In this sermon, Pastor Joe Babij looks at Jude 8-10 as Jude begins to describe five characteristics of false teachers so that Christians can identify and avoid such teachers. The first characteristic is pride, which manifests in multiple ways:
1. Sinful Pride Is Depicted in Rebellion (v. 8)
2. Sinful Pride Is Depicted in Arrogance (v. 9)
3. Sinful Pride Is Depicted in Ignorance (v. 10)
Full Transcript:
Okay let’s pray as we look at Jude this morning. Father, we thank You for bringing us here this morning. Be with those who are still under the weather and are still healing. Some from COVID, I pray that You would nurture them to good health and to their strength that they had before and their regular routine in life. I pray You would minister to them today and that they would sit up to be on Zoom to watch the service today. I pray You bless them with the Word of God, along with us here today. I thank You Lord and pray in Christ’s Name, Amen.
So we are looking at Jude and I want to focus this morning on two verses and finish up 10 and 11. This is a small book with a big message. Jude had originally intended to write a treatise on salvation but he heard grim news that some Christianas were denying Christ and using the grace of God to justify immoral behavior so he felt he had a right to warn the church. That’s what he does in Jude 1:3:
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.
It means that we are to fight and struggle. Jude is intensely concerned about the threat of heretical teachers in the church and the response Christians should have concerning that threat. He tries to wake us up a bit and we can admit that the threat of apostasy is blowing through America and the church at this time.
These are difficult times that we are in. We are called to discern and battle against false teachers and those who reject the truth. Jude is calling us who are in the faith to war against these intruders and they are here who have come and want to usurp the gospel, change the message into something that is not the gospel. These teachers get large followings of people because they appeal to the base nature of the human being and therefore they are giving people what they want.
If we are to contend for the faith, then we must grow in discernment and in these later 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 8-16 about false teachers that the Word of God wants us to know.
The first one that I am still in is the pride of apostate teachers. The second is about the profound resemblance to Old Testament apostates. We’re going to be looking further at the portraits that they exemplify, the punishments they earn, and the problems that they trigger in the church.
Today, I’m back in the pride of apostate teachers and looking at that we’ll finish the first and examine the second point. We saw from last time that their sinful pride is depicted in rebellion. In Jude 1:8, it says:
Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
This phrase by dreaming is a habitual practice of these false apostate teachers where they promote deluded teaching through false dreams that they claim are from the Lord, which are not. They fantasize and dream up things and in fact, Jude tells us they are filthy dreamers in which they cause the church to actually live in immoral behavior. We are to struggle against what these teachers are teaching with the truth. They don’t struggle at all to keep their thoughts clean and pure.
Now take your Bibles and turn to Deuteronomy 13 because back there in the Old Testament we have the same thing going on when they were going to go into the Promise Land. The people are warned about people just like this. They have always been around and are still here now. It says in Deuteronomy 13:1:
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. 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. 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 notice that there are six things that somebody who loves God has evident in their life. They follow the Lord, fear the Lord, keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve him, and cling to Him. These are biblical principles in the Old and New Testaments. It’s the same thing for us and we have greater revelation to base those truths on.
So the Word may indicate the false teachers’ delusion and blindness that they take the real for the unreal and the unreal for the real.They are dreamers who claim authority from their dreams. They claim they got the dreams from God.
The authoritative source of revelation is their own wicked imagination, not the Word of God. It’s the Word of God that is going to transform our mind and make us into believers who know what the good and the acceptable and perfect will of God is. These kinds of teachers will never point to that or get people there at all.
The second thing we see is arrogance depicted. Everything they do is about themselves. They are ruled by self-interests. The attitude by these false apostate teachers is contrasted by Michael the archangel. Notice that it says in Jude 1:9:
But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
He did not even bring a railing accusation against the devil with this dispute over the body of Moses. He reverted to God’s authority to create a fallen angel like the devil. So we learned from Michael that he saw himself exactly the way he should. He was not the judge, the creator, his own authority or a lawmaker. He was a created angel and a servant of the living God and ministered on behalf of God’s creation.
He respectfully accepts this position, he knows his boundaries, and sees himself exactly as he was created and what he was created to do. He knew his mission in God’s economy. He did not question that, he enjoyed that, and he was very effective in his role. There was no pride or arrogance found in his character but it was quite the opposite in false teachers.
They are claiming authority, messages from God and they are doing it with an arrogant attitude. This leads to the third thing in that their sinful pride is depicted in their arrogance. In Jude 1:10 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 things they are destroyed.
So this means that the things 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. That understanding only comes from their base nature. We see that false followers of Christ do not think biblically but naturally.
Most of their understanding of the Word of God is off base. They possess an incorrect concept of God and mock truly spiritual things and carelessly handle the Word of God they do use, twisting and turning it any direction they want it to go. Many are very skilled at that and persuasive. But because they are devoid of the Holy Spirit, they only know things that naturally come to them and they are solely people of the world. If you look down to Jude 1:19 it says this:
These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.
These individuals only know what comes naturally to them. They know their own bodily appetites and know what makes them happy. They know what pushes their own buttons and how to satisfy their fleshly desires because they rise no higher than the instinct of animals. It’s like when dogs salivate for their favorite doggy treat, or bears instinctively go to the river when salmon are swimming, or when pigs grunt and snort over food.
Like animals, naturally these individuals do not understand the Spirit of God. Just like what was read this morning in 1 Corinthians 2:14:
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
That’s the difference, that Christians get to the point where they understand the Word of God and put it into practice. Because their mind is not being transformed by the Word of God, their reasoning and actions are completely off base. In other words their minds are not being renewed and bent toward knowing the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
These false followers of Christ do not respond biblically, but instinctively. They think and act like animals. It says in Jude 1:10:
But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals.
This is the passage in 2 Peter too. They lack reasoning capacity and true spirituality. These false teachers may claim to be in the know but when they speak, they speak out of their own ignorance. They have an abandoned mind, as it says in Revelation, for human reasoning. And they even forsake sense and logic.
All that is left if you do that is to think stupidly and to act like mere animals and respond to your environment. So every person has two sides to their nature. They have the physical side that has instincts, passions, and impulses. He shares this with the animal creation. These instincts are normal and good if they are kept in their proper place. They are necessary for life.
A second part of man that is different from animals is that they have a spiritual or Godward side to them. If these sides are out of whack, then this person becomes unbalanced 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 eating, drinking, mating, and survival. That’s what they do all the time no matter what kind of animal they are. Even if they are domesticated, they still have those things.
We train animals by giving them treats. We train them to stand, roll over, play dead but they are only doing it to get the treats because they are animals. So these apostate teachers have passions and drives for eating and drinking and sex are all out of balance. They are inflamed by the sinful desire to gratify the self-indulgent flesh. They are earth bound to the max and speak blasphemy. They speak slanderously about things they do not even understand.
It was C. H. Spurgeon who said, “of these kinds, hypocritical maniacs, that claim revelation from God when He has not spoken, declaring words of prophecy that are full of error and corruption, it is always perfect, true, and infallible.” He went on to give advice to those who speak from their own imagination and said, “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 and He never will.”
That is a great observation that we should all follow. Another thing that it says in Jude 1:10 is that those that have given false teaching don’t have a sanctifying effect but a destructive effect on the ones listening to them. It says here at the end of the verse:
By these things they are destroyed.
That means their own corruption will destroy him and those who follow him. God will use the very things that they pursue to destroy them. There is no fearing God or keeping His Word or listening or serving or clinging to Him. Just like some animals, false teachers and those who follow them, were put on earth in order to be caught and died like common animals.
They think only what they feel and experience and by this view there are no guiding laws or principles. They are the captains of their own ships. Like sailboats without rutters, they drift, lose control, and inevitably capsize. Their understanding of Christian freedom is God loves you and wants you to be happy so do what feels good and right for you for that to take place.
False teachers say that God accepts us even if we live like the devil and live after the world and the flesh. These teachers say that faith exists without producing fruit and that a person can believe in Jesus Christ without repenting, without changing their life, without separating from the world, without denying the flesh, without following Christ.
False teachers say that God’s love and grace are so inexhaustible that a person is free to sin just so that they believe in Jesus. Well, if you have your bibles turn back to 1 John. John seems to refute that quite clearly with what it says in chapter 3, verse 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 verses 7-10 it 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 it and confess it and put it to death! They put on righteousness because they truly repent of it, forsake that sin and go forward with holiness. False teachers do not teach that or live that. We have to remember that God establishes our freedom within boundaries. 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. The Christian is free because he doesn’t have to attain righteousness by his own efforts. It’s just like the Word of God tells us in Philippians 3:9:
Not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through 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. That’s real freedom when we are free to live life because we have no more condemnation of sin upon us, no more judgment from God. That’s when you’re free to serve God! This is the first time in your life that you’re willing, excited, encouraged and filled up when you do it. It takes all of the pressure off of us because He has done it, He has redeemed us and made us righteous, He is sanctifying us.
We are awakened to this new reality that we’re free for holiness and all that God wants us to be and do in this life until He takes us home. Christians are saved and have freedom to serve Christ and have holiness and godliness. Just as the Apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3:11:
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. That is what false teachers cannot do. They are ungodly because they cannot do it and have no transformed heart. They could have a twisted head knowledge of the truth but there is no regeneration in their hearts or supernatural work of grace having been formed in their souls. The lusting of the flesh will prove to be so strong to them and because they have no changed heart, they are prisoners in their own lusts and animal instincts. They can go no further than that.
You have to use your scriptural knowledge to be aware of those who redefine sin as a psychological disorder. We need to be aware of those who excite people to feel good messages. We need to be aware of those who do not promote the good and glory of a holy and godly life. We need to be aware 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 be aware of skilled persuasive orators that sound authoritative but their authority does not come from the right source, the Word of God, but rather from themselves. We ought to be aware of celebrity type individuals with big name ministries.
We need to be aware of teachers who promote tolerance and endorse homosexual LGBTQ lifestyles as acceptable. We need to be aware of those who promote entertainment like worship services where there has to be a night club type of atmosphere and a concert atmosphere for worship to take place.
Be aware of prosperity teachers and those who say that God spoke to them in a dream. Be aware of those who ignore biblical roles established by God for male leadership in the church of the living God. We need to be aware of churches who refuse to discipline their sinning members and be aware of individuals in churches that preach another gospel which is a false gospel that turns the grace of God into sensuality. They are all out there and in a big way.
So the godlessness of false teachers can be described in four categories up until this point: they reject authority, they claim divine revelation through dreams, through dreams they are given permission to participate in immoral acts, their dreams overrule biblical teaching and pollute their own bodies and the lives and the bodies of those who hear them.
That leads me to my second point this morning because this becomes very clear when the bible reminds us that their profound resemblance is found in the Old Testament in three individuals. In Jude 1:11 it says:
Woe to them!
Let me stop there and say that is a declaration of a divine judgment oracle. It means to damn or curse someone. It is 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 are forsaking God. The woe by extension echoes the misery that overtakes those who suffer God’s judgment. The woe introduces the ultimate doom that overtakes those who have resisted God’s purposes by embracing unrighteousness.” Here is the woe directed at false apostate teachers which resemble those from the Old Testament. The first personality that is resembled is that of Cain. It says in the verse:
For they have gone the way of Cain.
Actually the phrase gone the way means going from one place to another, to travel. It can be used to describe someone who decides to take a trip. They decide when they take the trip which direction to go in and where. At some point we must all make a choice about which direction we are to take in life. Are we going to follow the world and its system and 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 it.
Well Cain, the brother of Abel, had a certain way about him that was completely the opposite of his brother. The way is a pattern or the road you choose as you move through life. Old Testament wisdom literature speaks often of choosing the way you ought to go. For example in Proverbs 2:20 where it says:
So you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous.
See that’s a way to go. You can identify that way and see how that way looks. It’s going to look a certain way in a person in their character, the way they talk, what they do in their life, 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, but they forsook it for another way to live. 2 Peter already told us that they forsook the right way and have gone astray. This passage of Scripture is narrowly revealing to us that there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live. False teachers knew the right way to live yet they forsook it for another way. They couldn’t stay neutral, they had to take another way. You have to go one way or the other.
They took the old way, the world’s way, the fleshly way, the wrong way. The charges against these teachers is that they once knew better than to do what they are doing right now. They have left the straight way and have wandered off course. These apostate wanderings were really not due to disorientation or getting lost but rather willful apostasy from God and rebellion against His Lordship.
So these good for nothing things don’t live according to conscience and are guided by right and wrong, truth or morality, holiness or godliness. They march to the beat of their own drums and take the broad road that leads to destruction. Now just for reference, take your bibles and go back to Genesis and let’s look at five passages that have to do with Cain and see what it says there.
So when you read the account of Cain in Genesis, we get the sense that God must have given Cain and Abel some instruction after the fall concerning how to approach Him in worship. This has always been important for God: how someone in sin should approach Him in worship. If you don’t approach God in the right way, you lose your life.
Look at Genesis 4:1-5:
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 worshiped God in accord with divine instruction but Cain worshiped God to his own understanding and not according to God’s revelation. Being left to himself, he could not control his own impulses to envy and hate, which led finally to the murder of his brother. Where Cain went off the path was when he strayed from the Word of God. 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, look at what it says in 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.
He envied him and killed him and 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, then often they conclude that they know God will understand them.
They do not follow the Word of God in their understanding but their own agenda. 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. Yet many people think that way. They say religion is too personal and they made their choice to worship in their own way.
Well this is where 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 is a second personality that these false teachers look like and that is Balaam. In Jude 1:11 it says:
Woe to them! 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 is rushing ahead, not thinking of the consequences as long as there is money to be made. Does anyone do that today? People think they have to work another job, another hour, forsaking other things just to make enough money. Many times people put off marriage, raising a family so they can get to that ideal number where they can now live. That is such a false way of thinking and yet Balaam is 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 but let me give you some of the highlights on what happened. King Balaak was the king of the Moabites and part of the anti-Israel coalition. The Moabites were descendants of Lot and of course they appear to be spared up until this particular point. They have come to represent heathenism and spiritual bankruptcy and idolatry.
Their gods, Chemosh and Baal, seem to be helpless and impotent against King Balaak’s enemies. So what does he do? Balaam was a prophet that was very skilled in the craft of sorcery. He was so skilled that he could curse or bless someone. He could actually ask for substantial amounts of money for his services. Balaak being king had the money to pay. His gods couldn’t come against Israel so he called on Balaam to come against Israel and actually curse them.
He went ahead to do that and God stopped him through three different sections of Scripture. The bottom line was that he was not able to do it. The Lord said to Balaam, “I’m against you Balaam. You’re supposed to be representing me but your way of behavior and conduct are opposite of my ways. Your path is reckless before me.”
Balaam 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 ought also where it says in 2 Peter 2:15:
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 chose to use a dumb animal, a donkey, to show that those who live in sin are like dumb animals that have this animal instinct. Those who teach false doctrine are equated with dumb animals. Here in Scripture it is represented as wiser than a human being.
A human being created in the image of God was viewed as blind and ignorant and they have chosen to live an insane lifestyle that satisfies the sinful flesh while rejecting all sound counsel of the Lord. Because he pursued money and covetousness, that led to sexual immorality and idolatry and judgment.
Remember, Balaam could not curse Israel because God would not let him. But what he did do was teach Balaak how to teach Israel what was wrong. That’s what it says in the Word of God in Numbers 31:16:
Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor.
For money, Balaam, was the 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 them to the Moabite gods. As Balaam in the end was slain, and 24,000 Israelites perished along with him.
Balaam’s name became synonymous with these sins of immorality, covetousness, and idolatry which caused God’s people to be led away from the straight path to all kinds of sinful behavior. The point for this one was that Balaam was an example of a false teacher who became worldly who led God’s people, and is still doing so, into sin and destruction.
If all false teachers, who deny the Lordship of Jesus Christ, become worldly, seek possessions, money, popularity, success, acceptance, security of the world, and forsaking the right way they go astray. They lead people into sin and ultimately to destruction.
Most false teachers today, just as in Jude’s day, allow greed and selfishness to rule them. Religion can be a very lucrative business. You can get money from people and can get them to give large amounts beyond what they should give until they lose their things because they are giving to this ministry hoping to get a blessing.
The basic message of these false teachers is that God will give healing, wealth, material blessing in return for money. Give them your money, they will pray for you, and God will give you what you want. They preach a message people want to hear emphasizing God’s love. They are able to lift a person’s self-esteem and make them successful, promising a wonderful life on this earth.
When you become a Christian, you may not have a wonderful life in the same definition. You will have a wonderful life because you will have a relationship with God, but your life could go towards persecution and difficulty.
You may lose your job because you’re a believer. Things may go south when you are a believer. But that doesn’t change your relationship with God, that’s the hope we have and that keeps us going.
There is one last personality that the Scriptures identify in Jude 1:11:
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 dissatisfaction on the part of some of the rightful leadership of Israel.
In other words, who should lead now that Israel is in the wilderness? Should Moses and Aaron do it? Or should we do it because we are connected to the Levitical line. So there are two interests that work in this particular narrative.
Take your bibles and turn to Numbers since you’re probably very unfamiliar with this text. The first interest is against the sacerdotal part, the priesthood, who was to be regarded as the heir and founder of the priesthood.
Secondly, some were against the political or ruling branch in the wilderness, Moses and Aaron. They thought that Moses and Aaron did not belong in their positions. So Korah, a Kohathite and descendant from the brother of the ancestor of Aaron, probably the elder son, felt that the priesthood should be a birth and have belonged to his family and by consequence to Korah. He should have been the high priest.
I want you to notice in Numbers 16:3, what Korah says to Moses and Aaron:
They assembled together 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?”
Then down in Numbers 16:8, 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. Those that were secretly opposed were from the tribe of Reuben and their names were Dathan, Abiram and On. As the plot against Moses and Aaron matured what’s interesting is that when Israel met in the wilderness and the tabernacle was in the middle, they would put sides around the tabernacle like north, south, east, west,
In the south border was where the Reubenites hung out and the Kohathites were between Reuben and the tabernacle. If you’re in the south and looking at everything going on from your tent. The camp of Israel was sectioned off in twelve tribes and the allotted place of the tent of Reuben was on the south side of the central area of the tabernacle and in between them was the encampment of the Kohathites, the division of the Levitical family to which Korah belonged.
Now on the day of the trial, they were to learn 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 and they were to perform their priestly function of offering incense and the Lord would make known who would be the objects of His choice.
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 rose from off his knees and commanded the people to stand clear from 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 here. Because he is not mentioned, he probably did not come under God’s judgment. But I want you to notice in Numbers 16:23-35 that 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. 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 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.” 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!” Fire also came forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering the incense.
So both branches, the sacerdotal and the political ruling, of that great controversy were extinguished by that judgment. It was immediate, miraculous, and the 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 he should be the position that God gave to Moses and Aaron. So by slander of the leadership that God had chosen to put in place, Korah rebelled against God and perished along with all those who followed him. 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 judgment.
Now saying all that, if we conclude that these false teachers and those who follow them are wrong about the direction they take in life, then they go with the devil. Like Balaam, they have reckless thinking about the consequences when the love of money drives every decision.
Like Korah, they are rebellious in heart against God and those God has put in leadership and all of them were judged by God and perished. What does that conclude for us? I think Jude is clear to say don’t follow them, don’t listen to them, and don’t be like them.
In growing in godliness and holiness, we are actually fighting against the apostasy that is evident in our country and in our society and in our government and in the church. We are actually fighting against that when we are not like them. We have a changed heart and God is making us like Him in His image and because of that, that’s where power gets these people blind.
Remember, it’s a little book but a big message. It really teaches us and rebukes and makes us sober to what is going on. Every little thing that comes into our ears we need to be careful about and it may also be false teaching that we don’t want in our lives.
Alright let’s pray. Lord, thank You this morning. These Scriptures are heavy, they are instructive, I pray that we would take them seriously and not be caught in any of these pursuits of life because they are exactly what false teachers do. I pray that You would make us people who stand against these false teachings and that we would be standing with You upon Your Word and Truth. I pray that in doing so, You would also make us more discerning, to know what is Your way and what are other ways that are wrong. Make us Christians who are thinking clearly about what we ought to know and clearly about how we are to practice our faith. I would ask You Lord that we would always grow in this knowledge. Do it for the sake of the glory of Your great Name and to strengthen and help the church. I pray this in Your Name, Amen.