorites. Some refer to them as shooting stars that appear in the sky for a moment with a quick blast of light, which very soon vanishes. They promise something glorious and even beautiful, but it ends up becoming lost forever in darkness.

So false teachers really provide no guiding light to its followers. They only lead their followers into further darkness. Instead of providing the light of Scripture that would aid Christ’s followers to be the lights in the world they ought to be, as Paul told Philippians, so that

you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you appear as lights in the world.

That’s what believers ought to be. But they can’t lead them there. All that they can lead those followers to is darkness.

And notice what it says. It identifies really the nature of the darkness, it’s black darkness. That means all light is sucked out, leaving complete darkness, no light at all. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation where you could be in a dark room, and if there’s a little beam of light coming into the room, there’s light. But being a place where there is absolutely no light to penetrate that particular area, it’s a scary thing. One summer, my family and I went to the Lackawanna Coal Company, and they had a coal mining tour. And what they did is they lowered you into a mine, a coal mine that was empty and not used, as an illustration. When you got there, they put you in this little room, and they shut the lights off. It was the scariest experience in my life because they shut the lights off and there was no way any light can get into that room. And you felt it. It began to consume you and overtake you. It was dark, so dark it’s undescribable. There’s nothing.

And this is the kind of darkness he’s describing here, that it doesn’t lead to any place where there could be any kind of fellowship or any kind of interaction or any kind of joy or any kind of anything that would produce in our life what the Spirit of God produces. It says here, for whom the black darkness has been reserved: to those who spew out false teaching. They have reserved seats in the blackest darkness, unless they turn and truly repent and believe the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and surrender to his Lordship and return to the truth of Scripture. For all life and godliness, eternal doom is their state and destiny because their depravity is so extreme, their punishment is extreme. Jesus mentioned it more than anybody where He says that, for example in Matthew 22, it says that the king said to the servants,

Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 22:13

A horrible thought to have in your mind is to never get out of darkness. I mean, we have gloomy days, but we have light all around us. This world is penetrated with light. But he also mentions not only the nature of darkness, that it’s black, deep black, but it’s also the duration of darkness has been reserved forever. This is eternal punishment. To die in one’s sins is the darkest of deaths. Either you will die in the Lord or you will die in your sin.

So do you realize the privilege that real believers have in receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ and having real salvation and knowing really what the light of truth does in our own heart and life, giving us the joy of knowing where we’re going, knowing that we’re forgiven, knowing that we have a relationship with God through Christ, and knowing where we’re going to end up. For it says that they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

So don’t be naive to think that you can’t be influenced by false teachers. Their influence is everywhere. Their pride, their greed, their immoral behaviors are clear marks to who they are. But people seem to want to look past that. So be aware of the enslaving destructive power that their teaching can bring one into. And remember, sin will always carry the power to enslave someone.

Discernment today is greatly needed in God’s church. We need it in order to understand what is true, what is false, what is God’s way, what leads to life and godliness, and what leads to darkness and death. We must know these things to be confident in them ourselves and then to be able to identify them in everything that’s flying around out there, whether it’s in the church or outside the church. It’s everywhere. Christians, don’t be duped.

However, we must be careful with our judgments so that we do not call bad men good and good men bad. Some judgments we must leave up to God. We can judge outward actions and words, but we cannot always judge motive. Only God can judge that. So all I can say is, "Lord, please grow us in sound biblical discernment so that we will not be enticed or entrapped by false teachers and their teachings, but we would be consumed and immersed in God’s Word, where the Word of God is constantly transforming our mind so that we would know the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God." Amen?

Let’s pray. Lord, thank You this morning for the Word of truth. Lord, if this was not in the Bible, we probably would not know what to look for. And we know, Lord, that Jude and other Bible writers that write on these things, write on them from the perspective of the Old Testament.

So, Lord, please today give us discernment as believers. Help us to be careful about what goes into our mind, what we dwell upon, what we imagine. And, Lord, make us sensitive to your Spirit. Always give us a hunger for the Word of God and the truth in the Word of God that will make us into your light-bearing disciples, that we would be the salt of the earth, and that it would be real and effective in our life. So, Lord, let us give ourselves to the teaching of God’s Word so we become disciples that know what we believe and can discern when others teach otherwise. And I pray this this morning in Christ’s name. Amen.

In this sermon, Pastor Joe Babij looks at Jude 8-11 and the first two of five characteristics of false teachers: sinful pride (vv. 8-10) and profound resemblance to Old Testament apostates (v. 11). Christians must be careful not follow such teachers, listen to them, or be like them.

Full Transcript:

We’re going to have some holiday messages coming next week. I do want to remind you about our candlelight Christmas eve service. We will sing some Christmas songs, have the Word of God. It’s a great time to invite people that you may know who maybe are not church people in the sense, but they are willing to come to a Christmas eve service and maybe the first time they hear the word of God. You never know what the Lord’s going to do with that when the word of God is unleashed upon their soul and conscience. So that’s going to be Christmas eve. That’s Friday the 24th at 7pm right here at our church. So hopefully you can invite somebody to that service.

Let’s pray as we look at Jude this morning. Let’s pray. Father, we thank You again for bringing us here this morning. Be with those, Lord, this morning who are still under the weather and are still healing, and some from Covid. I pray, Lord, that You would just nurture them back to good health, to their strengths that they had before, and back to the regular routine of life. I just pray You would just minister to them today. I pray, Lord, even they be able to sit up and be able to at least be on Zoom and watch the service today. And I pray You bless them with the word of God along with us here today. And I thank You Lord again. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

So we’re looking at Jude. I want to focus in this morning on just two passages to finish up verse 10 and verse 11, because this is a small book with a big message. It really is. Jude, remember, had originally intended to write a treatise on salvation, but he heard that grim news of some supposed Christians who were denying Christ and using the grace of God to justify immoral behavior. So he felt he had to right and rebuked and warned the church and that’s what he does. In verse number 3, it says,

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 handed down to the saints.

Again, it means that we are to fight. We’re to struggle. Jude is intensely concerned about the threat of heretical teachers in the church and the response a Christian should have concerning that threat. And sometimes he’s trying to awaken us a bit. We all must admit that the spirit of apostasy is blowing through America. It’s blowing through the church at this present time. So these are definitely difficult times that we are in. So then Christians are to wake up and they are called to discern and to battle against false teachers and those who reject the truth. And so Jude is calling all of us who are in the faith to war against these intruders. And they are there. They are here, who have come and want to usurp the gospel, change the message into something that is not the gospel and not the word of God. And yet, many times these teachers get large followings of people that follow them because they are just appealing to the base nature of the human being. Therefore they’re giving people what they want, and so they can get people to follow them.

So if we are to contend for the faith, then we must grow in discernment. And in these latter days, we must be able to successfully identify false apostate teachers whenever and wherever they may show up. There are five characteristics in this section from verse 8 to verse 16 about false teachers that the Word of God wants us to know. The first one I’m still in, and that’s the pride of apostate teachers. The second is going to be their profound resemblance to Old Testament apostates. And then we’re going to be looking further later on in the portraits that they exemplify and the punishments they earn and then of course the problems that they trigger in the church.

But today I’m still back in the first one, the pride of apostate teachers. And looking at that, this Lord’s day we will finish the first and will examine the second. The first thing that we saw from last time is that their sinful pride is really depicted in their rebellion. Verse number eight,

Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.

This phrase by dreaming, this is a habitual practice of these false apostate teachers. They promote diluted teaching through false dreams that they actually claim are from the Lord, which are not of course from the Lord. And they fantasize and dream up things. In fact, Jude tells us these are filthy dreamers. They have filthy dreams in which they cause the church to actually live in immoral behavior. We’re to struggle against what these teachers are teaching with the truth. And they don’t struggle at all, these teachers, to keep their thoughts clean or pure what-so-ever.

Now, just with that in mind, turn to Deuteronomy chapter 13. Because right back there in the Old Testament, we have the same thing going on right in the beginning when they were going to go into the promised land. They’re entering into the promised land. They’re looking forward to doing that. And again, the people are warned about people just like this. So they’ve always been here. They’re here today. They were here in the past. Notice what he says in Deuteronomy 13:1. It says,

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

And then he says this in verse four,

You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.

And then verse five, it says,

But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.

So the word of God looks at what they are doing as evil. And noticed that there’s actually six things that somebody who loves God is evident in their life. They follow the Lord. They fear the Lord. They keep His commandments. They listen to His voice. They serve Him. And they cling to Him. Those are all biblical principles that are non-negotiable that are not only in the Old Testament, but they are in the New Testament too. It’s the same thing for us. And we have greater revelation to base those truths upon. So the word may indicate that the false teacher’s delusion and their blindness, that they take the real for the unreal and the unreal for the real. So they are dreamers who claimed authority from their dreams. They’re claiming that they got the dreams from God. And so this is what God told me, and I’m now going to tell you. So then the authoritative source of revelation is their own dreams, their own wicked imagination, not the word of God. That’s the point. It’s the word of God that is going to transform our mind and transform us into believers who know what the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God is. These kind of teachers will never point to that at all or get people there. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing we see is that their sinful pride is depicted in their arrogance. They’re just arrogant people because everything they do, it’s about themselves. They are ruled by self-interest. The attitude of these false apostate teachers was contrasted last week with Michael the archangel. We noticed in verse number 9, it said there,

But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!"

So he did not even bring a railing accusation against the devil over this dispute over the body of Moses, but reverted to God’s authority to rebuke a created angel, a fallen angel like the devil. So we learn from Michael that his response was he saw himself exactly the way he should – that he was not the judge, that he was not the creator, that he was not his own authority, that he was not a lawmaker, that he was a created angel and he was a servant of the living God, a minister on behalf of God’s creation. And so he respectfully accept his position. He knows his boundaries. He sees himself exactly how he was created and what he was created to do. And so hence, he knew his mission within God’s economy. He did not question that. He enjoyed that actually and was very effective in his role.

So there was no pride or arrogance found in his character, but it’s quite the opposite in false teachers. They’re claiming authority. They’re claiming messages from God which are not message from God. They’re doing it with a very arrogant attitude. And this leads to the third thing in this, that their sinful pride is depicted in their ignorance. Now notice verse number 10. We did not cover this one last week. Number 10, it says,

But these men revile the things that they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

So this means the things that they do not understand, they revile. They speak against. And the things that they do know by instinct, they follow to their own destruction. So false teachers actually corrupt themselves with things they understand, because that understanding only comes from their based nature. We see that false followers of Christ do not think biblically. They actually think naturally, period. Most of their understanding about the word of God is off base. Most of them do use the word of God, but it’s all off base. And they possess an incorrect concept of God. They mock truly spiritual things and carelessly handle the word of God that they do use, twisting the word of God and turning it in any direction they want it to go. Many of them are very skilled at that and again, very persuasive. But because they’re void of the Holy Spirit, they only know things that naturally come to them. And they solely are people of the world. If you notice down to verse number 19 of of Jude, it says this,

These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

So these individuals know only what comes naturally to them. They know their own bodily appetites. They know what makes them happy. They know what pushes their own buttons. They know how to also satisfy their fleshly desires because their desires rise no higher than the instinct of animals, like dogs salivating for their favorite doggie treat, or bears instinctively going to the river when salmon are running, or pigs grunting and snorting over food. Like animals, naturally these individuals do not understand the things of the Spirit of God. Just like we read this morning in the passage,

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

They cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. That’s really the difference, that Christians get to the point where they understand the word of God and they actually put it into practice. Because their mind is not being transformed by the word of God, their reasoning and their actions are completely off-base. In other words, their minds are not being renewed and bent toward knowing the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God. So these false followers of Christ do not respond biblically. They respond instinctively. They think like animals, and they act like animals. In verse number 10, it says,

and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals,

This was a passage brought up in 2 Peter too. He calls them there lacking reasoning capacity. They don’t have a clue about true spirituality. So these false teachers may claim to be in the know concerning the Christian life, however when they speak, they speak out of their own ignorance. They have abandoned divine revelation for human reasoning, and they even forsake sense and logic. So all that is left, if you do that, is to think stupidly, to act just like mere animals, to just respond to your environment. That’s it. No further than that.

So every person has two sides to their nature. First, they have the physical side to their nature. The side that has instincts, that has passions, that has impulses. He shared this with the animal creation. And these instincts are normal and they’re good only if they are kept in their proper place. They are necessary, actually, for life. The second part of man that is different than the animals that they do have a spiritual or a Godward side to them. If these two sides are out of whack, that person becomes imbalanced and of course, false teachers are only dominated by the physical. They are slaves to their animal instincts. And the basic drives of all animals is basically eating and drinking and mating and survival. That’s what they do all the time no matter what kind of animal they are, no matter how domesticated they are. They still have those things. You can train an animal by giving them treats, you know, stand, roll over, play dead. You can give them treats and train them to do that, but they’re only doing it to get the treat, because they’re animals and that’s what they do.

So these apostates, their passions and their drives for eating and drinking and sex are all out of balance, inflamed by the sinful desire to gratify the self-indulgent flesh. They are earthbound to the max. They speak blasphemy, and that is they speak slanderous lie about things they do not even understand. It was C. H. Spurgeon who said of these kinds, he called them hypocritical maniacs that claim revelation from God when He has not spoken, declaring words of prophecy that are full of error and corruption. When God speaks, Spurgeon said, it is always perfect, true, and infallible. He went on to give advice to those who speak from their own imagination. And he says – "If you feel your tongue itch to talk nonsense, trace it back to the devil, not the Spirit of God. Whatever is to be revealed by the Spirit to any one of us is in the Word of God already. He adds nothing to the Bible. He never will." That’s a great observation that we should all follow.

But another thing in our passage in verse number 10 of Jude is that those who follow or have followed false teaching, they should know this, that they’re teaching does not have a sanctifying effect but actually a destructive effect upon the one listening to them. Notice in verse number 10, at the end of the verse it says,

by these things they are destroyed.

That means his own corruption will destroy him and those who follow him. God will use the very things that they pursue to destroy them. There’s no fear of God. There’s no following the Lord. There’s no fearing the Lord. There’s no keeping the Word. There’s no listening to Him. There is no serving Him. There is no clinging to Him. So just like some animals, false teachers and those who follow them were put on earth in order to be caught and die like common animals. They think only what they feel and experience. That is what they give worth to. And with this view, there is no guiding laws for them or principles. They are the captain of their own ship. And like sailboats without rudders, they drift, lose control, and inevitably will capsize.

So their understanding of Christian freedom is God loves you and wants you to be happy. Do what feels good and right for you for that to take place. So false teachers say that God accepts us even if we live like the devil and live after the world and the flesh. These teacher say that faith really exist without or even producing fruit, and that a person can believe in Jesus Christ without repenting, without changing their life, without separating from the world, without denying and controlling the flesh, without following Christ. False teachers say God’s love and grace are so inexhaustible that a person is free to sin just so they believe in Jesus. Well, if you have your Bibles turned to 1 John, notice in chapter 3 what it says there. John seems to refute that quite clearly. Look at what he says in 1 John 3:6,

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

He’s talking about habitually practicing sin. In verse 7 he says,

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

So a Christian does not habitually practice sin. They take care of their sin. They confess their sin. They put their sin to death. They put on righteousness because they truly repent of their sin and they go on forsaking that sin, going on walking forward in holiness. False teachers do not teach that. They do not live that. We have to remember that God really establishes our freedom within boundaries, that the Christian is the freest person in the world, but that doesn’t mean that we can do anything we want when we want it. Surprisingly, Christian freedom is most precise and clear when we understand that it comes because we are saved by someone else’s righteousness. Surprisingly, the Christian is free most precisely because he doesn’t have to obtain by his own efforts his own righteousness.

Just like the Word of God tells us, it’s not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through Christ. Faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. That’s where freedom really comes from. Our freedom is in the righteousness that comes from God, not ourselves. Now brethren, I must admit that that’s real freedom, when we’re free to live life because we have no more condemnation of sin upon us, no more judgment of God on our sin. That’s when you’re free. And then when you’re free, what are you free to do? You’re free to serve God because now this is the first time in your life you want to do it. You’re willing to do it. You’re excited to do it. You’re encouraged to do it. You’re filled up when you do it. See, that’s freedom. It takes all the pressure off of us. He has done it. He has redeemed us. He has made us righteous. He is sanctifying us.

So we’re awakened to this new reality, that you are free for holiness, free for all that God wants you to be and do in this life until He takes you home. So Christians are saved and have freedom to serve Christ in holiness and godliness. And just as the apostle Peter wrote, since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness. That’s where the truth of God’s word takes us. It takes us right there, the holy conduct in godliness.

That is what false teachers really cannot do. False teachers are ungodly because they cannot do it. They have no transformed heart. They have no changed heart. They can’t do it. They could have a twisted head knowledge of the truth, but there’s no regeneration in their heart. There’s no supernatural work of grace having been formed in their souls. So that means that the lusting of their flesh will prove to be so strong to them. And because they have no changed heart, they’re prisoner within their own lusts and their own animal instincts. They can go no further than that.

So you have to use your scriptural knowledge when you think of this to say, listen we need to beware of those who redefine sin as a psychological disorder. We need to beware of those who excite people with feel good messages. We need to beware of those who do not promote the good and the glory of a holy and a godly life. We need to beware of those who present Christianity as a means of self-help rather than a cure for sin and evil in the heart. We need to beware of skilled persuasive orators that sound authoritative, but their authority does not come from the right source, that is the word of God. It comes from themselves. We ought to beware of celebrity type individuals with big named ministries. We need to beware of teachers who promote tolerance and endorse homosexual and lgbtq lifestyles as acceptable. We need to beware of those who promote entertainment-like worship services where there has to be a nightclub type of atmosphere and a concert atmosphere for worship to take place. Beware of prosperity teachers. Beware of those who say, God spoke to me in a dream. Beware of those who ignore biblical roles established by God for male leadership in the church of the living God. We need to beware of churches that refuse to discipline their sinning members and beware of individuals and churches that preach another gospel, which is a false gospel which turn the grace of God into sensuality. We need to beware of those things because they are all out there and they’re out there in a big way.

So the godlessness of false teachers can be described in really four categories up until this point. First, they reject authority. Secondly, they claim divine revelation through dreams. Thirdly, through dreams they are given permission to participate in immoral acts. And then fourthly, their dreams overrule biblical teaching and actually pollute their own bodies and pollute the lives in the bodies of those who hear them. That’s what Scripture says.

Now, that leads me to my second point this morning. That becomes very clear when the Bible reminds us that their profound resemblance is found in the Old Testament, and is found in three individuals. In verse number 11, it says,

Woe to them!

Now let me just stop there for a minute. That is a declaration of divine judgment. It’s a judgment oracle, and it means to damn or curse someone. It’s a very severe warning of doom. It was the exegetical commentary who said this about that phrase – this is a prophetic pronouncement of judgment on those who have forsaken God. The woe by extension echoes the misery that overtakes those who suffer God’s judgement. The woe introduce the ultimate doom that overtakes those who have resisted God’s purposes by embracing unrighteousness. So here is the woe directed at false apostate teachers, which they resemble those from the Old Testament.

Now the first personality that these false teachers resemble is found in verse number 11, and that is the personality of Cain. Look at what it says there,

Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain,

Now the phrase have gone, it literally means going from one place to another. It means to travel. It can be used when someone decides to take a trip. They must decide when they take the trip what direction am I going to go. Where do I want to go? At some point, we must all make a choice on what direction we are going to go in our life. Which way are we going to go? Are we going to follow the world and its system and its teaching? Are we going to follow our own base instincts and go the way that makes us happy and satisfies all our needs? Or are we going to go the way of God? That’s really it.

Well, Cain here, the brother of Abel, had a certain way about him. The way of cain is really the way that is completely the opposite of his brother Abel. The way is a pattern or the road you choose as you move through life. And the Old Testament wisdom literature speaks often of choosing the way you ought to go. For example, Proverbs 2:20. We’ve been looking at Proverbs in our men’s groups. It says there,

So you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the paths of righteous.

See, that’s a way to go. You can identify that way. You can see how that way looks. It’s going to look a certain way in a person in their character, in the way they talk, in what they do in their life and where they go and who they hang out with. That way is going to be evident to people.

So the false teachers knew the right way to live. They forsook it for another way to live. 2 Peter told us already – forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. So this passage of Scripture really is narrowly revealing to us that there is a right way to live and there’s a wrong way to live. False teachers knew the right way to live, yet they forsook it for another way to live. They couldn’t stay neutral. They had to take another way. You can’t stay neutral. You have to go one way or the other. And so in this case, they took another way. They took the old way. They took the world’s way. They took the fleshly way. They took the wrong way. So the charges against these teachers is that they once knew better than to do what they’re doing right now. They have left the straight way and wandered off course.

So these apostate wanderings was really not due to disorientation or getting lost, but rather willful apostasy from God and rebellion against His lordship. So these good-for-nothings don’t live according to conscience guided by right or wrong, truth or morality, holiness or godliness. They march to the beat of their own drum. They take the broad road that leads to destruction.

Now just for reference, take your Bible and go back to Genesis, and let’s look at at least five passages that have to do with Cain and just see what it says there. I’ll bring some things out there. So when you read the account of Cain in Genesis, you get the sense that God must have given Cain and Abel some instruction after the fall concerning how to approach Him in worship. This was always important for God, how someone who has sinned approach a holy God in worship. The Old Testament is speaking about that all the time. How do you approach God? If you don’t approach God the right way, you know what happens to you? You die. You lose your life. But there’s a way to approach God. Now look at Genesis 4:1, it says,

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord." Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

So Abel worshipped God in accord with divine instruction, but Cain worshipped God to his own understanding, not according to God’s revelation. Left to himself, he could not control his own impulses to envy, hate, which led finally to the murder of his brother. However, where Cain went off the path is when he strayed from the word of God. That’s where he went off the path. So Cain was a willful unbeliever who rejected the worship of God and gave himself fully to sin.

Now if we go back to the New Testament, what does the apostle John say about Cain? This is what he says about him and 1 John 3:11-12,

For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.

So he envied him and kill him. Because Cain chose his own path and decided a path away from following the Lord, God cursed him and banished him from His presence. Now when people conclude that religion is personal and they decide to worship God in their own way. You hear people all the time speak this way. Well, they made their choice. Then often they would conclude, if you have a conversation with them, by saying, I know God will understand me. They do not follow the word of God in their understanding. They follow their own agenda. So unless they hear, understand, and receive the gospel of Jesus Christ in repentance and faith, their wrong choice will lead them to the same destructive end as Cain with no rescue. And yet many people think that way. Oh, I can’t speak with you because religion is too personal. I’ve made my choice. I worship in my own way. You ever hear people say that? Well, this is where it leads. It leads to destruction. So the false teachers are just like Cain, not only in the way they go but in the destruction that comes upon them for their choice.

There’s a second person that these false teachers look like, and the second one is Balaam. In Jude 1:11 it says,

Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam,

So for Cain, it was deciding to take the wrong way, not God’s way. For Balaam, it’s rushing ahead without thinking of the consequences as long as there’s money to be made, deciding to do anything for money. Does anybody ever do that today? Everything is about money. I’ve got to work another job, another hour, forsaking everything else in their life just to make enough money. Many times people put off marriage. They put off raising family so they can get to that ideal number where they now could live. That’s such a false way of thinking. And yet Balaam, he is right in that category. We know that the story of Balaam is found in the book of Numbers, and I did mention this quite clearly in 2 Peter.

Let me just give you some of the highlights on what happened. King Balak was the king of the Moabites. He was part of the anti-Israel coalition, and the Moabites were descendants of Lot. They appeared to be spared up until this particular point, but have come to represent heathenism and spiritual bankruptcy and idolatry because their gods kemosh and baal seemed to be helpless and impotent against king Balak’s enemies. So what does he do? Balaam was a prophet, and he was a prophet that was very skilled in the craft of sorcery. He was so skilled that he can curse or blessing someone that he can actually ask for substantial amounts of money for his services. Of course Balak, being king, had the money to pay. His gods couldn’t come against Israel so he called on Balaam to come against Israel and he wanted Balaam to actually curse Israel. He was going ahead to do that. God stopped him through three different sections of Scripture. The bottom line is that he was not able to do it. The Lord said to Balaam, I’m against you, Balaam. You are supposed to be representing Me, but your way of behaviour and conduct are opposite of My ways. Your path is reckless before Me. Balaam, what he did, he had a heart that was bent on silver and gold, but he gave the appearance of religiousness to cover his covetous practices.

Now again 2 Peter brought this out also where he said,

forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;

So Balaam was rebuked for his sinful lifestyle and God choose to use a dumb animal, a donkey. That’s quite ironic. It shows that those who live in sin live like dumb animals. They have this animal instinct. And those who teach false doctrine are equated with dumb animals. Here, the donkey in Scripture was represented as wiser than a human being. A human being created in the image of God is viewed as blind and ignorant, and they have chosen to live an insane lifestyle, a lifestyle that satisfies the sinful flesh, while rejecting all sound counsel of the Lord. Now, because he pursued money and covetousness that led to sexual immorality, that led to idolatry, that led to judgments. And remember that Balaam could not curse Israel because God wouldn’t let him, but what he did do is that he taught Balak how to teach Israel what was wrong. And that’s what it says it in the word of God. He caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of peor. And of course that Balaam, for money, was instigator of Israel’s shameful sexual sin with the Moabite Midianite women which led to idolatry because as they were seduced by these women, it led to their gods, the Moabite gods, for which Balaam in the end was slain and 24,000 Israelites perished along with him. So Balaam’s name became synonymous with these sins of immorality and covetousness and idolatry, which he caused God’s people to be led away from the straight path into all kinds of sinful behavior.

So here’s the point for this one, is that Balaam is an example of a false teacher who became worldly and led God’s people and still are leading God’s people into sin and destruction. And of all false teachers who deny the lordship of Jesus Christ become worldly seeking, possessions seeking, money seeking, popularity seeking, success, acceptance, security of the world and forsaking the right way, they go astray. They lead people into sin, and then ultimately they leads them to destruction. And most false teachers today, just as in Jude’s day, allowed greed and selfishness to rule them. Religion can be a very lucrative business. You can get money from people. You can get them to give large amounts, way beyond what they should give in some respects, until they lose their own things because they’re given to this ministry, hoping to get a blessing. So the basic message of these false teachers today is God will give you healing and wealth and material blessing in return for money. Just give us your money and we’ll pray for you and God will give you what you want. So they preach a message people want to hear, emphasizing God’s love and His ability to lift a person self-esteem and make them successful, promising a wonderful life on this earth.

But you know what, when you become a Christian, you may not have a wonderful life in the sense of definition. You will have a wonderful life because you have a relationship with God, but your life could go to persecution. Your life can come into difficulty because you become a Christian. You may lose your job because you’re a believer. Things may go south when you’re a believer. But that doesn’t change your relationship with God. That will never change, and that’s the hope that we have. That’s the hope that keeps us going.

And then there’s one last personality that the Scripture identifies in verse 11 of Jude chapter 1, and that’s Korah, Korah rebelling against God in God’s chosen order of leadership. He says to them,

Woe to them…and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

Now, after God led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness as the smoke cleared and the new routine of life in the wilderness became a reality, there arose an underground conspiracy. In other words, there was a disappointment and a dissatisfaction on the part of some against the rightful leadership of the people of Israel. In other words, who should lead the people now that they’re in the wilderness. Should Moses and Aaron do it? Or should we do it, because we’re connected to the levitical line. So there’s two interests that work in this particular narrative. You probably should take your Bibles and turn the numbers chapter 16, because I want to want you to see that, because you’re probably very unfamiliar with this text.

There’s two interests that are at work here. One is against the sacerdotal part of being in the wilderness, that is the priesthood, the levitical priesthood who was to be regarded as the heir and founder of the priesthood. And then secondly, somewhere against the political or the ruling branch in the wilderness, Moses and Aaron. They thought that Moses and Aaron did not belong in their positions. So Korah, a Kohathite descendant from the brother of the ancestor of Aaron, probably the elder son. The feeling was that the priesthood should be by right of birth, and that belongs to his family and by consequence to Korah. He should have been the high priest. So that’s what’s going on here in this. But I want you to notice in Numbers 16:3. It says this,

They assembled against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, "You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?

This is what Korah and his team was saying against Moses and Aaron. And then down to verse number eight. It says,

Then Moses said to Korah, "Hear now, you sons of Levi, is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them; and that He has brought you near, Korah, and all your brothers, sons of Levi, with you? And are you seeking for the priesthood also? Therefore you and all your company are gathered together against the Lord; but as for Aaron, who is he that you grumble against him?"

So we see that the tribe that had the political power was the levitical tribe, and the ones who were secretly opposed where those from the tribe of Reuben, and their names were Dathan, Abiram, and On. As a plot against Moses and Aaron matured, what is interesting is that when Israel met together in the wilderness and the tabernacle was in the middle, that they would circle the tabernacle, like in a square, you have north, south east and west. And then on the south border, that’s where the Reubenites hung up and between Reuben and the tabernacle in the wilderness, there was the Kohathites. So if you’re in the south and you can see everything going on from your tent as far as what’s going on in the tabernacle and what’s going on in this particular trial, in a sense. So the camp of Israel was really sectioned off in twelve tribes and the alotted place of the tents of Reuben was on the south side of the central area of the tabernacle. And between them and the tabernacle was the encampment of the Kohathites, the division of the Levitical family to which Korah belongs.

Now on the day of the trial, they were to learn on that particular day if the appointment of leaders had been of God or of man. Korah and his company appeared at the tabernacle. The Reubenite leaders refused to attend. They were to perform their priestly function of offering incense and the Lord would make known who would be the objects of his choice. Now, even though the Reubenites did not attend because of their placement in the camp, they had a bird’s-eye view of the proceedings as they stood in the doors of their tents. Moses arose from off his knees and commanded the people to stand clear of the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Now, it’s interesting that On is not mentioned here. Obviously he got the memo that you need to get out of there, and so he’s not mentioned any. Because he’s not mentioned, he probably did not come under God’s judgment. But I want you to notice in verse number 23, it says,

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the congregation, saying, ‘Get back from around the dwellings of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.’" Then Moses arose and went to Dathan and Abiram, with the elders of Israel following him, and he spoke to the congregation, saying, "Depart now from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing that belongs to them, or you will be swept away in all their sin." So they got back from around the dwellings of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the doorway of their tents, along with their wives and their sons and their little ones.

And then in verse 28,

Moses said, "By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing. If these men die the death of all men or if they suffer the fate of all men, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord brings about an entirely new thing and the ground opens up its mouth and swallows them up with all that is theirs, and they descend alive into Sheol, then you will understand that these men have spurned the Lord."

Look at verse 31,

As he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. All Israel who were around them fled at their outcry, for they said, "The earth may swallow us up!"

Nobody got away with this verse. Verse 35,

Fire came forth from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.

So both branches the sacerdotal and the political and ruling branch of that great controversy were extinguished by the judgment, immediate miraculous and final judgment of God, in one moment. Could you imagine being there when that took place? I think it would change the mind of the rest of Israel not to speak against God’s chosen leaders. Korah thought that he should be in the position that God gave to Moses and Aaron. So then by slander of the leadership that God had chosen and put in place to lead His people into the promised land, Korah rebelled against God and he perished, and with all those who follow him perished. The Lord knew everything that was going on in their tents and in their hearts. He knew what they were saying about the leadership and God held judgement.

Now saying all that, we conclude this, that these false teachers and those who follow them, Cain – they are wrong about the direction they should take in life. They go the way of the devil. Balaam, they have reckless thinking about the consequences when the love of money drives every decision you have. And Korah, are rebellious and hard against God and those God puts in leadership. And all of them were judge by God and perished.

So what is that for us? I think Jude is clear to say, don’t follow them. Don’t listen to them. Don’t be like them. And doing that, when we are grow in godliness and holiness, we’re actually fighting against the apostasy that’s evident in our country and in our society and in our government and in the church. We are actually fighting against that when we’re not like them because we have a changed heart. God’s making us into His image. And because of that, that’s where the power against these people lie. So it’s an important message. Remember, a little book, big message. And it really teaches us and rebukes us and makes us sober to what’s going on, that every little thing that comes into our ears, we need to be careful that everything that comes into our ears may actually be false teaching that are going to lead to things that we don’t want in our life.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank You this morning. These Scriptures, Lord, are heavy. They’re instructive. They’re surely instructive, Lord. I just pray, Lord, that today we would take them seriously, that we would not be caught in any of these pursuits of life. Because they are exactly would false teachers do. And I pray, Lord, that You would make us people that stand against these false teachings, and that we would be standing with You and upon Your word and upon the truth. And I pray, Lord, in doing so that You would also make us more discerning to know what is Your way and what is every other way, what people are teaching that is wrong and why it’s wrong and where we find it in the word of God. So make us Christians who are thinking clearly about what we ought to know, and clearly about how we are to practice our faith. And I just ask you Lord that You would always grow us in this knowledge, and do it for the sake of the glory of Your great name and to strengthen the health of your church. And I pray this in Your name. Amen.