Why We Must Contend for the Faith

I'm thankful for the generosity and hospitality of the host pastors of this content conference. I'm happy to be here. If you have your copy of God's Word, please open once again to Jude. I'm going to do something that is quite new to me this evening.

And that is to preach an entire letter in one sermon. That would normally probably take us at the church from which I come dozens and dozens of weeks. We're going to do it in one evening. And so we're going to cover some of the same ground that Matt has so wonderfully covered for us already this evening.

And we'll trust the Lord's providence that you'll hear it twice because you need to. And so as we move through this text, there are going to be times when we are moving rather quickly. And it may present more as a commentary rather than a deep exegesis of the text which rubs against the grain of my soul.

But I believe and hope that it will be beneficial to you. Our goal in this next hour, it's a bit ambitious. Along the way, I'm going to give you some examples, some clips of various false teachers that will serve for us as examples of what Jude is describing in this text.

My task is to speak to you about the necessity of contending. You've already seen from verse 3 which is Jude's purpose statement for this epistle. The necessity that he felt from the Holy Spirit to charge the church to contend.

Let's go ahead and read Jude's introduction which is the first four verses. Let's hear it again. Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are the cold, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. Ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the faith once delivered. We thank You for the reminders in Your Word and the exhortations contained therein to our often weary, often distracted, often slow and apathetic souls to contend earnestly for that which You have delivered to us through the inspired authors.

Help us to recognize this evening, Lord, the seriousness of the threat. I think, Lord, that at moments tonight we will laugh. And that's okay, but Lord, help us to fear. Help us to fear God. And love souls.

And seek the glory of our Savior. It's in His matchless name we pray.

Amen.

For the introduction of the letter here, we need to note two things. Before we get to Jude's inspired purpose, we want to pause and consider firstly, Jude's warm affection. Jude's warm affection. Again, verses 1 and 2.

He says he's a bondservant of Jesus Christ, a brother of James. And then he says, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

Notice Jude's warm affection for the church. He says, you, beloved, you are called. You are the called. You are beloved. You are kept. And he prays for you. Mercy and peace and love. Contending for the faith is necessary as we have seen in part and as we will see more this evening.

And what is also necessary, what we cannot miss, what we cannot forget, and what we must say here at the outset, is that what is also necessary is godly affection for the true church and love for the saints.

The motive that I must have, that you must have, is God's own love for His church. Our work will be hindered if we come away from this conference all fired up to call out false teaching for the purpose of gratifying our flesh or stroking our egos or indulging our anger.

As a pastor, as someone in the ministry, I must be fueled by care and concern for the health and purity of Christ's church to the glory of God, and so must you. Jude calls the saints beloved four times in this epistle.

When you contend for the faith once delivered, you will be accused of going after the body of Christ. You will be accused of attacking fellow believers, of sowing discord in the church. You will be slandered.

People will tell lies about you. But you contend. You call out false teaching, false teachers with the Word of God, faithful to it because you love the true church. And the church is defined by what she believes according to the faith once for all handed down to the saints.

So now let's consider Jude's inspired purpose. Verses 3 and 4. It says, Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness, and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

As someone who preaches in public, on street corners, sporting events, festivals, and other places, I wish that I could only talk about the Good News. I wish that I only needed to expound upon the grace and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ as it is contained in the Gospel.

But I know that it is necessary to do that which I do not so much enjoy. I know that it is a necessity for me to speak about hell and death and judgment to come, so that persons might come to recognize their need for a Savior.

Jude wishes to write about the spiritual blessings of our common salvation. It would be far easier. It would be far more enjoyable. But necessity is laid upon him under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

He must write otherwise. He says, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. The necessity that Jude felt to write is the necessity that we must also feel to contend.

The present tense of the verb does not limit the necessity to contend to the persons that Jude has immediately in mind. The church is called to take up arms, to fortify her defenses, to man the guns, and to always be engaged in this work.

Now preoccupied by false teachers on the internet to the neglect of her other duties. Let me make that clear. But nonetheless, her struggle is continual until the Lord returns. It is always necessary.

And this is Jude's appeal. The word appealing there is often translated in the New Testament as exhort. This is Jude's exhortation. He is imploring the church. It is always necessary to contend earnestly for the faith.

Now this is, as we've heard, not my personal faith in the Gospel, but it is the faith. The body of doctrine as delivered by the apostles contained in the pages of Scripture and pertaining to our salvation.

The other pastors hosting the conference and myself subscribe to the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of faith. It is a systematic summary of the apostolic body of doctrine. The faith, therefore, is not progressing.

It's not changing over time. Nor is it changing with the times. So many today seeking to make the faith once for all handed down palatable to the times act as though they are contending, but they are in fact compromising.

They are pretend contenders. And so when Christianity Today puts out an article that says we are all still figuring out gendered language, they are failing to contend for the faith that unquestionably and unapologetically affirms male and female created in God's image to God's glory.

It is once for all handed down and for it, it is continually necessary to contend. Now, finishing his introduction in verse 4, Jude gives the present reason as to why we must contend. Jude 4, For certain persons have crept in unnoticed.

Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Some arguments against the public exposure of false teachers have come up.

They've been brought up to me suggesting that such practice is limited to the scope of one's local church and reserved for pastors alone. While the theologically mature should be the only ones engaging in a formal way in public forums in any formal capacity, it is most likely that the certain persons Jude has in mind are not a part of his local congregation.

But they were probably traveling teachers and self-proclaimed prophets and seers and apostles who were claiming to have some God-given authority for their teaching and they would travel to different churches to spread their teaching and to gain followers.

They have crept in unnoticed. This phrase doesn't speak so much to the willful neglect of the church in allowing them to come in, but it means that they have slipped in stealthily. With purpose, they have come in they have snuck in.

Now that is not to say that the neglect of the church towards the preservation of doctrinal purity does not contribute to the ease with which false teachers creep in. It certainly does, but it is to say that these unreasoning animals, as Jude will later call them, have come in to do harm to the body of Christ.

Yet they are unnoticed for a time. Why is that? We've heard it. It's because they say a lot of true things. Many things that are consistent in part with the faith once handed down. On the surface, they look close enough to the real thing.

And so they creep in. Now he says that they were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. Peter speaks similarly of false teachers. In 2 Peter 2 17, he said,. They are those for whom the black darkness has been reserved.

1 Peter 2 8, he speaks of others appointed to doom. And it is thought that Jude perhaps used 2 Peter as a source or vice versa. The point is that we are no doubt confronted with the sovereignty of God in regards to the destinies of these false teachers.

We are confronted time and time again in both Jude and 2 Peter. And the language here connects to the conclusion of the letter where the beloved are finally exhorted to remember the predictions of the apostles.

If you look in verse 18, he says,. In the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. And you can see how it corresponds with the end of the verse, the end of verse 4, ungodly persons who pervert or turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

But between the introduction and the letter's conclusion, Jude moves through a pattern of severe scathing denunciation of the false teachers coupled with lessons from history and prophecy both about the judgment that awaits them and the present danger they are to the church.

Jude is using language that if you used this language, perhaps in any context, you would be labeled not very nice. Because he feels the necessity to warn them about the seriousness of the threat. And this is our great obstacle today, my dear friends.

So many professing Christians who do not understand the seriousness of the threat. So before we begin to work our way through the body of this epistle, I want to point out the literary pattern to you which is serving as the structure of the sermon.

Jude gives us three couplets, if you will. The first couplet is in verses 5 through 10. Jude lists three examples of divine judgment on apostates. And in verse 8 through 10, you'll notice he begins verse 8 with, yet in the same way these men.

Jude denounces the stupidity and the apostasy of the false teachers. The second couplet is verses 11 through 13. In verse 11, Jude lists three more Old Testament examples of rebellious men. And in verse 12 and 13, Jude denounces the danger of these false teachers who would lead others into such damnable rebellion.

The third and final couplet is contained in verses 14 through 16. In 14 and 15, Jude cites Enoch's Old Testament prophecy, drawing from which it aligns doctrinally with several Old Testament prophecies about the final judgment of the ungodly false teachers.

And in verse 16, Jude denounces the haughty, self-seeking spirit of the false teachers. And then in verses 17 through 23, they consist of final exhortations that we will cover briefly. And 24 and 25 in the letter with a concluding blessing and doxology.

So hopefully that outline will help you and create some thought pegs for you as we move through this text. And we could state the proposition of the letter very simply. Because false teachers have crept in, you must contend.

Now first, we must contend against apostasy. In Jude 5 through 7, he gives three Old Testament examples of apostasy. The first is unbelieving Israel.

Jude 5.

It says,. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. These Israelites had front row seats to the wonders of God.

They saw God miraculously deliver their people out of slavery in Egypt. They saw the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. And they saw the Red Sea dry up so that they could pass through it. And yet, their generation was marked by grumbling and doubting and longing for Egypt once again.

In other words, apostatizing from the promise of God that He would deliver them into the promised land. That He would bring them there. They died in the wilderness. The second example of apostasy is the fallen angels.

In Jude 6. It says,. And the angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. This is simply speaking about Satan and all his demons being cast into the lake of fire along with the ungodly as Revelation 20 .15 tells us.

Now the third example of apostasy is an interesting one and it's Sodom and Gomorrah. In Jude 7. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

We don't typically, I don't think, view Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of apostasy. But we need to understand that they were destroyed only a hundred years after Noah's death. Who Peter tells us was a preacher of righteousness and whose righteous preaching was confirmed by a worldwide flood.

This message of righteousness would have been well known among the inhabitants of places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps just like it was once well known in the United States. And they apostatized from that message of righteousness.

And so we have these three examples and no time to truly exegete them, but I wanted to present them to you so that you may grasp Jude's primary point. The point is about the fate of apostates. The Israelite generation perished in the wilderness.

Angels are kept for judgment for whom no redeemer exists. Sodom and Gomorrah are burned, exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. And before we get to our first set of clips, I want you to look at the end of verse 10.

It says, By these things they are destroyed. That's the point. Jude is impressing upon the mind of the reader. He is reminding the church about the fate of apostates that you might fear God and understand the seriousness of the threat that these false teachers are.

Now Jude, having given us the examples from the Old Testament, will describe these false teachers and five times in this epistle, Jude will say, These men. These are the men. These are the ones. He will use a variation of this phrase and he will do that using this identifying language so that you will know who they are.

He expects his readers to be able to identify these men. Many today think that it is virtuous to remain naive about false teaching and false teachers and to not worry about it because God will settle it.

God will deal with it. It is not virtuous, my dear friends, to remain naive about these things. Instead, the church needs desperately to recover the lost virtue of narrow mindedness. We must be able to identify false teaching.

Look at verse 8. Yet in the same way, these men also by dreaming. Stop there. The ESV renders it relying on their dreams. The New King James. These dreamers. Most likely the idea is that these men claim to receive revelation from God through visions and dreams that they proposed was authoritative.

We're going to deal with it more tomorrow, but I have read a book because I like painting, I guess. And it's the book of a prominent deliverance minister, a supposed apostle named Alexander Pagani. And the book is entitled The Secrets to Deliverance.

The book is riddled with unbridled Gnosticism and Pagani claims to be an apostle set apart by God for this task. And so what God reveals to him is authority. He's an apostle. And the source of this book and subsequently his whole deliverance ministry as it exists today is a dream.

And you will now share in my sufferings. This is from page 2 and 3 of his book. He gives a testimony of he himself being delivered. And then he says, through the years, God had been showing me step by step how to help people get free.

But my experience at our church that day, his deliverance, convinced me that there was even more to deliverance than I realized. Christians could not only need deliverance, but demons could lodge themselves in hidden areas of our lives, both in our souls and in our body parts.

I knew the demon that caused me to feel such rage was literally residing in my chest because after I was set free, I felt a physical difference. I realized that if a demon could live in a body part, then I needed to look further into where else an unclean spirit might hide so that as a deliverance minister, I could be more targeted and specific in my prayers.

I began seeking God for answers and a couple months later, I had a dream. In it, I was approached by a well-known ministry leader who told me to open my hand. When I did, this person gave me a little book with the title, The Secrets to Deliverance in gold letters.

The minister then closed my hands and I woke up. From that day until now, my spirit has been receiving download after download of insight into the realm of the human soul and the demonic. This is Alexander Pagani's deliverance ministry today.

Here's our first clip.

Come over here, devil. We're gonna embarrass you publicly. Come over here.

Not her.

Oh, woman of God, we're gonna love on you publicly. Oh, you're gonna get set free. You're gonna go. You're gonna go. Leave.

Goodbye. Goodbye.

Now, woman of God, I see you in there. Oh, I see you in there.

See? See?

Now I'm looking at you. Demon, come back up. Now I'm talking to you.

Out. Out.

Now.

Out.

Now. Every demon hiding in every room in her life. I open all the doors by the keys of the kingdom of God. I open. I open. Open the sister room. I open. I open. Open all rooms by the keys of the kingdom.

And I command every spirit. Out, Jesus name.

What do you think? He had a dream. And in his book, dozens upon dozens of time, Pagani will label these secrets he's received from the Holy Spirit as revelation. This revelation, he will say. And it is imperative that the reader receive this revelation from God through his apostle, this dreamer.

Now, perhaps you've begun to notice that Jude is fond of writing in triads, in groups or lists of three. Looking back at verse 8, he writes, yet in the same way, these men also by dreaming. And then he lists three behaviors that these false teachers engage in.

Behaviors that are common among them, which their dreams and visions and downloads of revelation are supposed to justify. They defile the flesh. They reject authority. And they revile angelic majesties.

Let's consider first the defiling of the flesh. This refers to immorality. And it is justified by dreams, visions, revelation that the false teachers receive from God. By the authority of the teacher who is receiving visions from God, these acts of immorality are justified.

Particularly, it is speaking of sexual immorality. And it is really astounding how many prominent figures in the charismatic movement during the last 124 years or so have been charged or found guilty of sexual misconduct.

It's not our purpose to go through them. But let me highlight two examples, one from the beginning of the charismatic movement and one that is happening today. Tom Pennington notes in his book, A Biblical Case for Cessationism, the charismatic movement can be traced to the early days of Pentecostalism, which began at the turn of the 20th century in Topeka, Kansas.

There, Charles Fox Parham, a former Methodist holiness minister, founded a Bible college where he taught his students to pray earnestly to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He often organized and encouraged large gatherings to seek conversion and pursue the baptism in the Spirit and miraculous healings.

On January 1st, 1901, a group of Parham's students, including a woman named Agnes Osmond, began to pray that they would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Parham himself described what happened to Osmond.

Quote,.

I laid my hands upon her and prayed. I had scarcely completed three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her. A halo seemed to surround her head and face and she began speaking the Chinese language and was unable to speak English for three days.

When she tried to write in English, to tell us of her experience, she wrote in Chinese. Spoiler alert, it was not Chinese. It was scribble. This was essentially the birth of the charismatic movement. Parham was later arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a teenage boy.

I want you to consider our text again as we look at a modern example. The false teachers used dreams to justify their sexual misconduct. Mike Bickle has been the long time leader of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.

He is a proponent of much false doctrine common to the charismatic movement including dreams, visions, prophecies, tongues, etc. A few weeks before the scandal broke out, Bickle announced that he had a vision that he was soon going to be targeted with slander and persecution.

What was recently disclosed is that Mike Bickle sexually abused multiple women over the past.

40 years.

What does this have to do with Jude's words? Listen, the line that Mike Bickle would use with these young women, what he would say to them, who had come to IHOP, sensing a call of God on their life and coming to be trained for the ministry in whatever capacity.

The line that he would give them was that God gave him a dream that his wife was going to die and she, this young woman, was going to be his new wife. Yet in the same way, these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh.

My friends, this describes the Mike Bickle situation exactly. This text is about him and is about others like him. The threat is serious. The threat is present. Now secondly, let's consider the rejection of authority.

There is much that could be said here, but for the sake of time, let me just say this. The thousands of false teachers today who dub themselves Apostles of Christ with a capital A, they reject authority.

And they reject authority by assuming authority that is not theirs. By assuming authority that they have no claim on, they reject the authority reserved only for the Apostles chosen by Christ. Whether it's Apostle Catherine Crick, or Apostle Alexander Pagani, or Apostle Bill Johnson, or Apostle Chuck Pierce, or whoever, by claiming to be Apostles of Christ, they reject the authority of Christ to appoint His own Apostles.

Listen to this from Catherine Crick, because assuming this apostolic authority, they speak madness.

We're not limited to the Bible, but God expands. Everything aligns. It's coming from the Word. It's not isolated. Some random teaching. It must align with the Word. But God wants to bring more. God wants to bring meat.

God wants to bring mysteries. God wants to bring secrets of the kingdom. That comes by taking the limits off of Him and allowing Him to expand upon Scripture. Bring revelation upon Scripture that aligns with Scripture.

Religious spirit doesn't like that. Beware of that. They always will say, but it's not in the Word of God. Still speaking. He's doing a new thing. He's doing a new thing. We can't shut off His voice here and now today and only just read the Bible and that's it.

We need His voice to breathe upon the Word.

And bring more.

Apostle Catherine Crick teaches that when she speaks, she speaks the Word of God. And she downplays, she slanders God's inspired and sufficient Word. They not only reject apostolic authority by saying that God is speaking through them in the same manner He spoke through the twelve and Paul, but they reject the authority of Christ who did not appoint them.

The same goes for these so-called prophets today. And they'll say, well, He did appoint me. I had a dream. And they are deceived. And they are liars and they are false. So again, Jude says here that they rely on dreams to justify the ungodly behavior of defiling the flesh and rejecting authority and thirdly reviling angelic majesties.

Unbiblical views of spiritual warfare are the hallmark of modern false teachers, of much of it. And much of it consists in pretended hand-to-hand combat with the devil. And Jude is going to demonstrate how foolish it is.

Jim Osmond says this very helpfully in his book Truth or Territory that biblical spiritual warfare is a truth war. And it is fought with the truth, with the power of God that is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And it is not about speculative tactics and downloads of secrets that we employ in order to fist-fight the devil over territory, over spiritual territory. Let's consider briefly just one such practice, the practice of binding Satan.

Osmond writes, it is believed that by binding Satan, his activity is limited, hindered, or prohibited in the sphere in which he is bound. For instance, a person might pray that Satan will be bound from blinding a person to whom they wish to present the gospel with the belief that this will improve the likelihood that the person will trust Christ as their Savior.

Someone might pray that Satan would be bound from a certain event, a concert, a worship service, a conference, or whatever it is, and thus be prohibited from having influence or power over that event.

Someone might pray that Satan be bound from a geographical location with the belief that uttering such prayer cripples Satan's ability to interfere or enter. Now more often than not, however, binding Satan is not practiced as a prayer to God, but as a direct address to Satan himself.

After I was converted, I was in a church, and it was common to include in prayer the phrase Satan we bind you. And even then, I think it was a little shocking to me how casually that phrase was uttered.

The way in which Satan himself was directly addressed.

Gave.

No pause. It gave no fear to those who practiced this. Listen to this from Robert Tilton's TV program back in the day. If you don't know who Robert Tilton is, I actually have a clip for you to just familiarize yourself with Robert Tilton, the great Robert Tilton, before we read this quote of his.

It's a beautiful day, got my Bible, I'm ready to go.

I'm loaded, I'm pregnant with miracles. Nope.

This is Robert Tilton on his TV program. Satan, you demonic spirits of AIDS and AIDS virus, I bind you. You demon spirits of cancer, arthritis, infection, migraine, headaches, pain, come out of that body.

Come out of that child. Come out of that man. Satan, I bind you. You foul demon spirits of sickness and disease, infirmities in the inner ear and the lungs and the back. You demon spirits of arthritis, sickness and disease.

You tormenting, infirm spirits in the stomach. Satan, I bind you. You nicotine spirits, I bind you in the name of Jesus. There's much that could be said about the association of bad habits with demons and I think we'll talk more about that tomorrow in our deliverance, our session on deliverance.

But the point here is the direct reviling of angelic majesties. This is a silly example from Silly Man back in 1991. But it seems today that this practice is only growing in popularity. Now, in verse 9, Jude is going to demonstrate the absurdity of shouting at demons.

We see deliverance ministers having full on conversations supposedly with demons and Jude is going to demonstrate the foolishness of it, Jude 9. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord rebuketh you.

Jude is taking an account from a pseudepigraphal work called the Assumption of Moses and he wants you to see the absurdity by pointing to an angel. An angel who is without sin and mighty. But not just any mighty angel, the chief angel of God, Michael, with all his power and purity, did not dare pronounce against the devil a railing judgment.

Rather, what did he do? He deferred to the greater power of a sovereign God. And so Jude's point is that if even the archangel would not address Satan in a direct, bold, brash confrontation, then sinful men should likewise do no such thing.

We should not follow, or we should follow the example of Michael and defer to the Lord to intervene on our behalf. In other words, Christians have no business yelling at the devil. Now what does he say about these false teachers?

Remember he is illustrating the third behavior justified by dreams. Jude 10. But these men revile the things which they do not understand, and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

These apostates are so puffed up with this dreamt up power and authority, especially those who deem themselves prophets and apostles, and think they have the same authority as the Lord Jesus, that they actually have no understanding about the things they revile.

How terrifying. I think again of these so-called deliverance ministers, these demon slayers who make a show out of yelling at demons hiding in Christians. Jude says that they are like unreasoning animals.

They have no spiritual sense. It is only pretended. John MacArthur puts it this way. In divine matters, they are no brighter than the dumbest beasts. Now remember that the point of these three examples Jude gave was the fate of the apostates, and now he is going to conclude this thought, this section with this last phrase in verse 10.

By these things they are destroyed. And this clip is an example of a man who was in Lubbock, Texas recently, reviling angelic majesties. This is Daniel Adams.

You will speak. What are you doing to her? Talk. You're going to take her destiny. How did you get inside of her? Her mom. What did her mom do? Shaman. Ah, you are a marine spirit, aren't you? Ah, you all water spirits.

They dedicated her? Yes. She's mine now. No, she's.

Not. The kids are mine too now.

Ah, no, she's not. You demons are so funny. What do you see? Son of God. Ah, she sees a son of God. Then you know what that means. If you see me as a son of God, then you know what happens next, right?

Listen. First of all, shut up. Second of all, come out of her.

These people have a massive following. And it's growing. The threat is serious. So we must contend against apostasy. We must contend also against the rebellious. And here we'll deal with 11 through 13.

Judah's going to give another three examples from the Old Testament and then apply it to the false teachers. Read with me. He says woe to them for they have gone the way of Cain and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

We're just going to walk through these words. These Old Testament examples. The way of Cain. Do not think that Cain and Abel had no knowledge of God's will when it came to the offering of sacrifices as if they were both just guessing what God was going to find an acceptable sacrifice and Abel happened to guess correctly and Cain drew the short stick with his offering.

Jude's point is that Cain rebelled against the revealed will of God and he went so far in his rebellion that rather than shedding the blood of an animal in worship, he shed the blood of his own brother in rebellion.

That's the way of Cain. The error of Balaam. Balaam was not ignorant of the Lord's revealed will either for his people and yet for money he devised a plan for Balak, king of Moab to tempt Israel into a compromising situation with idolatry and immorality which would bring upon the people of Israel the judgment of God.

He was a rebellious man against the revealed will of God. The third example Jude gives is the rebellion of Korah and Korah led 250 other Jewish leaders to seek to replace Moses as the head, as the leader and they rejected him as the God appointed man to lead the nation.

The Lord caused the earth to open up and swallow every mutineer. These are the examples Jude gives here. These false teachers rebel against the revealed will of God and lead others into compromise and ultimately to destruction.

And it's a serious threat. That's what Jude is getting at. These men will lead you to death. And in light of the seriousness of the threat Jude does not mince words. These are the men. And he uses this identifying language.

He wants you to know who these men are. These are the men. Hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear caring for them selves. They are among you. And they are the embodiment of the cause of shipwreck.