WWUTT 467 Angels In Gloomy Darkness?

Jude’s Warnings About Unbelief and False Teachers

Jude gives examples from the Old Testament of the judgment of God poured out on those who rebelled and would not believe. And so the same is going to happen to false teachers if they don't repent and teach the truth when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand the Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. And don't forget our website, www .utt .com.

Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the book of Jude today, and in the section that we are studying this week, Jude gives three examples from biblical history about the judgment of God that is coming upon the heretics if they do not repent of their false teaching and follow the truth that is in Christ Jesus.

Jude 5 and the Judgment on Unbelieving Israel

And so we're reading Jude, verses 5, 6, and 7, today and tomorrow. Jude writes,. Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

And so these are the three examples that Jude gives. You have the example of the Israelites delivered out of Egypt and Christ destroyed those who did not believe in the wilderness. You have the angels who left their proper dwelling.

That's the example we're going to look at today and are kept in chains until the judgment of the great day. And then you have the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that's the example we're going to look at tomorrow.

So yesterday we were looking at this example from the deliverance of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

And just as Christ delivered the Israelites out of slavery. So we who are in Christ Jesus have been delivered out of our slavery to sin Christ by his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave has reconciled us to God.

He took our sin upon himself on the cross and bestowed upon us his righteousness. That double imputation that we talk about concerning the cross of Christ, which Paul talks about in second Corinthians five, when he says he became sin, who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God, our sin imputed upon Christ and his righteousness imputed upon us.

And so in this way, we've been reconciled to God that which God did not desire because of our sin. He now desires because of Christ's righteousness. That's what it means to be reconciled. And so this is how we've been delivered from our slavery to sin.

We're no longer in bondage to sin, but we have been set free to follow in the righteousness of Christ. So now all those who are in Christ Jesus will display his righteousness. This is the connection between the Israelites freed from slavery in Egypt to the way that we are freed from our slavery to sin.

But there were those who did not worship God even after they had been freed from slavery. And so Christ destroyed them in the wilderness and they were not allowed to enter into the promised land. They were never fully delivered because they continued to behave like Egyptians.

And so they were destroyed in the wilderness and did not inherit the promised land. So Jesus is revealed here by Jude as both the deliverer and the destroyer. He delivered his people out of slavery, but those who would not give glory to God and worship the created thing rather than the creator, he destroyed in the wilderness because of their unbelief.

So likewise, there are going to be those who will show some sort of Christian attitude in their lives, but it will not be genuine and they will still behave like the rest of the world, still enslaved to their sin and following their own sinful passions.

And so Christ will destroy them before they are delivered into the heavenly kingdom. And so Jude is talking about the false teachers who will be judged in this way and warning those who could potentially be persuaded by these false teachers not to follow after them lest they be judged as the false teachers will be, the heretics will be.

So there was our example from yesterday that was in verse five. And then today, verse six, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of that great day.

The Fall of Satan and the Meaning of Jude 6

Now I want to tell you first what I believe that Jude is referring to, and then I'm going to, then we're going to talk about another way that this is interpreted, which I don't agree with as much. So first of all, here's what I believe Jude is truly referring to when he writes and the angels who did not stay with within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling.

He's talking about how all of the angels were at one point with the Lord in his glory. They were with God in heaven. They inhabited the same place that God dwells in, but he's still the creator of all things created even the angels.

Yet there were angels who rebelled Satan and a third of the angels with him who were cast out of heaven. And we read about Satan in Ezekiel 28 in what he may have been like prior to the fall. There is a comparison between the king of Tyree and who Satan was before he was cast out of heaven.

It is written, you were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering on the day that you were created. They were prepared.

You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire. You walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you.

And then at that point in the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst and you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God and I destroyed you, oh guardian cherub from the midst of the stones of fire.

Your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you by the multitude of your iniquities and the unrighteousness of your trade.

You profaned your sanctuary. So it's likely that Ezekiel is comparing the king of Tyree to the fall of Satan in this particular passage. And notice that it mentions that prior to his sin, he was holy.

And indeed it is mentioned in the scriptures that the angels are holy. Luke 9 26, a verse I believe I read on the program last week, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words of him, will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the holy angels.

So those angels that dwell with God in glory are still holy, but those who were cast out of heaven along with Satan, a third of the angels that went with him, they are unholy. So this was at one point the proper dwelling for the angels.

They had a position of authority there in heaven, but they left their proper dwelling when they were cast out, when they sinned against God. And that sin happened in the garden of Eden at the same time that Adam and Eve sinned against God.

For it was the serpent who tempted Eve to do that which God had forbidden Adam and Eve to do. So the moment that they sinned and were cursed was also the moment that Satan was sinned and was cursed and the other angels that went along with him.

So they left their proper dwelling, their position of authority, and have since been kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of that great day. So they do not have the authority that they once had.

This reference to being kept in eternal chains simply means that they don't have that authority. It doesn't mean that they can't do anything anymore. They've been restrained to chains, and so there they sit in these little spiritual prisons down there just kind of awaiting judgment.

For we know that Satan and his demons are doing things. There is still a work of the devil that is being done among the children of man. And so it's talking about a limited disempowering. They don't have the authority that they once had.

They do not speak the word of God anymore, just as we see the angels doing throughout the scriptures whenever they come to a prophet or speak to someone that it is being done with the authority that God has given to them to be able to speak the word of God.

So here in this instance, with these that have been cast out of heaven, they're no longer doing that which God has told them to do. They no longer have that authority of the word of God, but they are kept in chains until the day of judgment.

So that's what I truly think Jude is referring to when he uses this example from the angels. Just as Satan and his angels were cast out of heaven, so will the false teachers be excluded from heaven because they speak a word that does not come from God.

Satan when he tempted Eve spoke his own words. Did God really say to you? And so the heretics are doing the same. They're not speaking the word of the Lord. They are speaking from their their own sensuous minds, and so they will be judged with the devil and his angels.

Jesus in Matthew 25, 41, he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Now there's another way Jude six is interpreted, and this is not the this is not the interpretation that I agree with, although there are many great teachers that I respect who hold this particular view.

Dr. Albert Moller being one of them, but he and some other like minded scholars would interpreted would interpret Jude six as meaning that the angels left heaven and came down to earth and had sex with the daughters of men and they produced ungodly offspring.

And these were the people who were judged in the flood of Noah's day. Now I don't agree with that interpretation because I think it comes from a misreading of something that we read in Genesis six. So let's go there.

Genesis 6, the Sons of God, and the Line of Seth

Genesis chapter six verses one through four. When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose.

Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them, there were, these were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

Now again, so the way that this story is interpreted is that angels came down from heaven to have sex with the daughters of men and therefore they produced this ungodly offspring, the Nephilim who were on the earth in those days and these were great mighty men of old.

And so we think of this as being, you know, some sort of a mythological story that these supermen were created as a result of sex between an angel and a human being. But I don't really think that's how that story is supposed to be interpreted.

Why do I think that? Well, because this beginning to chapter six comes right at the end of the genealogy of Seth mentioned in chapter five. Remember that Adam has two sons, Cain and Seth. Cain killed Abel and so God blessed Adam and Eve with another son who is Seth and it is Seth that becomes the promised seed and Cain is the seed of Satan.

We have Cain's genealogy in chapter four and along with his descendants are mentioned all the sins that they continued in. They just continued to be a corrupt, immoral line. But Seth is the promised seed and it is from the line of Seth that we get the righteous man Noah.

We also have Enoch mentioned in the line of Seth and Enoch walked with God and all the days of Enoch were 365 years and then Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him because Enoch was a righteous man.

And so you see more righteousness in the line of Seth, but none in the line of Cain. So when you get to chapter six, the understanding is that the sons of God is the line of Seth and the daughters of man is from the line of Cain.

And there was at one point when those two lines were distinguishable. Seth was the righteous people and Cain were the immoral, unrighteous people. But then the line of Seth started looking at the daughters of Cain and finding them attractive and intermarried with them.

And they lost that moral identity that they had as the promised seed. And I mean, you just you just think of the story of Solomon, which we've been reading about in first Kings. He was a righteous man who married these immoral women who worshipped false gods.

And Solomon's heart went after his pagan wives and the gods that they worshipped. And so Solomon also worshipped those false gods. And we read in first Kings chapter 11 that Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, once a righteous and upstanding man.

But because he went after these pagan wives and his heart was united with them, he was led astray. And so this was the case also with the line of Seth intermarrying with the line of Cain. And then immorality becomes pervasive over the entire earth.

And God wants to wipe out man. And from the offspring of the line of Seth and the line of Cain come these very powerful and violent men, the Nephilim. It's not that these are supermen that came from an unholy union between angels and human beings, because in order to read the story that way, you also have to have an understanding of the angels being able to procreate, that they were actually procreative beings or they had some ability to become incarnate and they could enter into human flesh and then, you know, have sexual relations with human beings.

I think there's too much being read into the story or being assumed rather than trying to understand the context in which this is given. So I don't think that's what the story in Genesis is referring to.

And therefore, I don't think that's what Jude can be referring to either when he says the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling. They did not maintain the authority that God had given them as carriers of his word.

But instead, they left that dwelling. Satan comes into the Garden of Eden and tempts Eve with a word that does not come from God. And she listens to the serpent and so ends up giving the fruit to Adam.

He eats. They know that they have sinned against God. And so there in Genesis chapter three, where you have the curse that is given to the man and to the woman and to the serpent, this is the fall of all of these at once, the fall of man and the fall of Satan and his angels from heaven.

And so they've been kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of that great day. Satan and his followers know that day is coming. In Matthew chapter eight, Jesus was walking in the country of the Gadarenes and two demon possessed men met him coming out of the tombs so fierce that no one could go that way.

And they cried out. They saw Jesus and they cried out, What have you to do with us, O son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? Now a herd of pigs was feeding at some distance from them, and the demons begged him, saying, If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.

And he said to them, Go. And they came out and went into the pigs and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. And so you have these demons who see Christ, the son of God, and say to him, Have you come here to torment us before the time?

They know that a time is coming in which they are going to be judged. And at the present, they have been restrained from the power that they previously had until that day of judgment comes. So when they see Christ, they think, OK, the time's not yet.

We know it isn't yet. So what are you here for, to torment us before that time comes? So Satan and his demons know their number is going to be up. There's going to be a time when Christ is going to judge them and cast them into the lake of fire.

And once again, those who did the work that the devil did, those who did the works that Satan did will be judged along with him and his angels. As Jesus talks about in Matthew 25, and they will be cast also into the eternal lake of fire.

The Call to Preach God’s Word and Warn of Judgment

So be sure that what you know is the word of God instead of following with the message of the devil. In Ephesians chapter two, verses one through three, it says that we were once dead in our sins and our trespasses following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So there was a time before we came to Christ, we were following the message of Satan, the power of the air, the spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience. But since we have been delivered out of that by Christ, we are now sons of God adopted into his family, blood bought by Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.

So now we are the children of God. And the message that we hear and follow and repeat and speak is not the words of the devil, but the word of God, which we have given to us by the prophets and apostles written down for us in the pages of scriptures.

This is God's word. And through the prophet Isaiah, God said, this is to whom I will look. He who is upright in spirit and who trembles at my word. So be sure you know this word and repeat the true word of God, not the deadly, corrupt word of Satan.

Stephen Lawson said to those who preach, go where the text goes. Say what the text says. Promise what the text promises. Warn what the text warns. And this is what Jude is warning about in verse six, when he says the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of that great day.

May we warn those who are aligned with Satan and not aligned with God that the day of judgment is coming so that they would turn from their sin, turn from the lies of the devil they have been following, and instead walk in step with the truth of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Let us pray. Oh, great God and Savior, we thank you for the word that has been given to us that by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we would turn from sin and follow in your truth. We would be rescued from that darkness, that gloomy darkness until the judgment of that great day.

And we've been delivered into your marvelous light. So keep us in the light. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we know that we are following in the truth and we are indeed the children of God.

Give us a courage to preach the word of God to those who are perishing so that by this word they might be delivered and saved. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand the Text.