Jude wants his readers to defend the faith. Therefore, his letter is designed to be an apologetic for apologists. Jude is writing to those in the church who are facing the attacks of the Devil. He is appealing that they would “contend earnestly for the faith.” He makes the argument why every Christian should be well versed in apologetics. There are people within the church who are abandoning the faith, reinventing the faith, and using the faith for their own desires. Specifically, he is speaking of those who are like this and stay in the church and become defiling influences within the church. He identifies them as “[S]pots in your love feasts” (Jude 1:12). 

Lord, we thank you for laying before us holy words, true words, words that we always need, words that are deeper than even our understanding of them. We thank you that there's no limit to their beauty and their goodness. And Lord, we don't know exactly why we're here right now before these words, but we're grateful for your sovereign hand, that you love us, and that you desire to strengthen us and protect us. Lord we thank you that you're able to keep us from stumbling and to present us before your Son with joy. Lord, so we I pray you'd bless the words of Jude to our hearts today.

Amen. Okay, so open to the book of Jude. It's just one chapter. Just a few opening thoughts about Jude. Jude is writing to those who are facing attacks of the devil against the church of Jesus Christ, And he's appealing to the Christians to contend earnestly for the faith.

That's a quote and the central, I think, message of the book. And he makes the argument why every Christian should be well versed in Christian doctrine and particularly apologetics so that that Christian is equipped to be able to contend for the faith against the attacks that are taking place in the church. So this is a letter that appeals to Christians to understand apologetics. There are people within the church who are abandoning the faith. They're reinventing the faith.

They're using the faith for their own glory and for their own desires. And he's talking about not the people that have left the church and are apostates in that way. He's talking about the people who are still in the church. They didn't leave, but they're like a poisonous influence within the church, and this should help us to have a mature understanding of the Church of Jesus. We often think the church is just a sweet place where everybody's beautiful in their own way.

That's not exactly true. There will be people within the church who are spots or like he says, reefs in your love feasts. And so this letter makes it really clear that the life of a Christian in the church is on the one hand it's a life of being in peacetime but it's also a life of being in wartime. And while the Christian is at peace with God through the peacemaking work of Jesus Christ on the cross, the Christian is at the same time in a battle with the world and the flesh and the devil. And so the Christian in a church, in a true church, smells both the smells of war and also the aroma of the sweetness of Jesus Christ, you will have those two things existing in a true church, as Jude makes it very clear.

And so with this in mind, Jude exhorts the church not only to earnestly contend for the faith, but also to keep themselves in the love of God. Those two things are so important. And it's keeping yourself in the love of God that allows you to speak the truth in love. The more you are absorbed in the love of God and everything about God, the more you'll be able to detect the false teaching and the people who are really spots in your love feasts. And so here is the focus is contend earnestly for the faith.

That's probably the central message of the book of Jude. And also too, not only that we are earnestly contending for the faith for the Church, but also for the sake of others, because Jude also speaks of how we ought to love our brother by exposing falsehood, maybe even in their own lives. Now this book exposes false views of love. It corrects the sentimentalism of our day regarding love. A lot of times we've removed the truth from love, but God calls us to speak the truth in love.

So There's apostasy in the church that Jude is addressing. There's immorality in the church that Jude is addressing. And there are dangerous men in the church. Thomas Manton, in his commentary on the book of Jude, he described these men as fanatical and libertine, a kind of mean and loose sort of people that vented monstrous and gross conceits chiefly out of envy. This is written in the introduction to Thomas Manton's commentary.

So the author of Jude is the brother of Jesus, actually the half brother of Jesus, and also the brother of James who wrote the book of James. James who became a great leader in the Church of Jerusalem. So Jude walked with Jesus, rejected Jesus because the Bible says that his brothers and sisters thought he was crazy and they abandoned him. But there was a change in Jude's life at some point and it just bears witness to the beautiful truth that even though you reject Jesus soundly at one time in your life, that's not the end of the story. That God can save the most cynical, the most knowledgeable, the most intimately connected person with the rejection of Jesus and can restore that and can bring that person into his own fold.

So the time of writing we're not exactly sure. It's very difficult to pinpoint the time of writing of the book of Jude. There are several key verses and I've identified three in your outline and the first is Jude 3 and 4, where the central message of Jude is explained, and I'll just read those two verses. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you, and this is the phrase, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the Saints. For certain men crept in unnoticed who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of God, our God, into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ." So these first verses, verses 3 and 4, explain the central message.

And then verses 20 and 21 speak of how a Christian should respond to the situation beyond contending for the faith. And he says, but you beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." Now we'll get to this in more detail later, but the Christian should be building himself up and praying in the Holy Spirit and keeping themselves in the love of God. That's how you prepare yourself to contend with the faith. There is this fortification of knowledge and filling your mind up with the knowledge of God's will and praying and then keeping yourself in the love of God. And then the third set of verses that explain this this book are verses 24 and 25, the last two verses.

And there Jude talks about how God preserves his people, And these are very wonderful words. You've heard these words prayed in benedictions, perhaps in churches. These are often the final words that pastors will say to their churches when they meet. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen." So this is how God preserves his people.

He keeps them. He's the one who's able to keep you from stumbling. What a blessing that is. God is very kind to his own. Also, I think we should identify the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in Jude.

And I've identified three ways that Jesus is presented. And first of all is in the first verse that Jesus Christ preserves his people. Secondly, that you keep yourself in the love of Jesus Christ. That's verse 21. And thirdly, that Jesus keeps you from stumbling.

That's verse 24. So Jesus Christ is spoken of from the first to the very last verse in this very short letter. Okay, so let's let's move on into the the body of this letter and we'll just walk through it section by section. And as you can see I've divided it into seven sections. First of all, the greeting verses 1 & 2.

Secondly, the exhortation verse 3. Thirdly, the reason that contending for the faith is necessary. That's verse 4. And then, I'm not in verse 4, and then the fifth division is how to detect a false teacher. That's verses 8 through 13.

And then the fifth section speaks to the judgment that awaits false teachers, and that's verses 14 through 16. And the sixth division is the way to deal with false teachers, and there are five directives that are identified in verses 17 to 23. And then finally, the seventh section is the final blessing of being kept from stumbling, and that's verses 24 and 25. So if you could just follow with me through these sections. The first section is the greeting and that is encompassed in verses 1 & 2.

So let me read the greeting. Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ. Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. So in these first two verses in the greeting you learn that it's the brother of James who is writing, who is the brother of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 13 verse 55 we learn that he was the half brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, the younger son of Mary born to Joseph including James and Joseph and Simon as his other brothers who were born to Mary.

This is why we call him a half-brother because Jesus was born of a virgin. So His siblings were half brothers and half sisters in that sense technically. In John chapter 7 verse 5 we learn that Jesus was rejected by His brothers. Jude denied the Lord until after his resurrection, apparently. Now, we don't know exactly when his heart turned, but definitely his heart turned after the resurrection.

The recipients of the letter are identified, those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ. So there's not a specific geographical grouping of people or a local church as are many of the letters. You know, there's the letter to the church in Corinth. You know, Peter's writing to those who are scattered abroad. Well, this is more general because it's written to those who are called and sanctified.

It seems to be very broad in that sense. And perhaps he's writing to a Jewish audience. We're not sure. He does refer to, there's some allusions to Jewish writings there. The book of Enoch is alluded to later on in this book.

But he calls a blessing upon them. He says, mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Think about that. Mercy, peace, and love multiplied to you. You know, how much of his mercy do you need today?

How much of his peace? How much of his love? Well, it was Jude's desire that those things would just be multiplied in your heart. And This is God's wonderful desire for his people, that those things would multiply. How about that?

He wants something to grow in you. He wants a sense of God's mercy to expand and overtake all kinds of other things that exist in your heart. He wants his peace to grow, to expand, to like multiply, to you know exponentially grow in your life and then love to be multiplied to you. All of these things God desires to be multiplying in you. Now we do things that cause the multiplication to be stunted, don't we?

In the same way that, you know, radiation treatment, you know, stops and can kill cancer. So there are certain things, there's certain kinds of radiation from this world that will stunt the mercy, the peace, and the love of God in your life. And the Christian always has to ask, is there anything that I'm doing that stunts the multiplication of mercy and peace and the love of God in my life? You know, do you want those things to multiply? Well, absolutely you do.

You want them to multiply. Well, how do you make them multiply? First of all, you have to feed them, and you also have to eliminate the things that stunt the growth of those things. But, it's Jude's desire that there's something multiplying in the hearts of his people. Isn't this wonderful?

You really get a sense of the love of God toward his people. What does he want to do to you? Well, he wants to multiply mercy and peace and love in your life. What a life! What an amazing thing God has called us to.

It's very exciting to just consider the things that God has for us. You know, the Apostle Paul, when he was writing to the Ephesians, he talked about the kind intention of His will, and here we see a manifestation of the kind intention of God's will toward us as He desires those things to be multiplied within us. So after the greeting in verses 1-2, then Jude turns to the primary exhortation in verse 3. And the exhortation is issued in these words, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation. I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to all the saints." So there's a very strong exhortation to earnestly contend for the faith.

Earnestly and contend. Those are two critical words in this exhortation. There is a vigorous life of contending for the faith. In other words, there's something to fight for and it takes an earnestness in order to fight for that faith. Peter speaks of this in 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15 where he talks about suffering for righteousness sake.

He talks about the threats that are delivered to the people of God. And he says, don't be afraid of their threats, don't be troubled. He says, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they defame you as evil-doers, Those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed, for it is better if it is the will of God for you to suffer for doing good rather than for doing evil. For Christ suffered for sins once, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit." So this exhortation is issued, and there's a call to fight, to defend, to refute, and to be ready with your apologetics. In other words, being able to answer.

It's a loving thing to be able to answer. It's loving to fight. That's one of the issues that I think comes about here. We have a false view of love. Love means you never make any ripples.

That's sort of the way that people think about love today. It's a wrong way. And here the Apostle is making it very... Or Jude is making it very clear that it's right to fight. But there's a way that a Christian must fight and he speaks of it here with meekness and fear in 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15, and particularly in verse 16 as well.

So there comes a point where a Christian has to abandon his self-protective impulses and speak the truth in love. It might cause a dramatic, forceful, negative reaction, but we have to realize that when the truth of God confronts the work of the devil, that there will be slanderous things that will come back. And he's making it very clear that it requires a contending for and a loving to defend the truth of the Scriptures. And it's loving to defend is one thing that he's saying here. He says that our faith is not an invention of man so that we shouldn't be afraid of it.

It's not our deal. It's not our message. It's God's message. It was the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. And he's making this point about revelation, the revelation of God to the apostles, that the faith was delivered to the apostles and then it was communicated.

It was written down, and we have it now today in the form of many books in the New Testament, and it's a completed faith. It was delivered once for all. It is the standard by which all other faiths are judged. And the Apostle Paul made this very clear. He said in Philippians 3, we have no other pattern, 3.17, that there is a pattern for truth and God has delivered it to the apostles.

It is a faith once and for all delivered. And so it's a fixed faith. It's the Rosetta Stone. It's the immovable faith that we hold. And This is why in the book of Revelation, John in chapter 22 verse 18 says this, For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the book of life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. So this is a faith that has been delivered. It is a fixed faith. And if you change it, then There's punishment and damnation for those who reject the faith once delivered. And, you know, today we live in an era of many, many faiths.

We have the non-Christian religious faiths like Mormonism and various other false religions. And we have the religions of Hollywood. We have the religions from all over the world. These religions are being promoted. There's the LGBTQ religion which says that it's wrong to speak of gender, that we don't have fixed genders.

This is a religion, and we have a fixed pattern of faith that was true and is always true, and it was delivered by Jesus Christ, who is the Alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. And so that's why there's this earnest exhortation to contend for the faith. Now when we get to verse 4, we see the reason that contending for the faith is necessary, and this brings us to the third division of the book, the reason that contending is necessary. Verse four reads, For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. So the reason that contending is necessary is that men have crept in how?

Unnoticed. There were things that could not be discerned up front. They were crafty. And it says here that they were marked out for this condemnation. Philip Dodridge, a successor of the English Puritans, wrote that in his commentary he said that they were registered for condemnation.

In other words, God has two books. There's the book of life and there is the book that contains the names of those who are registered for condemnation. They are marked out for condemnation before the foundation of the world. And God makes it very clear that the wheat and the tares exist together in the church. And Jonathan Edwards notes that they were put in a sacred record, quote unquote, put in a sacred record.

They were marked out and it's like when someone comes into the fellowship and they look okay on the outside, but on the inside you find that they're not who you thought they were, and you find out over time by their teaching. They creep in unnoticed and they exist for a period of time, and then something happens and you notice. You notice that something is wrong. And so this is how the church is attacked from within. Often it's not the attacks from without, they're the most harmful in a church, They're the attacks from within.

And so Jude is addressing this. This was happening in the first century church, and now here we are 2, 000 years later. We shouldn't expect it to be any different, that this is a warning for every church in every age, that there will be people who will come in and their danger is not noticeable immediately, but in time it will be noticed. And so, you know, this is how God protects his people from false teachers. And now he gives three examples of how God protected his people.

First of all, look in verse 5. The first was preservation through the Exodus from Egypt in verse 5. But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord having saved his people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe. So when someone creeps in unnoticed and you finally notice it, here's what you need to remember. Remember Egypt.

And that God destroyed those who didn't believe. It was God who did it. They murmured and they perished in the wilderness. You know, God showed them miracle after miracle and he destroyed them who did not believe. In other words, he's making a warning and really giving encouragement that God's going to take care of these people.

The second example is found in verse 6, and it's the judgment and the final incarceration of fallen angels, who are demons. So he's giving examples of how God rises up to protect his church and also how this spirit is manifested. First in Egypt, and those who left and they murmured and they did not love God, they did not appreciate what God had done for them, they didn't regard the miracles that they saw, they still murmured in the wilderness and God killed them off. And the second, that's found in verse 6, let me read it, and the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day." So he's speaking of spiritual forces in the angelic realm, and what he's saying is that God will protect his people from demons and from their work on the earth. They are in chains.

The demons cannot do whatever they want to do. You will not be victimized by demons. John said, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. You never need to fear demons. God is in control of them, absolutely in control.

You know, Jesus said, you know, In the world you'll have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." But he says that they are reserved in everlasting chains. Everlasting chains. Now we'll get to some more things that Jude tells us about demons and how we should relate to the forces of darkness, but just know this, that they are incarcerated. This is why in the book of Job, Satan comes to God and asks him if he can touch Job. Because the demons don't do anything without the sovereign control and protection of God in the world.

And you can always know that. Demons aren't gonna jump you, okay? Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, and you never have to be afraid of that. You know, there are people that have these haunted house tours, you know, in the great cities of America, and they try to scare people that demons are going to jump all over them and enter their room and speak and all these kinds of things. They have no power against God at all, and so there's no reason for fear.

They are reserved in everlasting chains. Do you see that there in verse 6? That is their status. And they are being kept for judgment on that great day. In the book of Revelation, I was just listening to today in chapter 12 where there's this great judgment against the demonic forces, and there's this phrase, the devil knows that his days are short.

He knows. He's in chains. And then the third example, the first example was Egypt, the second example was the judgment and the incarceration of fallen angels, And the third example is Sodom and Gomorrah. And here again with these examples we learn two things, how the devil works through these people but also how God is protecting his church. And So Sodom and Gomorrah is the third example in verse 7.

As Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." So in Sodom and Gomorrah, the people there indulged in despicable manifestations of immorality, And they also did have a culture that was characterized by lack of love. They had no sense of hospitality or care for others. Now, if you find yourself sharing the gospel with people who call themselves homosexual or bisexual or transsexual, they will tell you that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of the lack of hospitality, not sexual immorality. They'll tell you that. Now Sodom and Gomorrah did manifest the sin of lack of love by not caring about people and not being hospitable because immorality also is another manifestation of lack of love.

But if anyone says that to you, go to Jude 7, because Jude 7 completely refutes that. Jude 7 makes it clear that it was the sexual immorality that God, that God, it was for the sexual immorality that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Read it. As Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, which is code for homosexuality, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. It was that licentious, homosexual, erotic culture that drew the wrath of God upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

And it wasn't because they lacked hospitality. Okay? Hospitality was in the mix for sure. But go to Jude 7 and you'll refute that ignorant assertion that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed not because of homosexuality. The Bible just doesn't teach that.

So in these three examples of Egypt and of the angels and of Sodom and Gomorrah, we're shown two things. How sin can manifest itself through those coming in unnoticed, but it also shows how God deals with sin through his wrath, how he simultaneously protects his people and separates the wicked, and he will bring judgment upon them. So that's the message in this section. And then Jude turns to some really practical insight on how to detect a false teacher. That's the fourth division in your outline, how to detect a false teacher, in verses 8 through 13.

And I'm going to take these one by one, but I'm going to name them first and then we'll we'll walk through them. First of all, they reject authority. That's verse 8. Secondly, they lie. That's verse 9.

Thirdly, they speak evil. That's verse 10. Fourthly, they go the way of Cain and Balaam and Korah, three examples of ungodly men who were part of the assembly, that's verse 11, and then they defile the love feasts. And that's verses 12 and 13. So this is how you identify false teachers by these five things.

Now there are other things, but these are the ones that Jude is identifying. So the First is they reject authority. Verse 8, likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. Now the first thing that Jude says is that they're dreamers. Now what does that mean?

It means they're just making up their own ways. They create these false imaginary scenarios. They have a dream and they make dramatic conclusions out of their dreams And they're just creating this thing that has happened to them through a dream. Now God can use dreams, there's no question about that. But these are people who are just creating their own imaginative worlds out of their dreams.

And they present these scenarios that are not true, and people follow them. They're interesting, they're fascinating, they're compelling, they appeal to people's hearts, and they grab onto them the people who have dreams. And so they are dreamers and they reject authority. In other words, they reject the authority of Scripture and prefer their dreams. And this whole spirit of rejecting authority includes defiling the flesh.

In other words, they do whatever they want with their bodies, and they speak evil of dignitaries. And He could be speaking of angels here, that they speak, speaking evil of these dignitaries, these angels, these authorities. God has given authority to angels without question. And why would He be speaking of this? I think that there's some speculation that because the law of God was delivered on Sinai with the angels that somehow when when a person rejects the authority of God they are also speaking evil of these dignitaries, these angels who delivered the law of God on Mount Sinai.

In Acts chapter 7 verse 53, Stephen says, you who received the law as ordained by angels and yet did not keep it. He's saying this just before he's stoned to death in Acts chapter 7, and he's making it clear that the law was ordained by the angels, but the Pharisees were not keeping the law, they were keeping just the outward manifestations of it. In Hebrews chapter 2 verse 2, we read a very similar testimony, for the Word, for if the Word spoken through angels proved unalterable, he's talking about the law of God, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" So in Hebrews he's talking about how the Word was spoken through angels, these dignitaries. The law of God, the Word of God was spoken. And then in Galatians chapter 3 verse 19 that we learn that the angels were guardians of the law of God and were part of dispensing the law of God on Mount Sinai when the law was given.

Galatians 3 19, Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions having been ordained through the angels. So how do you spot a false teacher? How do you spot a reef in your love feast, a spot in your love feast, they reject authority. They reject the authority of God and they exalt all kinds of other authorities.

I mean, how did Mormonism come about? Well, an angel apparently showed up and Joseph Smith preferred the testimony of that angel, Moroni, to the fixed and authoritative Word of God. He rejected the authority of God. He went on to have 55 wives in Salt Lake City there. He rejected the law of God on so many counts it's not even funny, but it came through an angel.

He rejected the authority of God and embraced this dream that he had where an angel appeared to him. So the first thing is they reject authority. Secondly, they lie, verse 9. Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation but said, The Lord rebuke you." So These people lie and in their lying they are making reviling accusations against the saints. When someone is making reviling accusations against the saints and saying that they're unclean, they're filthy, then you find a person who is lying.

And he gives this example of the devil who is disputing about the body of Moses dared not to bring against him a reviling accusation but said the Lord rebuke you. So now in this verse you have Michael the Archangel, you have the body of Moses, and you have this dispute. Michael the archangel is spoken of in Daniel 10 and 12. He's a mighty angel. He's involved in defeating Satan's schemes against the saints.

He's called a prince. He's mentioned in Revelation Chapter 12, verse 7. And we read of him waging war with Satan and his angels. Now what you have here with Michael the Archangel is that He refuses to rebuke a devil. He refuses to rebuke a fallen angel, and He's only willing to say, the Lord rebuke you, okay?

Even holy angels like Michael, the archangel, do not rebuke the devil. And we should consider, you know, this in terms of the environment that we live in where where people in the charismatic movement promote the idea that Christians should be pronouncing judgment over Satan and rebuking demons and binding demons. But here's what you have here. If Michael the archangel is not comfortable with rebuking the devil, why should we? Who do we think we are?

You know, are we the superheroes of the Christian faith? You know, we may find ourselves hearing the words of the demons spoken to the sons of Sceva. Jesus we know and Paul we know but who are you? Well Michael the archangel didn't even feel comfortable rebuking the devil himself. He said the Lord rebuke you.

The devil apparently was bringing accusations against Moses, like the devil always brings against the Saints. He brings accusations. You know, Moses was a murderer. Moses made some terrible errors in his life, And my view of that, this passage, is that the devil was bringing accusations against Moses, and Satan as the accuser of the brethren was the one who was doing it. And Michael the archangel said, the Lord rebuke you.

The Lord rebuke you for bringing an accusation against one of mine. He's mine. He belongs to God. And We find a similar thing in Zechariah chapter 3, verse 1. The high priest, Yeshua, is in this scene that the prophet Zechariah communicates.

Now, Zechariah is full of images and figures. It's an apocalyptic literature in some ways, but it's just full of imagery. And there's this scene that Zechariah sees in his prophecy, and there are three people in the scene and there's Joshua and he's standing in the middle there are three personalities and and there there is the devil on the one hand on his right and there's the angel of the Lord on his left. So that's the scene. And the devil is is pointing out his filthy clothes.

Yeshua is filthy. He's the high priest. He's been leading in a revival. He came back with Zerubbabel to restore the worship of God and to rebuild the altar and the temple of God. And Zechariah is prophesying during this time because the people had stopped working on the temple, or on the temple.

And so, And God brings Zechariah to encourage the people to get back to work. And one of the scenes here that Zechariah brings is this scene where these three beings are standing there and Jeshua is in the middle. And the devil is reminding Jeshua, the High Priest, of his filthy garments and the angel of the Lord who is most likely a pre-incarnate Jesus Christ standing next to the high priest. So you have the devil and you have the high priest and you have Jesus, the angel of the Lord. And the angel of the Lord says to the devil, the Lord rebuke you.

The Lord rebuke you. His clothes are not filthy. His clothes have been washed. That's really the message that's there. So they lie.

That's the point. How do you identify a false seizure? They lie about the saints, and they condemn the saints. And they condemn the saints. And so, while the devil is rebuking the saints, the Lord is saying, no, no, Your clothes are not filthy.

And so here in this case, Michael the Archangel says, the Lord rebuke you. In other words, the Lord's going to take care of you. The Lord's going to take care of you. He'll make it all clear. And you know while there are people who are encouraging immature believers to rebuke authorities, here you find a completely different thing.

The Lord rebukes the authorities. And so what Christians do is they point to the Lord. They don't have authority of their own. It's only God's authority. So the first way that you identify a false teacher is that you see they reject authority.

Secondly, they lie. They really lie about the sinfulness of the church and the condemnation that the church does not deserve. And then Thirdly, they speak evil. That's verse 10. But these speak evil of whatever they do not know, and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, these things they corrupt themselves.

So they speak evil, and they speak about things they don't even know. They talk about things they don't even understand. They have a corrupt worldview and they speak out of the wellspring of their corruption. They don't understand how God has ordered the world. They don't understand what is true.

They're driven by their false teachings. They're driven by their dreams, their impulses, their their pleasures, they're speaking out of ignorance. And so they speak evil as a result of that. Now, but it's even worse than that because they're like unreasonable, unreasoning animals. They are brute beasts.

They're like wild animals. You never know what a wild animal is going to do. Here's what you know about a wild animal. He might turn on you. You know, even the most well-trained animals, they just might snap.

It happens. You can read about it, you know, in the press, particularly about, you know, with zoos and animal shows and things like that. Sometimes that lion just turns around one day and chomps you because they are brute beasts. They don't... They have no government of God.

They're self-driven. They're operating out of their own knowledge and their own emotions and out of their own their own motivations and so as a result they speak evil. They're self-driven. John MacArthur speaks about this. He talks about various ways that this as this comes out even in modern times.

He talks about the book The Da Vinci Code. He says the Da Vinci Code book which is blasphemy upon blasphemy upon blasphemy, is a new run of old Gnosticism. It purports to have profound, esoteric, mystical insights into the real Jesus. And it is without reason, without truth, without knowledge, as ignorant as a dumb animal. And by the very things that they do instinctively, they are destroyed.

Like a stupid animal caught in a trap because he follows his desire for food. So they follow the lusts of their flesh. The insubordination of their hearts, the irreverence of their minds, and ignorance kills them like the suicide bombers. They blow themselves up in representing Satan by following their own instincts, the judgment of God gets them in the end. This is the tragic result of speaking evil.

No one gets away with it. And then fourth, they go the way of Cain and Balaam and Korah. So he gives these three examples of how they go, and they go the way of these three personalities. These are three rebellious men, Cain, Balaam, and Korah. And we find these dangerous elements that can creep in unnoticed.

First, the way of Cain, he was a murderer. But there were two critical problems with Cain. First, he did not worship God from the heart, and so God didn't accept his sacrifice. His heart wasn't in it. It wasn't a sacrifice that God had ordered.

He wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to worship his own way. And the second problem with Cain was that he hated his brother in his heart. He did not love his brother. 1 John 3 verses 11 and 12 uses this phrase, not as Cain, not as Cain who murdered his brother.

And so there was no love in his heart and so he murdered his brother because his works were evil and his brothers were righteous. That's 1 John 3 verse 12. He did not have righteousness that comes by faith. He didn't have true faith. And so Cain is the first example, and then Balaam.

They run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit. And so, you know, Balaam was this prophet. A pagan hired Balaam to curse the people of God. And you know Balaam's donkey who talked to him. You know, the donkey sees an angel in the way, and the donkey turns around and talks to Balaam, and Balaam is beating the animal.

And Balaam takes money for sending pagan women into Israel's camp to lure them into idol worship. He'll do anything for money, anything. And sex, lying, slander, greed, whatever it is, he'll do it. And then you have Korah who opposed Moses. You know, Moses was the God-appointed leader of the people of God going through the wilderness and this proud man he was self-righteous he was condemning and in Numbers chapter 16 which is the critical text here says they became insolent and rose up against Moses.

And the story you can read in Numbers 16 verses 1 through 5, and many of them gathered against Moses and they gathered together against Moses and Aaron this is verse 3, and said to them, You take too much upon yourselves, for all the congregation is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?" Then Moses fell on his face and he cried out to God. But there were 250 leaders in the congregation, you know, men of renown in the congregation that rose up against Moses. And of course they were all destroyed. But here we just find a manifestation of the false teachers.

They go the way of Cain and Balaam and Korah. And so you can see those manifestations. And then fifthly, they defile the love feasts. That's in verses 12 and 13. These are spots in your love feasts.

Another translation says reefs. You know what a reef is? A reef is something that a ship gets caught on and destroyed. You can't see it, but you hit that reef because it's just under the surface, and then you lose your boat. You lose your ship.

These are spots or reefs in your love feasts. In other words, they're there but you can't see them. I mean, you're there, you're celebrating, you're singing, you're enjoying the fellowship of God, but they may be there. While they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves, they are clouds without water, carried about by the winds, late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up from the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame, wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness and darkness forever." So The love feast was a meal after the church meeting in the early church. And so there they are.

They defile the love feasts. And then the fifth division is the judgment that awaits the false teachers, and that's verses 14 through 16. And here we find that there's a very dramatic judgment that awaits them, And He's punishing them for ungodly things and harsh things, for the grumbling, for the living in their lusts, for their swelling words, for their flattering people to gain advantage. Look at verse 16. This is what they do.

They grumble, they complain, they walk according to their own way, and they mouth great swelling words. In other words, they're really great with words, and they flatter people to gain advantage. They try to create divisions. They flatter people to try to get them attracted to them. But there's judgment that awaits them.

And then here's the way you deal with false teachers. There are five directives in verses 17 through 23. And the first is remember the words of the apostles. That's verses 17 through 19. But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So if you, in order to deal with false teachers, remember the words of the apostles. They told you this would happen. That's the first directive. The second directive is build yourself up. That's in verse 20.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. In other words, recognize your weakness, recognize what you don't know, and is there anything in your heart that's that's hindering you from defending the faith? Are there areas that you need to build yourself up in? Remember this is an apologetic for apologetics. You should know, understand the faith, and contend for the faith.

What is it that you don't know that you need to know in order to contend for the faith? And The third way to deal with false teachers is to keep yourself in the love of God and waiting for His mercy. That's verse 21. Understanding the love of God and what it means is really the first step in thinking straight about anything because God has done everything for his love. God creates, but Satan destroys.

This is the most critical thing. If you understand the love of God, then you can rise up and contend for the faith. And then the fourth thing that you do to deal with false teachers is that you have compassion, verse 22. And on some have compassion, making a distinction. Because some people will turn.

There's hope. Contending for the faith is not hopeless. Some will turn, and God really does call us to hope. And then fifthly, rescue the wayward and hate their sin. That's verse 23.

But others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. This means that some need a more aggressive approach. They need to be pulled out to declare their defilement and call them out of darkness, appeal to them. Some of them will come. So pull them out.

Is there anybody that you know that needs to be pulled out? Is there anybody that you know that just needs your compassion, your compassionate appeal, or is there somebody you need to go get? You need to go after them. Just like, you know, the lost sheep. God goes after the one who's lost and He pulls them out.

He pulls them out of their trouble. And then the final blessing of being kept from stumbling in the seventh division of Jude in verses 24 and 25. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To God our Savior who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever. Amen." You know the Lord says he's going to protect his church and he's going to keep you from stumbling.

You know, are you worried about stumbling? Here's what you need to know. God will protect you. He'll keep you from stumbling. And so this whole book is written to urge us to earnestly contend for the faith, and what is at stake?

People's souls and the purity of the church. And so we really ought to heed this urgent command, earnestly contend for the faith, which was once delivered to the apostles. It's really worth fighting for and it's the reason God put the church in the world. A heaven and hell is at stake. The beauty and the tenderness, the compassion, the love of Jesus in the church is at stake.

So here is an apologetic for apologetics and so we should do everything we can to prepare ourselves to contend for the faith. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord we pray you would reveal our weaknesses and in what we need to contend for the faith and that You would give us boldness and courage and fearlessness, that we would not fear man, and that we would be willing to contend, and that we would be willing to identify those who've crept in unnoticed, and that we would be useful to you to with compassion to rescue some who have fallen amen