verses 25 verses Paul got to write 14 books John got to write 5 Peter got to write 2 Jude gets 25 verses they're the words of God Almighty these are the words of God Almighty as Jude's he wrote as Jude and wrote exactly God had ordained, commanded and directed him to write.

And he begins, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Who is Jude? He's the brother of James. Let's see who the brother of James is in Galatians chapter 1. Paul talks about his trip to Jerusalem. to give a history and to give a declaration of the gospel that he preached to the Gentiles and the Jerusalem in council ensued. But listen to who he went to see, Peter and the other apostles. But the other apostles, verse 19, the other apostles saw I none save James, the Lord's brother. Jude was, it's very hard to put this in proper terms, you would want to say he might be the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he was certainly one of that family as James was. He and James were brothers, and they were brothers.

What a remarkable history this man had. For all of his life, seeing he wasn't the eldest by any stretch of the imagination in that family. The Lord Jesus Christ was the eldest sibling that they lived with. What a remarkable history he had. He lived all of his growing up in the presence of perfect holiness. He lived all of his growing up in the presence and witnessing perfect righteousness in his brother. Not a thought crossed the Lord Jesus Christ mind that was sinful. He was perfect in every way, perfect under the law. And then when he showed himself publicly after his baptism and God the Father spoke and God the Holy Spirit came upon him and he came back from his wilderness time and started preaching and declaring the wonderful good news of prisoners set free and he performed these remarkable miracles around there.

Turn with me in John chapter 7 and you'll see what he and his other brothers did. In John 7 verse 2, the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, And he himself seeketh to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him.

Where did Jude's faith come from? exactly the same way it comes to every other redeemed sinner. By a sovereign act of God Almighty, Jude, like the other, If you go through the letters of the Old Testament, and Jude and 2 Peter are very, very similar, but if you go through the writings of these men as they finished their lives, they were men who were writing in perilous times, as Paul says to Timothy.

If you just turn back one page, you will see in your Bible, in John chapter, the third epistle of John, Imagine this, an old apostle who had lent on the breast of the Lord Jesus Christ, who had spent three years and a half walking with him, had seen him resurrected, had proclaimed him, had been responsible and given oversight of those churches in that area. And here in those churches is a man called Diotrephes. who love to have the preeminence, verse nine, among them, and he receiveth us not. He will not receive John.

All, 2 Peter, the end of 2 Timothy, all of the apostles and the Bible writers finish writing as people in a church to those who were in the midst of being harassed enormously by false teachers from within their ranks. What's Jude's other name? Well, it comes from the word Judah, which means praise, but he would have been known as Judas. Imagine how often he must have thought, as his name was mentioned, that that man who had for three and a half years had a place of prominence amongst the very apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, and at the very last proved himself to be a child of Satan.

Deceived and deceiving, he had all the outward show, so much so that the apostles didn't ever think until that very event that he was a deceiver. So that's the context in which Jude is writing and if you have time at your leisure, if you get to read 2 Peter, you'll see that there are so many wonderful similarities between the two.

So let's just, I just wanted to read through it and just let's for us sort of try and the Lord will grant it to get just a picture of what is going on here because Jude begins so well and it's just wonderful to think and for us to be reminded of what the response of God's servants is and the response that God's servants want to bring to those that they love in the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of trials, in the midst of opposition to the gospel.

Listen to how he begins. Jude's a servant of Jesus Christ. and a brother of James to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. There's a triune work of God. How did Jude come to be a child of God? He was set apart by God the Father from all eternity. He was preserved in the Lord Jesus Christ from all eternity and he was called into acknowledgement of all that by the Blessed Holy Spirit.

The electing love of God is mercy, verse 2. It's mercy from God the Father. The preserving work of the Lord Jesus Christ is to bring you peace in his blood. And the calling is a calling into a love relationship with God Almighty and a love relationship with all of the brethren called. Mercy unto you, peace and love be multiplied.

Beloved, what a lovely word beloved is, what a lovely description. They're beloved of God and they're beloved of each other. If God has begotten you through his mercy and grace and love, and he's begotten a brother or a sister, then there is a love bond between them which is stronger than anything in this earth. Because it comes from God.

Why do we love him? Why do we love him? Because, there's one reason, isn't it? Because he first loved us. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, We'll look at that later on. It's not common in any sense that we might think of common, it means that there is only one. There is only one, that's what he's talking about.

It was needful for me to write unto you and to exhort you that you should earnestly contend. That word earnestly contend is the word from which we get our English word agonize. It's to strive to the point of agony for the faith. The faith. There is just one. The faith describes the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ. The faith is the gospel. The faith. Not a faith. The faith.

Our King. May the Lord have mercy upon him. But our king changed the declaration that he had, and even though it was a declaration that was given to Henry VIII by the Catholics for his staunch defense of Roman Catholicism, but they called themselves defenders of the faith, and Prince Charles decided that he wouldn't have a defender of the faith, he would have a defender of a faith. meaningless, absolutely meaningless. You can make it whatever you wish. God's servants and God's people, all of them have THE FAITH and they declare ONE FAITH. And this is where that faith comes from, which was once delivered, it was once given by God.

Listen to how Paul in Galatians describes how he came to have this gospel. And here's a pattern of all those who hereafter will believe. In verse 11 of Galatians chapter one, But I certify, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. He didn't learn it from any man. He didn't need to go to a seminary to learn this at all. It's not after man. It's not after man's wisdom. It's not after man's will. It's not after man's learning. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it.

But how did he come up with his gospel? How does any preacher, how does any child? It's by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For you've heard of my conversation in times past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it and profited in the Jews' religion above many of my equals in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my father.

How did you come up with this gospel, Paul? How did you have salvation? But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son, where? In me. Where's the hope of glory? Christ in me. that I might preach him among the heathen.

How is this gospel delivered? This faith which was once, once and once only delivered with absolute finality. Once John put his pen down in the book of Revelation, the word of God is complete, the revelation of God is complete. You need nothing else. We go nowhere else. We say this is what God says. Amen. This is what God says. It's once delivered unto the saints.

What a glorious description God has of his people. They have a common salvation, they are beloved, they are the recipients of the faith delivered to them and they're called saints. They're called holy ones, set apart by God. There is the sweet introduction, and all the way down to verse 19, from verse 4 all the way down to verse 19, is a description and a declaration of why he wrote, why such urgency in what he wrote, and to warn courage and to embolden the saints of God.

His life here on this earth in ministry facing opposition after opposition. Satan tempted him in the wilderness and then the scriptures say, and he just left him for a season. And we don't know much about what happened in the rest of that time and the Lords, but who we know that Satan's messengers harassed him. At every moment they attacked everything about the character of the Lord Jesus Christ and about his message all of the time. And as he proclaimed the gospel, if you go through the gospel, as he proclaimed the gospel and revealed himself, there was a division among the people. And some people were rejoicing and others were made mad by him declaring who he is. Him declaring himself to be the faith, the gospel.

And then this is why Jude's writing, four, you should earnestly contend. He wants you to strive agonizingly for the faith which is once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares. And then he immediately says, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation. The very first thing you need to remember when you encounter anything that disturbs and takes your eyes away from the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in and in his finished work. You need to remember this is all God ordained. These are before of old ordained to this condemnation. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul, our God, writes to us. Not that Paul is our God, but Paul writing by the Blessed Holy Spirit. He says, for there must, verse 19 of 1 Corinthians, there must also be heresies among you. Heresies is a choose. That word means to choose something that divides. There must be heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. They were ordained of old.

Firstly, let's remember that God is absolutely sovereign. Secondly, we must remember this is good for the children of God. It is good for the children of God. God uses the opposition to the Gospel to heighten the power of the Gospel and the wonder of the Gospel and the truth of the Gospel and the importance of the Gospel into the hearts of his people.

They're ungodly men. Ungodly men. He'll use that phrase over and over again. In verse 15 he uses it four times. They're ungodly, ungodly, ungodly, ungodly. Ungodly in their deeds, ungodly sinners. And they've got ungodly lust. Ungodly is a word that at its heart speaks of service and reverence and worship. And then in Greek, as we do in English, there is an A in front of it. So a theist is someone who believes in God, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God. These people Instead of worshipping and reverencing and standing in awe of God, they don't. It's the exact opposite. That's what the word ungodly means. Unworshipping, un-reverential, un-serving God.

Now listen to what they do. Turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness. That word turning means a translation. It means to transpose the grace of God. And what they are saying, so that we are clear about it at the beginning, what they are saying is that if you preach the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work and His gospel for His glory, then people will use that as a means for saying that we can live in sin and sin no longer matters to the child of God.

Turn with me to Romans 3 and we'll see that this is the accusation that was made against the Lord Jesus Christ. A friend of sinners and publicans he was. But I want us to understand what this particular phrase and what this particular activity was. I haven't got time to read it all, but Paul is talking about how free and how wonderful the grace of God is. And then in verse 80 says, and not rather as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say, let us do evil that good may come. We can live. If the grace of God is so free and so vast and so expansive, then we can live as we like. And God, because God is looking to his son and not to me, then the life that I live here, my desire to live in such a way that I do not dishonor him is irrelevant. and they're translating the grace of our God into lasciviousness, the accusation that's made unto this day.

And what do they do? They're turning that, these un-worshipping, un-reverential people, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. So that's at the heart of it. What is it to deny the Lord Jesus Christ? It is to take away anything of His glory and the wonder of His finished work from Him. I love the fact that the Brethren can say that He's our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 5, I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not. I don't know how we can find out how many people came out of Egypt. People can say that there are two million. Some say that there might have been up to three million. We know that there were well over 600,000 men of fighting age, men above 20 years of age. A vast multitude saw the Passover, saw the Red Sea, saw God descend in power on Mount Sinai. saw the water flowing out of a rock, saw every day the manna from heaven again and again and again. They lived in the very presence of the evidence of God, the Shekinah glory, lighting their nights with a cloud and covering their days with a cloud.

How many went into the promised land? Two. Two. How precious is salvation. How precious is the faith.

I don't know quite what he means, though you once knew this. Maybe these people, like us, need to be reminded again and again and again of how great and glorious and how serious our God is about his Gospel. How that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not, and the angels which kept not their first estate but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting change under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Every created being in every time in history fell. The angels that weren't filled were the elect angels and they were kept and preserved by God Almighty from that great fall of Satan before this world began.

Verse 7, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, that's homosexuality, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses. Durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, the Lord God buried Moses and hid his body such that no one would know where it was, such that all of God's children would know from there on in that Moses doesn't get you into the promised land. You don't get into the promised land, you don't get across that particular Jordan, Moses. A Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ, leads the people across the flooded Jordan into the Promised Land. It may mean other things, and we're Lord willing, we might get to look at it in the next little while.

Verse 10. For these speak evil of those things which they know not. But what they know, they know naturally. and in those things they corrupt themselves. God's children have the mind of Christ and they are taught spiritually. The truths of God are brought into their lives with a power that comes from God Almighty, which is why the children of God contend.

People can go a long way in natural religion. People can go a long way in natural intelligence. Just ask Nicodemus and Caiaphas. Just look at the religious leaders that we have witnessed in this last 2,000 years, the religious leaders that we could note around us now.

I had a friend whose appointed task was to assess the Bible colleges in various parts of the world, particularly in India and across Asia and many other places and even up into Europe. He used to go and do an assessment of what was being taught and the sort of state of the teaching in the Bible colleges and the state of the, because they all have their letters after their names, but what does it actually sort of mean in the context? Do you know how many men he knew in all of the world, in all of the Bible colleges he went to, who believed that the Lord Jesus Christ actually saved people at the cross, and really saved his people at the cross? in all those years of examination and all of those, five, he said. And I'm sure if those five had been examined carefully, maybe they wouldn't either. They didn't believe the gospel. And it's no wonder, isn't it? You can go to Bible college and you can get a PhD and you can be as brilliant as you could wish to be in the eyes of this world and remarkably knowledgeable. You could be as knowledgeable as the Pharisees and not know God. They know naturally.

May the Lord teach us spiritually. May he take his word and make it like fire in our bones that's shut, that we cannot contain. May he cause us like David to go down and hear the Philistines talk and say, there is a cause, there is a cause. those things they corrupt themselves, they defile the flesh even of themselves and others around them. Woe unto them for they have gone the way of Cain. What's the way of Cain? A bloodless to God Almighty. That's the way of Cain. That's the way of Cain. The way of man-made freewill works religion that denies the blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward.

You can read about these gentlemen, Balaam and Cora in Numbers 16 and 19. What was Bailon's great crime? Compromise. He was offered an awful lot of money to curse the people of God. And he went, and God restrained his lips. There wasn't a single thing that Balaam said that was wrong. You read Balaam's speeches, you read Balaam's sermons, and you read what Balaam said, you can't find a single thing that Balaam said in those declarations because God restrained his lips. And yet, what Balaam said to the Moabites, is that all you need to do is put your people down next to the nation of Israel. Let them camp down there next to them, and their young men will see your young ladies as beautiful, and vice versa. And then they will start worshipping your gods, and then you'll get God to curse them. Anyway, we'll look at Balaam more thoroughly in future.

Korah, of course, despised the fact that God had a priesthood and the priesthood represented the very priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ and he wanted to come to God in his own way and he had no regard for God's ordained people his message, but particularly at the very heart of it is an attack on the Lord Jesus Christ. But listen to the brazenness of these people. These are feasts at your spots, in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves, and this is the one thing that covers all of their sins, without fear. Remember what ungodly means? No reverential awe, no fear. Clouds they are without water, carried about by winds. Trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, puffed up. Wandering stars, there is no sure foundation for them because they're not built on the rock who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And listen to what God says, to whom is reserved. What's reserved? Our inheritance is reserved in heaven for us. God is not dethroned by these men ever. reserved the blackest of darkness forever. And Enoch, also the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince, to convict all that are ungodly, that same word among them, of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and all of their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."

Who have they spoken against? They've spoken against the Lord Jesus Christ and His people. They are one. These are murmurers and complainers walking after their own lust and their mouth speaking great swelling words, having men's person in admiration because of advantage. You've seen that so many, many times, haven't you, amongst religious people? that it's a continual competition of praise. They'll praise you so that you can praise them so that they can praise you again and you can go on and on. We have one person in admiration, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you that there, listen to the word, should, be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own godly lusts. These be they who separate themselves At the beginning, God sanctified His people. He separates the people to Himself. These people separate themselves from the world. You've heard of people who want to go into the wilds of the world, to get away from the world so that they and their children won't be polluted by the sins of the world. They don't realize how sad it is. They don't realize that the great sin that they have is carried within them wherever they go. We knew a family who went all the way up into the sort of wilds of far northern Canada, didn't they? They went up way, way, way, so far away that they could only get out in the middle of winter when everything was sort of frozen over. And she was a pianist, and this man, for some crazy reason, took a grand piano up there for this lady to continue playing her piano. They wanted to get away from the world. They'd seen the horrors of Europe. during the days of the Second World War, and they just want to get as far away from it as they possibly could. Religious people do the same. They separate themselves rather than having been separated by God. They're sensual. Earthly, sensual feelings drive them.

Now listen to what God says of them. Having not the Spirit. Having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, this faith, this one faith that was delivered to us, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mercy unto you, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Who needs mercy? Sinners need mercy. We need mercy to hear. We need mercy to stay hearing. We need mercy to contend. We need mercy from God in the midst of all of these troubles. Unto eternal life and of some have compassion making a difference. And others say with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling. With all of that opposition, in all of those ways, from these people who are so, so impressive in so many remarkable ways. There's never been a false teacher who wasn't a charming person. There's never been a false teacher who wasn't an outwardly intellectual, intelligent, and there's never been a false teacher who wasn't a great communicator. There's never been a false teacher who wasn't persuasive of other people.

Who needs to be kept? Lord keep me, and I'll be safe. Lord keep me. Keep me by your power. Keep me by your ability. is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Amen. Truly, truly.

What a glorious letter from our God before we enter into the wonder and joys of the book of Revelation. What an amazing way for the Lord to finish off the epistles to the churches. And I know Revelation has seven letters, but I'm just thinking about these other ones. May the Lord bless his word to our heart. May we find these 25 verses of Jude just incredibly precious, and a precious word from God Almighty.

Let's have a break.