So we're in Jude, the little
epistle of Jude, and verse one. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ
and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the
Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. Mercy unto
you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence
to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for
me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept
in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation. ungodly men, turning the grace
of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God
and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I have a few things that I would
want to say today about this verse, but before we begin, I
want to note the Apostle Jude's reference to the Lord Jesus Christ,
and especially his designation, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us remind ourselves that
Jude the writer of this little epistle. Such an interesting
little epistle it is. And as we remarked last week,
quite different from the other epistles of Paul and Peter and
James and John. But Jude, as he is writing here,
we remind ourselves, was a personal friend of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a disciple and he was
an apostle of Jesus. And nevertheless, Jude calls
him Lord. So Jude calls Jesus Lord, which
is a reference to his divinity. Here was the man Jesus to whom
Jude was a personal friend, and yet Jude calls him his Lord,
his God. And he calls him Christ, he calls
him the Lord Jesus Christ, because he understood that Jesus was
the anointed Messiah sent from God to fulfil all the Old Testament
prophecies. So that when Jude wrote to the
churches, he was writing a first-hand personal testimony concerning
the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. and he thereby
corroborates the witness of the other apostles. The witness of
John, for example, who tells us of him whom we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and
our hands have handled the word of life. And Peter, who says,
we have not followed cunningly devised fables, but we have not
followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses
of his majesty. eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Peter says, for he received, that is Christ, from God the
Father, honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him
from the excellent glory. This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased and this voice, says Peter, which came from heaven
we heard when we were with him in the holy mount. And Peter
also calls himself a witness of the sufferings of Christ,
and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. And so
Jude, and John, and Peter, these men testified of the Lord Jesus
Christ, whom they trusted, whose teaching they received, and whose
doctrine they believed. And furthermore, Jude calls the
Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ. And here the apostle
is distinguishing between those who are Christ's and those who
are not. And Jude actually is making that
division right here in his epistle within the churches to whom he
is writing. There are some, says Jude, who
deny the Lord Jesus Christ, and there are some who believe in
him and identify Christ as their very own. It is to these that
Jude is writing, the sanctified, the preserved, the called, of
the opening verse that he identified as his audience, all of whom
can say by faith, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is our Lord Jesus
Christ. And I trust that we know today
on which side of this divide we stand? Can we testify with
Jude and John and Peter to faith and belief in our Lord Jesus
Christ? Or are we amongst those whom
Jude calls the ungodly? In our verse today, Jude explains
why believers must earnestly contend for the faith once delivered
to the saints. It is because of ungodly men
who have neither love for the Lord nor an understanding of
the way of salvation, and yet nevertheless, have succeeded
in slipping into the Church, whittling their way into positions
of trust and authority, and who from that influential position
have worked tirelessly to disturb and to disrupt and to divide
the true Church of Jesus Christ. It is these men of whom Jude
is writing and it is concerning these men that he is warning
those who trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want us to pause
here in what is really still my introduction and to ask ourselves,
is this warning from Jude relevant today? Or was it only a reference
to the dangers that the apostle perceived in his own day? Is there a continuing value and
usefulness today for these admonitions that Jude has recorded? Well, surely, surely it is relevant
in this age and every age of the church. because the wiles
of the devil have not altered. Satan's hatred of Christ's church
has not diminished. Men's hearts have not mended
or improved. They are still deceitful and
desperately wicked. It is true that the world has
changed a lot since Jude first wrote in the first century. But
it is a fallen world, and it is still opposed to the cause
of God and truth. So that, referring to John again,
in 2 John 1, verse 7, he writes that many deceivers are entered
into the world. who confess not that Jesus Christ
is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist,
says John. And here perhaps is the answer.
The spirit of antichrist is not only carelessness and ignorance
about matters of the soul, It is a full-blown rebellion and
opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the Church of Christ
and to the doctrines of faith and the Gospel. The spirit of
Antichrist is direct opposition to Christ, his Church and his
Gospel. And furthermore, I don't doubt
but that having had more than 2,000 years to infiltrate the
Church, to corrupt its teachings, to modify its doctrines, to chop
it up into denominations, to attack its colleges and seduce
its professors, and undermine its ministers. I say again that
I don't doubt that there is such a weight of anti-Christian sentiment
out there in this world, even infiltrating the churches, that
most of us find it hard to recognise. The sheer size, the sheer scale
and sophistication and subtlety of Antichrist tends to make us
think, no, it surely can't be all that. Surely it's not all
the harlot Babylon. Well, If there were many deceivers
in John's day and they were already inside the church when Jude wrote
his epistle, we ought to be open to the possibility that the vast
majority of so-called Christian churches today must be numbered
with the ungodly men of Jude's day. grouped with the deceivers
of John's day, and lumped together with all who have trodden, underfoot
the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith
he Christ was sanctified an unholy thing, and done despite unto
the Spirit of grace. Jude gives us three descriptions
in this verse that is before us today. Three descriptions
are supplied by Jude to help the church, the sanctified, the
preserved in Christ and the called by the Spirit, to help the church
identify these ungodly men. Three descriptions are provided. First of all, we are told that
these men turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. That is
a lustful immorality. We're coming back to that in
a moment or two. They turn the grace of God into
lasciviousness. Secondly, they deny the only
Lord God, which is just idolatry. And thirdly, they deny the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. They deny the efficacy of the
atonement. They deny the uniqueness of grace
as the only way of salvation. And I mentioned yesterday in
the little note that I sent out that perhaps these are the three
principal sins of all fallen creatures of every age. There is the turning of the grace
of God into lasciviousness, the indulgence of our physical, fleshy
lusts. There is the denial of God in
his holiness and his purity and in his revealed way, which is
merely an image creation and idolatry, and there is an opposition,
an anti-Christian spirit towards the Lord Jesus Christ. And even
if you don't agree with all that I am about to say today, I hope
that we can agree that these sentiments that Jude expressed
in his own day are still prevalent inside the professing Christian
church as we see it today. Let me touch briefly then on
each of these identifiers that Jude leaves with us. First of
all, there are those who turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. I don't doubt there are many
ways that Satan and men have turned
the grace of God into lasciviousness. So many immoral, so many wicked,
and lustful abuses have been inflicted and condoned under
the disguise of the Christian religion, down through the centuries,
down through the years. So many that even in the house
of the worst perpetrators, of that sexual immorality. It is called a disease in order
to try and sanitise it of its horror. How many children, how
many women, have suffered at the hands of wicked men and fallen
prey to their insatiable lust and their base desires. Where
grace should have been discovered, should have been found, lasciviousness,
immorality, and lust was openly practiced. And that is true, that is a fact
and that is recorded history even in the courts of our own
nations today. But I don't think that that is
actually what Jude is talking about because I don't think that
that is the greatest abuse. Immoral conduct lustful activity
as it is. Immoral conduct is a symptom
of spiritual degradation and spiritual degradation comes from
false religion. It comes from error and lies. The grace of God I suggest to
you, is turned into lasciviousness by making the doctrine of grace
universal, by extending it equally to all mankind, by corrupting
it and making men and women their own saviour, thereby hardening
their hearts and encouraging them to sin. so that it is the
origin and the source of these sins that is being spoken of
here by Jude. They are turning the grace of
God, they are turning the doctrine of grace into lasciviousness. If a church teaches works righteousness,
if it teaches justification by works, if it corrupts God's grace
then it is Antichrist. If a church preaches obedience
to God's law for justification, it is a corrupting of grace. Paul says in Romans chapter 7
that sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me
all manner of concupiscence. Okay, we're using some big words
here. Concupiscence and lasciviousness are actually just synonyms of
lust and improper sexual desire. So that what Paul is telling
us here is that because man is naturally corrupt, because man
is fallen, The law, when it is imposed, merely is the vehicle
by which all manner of evil finds a vent and an opportunity to
exercise itself. So that it is first of all a
doctrinal problem that lends itself and leads to all manner
of human nature's wickedness. And I believe that the doctrine
of universal grace in its broadest forms, that is, that God loves
everyone, that Christ died for everyone, that the Holy Spirit
is trying to save everyone in this world, has done more damage,
has done more to convince men and women in their sin and to
confirm their hardness of heart than anything else. It misrepresents God. It denies
the true nature of grace. It makes man his own saviour. It employs the law and duty and
obligation in order to make men righteous and it merely inflames
their lust and gives vent to their corruption. Furthermore,
this doctrine, it could only be preached within professing
Christian churches, so that the apostles, Peter, James, John,
and here Jude, very early understood the seriousness of this situation. And ever since, Satan has had
a design to distort God's grace and to blind men's eyes to the
truth. And he has presented grace as
available to everyone by their own free will and therefore meaningful
to no one. It is an almost all pervading
teaching in the Christian church today and it comes straight from
hell. We make a great mistake if we
think that the issues of morality and broad-mindedness and permissiveness
that are seen today in our liberal churches are the measure of a
church's orthodoxy. it is rather their doctrine that
matters. It's the gospel that they preach
that matters. If the doctrine of grace is perverted,
then the foundation is destroyed and everything else that is built
upon it is evil and corruption at its source. So that is the
first point that I want to make to us today, that these men that
Jude speaks about as having turned the grace of God into lasciviousness
have done so by corrupting the doctrine that is preached. The second thing that identifies
these people is that they deny the only Lord God. And as we've
pointed out already, that is idolatry. Denying the only Lord
God is idolatry. And Jude tells us that these
ungodly men within the churches, because that's where he is speaking
about them, they are in the churches, they are crept in unawares. These
ungodly men within the churches deny the only Lord God. We might seem incredulous about
that. It almost seems preposterous,
implausible, that preachers in Christian churches could deny
the only Lord God. And yet, if God's sovereignty
is denied, He is denied. If God's revelation of himself
is denied, it is tantamount to denying the God who has revealed
himself. If his character and his person
is misrepresented, the true nature and character of God is denied
and substituted for a man-made alternative. an idol of man's
own design and man's own creation, a figment of our fallen imagination,
an imaginary fictitious God who serves the purpose of man-made
religion and human self-righteousness. If you tell most churchgoers
today that you believe in the sovereignty of God, they'd have
no idea what you were talking about. And if you went on to
explain your doctrine, which is the faith once delivered to
the saints that Judah's been speaking about, they would reject
and dismiss your views outright. And what is this but the denial
of the only Lord God? It was how Jude described the
ungodly men of his day and it hasn't changed much. The third
thing that we learn about these men is that they deny the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think you know where I'm going
with this. They deny the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. They deny the efficacy of the
atonement. I keep talking about this word
efficacious. I hope you're becoming familiar
with it. It means the accomplishment,
the achievement, the success. They deny the accomplishment,
the achievement, the success, the efficacy of the atoning work
of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. They deny that when he
said it's finished, it was actually finished. They're denying the uniqueness
of grace as the only way of salvation. They deny our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Jude says, they deny
our Lord Jesus Christ. Whose Lord Jesus Christ? Ours. They are denying our Lord Jesus
Christ. They have a Christ of their own,
who died to save everyone, who tries to save everyone, who wants
to save everyone, but who has neither the ability, nor it seems
even the pervasive, persuasive power to do so. What kind of
God is that? What kind of Lord is that? What kind of Christ is that? People speak about their church
confessions of faith, and there's Baptists, and there's Anglicans,
and there's Presbyterians, Episcopalians, they all have their historical
statements of faith. And it's true that they're usually
better than the preaching of the modern signatories. But that's
exactly the point that Jude is making. It is incumbent on believers
to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints,
to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints
by returning again and again to the message of the cross,
to the Pauline gospel, to the message of grace. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. What Christ accomplished by his
death and how finished and free a work it is, is reflected in
the gospel that the apostles preached and wrote about. For
he hath made him to be sin for us, says Paul, who knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Satisfaction,
substitution, reconciliation, justification by the righteousness
of God, the righteous obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. These
are the things that we must return to in order to contend for the
faith once delivered to the saints. If the Lord Jesus Christ died
for anyone who ends up in hell, he shed his blood in vain. And we would have to say he failed. If he is unable to bring anyone
to glory whom the Father placed into his hands, in the covenant
of peace for safekeeping, then he's a failure. Romans chapter five says, God
commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified
by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if,
when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death
of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. This is Paul's Gospel. This is
the Gospel of Peter, James, John and Jude. And let me say one
more thing with respect to Jude's comment on the fact that these
men were of old ordained to this condemnation. The doctrine of
those that Jude characterized as ungodly was false. Their doctrine was false. Their
activities divisive. Their conduct was deceitful. And yet nevertheless Jude would
have us know that these men were before of old ordained to this
condemnation. Jude is telling us that there
is wisdom and purpose in God's bringing these men and such error
into the church. There is wisdom and purpose in
God bringing such error and these ungodly men into the church because
true faith, true faith is revealed and proved in the presence of
error. We can see the difference, we
can see the distinction between those things which are true and
those things which are false, those things which are of our
Lord Jesus Christ and those things which are a denial of him. The
Lord, the Lord our God, is fully aware of his enemies' strategies. He has ordered and purposed them
to serve his own glory and ultimately his people's spiritual good. The phrase refers to God's eternal
decrees of election and reprobation. And I'm not saying that everyone
who believes in universal atonement is therefore reprobate. I would
say by the grace of God we have All of us been there and the
Lord has taught us better, but he has taught us better by sovereign
grace and we've come to a knowledge of the truth. But the ways of the righteous
and the ways of the wicked are ordained without the Lord being
in any way responsible for sin. Our Lord knows the end from the
beginning, and he has ordained and specified and measured the
ways of the ungodly. The works and the condemnation
of the fallen ungodly sinners is known to the Lord, having
been decreed by him to fulfil his eternal purpose and accomplish
his sovereign will. The choice and eternity of some
individuals to salvation and the ordination of others to this
condemnation is consistent with God's love and judgment. All
men and women are equally ungodly in Adam's fall. All are condemned,
first in Adam's rebellion and then by their own transgression
of God's law. and condemnation for sin is an
act of holiness and justice that is consistent with God's nature. God is not responsible for man's
sin, but he does restrain and channel and direct evil for the
glory of his own name. So that the psalmist could say
in Psalm 76 verse 10, surely the wrath of man shall praise
thee the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. May the Lord,
in reading these verses, in hearing these warnings, in taking on
board these matters that laid so heavily upon the hearts and
the minds of the Apostle, may the Lord grant us wisdom. and
boldness, to stand firm for the doctrines of grace and the faith
once delivered to the saints, and to uphold and to worship
and to praise the one true God, our Lord Jesus Christ, to his
glory. Amen.