Jude chapter one and verse 10. And Jude is still speaking about
these people who have encroached upon the church, entered into
the church with the troubles that they bring. And this is
what he says in verse 10. But these speak evil of those
things which they know not. But what they know naturally
as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe
unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily
after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying
of Korah. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading to us. Just before we speak about Jude,
let me draw your attention to a couple of things that the Apostle
Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. He said in 1 Corinthians 1, in
verse 23, we preach Christ crucified. We preach Christ crucified. This was the message that the
apostles, this is the message that the Lord's preachers and
leaders in the church ministered to those early congregations. We preach Christ crucified. But Paul went on to say, unto
the Jews, that message of Christ crucified is a stumbling block
To the Greeks, it's foolishness. Let me just unpack that for a
moment with you, if I may. The Jews were, at the time, at
the height of their religious development. They had their temple. They had
their sacrifices. They had their scriptures and
their parchments, their rules and their rituals, their priests
and their scribes, and their elite theologians. But when the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to the Jews with all
their religion, they did not recognise him. They had talked
about the Messiah for centuries, but when he came, he was a stumbling
block to them. They wanted a Messiah, but not
this one, because his doctrine contradicted and undermined their
carefully honed belief system. and so they had to silence him
by whatever means they could. The Jews found the preaching
of Christ to be a stumbling block. The Greeks, on the other hand,
they represented learning and culture. and art and science
and all the progressive thinking of the world. If the Jews had
perfected religious observance, then the Greeks possessed the
wisdom of the world. They weren't stumbled or perplexed
by Christ crucified. They just found the preaching
to be foolishness. so that the religion of the world
did not believe Christ, and the wisdom of the world mocked Christ,
the Jews and the Greeks. And this is what Paul is saying
in this little verse in 1 Corinthians 1. We preach Christ crucified
to the Jews. That's a stumbling block. To
the Greeks, it's foolishness. He had covered, as it were, the
whole world in the way in which he described that response, whether
it was the religion of the world, whether it was the wisdom of
the world. It stumbled one and the other mocked it. And to this day, these responses
haven't really changed very much. the preaching of Jesus Christ
crucified, or let me say it like this, preaching the blood of
Christ as the only ground of acceptance with God still stumbles
the religious world, and it still perplexes the secular world,
which considers it to be foolishness. And Paul explains why. He tells us that the carnal mind,
that is unregenerate and unrenewed people, the unregenerate mind,
the unrenewed mind of men and women is enmity. It is rebellious,
it is opposed to God. It is enmity against God. And the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, because they're foolishness
unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. These insights that the Apostle
Paul is giving us here or that he wrote to the Corinthians.
These insights help to explain what Jude is telling us in his
little epistle. Just because a person speaks
about God as the Jews did all the time, just because a person
speaks about God does not make him godly. Just because a preacher
speaks about spiritual things does not make him spiritual. Just because a church offers
God praise, be it ever so skillful and professionally done, ever
so musical, that does not make it true worship. Cain brought his offering to
God but it wasn't true worship. Balaam pretended to represent
God, but it was all an elaborate sham. Cora and his associates
brought their censers to the door of the tabernacle in their
hundreds, expecting God to be impressed by their show of strength
and their commitment and their dedication. And all of them were
consumed by fire from the presence of the Lord. And these are the
examples that Jude is giving us today. And don't get me wrong, as far
as knowledge of God is concerned, there may be depth to that knowledge of God. There may be a natural understanding,
there often is a natural understanding in religious matters, in things
about God, which natural men and women possess. Knowledge about divine things,
knowledge about holy things, and yet there may never be a
work of God upon the soul. Men and women may feel an obligation
to worship. Cain did. He felt obliged to
worship God, but there was no faith in his heart. And men and
women can, by reading, by hearing, by going to university, by going
to Bible college, acquire great knowledge in the truths of God
so as to speak, as Balaam did, very convincingly on the subject
of God. But their souls have never felt
any love for God. Their hearts have never had a
desire after salvation. This is head knowledge, but it's
not heart experience. It's nature, but it isn't grace. devils know more in terms of
doctrine and truth about the Lord Jesus Christ to their eternal
sorrow than many of God's children do to their eternal joy while
here below. just because people know facts
about the Bible and just because they can present it in a very
clear and understandable way does not mean that they are truly
the Lord's people. And that's something that the
true Church of Jesus Christ has to be discerning about. Now, I don't plan to say too
much today about the historical details of the examples that
Jude has given us, because they're all fairly self-explanatory.
You can read about Cain and his offering in the early chapters
of Genesis. You can read about Balaam. You can read about Korah in the
books of Moses. Their value for us today is recognizing
why Jude listed them as he did in this little epistle and what
lessons he intended by giving them, by drawing them to our
attention. And we can say that all three
examples exhibit coming before the Lord to worship him and yet none of
those who thus approached the Lord were truly God's people. None came by faith and all of
them ended up separated from God and all of them ended up
condemned by God. So what I'm going to do today,
if I may, is we will note, particularly in this reference that Jude makes
to brute beasts, we will note the condition of these hearts
before the Lord. And our points will be this,
the need for saving faith, the heart of saving faith, and the
proof of saving faith. Let me set the scene a little
bit by saying this. I assume that most of us would
be a little bit reluctant to call another person a brute beast. It's impolite to call someone
something like that. Why then does Jude do it? Why then does Jude, one of the
Lord's apostles, use such, we might say, an offensive label
to describe these men who have made their way into the church? Well, it is a strong rebuke because
it is a serious matter that Jude is dealing with. And surely this
language is designed, it's purposely given to tell us that we ought
all to be more sensitive to the danger of tolerating false teachers
amongst us. And some people, some folk might
say, as long as a man is preaching from the Bible, it's okay to
listen to him. And it's okay to follow his ministry. Or as long as a man is telling
us about the Lord Jesus Christ, it's fine. Well, Jude is telling
us that these teachers, these men who crept into the fellowship
of the Lord's people unawares are not okay and they're not
fine to listen to. In fact, they're dangerous because
they don't know what they're talking about. and they will
confuse and they will distract and they will hinder the faith
of the Lord's people by their ignorance if they're tolerated. And so Jude brings us these sharp
words, these direct statements in order to show us the need
of saving faith. So this is our first thought,
our first point. Cain that Jude refers to here. Again, he gives us these three
examples from the Old Testament. Cain was the first son of Adam
and Eve. And the parents, Adam and Eve,
were now expelled from the Garden of Eden. And yet, they and their family
were not without an awareness of God. They were not without
a sense of God's glory. Nor were they without the knowledge
of the history of bloodshedding for a covering for sin. That information was available
to Adam and Eve and their family. And Cain came to worship God,
offering the work of his own hands. He came with the produce
of the earth. And we learn in the book of Genesis
that his worship was not accepted or regarded by God because it
was not offered in faith, but in a formal and in a hypocritical
manner, without any regard to Christ's sacrifice or God's glory. Now Jude is telling us that saving
faith is necessary if we are to worship God aright. And like Cain, anyone can go
through the motions of worship and yet not offer God any true
spiritual worship. Christ himself told Jude. So this is how direct it is.
We're getting the very words of Christ from Jude as Jude writes
this little epistle. Christ himself told Jude in John
chapter 4, 24, that God is a spirit and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. And the imposters in the
church of Jude's day were like brute beasts. They were natural
men and women without spiritual understanding who could not approach
God in spirit and truth, regardless of what they said, regardless
of what they did. Theirs was not true worship.
And each of us should ask ourselves this question, is my faith rightly
fixed on Jesus Christ? Do I present myself before the
Lord with an eye to the cross and the merit of Christ's blood
alone to cleanse and to set me free from the prison of nature's
ignorance? Do I see Christ in worship? We're blessed indeed if we do. because the brute beasts who
walk in the way of Cain know nothing of true worship. I think in many respects that's
why what is called worship today has become so grand and spectacular
and sophisticated and professional and clever. It appeals so much
to the sensual elements that perhaps always had, whether we're
talking about the grandeur of massive buildings, the beauty
of man's singing, or the way in which worship is undertaken
in very graphic ways, It's been made almost into a professional
activity. And one wonders if that is because
they are trying to insert something into their worship that isn't
there of a spiritual dimension. Such brute beasts knew nothing
of repentance for sin and faith in the cleansing blood of the
substitute and the redeemer. And such brute beasts may speak
the same words that believers do. They may profess to know
peace with God, but they speak evil of those things which they
know not, for they have not faith in Him. Friends, let us be absolutely
sure where we stand today. We have a need of saving faith
if we are to worship the Lord in spirit and truth. For without
faith, it is impossible to please him. The second thing I want
us to think about is what is the essence? What is the heart
of saving faith? What is this saving faith? Saving
faith is trusting Christ on the authority of the scriptures of
the Bible and the Word of God. Saving faith is trusting Christ
for love and mercy and forgiveness and peace with God and for eternal
life. Faith is God's gift to his people. It originates from God. It is bestowed by God. In Galatians,
the apostle Paul calls it the faith of Jesus Christ, and that's
a very appropriate way to think about it. It is the faith of
Jesus Christ. It is Christ's faith. It is God's
faith. It is the faith that originates
with God. And the Saviour is said in Hebrews
to be the author and the finisher of faith. believer does not begin in his
own heart or even in his own mind, in his own head. It is
not produced in the will of the believer, despite what many,
many people talk about as free will and trusting the Lord with
our own free will. That's not where faith is produced.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the author of true faith. Think about it like this. He
wrote the book on it. He wrote the book of every spiritual
experience, every true thought, every acceptable act, everything
that is to do with our approach to God and our worship of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ himself authored. And the Lord Jesus
Christ is the finisher of our faith. He is the end point where
faith finds satisfaction and fulfilment and completion. And the brute beasts that Jude
wrote about knew nothing about this. It is faith alone that
brings understanding of spiritual things. Faith alone teaches us
that we are not capable of serving God in our own strength and that
we must derive all our help by his grace. Balaam, in the Old Testament,
in the book of Numbers, is one of the most puzzling characters
in the Old Testament as far as I can see. And he embodies what
Jude is saying here in this little passage, which is why he gives
us the example of Balaam. Balaam spoke with God. Balaam had amazing revelations
of God's will and purpose. He saw miracles. He experienced
close encounters with God and with death from which he was
delivered. His own ass, his own donkey spoke
to him to warn him not to be so foolish as to curse what God
had blessed. But Balaam wound himself up like
a pretzel trying to find a form of words to allow him to satisfy
Balak who wished to have the children of Israel cursed and
was prepared to pay someone good money to do it. Balaam got himself
all wound up trying to do the will of God who forbade him to
curse Israel while trying to do exactly that on Balak's behalf. And time after time, Balaam was
forced to bless Israel with some of the most extraordinary prophecies
in all the Old Testament concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and the
blessedness of Christ's people. For example, he spoke of the
righteousness of those whom the Lord was pleased to bless. Balaam preached justification
and imputed righteousness and it was Balaam who tells us that
God sees no sin in his people. He prophesied of Christ who would
arise from amongst the children of Israel. These are the words
that Balaam spoke. If we heard these words coming
from the mouth of a preacher today, we would be amazed. We
would rejoice. Balaam said, God is not a man
that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said, and shall he not
do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall
he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment
to bless, and he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it. He hath
not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness
in Israel. And speaking of Israel, he said,
the Lord his God is with him and the shout of a king is amongst
them. Balaam, Balaam said those things. Those are beautiful descriptions
of our God and of our saviour, Jesus Christ. And yet in all
this, he was a stranger to God's grace. How can we account for
this? Balaam had knowledge of Christ
in his head. but it was not planted in his
heart. He had glimpsed the glory of
God, but he never came to trust him. He knew there was forgiveness
with God, but he never experienced it in his own life. He ended
up enticing Israel into idolatry and fornication before his own
untimely death. and I've said this in the past
and no doubt I'll repeat it, Balaam's is a sad case indeed. Do you know that there were people
who literally witnessed the Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross? They were present at his crucifixion. They watched as his blood was
shed. They were familiar with the Old
Testament messianic prophecies. They were steeped in Bible tradition. And yet, nevertheless, Christ
was a stranger to them. They passed Christ by, and it
was nothing to them that he suffered and he died. What is it to you and what is
it to me? Let us not be content with head
knowledge. Isaiah 55 verse 6 says, Seek
ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is
near. So thereby we may discover with
the Ephesians that now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were
far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. That's the heart
of saving faith. Let me think finally about the
proof of saving faith. Let me make a few points here.
I want to end, if I can, on a positive note and remind ourselves that
Jude is not writing to these brute beasts to encourage them
to convert to the truth. That's not what he's saying in
this little epistle. He is writing to the Lord's people
to warn us to be on our guard, to be attentive and to be discerning
about what we hear, what we listen to, and who we follow. He's writing
to God's elect to warn us of the sneaky nature of the enemies
of the gospel and the church who spend their lives around
believers, like Amalek did, trying to hinder and to hobble the least
of the Lord's little ones. Now the Lord will not give them
the victory because the Lord will not lose the littlest, weakest
lambs from his flock. But that does not remove our
obligation to be informed and alert to the efforts of these
ungodly men and these brute beasts who don't have any true spiritual
understanding and to be alert and informed to their activities
for our mutual support and encouragement in the gospel. Jude's final example
is Korah. Korah is K-O-R-A-H is the usual
way in which it's spelt in the Old Testament. And he shows how
passionate and protective the Lord feels for his elect people. I mentioned it a little bit in
the notes that I sent out. At Sinai, the Lord established
the Aaronic priesthood. and he made it as a pattern for
Christ's greater priesthood. So that the book of Hebrews tells
us that the Lord Jesus Christ is our great high priest and
that he is a priest after the order of Melchizedek and the
comparisons are made with Aaron's priesthood or the Levitical priesthood.
and it is shown to be superior. It was here at Sinai that the
Levitical priesthood was first established. And it focused on
Aaron, who was to become the type or a type of the saviour
who is our great high priest. So that by seeing and understanding
what was happening with Aaron, the elect in the Old Testament
amongst the children of Israel would have a greater understanding
of who to look forward to in the person of Jesus Christ. However,
when God revealed his plan, his purpose to Moses, Korah and his
confederates wanted every man to be his own priest. every man to be eligible to approach
God in his own way, upon his own merits, in his own righteousness. And this is the pathway which
has been replicated down through the history of the church and
it is what is going on in much of today's man-centred religion. Korah tarted up his argument,
if I can say it like that, and he made it sound reasonable,
even attractive, that this was a good way to take the pressure
off of Moses and Aaron, and they would all be priests. It was
an attractive proposition in many ways, but it was another
gospel, it was another way of salvation. People say, surely all these
churches can't be wrong. Surely all these ministers can't
be mistaken, even though they preach the gospel of free will,
even although they preach the gospel of work salvation, it
can't all be bad, it can't all be wrong. Well, let me tell you what happened
to Korah. Moses said, I'm paraphrasing. Moses said, put your money where
your mouth is. Let me read the actual words
from Numbers chapter 16. And Moses said unto Korah, be
thou and all thy company before the Lord, thou and they and Aaron
tomorrow. and take every man his censer,
and put incense in them. And bring ye before the Lord
every man his censer, two hundred and fifty censers, thou also,
and Aaron, each of you his censer. And they took every man his censer,
and put fire in them, and laid incense thereon, and stood in
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation with Moses and
Aaron. And there came out a fire from
the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered
incense. The Lord slew them with fire
to a man, Now let me outdate that. Every
minister, every preacher, every false professor who comes to
worship with his own censor and his own incense, his own way
of salvation, his own righteousness, his own works, all who try to
approach God on any other ground other than the shed blood and
atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ will suffer the fire of God in
hell. Don't let big numbers confuse
you. In the same day as Cora was consumed
with 250 priests, the ground opened up between Dathan and
Abiram, his two confederates and all their families. Numbers says this, the ground
clave asunder that was under them, and the earth opened her
mouth and swallowed them up, and their houses, that is their
families, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all
their goods, they and all that appertained to them, went down
alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them, and they perished. And if that was not enough, in
the days after that, the Lord slew thousands more who supported
these people. He slew them with a plague. So
whether it was fire coming out from the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation, whether it was a, I don't know, was it
an earthquake and the ground opened up and consumed these
people, or whether it was the plague that God sent amongst
the children of Israel, The Lord wreaked havoc upon those who
had no faith and presumed to approach him to worship without
faith. Maybe you're going to say to
me now, how is all this death and destruction at all comforting? Well, for this reason, it shows
that the Lord will vindicate his true church. He will honour
the true gospel and he will justify true faith. This is the seriousness
of what we believe. If we are wrong about this and
those others are right, then it's us that are standing
in Korah's place. That is the importance of what
we believe. That is the importance of knowing
the truth. But by Moses and Aaron, God demonstrated
that the only way of salvation is by God's own free grace. And the only acceptable worship
is worship offered in accordance with Christ's sacrifice. Jude
is distinguishing brute beasts from the Lord's sheep. And may his presentation, stark
as it is, may his sharp language bolster our confidence in God's
gospel and reinforce our trust in Christ's blood. The faithful
apostle is freeing us from all the vague and confused ideas in order to truly show us what
matters and what it is that brings a sinner to salvation in Christ. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.