Introduction to Jude

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I've been anxiously looking forward to tonight's lesson, having been preparing it for what's actually turned into several months of preparation for the series and wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to be here tonight.
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As you all know, I've been dealing with sickness for the last two weeks, but felt good today.
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I'm COVID free, I believe, so can be here and be amongst everyone.
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And so I will be starting our next book in our little letter series.
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For those who haven't been here, what I have been doing is I've been going through what I've entitled are the little letters of the New Testament, that being 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Philemon.
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All of those are one chapter books.
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And that's why we didn't start with 1 John, because 1 John is five chapters.
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And if we would have started with 1 John, we'd have been there for at least a year.
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So I wanted to get into some letters that we could do in short studies, in relatively short amount of time.
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And so tonight we are on the third of the little letters.
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We have already done the epistle of 2 John and 3 John.
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Both of those focused on the subject of truth and love.
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John telling us that both of those are necessary in the church.
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And tonight we are going to begin looking at the book of Jude.
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Now, as you know, brother Andy and I rotate the teaching responsibility on Wednesday night, which means that I'll be in Jude tonight and then in two weeks and then two weeks like that.
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Here is my plan.
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I want to give you the outline.
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I plan on spending five Wednesday nights on the subject.
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Tonight is going to be an overview of the book of Jude.
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Then weeks two, three, and four are going to be exegesis of the letter itself, where I'm gonna go verse by verse, line by line, explaining the words in context.
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Some of the nights we're even going to be looking at the Greek.
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I'm gonna be showing you some things that are very important in the use of Jude and how he uses the language.
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So that will be weeks two, three, and four.
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Then in week five, which will actually be 10 weeks because it'll be every other week.
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In week five, we are going to watch a film.
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The film is by Justin Peters.
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Justin Peters is a pastor who gives a teaching on false teachers called Clouds Without Water.
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That's the title of his teaching.
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And it involves the book of Jude because the book of Jude is where we get the term clouds without water.
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And so that's the outline of the next five lessons.
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Tonight is the overview.
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Then we're gonna have three weeks of specific direct exegesis.
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And then one week of a video lesson from pastor Justin Peters.
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And I'm looking forward to you hearing that one because I think he points out some things that many people simply have not ever heard.
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Now, what you should have been handed tonight is two things.
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You've been handed a color copy of the outline of the book of Jude.
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This is actually something that I put together myself.
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I did this for this series and this is what we're going to be looking at tonight.
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And I'll show you why it's color coordinated.
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And I do apologize if anyone in here is colorblind because the colors do matter.
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So if you have a little bit of colorblindness, then if I say, well, look at the pink part or the green part, hopefully that won't be too terribly confusing for you.
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You also received a copy of a comparison between Jude and 2nd Peter.
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Everybody has this, right? The color copy comparison between Jude and 2nd Peter.
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All right, I wanna make sure that everybody has both of those because we're gonna be looking at them both tonight.
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Okay, so let's get started by looking at our color copy of the book of Jude.
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Jude, in my opinion, is one of the great unsung heroes of the New Testament in the sense that so many people don't spend time in this short little letter because it is so small, they feel like, well, maybe it's just not worth the time to spend as you might spend in Romans or Corinthians or something like that.
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And Jude doesn't get the attention or the time that I think that he truly does deserve.
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I was thinking about how could I describe Jude to an audience? I said, here's the way I would describe Jude.
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Jude is like concentrated orange juice.
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And I don't know if you were, like when I was a kid, Pat would always go to the grocery store and she would buy these cans of concentrated orange juice and she'd put them in the freezer.
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And anytime we wanted to have orange juice in our house, we didn't go buy orange juice in gallon jugs.
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We would take those concentrated orange juice containers that had a little lip that you had pull off the top and tear back that metal tab.
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And you dump that very thick concentrated orange juice into a pitcher and then you fill that with cold water, mixed it up and there was how you got to enjoy orange juice with your breakfast or whatever.
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And the reason why I'm comparing Jude to concentrated orange juice is because even though Jude is a very small book, Jude is packed with absolutely powerful information that we need to understand and we need to apply in the modern church.
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And it really is concentrated in a very small package.
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You remember, I did third John in one week.
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I did second John in two weeks.
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But I said, there was no way I'm going to be able to do Jude in that sort of amount of time.
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In fact, I'm limiting myself to five weeks only because I know myself.
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And y'all know how it's been with Genesis.
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We've been three years now and I'm still there.
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I would be Jude for six months.
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And the fact that we rotate, it would be even longer.
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So I'm limiting myself because there's so much in this book and I want us to get it, but I don't want to become the guy who never gets on to the next thing.
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So I'm limiting myself for a reason.
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It's so full of good information.
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If you look at your colored form, what you'll see here, you'll notice the top is green in the outline and the bottom right-hand corner is green in the outline, you see that.
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And then you'll notice the blue portion is the middle portion.
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Then I'm talking about the background colors now.
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Those background colors separate the book into three parts.
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And that's the three parts that we're going to look at in our three sections.
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The first week, which would be two weeks from tonight, when we really get into the exegesis, that will be verses one through seven.
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The second portion will be verses eight through 16.
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And then the final portion will be verses 17 to 25.
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And what that breaks it into is our introduction of the book, then the body of the book, and then the conclusion of the book.
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And that's how we're going to look at Jude.
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We're going to look at Jude in that threefold separation.
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But what I want to do tonight, and I'm going to pray, is I'm going to read through the whole book, but I'm going to read from this page.
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And the reason why I'm reading from this page rather than my Bible is one, so that we'll all be reading the same thing, because I know we do have different Bible translations.
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This will be the same translation, but I want you to notice Jude's use of lists.
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One of the things that Jude loves, and I love him because of it, is Jude loves lists.
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He likes to list out things.
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And a lot of times it's lists of three.
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It'll be boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and lists of three.
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And that's what we're going to see as we go through these.
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I've broken everything out into these miniature lists for us to read.
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So let's begin at verse one.
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This is in the blue at the top.
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It says, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.
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To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.
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I can't tell you how, I want to go ahead and preach that.
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Because just that one line, what he just said, we are called, beloved, and kept.
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Boy, that's a sermon, ain't it brother Andy? By itself, that's a sermon.
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But continuing on.
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May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
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See how he's using that threefold? He loves those threefold designations, that threefold list.
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Verse three, beloved, although I was eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
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Now moving over to verse four, he introduces his concern.
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For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now he reminds them of God's judgment.
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Verse five, he says, now I want to remind you that although you once fully knew it, Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
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And the angels who did not stay within their own positions of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
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Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulge in sexual immorality in pursuit of natural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
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See what he just gave there is a list of three different examples of God's judgment.
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Now, moving to verse eight, he describes the danger of these false teachers.
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Yet in like manner, these people also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority and blaspheme the glorious ones.
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But when the archangel Michael contending with the devil was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment but said the Lord rebuke you.
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But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand and they are destroyed by all that they like unreasoning animals understand instinctively.
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Woe to them for they have walked in the way of Cain.
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They've abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and they have perished in Korah's rebellion.
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These are hidden reefs at your love feasts as they feast with you without fear.
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Shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by the wind, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter destruction or excuse me, utter darkness has been reserved forever.
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Now, back up to verse 14.
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This is the top of the middle here.
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It was also these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied saying, behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness and that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
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Verse 16, these are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.
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They are loud mouth boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
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That ends the body of the work and now we move into the conclusion where he calls us to remain faithful.
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Notice verse 17, I highlighted the word you, but you must remember beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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They said to you in the last time, there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.
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And then he again jumps back to these.
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He said, it is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the spirit.
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You think he's got a problem with these false teachers? Absolutely.
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And then he continues on, but you, verse 20, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
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And then he distinguishes those who need mercy, says and have mercy on those who doubt, save others by snatching them out of the fire.
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Love that phrase.
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And to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
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And then he ends with this wonderful doxology.
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Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.
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To the only God, our savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.
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Amen.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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Lord, as we talk about the overview of this text tonight, as we look at the structure of Jude and what he has to write to us, Lord, I pray that you would first and foremost keep me from error.
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Lord, I am a fallible man.
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I can teach error and I don't want to.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would be enamored with your word, that we would love what your word has to say, that we would take joy in our study as we look at your word tonight in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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So what do you think? Was that helpful? Looking at it that way? Maybe it was a little confusing because of the way I put it together.
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Hopefully not too confusing.
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Again, I want to ask that you put this in your Bible, maybe fold it up, maybe put it in a notebook and bring it back with you in two weeks when we come back to this, because this will be the outline that we follow.
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And the outline is simple.
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As I said, we have an introduction, a body and a conclusion.
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And what we learn from the introduction is this.
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This was not the letter that Jude intended to write.
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You'll notice that in his opening words.
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He says in verse three, "'Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you "'about our common salvation, "'I found it necessary to write appealing to you "'to contend for the faith.'" Now, when we come back and we look through these verses, I'm gonna draw a little bit more out of this.
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But for tonight, I simply want to point out to you that that verse, verse three, is the thesis of the book.
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Because he's telling us, and we call it a book, it's a letter and it's an epistle, but it's the thesis of the epistle.
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And the thesis is this.
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I want to talk about salvation, but these false teachers are making me have to deal with something else.
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I want to write to you about our common salvation, but instead I have to write to you to contend for the faith.
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We're gonna look at the Greek behind that.
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We're gonna look at what it means to contend for something, to battle over something.
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And here's the thing that we need to really put into our hearts.
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Jude is a call to arms against false teachers.
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Men who teach the word of God, and women who teach the word of God falsely, are not just confused brethren.
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They are enemies who are to be pointed out and to be discouraged from listening to.
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They are dangerous and they are deadly to the soul.
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That's Jude's point.
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I'm not saying that he is.
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I'm not saying that we ought to go out and burn people at the stake, but I will tell you this.
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There are many of us who continue to entertain charlatans and heretics because we think that it's the right Christian response.
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It's not.
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The right Christian response is to call the heretic out and to point and say, we will not listen to you and we will tell people not to listen to you because you, sir, are not a brother, but you are a wolf.
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And that's what Jude is doing.
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And he is demanding that the church listen.
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He is saying to the church, there are certain people, verse four, who have crept in unnoticed.
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I watched recently a film and I did a podcast on it.
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So if you do listen to conversations with a Calvinist, you know that I did a podcast just last week on the film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
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That is a movie that just recently came out.
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It was a 2021 production on the rise of Tammy Faye Baker, who was, of course, the wife of Jim Baker.
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Jim Baker, of course, being the one responsible for starting the 700 Club and then going on and producing PTL, which was the Praise the Lord television program, which at one time commanded a 20 million person audience on a daily basis.
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And they were not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And yet they had 20 million people tuning in.
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They had a billion dollar and billions of dollars funneling in through their ministry.
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Beloved, why? Why is it that we have 15 people here on a Wednesday night? But they get 20 million people listening to the heretics because Jude is right, because these people creep in unnoticed and they are a danger.
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That's the point of this whole book.
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Now, I'm not saying I'm worthy of a 20 million person audience.
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I'm not in any way trying to put myself on a pedestal, but I will say this.
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If you wanna find a church where there is probably heresy going on tonight, you go to the one with the largest parking lot because heresy breeds participation.
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People want their ears tickled.
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They want their satisfaction of the flesh met.
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And that is what we see in general in these ginormous churches with ginormous personalities that are not preaching the Bible, but are preaching damnable heresies.
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One of the most popular pastors in the world right now preaches in a basketball stadium in Texas.
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And he commands millions of listeners on his television program.
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He has enough money that it's literally coming out of the pipes in his bathroom at his church.
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You don't know who I'm talking about.
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They found, literally found thousands of dollars stuffed into pipes in the bathroom of the church.
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And the man does not preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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He has not crept in unnoticed.
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He's been noticed by many, but people do not want to hear.
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He's so nice.
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He sounds so good.
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He's so wholesome.
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He tells good stories, but he is leading people to hell on the coattails of his million dollar shoes.
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So that's what Jude's about.
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I'm writing to you to contend for the faith because I want to talk about salvation.
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I want to talk about the good stuff, but they won't let me.
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I remember one time there was a person here who said, I don't like it.
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I don't like that you preach because you always preach on the bad stuff.
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I want to hear the good stuff.
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There was a person, I mean, I don't want to name any names, but this was years ago.
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Many, many years ago, I was a young man and probably about 26, 27 years old.
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And this lady made it known that she didn't like my preaching.
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She said, you always preach on the bad stuff.
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I want to hear the good stuff.
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I said, well, first of all, if you hear my preaching, there's always grace and mercy at the foot of the cross.
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So there is always good stuff.
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But if you don't understand the desperate condition we are in as a church in America today, Jude could have just as easily written this letter to us today.
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This is not 2,000 years old.
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It is, but it's contemporary in that it speaks to us about the very same things that we are dealing with today.
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There are clouds without water all around.
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There are those who are entering into the church unnoticed and being allowed to teach when they shouldn't be and they are dangerous.
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And that's what Jude is about.
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Jude is telling us to watch out for them.
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And to be careful.
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Notice, I just want to point out to you.
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Notice, I'm going to shoot a few verses at you.
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So if you're looking at the sheet, verse eight, these people, verse 10, these people, verse 11, woe to them, for they, verse 12, these, verse 16, these, verse 14, these.
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Notice it's over and over.
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You know what the thing, people don't like to hear that today.
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They don't like the phrase these people.
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Some people think that's somehow offensive to use the phrase of these people.
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Jude's all about it.
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Because he doesn't mind calling out whoever these people are.
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And he tells us who these people are.
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These people are the heretics.
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These people are the ones who defile the flesh, reject authority, blaspheme the glorious ones.
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These are the people who blaspheme all they don't understand.
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They destroy like unreasoning animals.
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They're like Cain, Balaam, and Korah.
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And if you don't know who those are, you'll find out in a couple of weeks as I'm going to go through and explain to you.
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Because he, one of the things that we learn about Jude by reading through this is we learn that Jude expects you to know your Bible.
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Jude expects you to know who Korah is.
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He expects you to know who Balaam is.
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He expects you to know who all of these people are that he's mentioned.
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In fact, he not only expects you to know your Bible, he expects you to know books that aren't even in the Bible.
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Because Jude references two books that are unbiblical.
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He references the book of 1 Enoch, and he references the book called the Testament of Moses.
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Now you might say, why in the world would he reference unbiblical books? Well, we're going to talk about that in a minute, but just for now, understand that's the two green with white outline that's on your sheet.
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If you look at your sheet, you see the part with the green square with the white outline, verse nine, that is referencing the Testament of Moses.
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And then verse 14 and 15, green box with the outline white, that is referencing the book of Enoch, okay? Now in a minute, I'm going to talk about why we don't accept those books, but why Jude would have referenced them.
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But for just for now, let me just say this.
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Jude expects his audience to know these things because he knew his audience.
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Jude's audience would have been first century Jewish Christians.
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And first century Jewish Christians not only knew their Old Testament because that was the only Bible they had, but they also knew the traditional teachings of the rabbis that included these other extra biblical books.
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These books were part of the tradition that was taught among the Jewish people.
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Enoch is a book that was produced somewhere around the second century BC.
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So that would have been about 200 years before Christ.
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Wasn't written by Enoch because when did Enoch live? Enoch lived before Noah.
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So we don't have anything written by Enoch because there was no library on the Ark.
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Okay, just to be clear, we don't have anything written by Enoch.
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But what we do have is we have sayings of Enoch that were passed down through oral tradition.
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And later a book that bears his name was written, which included some of those oral traditional statements.
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And one of them is what's included here in the book of Jude.
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That does not mean that everything in the book of Enoch is true.
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If you want to read Enoch, go ahead.
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You can go to YouTube and you can YouTube first Enoch and you can listen to it.
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It's three hours long.
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I started it and I don't have three hours to devote to it.
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But I wanted to listen to a portion of it just so that I had heard some of it.
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And the book is available to read.
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We have it.
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But understand this, it's what is called pseudepigrapha.
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What is pseudepigrapha? You may remember, I talked about this a few weeks ago.
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False author.
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It's a pseudepigrapha or false.
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The name of the book is not the person who really wrote it.
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So for instance, there's another one.
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The, anybody ever heard of the gospel of Thomas? The gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas.
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Okay, so that is called pseudepigrapha.
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It was not written by the one whose name that it holds.
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There's also, there's, by the way, there's a bunch of gospels.
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There's the gospel of Thomas.
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There's the gospel of Judas.
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There's the gospel of Mary Magdalene.
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And most of those are second, third, and fourth century writings.
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They come way after the gospels.
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The gospels were all written in the fifties and the sixties.
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That's in the first century.
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The false later gospels, the gospel of Thomas probably being the earliest, but then the Judas and Mary Magdalene and all these, these are Gnostic works that were a group of non-Christian, a non-Christian sect that used Christian language and Christian names to promote their false teaching.
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And their false teaching was a dualistic heresy known as Gnosticism.
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So we have Jude who is expecting his audience, one, to know their Bible, and two, to even know things that are not in the Bible.
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So one thing about Jude is he expects you to have some knowledge of what he's saying because he ain't explaining anything.
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When he mentions Korah and Balaam and Cain, he doesn't say, by the way, you know, Cain, the son of Adam and Eve.
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He doesn't even say that because he knows.
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You better know this.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Well, maybe I better not.
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I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
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In your mind, if you walked in tonight and I handed you a piece of paper and there were three names on it, Cain, Balaam, and Korah, could you tell me anything about those three men? Jude expects you to be able to.
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Jude expects his audience for him to be able to say that they walked in the way of Cain, they abandoned themselves to Balaam's error, and they perished in Korah's rebellion.
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He expects you to know what that is.
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And we should.
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We should know our Bibles.
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But sadly, many people don't.
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That's why these guys are able to get away with what they get away with.
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That's why the false teachers get away with so much, because people don't know their Bibles.
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And we are the first generation to really have no excuse.
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Maybe not the first generation.
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We are among the first generation.
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The last 150 years, there's no excuse for somebody not to know the Bible.
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There are Bibles in every hotel room.
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You call the Gideons, they will gladly bring you one if you can't afford it.
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There's no excuse not to know our Bibles.
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People, I go to the fair, I ask people questions.
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I say, can you tell me the 10 commandments? No.
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How about this? Can you name 10 football teams? Oh, I can name 10 football teams like that.
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Can you name 10 beers? I can get Bush, Coors, all this.
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Yeah, I can go through 25 beers.
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Do you know the 10 commandments? No.
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Do unto others as you have them do unto you.
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That's not one of the commandments.
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That's a codification of the last six, but that's not one of the commandments.
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It's been a while since I preached.
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Can you tell? Well, this is to me what makes Jude so special.
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Jude is willing to call out his audience.
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You have let this happen.
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You have let these people in the church and something needs to be done.
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You need to understand, I wanted to write to you about salvation.
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I wanted to write to you about the good stuff, but I can't because these dangerous people and dangerous men are among you and you need to remain faithful.
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All right, so that's the overview of the book.
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And now I want to talk about two additional things in the book.
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The second thing I want to talk about tonight is I do want to talk about a relational aspect that Jude has with 2 Peter.
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So if you would take out the second sheet that I gave you.
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On the second sheet, you'll notice that it has two columns.
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The first column is 2 Peter and the second column is Jude.
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The reason for this, the way that I have this broken out like this is because these books have some overlap and that is important because it leads to a question.
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Who wrote 2 Peter? We think Peter, right? We believe Peter wrote it.
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Now, there is some discussion in scholarly circles as to whether or not he really did.
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I believe he did.
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And if you do come to our academy, which I know Miss Daisy and Miss Jackie have been to the academy when we did our New Testament class, I gave my defense as to why I believe Peter wrote 2 Peter for a few of those books.
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But these are the traditional authors that we have listed here, right? 2 Peter traditionally was written by Peter and Jude was written by who? If you said Jude, that's right.
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But who is Jude? Brother James, he says he's the brother of James, but who is James? Half brother of Jesus, right? Which would make Jude who? Half brother of Jesus, right? And so Jude is based upon a very simple explanation that he names himself the brother of James.
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James is the brother of Jesus.
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So he is likely also the brother of Jesus, but he doesn't call himself the brother of Jesus.
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He calls him a servant of Jesus rather than a brother, not to put himself on any level of equality with the Lord of glory.
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But Jude identifies himself in the book.
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But here's what we learn when we study 2 Peter and we study Jude at the same time.
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There are some very conspicuous similarities that come up between these two books, which raise questions of authorship.
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Now, let me just say this.
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There are some people who would get offended by me even bringing this up because they would say, how dare you even throw out a question of authorship? We hold to the traditional authors.
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I do hold to the traditional authors, but it is important to recognize this one simple truth that our Bible is constantly under attack.
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And one of the things that is most attacked about our Bible is authorship and authenticity.
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Why do you believe Paul wrote the New Testament books that bear his name? Because you know, there are some that people believe he didn't write, such as Ephesians and Colossians, which were some of the later books.
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They say, Paul didn't write that.
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The theology is way too sophisticated to be Paul line.
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It has to be much later.
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It has to have been written much later than Paul's death.
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Paul lived in the 60s, but we believe this theology was not at all understood and this well articulated until at least the end of the second century.
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So these books must be at least mid second century writings.
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You see, this is arguments.
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You might say, well, I don't know why I need to know these things.
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Because one day you may have to give an account for what you believe.
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And if you don't know some of these arguments, maybe you'll never even understand what the conversation you're in when somebody tries to attack what you believe.
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And the attack that comes about Jude is that Jude and second Peter are either written by the same person or they're both copying the same work.
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Okay.
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So if that is the case, that leads to some questions.
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One, it leads to the question of if they're both written by the same person, then one of them isn't bearing the right author because Peter is not Jude and Jude is not Peter, right? Or if they're both citing from the same source, where's that? How many of you have ever heard of the synoptic problem? By show of hands, I wanna know.
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How many of you have ever heard of the synoptic problem? How many wanna define it? Okay, all right.
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What's that? I'm about to define it.
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No, that's okay.
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The synoptic problem is a scholarly debate that has gone on in regard to the authenticity of the Gospels.
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The Gospels, we have four Gospels, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what are known as the synoptic Gospels.
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And the reason why they're called synoptic is it means from one point of view.
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They have a combined view, right? And if you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they all tell basically the same story.
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In fact, at some points, they read verbatim.
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You ever notice that? That at certain points in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I mean, Brother Mike on Sunday, what did he preach? He preached Matthew 18.
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And what did he say? You can see this in Luke, and you can see this in Mark, because they say the same things.
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Now, it might be a little different here and there, but it's basically the same.
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So, and by the way, John is much different.
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So John is called the autopic Gospel or the Gospel that comes from one perspective or one point of view, rather than the synoptic Gospels, the three perspectives.
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In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there are passages which, you were an English teacher, and if I handed in a paper to you as my teacher, and Brother Andy handed in a paper to you, and we both had sentences that were exactly the same, you would conclude, well, you would conclude that either I copied from him, he copied from me, or we both copied from the same other person, that there was a third person, right? And that the third person is the source of our, that maybe he didn't know I did it, but we both copied from the same source.
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And when it comes to the Gospels, that source is sometimes referred to as the Q source.
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It's the unknown Gospel.
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It's the one that predates Matthew and Mark, because most people would assume Matthew and Mark are the earliest.
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And I believe that.
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I do believe Luke is third.
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Luke actually references being later, having others having undertaken to write this down, and him coming in third.
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I think John, of course, is the fourth.
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So the question is, how does that happen? Now, I don't have time to get into all of the nuts and bolts of it tonight, but one person may just ask the question and say, well, hey, it's the same Holy Spirit, so couldn't that just be the answer? And yes, it could.
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But, what, was that what you were gonna say, Matt? Was that, well, they're all inspired by the same Holy Spirit.
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Maybe the Holy Spirit inspired it to be written the exact same way.
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Yes, but there's another question that comes from that.
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And that's the question of, well, what about the parts where it's not the same? Because there's some parts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that are completely different, particularly, specifically the resurrection account is almost completely different in all three.
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Now, I'm not saying they can't be harmonized.
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I believe they can, absolutely.
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I've taught on the harmony of the Gospels in the resurrection account because I think it's important to understand they can be harmonized, but they do have to be harmonized because some talk about the angels being out of the grave, some talk about in the grave, some talk about one angel, some talk about two angels, right? And so the story is different.
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It has to be harmonized as you look at it.
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So the question of, well, they're the same here, but they're not the same here.
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So that begins to add the question of, well, does that mean there was a third source? Was there a Q source that they were all drawing from? Maybe it was the verbal tradition that had been passed the oral tradition because when was the first book of the New Testament written after Christ, right? When did Christ die? Somewhere around 33, 30 to 33.
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When was the first book of the New Testament written? 49-ish.
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So we're looking at a distance of at least 17 years, possibly more, right? Between the time Jesus died on the cross, was resurrected to the time of the first New Testament book and the first New Testament book was not a gospel.
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The first New Testament book was probably Galatians or James, right? So then you have all the 50s.
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In the 50s, we probably have the introduction of Matthew.
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Maybe Mark was first.
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We don't know which was first.
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People think of Mark in priority.
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Some people think of Matthew in priority, doesn't matter.
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One of those came first.
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Luke comes in the 60s.
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John, late in the 60s, right? John is the latest gospel written.
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Some people think John was written as late as the 80s.
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I don't.
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I think all was written before 80, 70.
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But all this is to say, we should know these things because we should know our Bible and we should know the history of our Bible.
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And when questions like this come up, we should be able to give an educated answer.
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This should not hit us as a surprise.
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You say, I don't think I should know this stuff.
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You desperately need to know this stuff because every one of y'all got kids and grandkids that are gonna go to college and they're gonna stand before people like Bart Ehrman who are gonna use these arguments to tell them why they shouldn't believe their Bibles.
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And if they've never heard these arguments from us, shame on us.
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If they've never heard these things, if all they've heard is the Bible stories and they don't know where their Bible came from, shame on us and how it came to us.
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So with all that being said, I know I'm a little animated tonight.
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I'm gonna sleep good.
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So I'm excited.
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Get all.
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I want you to just notice some of the similarities between 2 Peter and Jude.
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We're just gonna read through them.
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2 Peter 2, verse one, it says, but false prophets arose among the people denying the master who bought them.
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Jude 4, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed who deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.
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That's not exactly the same, but it's obviously similar.
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Next one down, for if God did not spare the angels who sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment.
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Now go over to the next one.
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For the angels who do not keep their own domain but abandon the proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
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Almost the exact same idea coming from two different people.
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And it goes down.
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I'm not gonna read them all to you, but I encourage you to take this home and look at it and see the comparisons.
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Now there are five possibilities.
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Five possibilities as to how this happened.
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Number one, could be both of these men wrote independently, never once had a conversation about what they were writing, and it just so happened that the Holy Spirit inspired them.
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As Matt said, could be that both of these came out this way independent of one another.
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Yes, yes, yes.
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I'm saying that could be.
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Could be these are absolutely independent, both of them being inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it just so happens that they're this close.
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By the way, we don't see this, except for in the Synoptic Gospels, we don't see this anywhere else.
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So that is interesting, because you're talking about, well, God wants the same message.
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Why don't we see this in all the New Testament books? We don't.
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We only see it in these two books.
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So that's why we're pointing this out, right? Yeah, but that doesn't make a difference as to the fact that there are specific lines here that are the same.
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My question is why? I'm not asking, I'm not telling you the answer, I'm giving you thoughts.
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First is they're independent, the Holy Spirit inspired them both, and there is no sense where either one of them knew what the other one was writing, and that's fine.
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There is a theory that Jude is writing for Peter, and so Jude includes some of his own language in Peter's writing.
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Now, do we have instances where people write for apostles? Yes, we do.
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It's called an amanuensis.
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Do you know what an amanuensis is? It's a person who writes on behalf of someone else.
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Paul uses that in Romans.
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He has somebody who writes Romans for him.
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He dictates the letter, but somebody else writes it in his place, and it could be that this is what's happening with 2 Peter, that Jude is his, essentially like a scribe in that sense, and that could be, and in that sense, we see some of similar language here, and if that is the case, then that makes the next possibility a possibility, and the possibility is perhaps Jude is written after 2 Peter, and Jude includes some of the same things in his letter that he had already put into the letter that was dictated by Peter.
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So, again, like you said, same message going out, right? But people say, well, does that mean it's not inspired? No, it doesn't mean it's not inspired.
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You know one of my favorite parts of the Bible is in Luke 1 and in Acts 1.
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In both places, Luke, my favorite Bible writer, by the way, it's not Paul.
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I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the book of Luke.
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I love Luke.
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I have a kinship with him.
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I've spent so much time with him.
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Luke says in his early writing, I took the time to investigate these matters and to even take, basically do interviews with people to ensure that what I'm saying is correct, and you say, but wait a minute, it's inspired by God.
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Why would he need to do that? Because he's a historian, and he writes, Luke has more historical information in his gospel than any of the other gospels.
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In fact, Luke's gospel is longer and more complete than the other gospels.
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Luke is a historian, and even though he was inspired by God in the writing, he still took the time to research what he was doing.
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There's nothing wrong with saying that the gospel writers researched what they were writing, because that's what he said, and literally what he said he did.
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Okay, so the question is, I said there was five different possibilities, right? And I feel like I've kind of gone off the subject, so I feel kind of bad.
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I'm excited to teach and kind of, okay, here are the five.
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Number one, both of them wrote independently.
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Number two, one person wrote both.
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Number three, there was a third source that they were both drawing from a single source.
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And number four and five is that either one wrote first and read from the other, or the other wrote first and read from the other.
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So it's either you have Jude writing first and Peter taking from him, or Peter writing first and Jude taking from him.
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You say, well, what's the conclusion? I think the conclusion is this.
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The Bible, as it is written, has been understood and received by the church for 2,000 years as being inspired by God.
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All scripture is inspired by God.
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And even though there are these overlaps, even though there are these very similar uses of language, there's no reason to deny either the inspiration of 2 Peter or to deny the inspiration of Jude.
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We just need to understand that in some way, God had it in his purpose that both of these books would use some of the same language to get the message across to us.
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And what is the message that both of them are getting? There are false teachers that have crept into the church.
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They are a danger and they need to be addressed and they need to be dealt with.
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All right, last but not least, I wanna deal with a quick thing I said earlier that, and I'm gonna close with this.
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Jude does reference some extra biblical sources.
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Somebody here? You may just walk in.
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Okay, okay.
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Jude references two books that are not in the Bible.
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I've already mentioned them, but for very quickly, I wanna bring them up again.
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Jude references two books that many of us have never heard of.
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How many of you have ever read or heard of the book of Enoch? Okay, what have you heard about it? And I'm legitimately asking, what have you heard about it? Oh, you read for tonight.
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You read the, okay.
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Yeah, yeah, okay.
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But here's what a lot of people think about the book of Enoch.
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People think that the book of Enoch is some special piece of literature that has been left out of the Bible.
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How many of you ever heard that? That it's been left out of the Bible.
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There's a Greek word for that.
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What is it? Baloney, it's baloney.
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It wasn't left out of the Bible.
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And here's what people will say.
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Oh, the book of Enoch was hidden and nobody had ever seen it.
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Hogwash, and we know it's hogwash because Jude literally cites it, but he doesn't cite it as scripture.
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The most important thing that we need to understand is just because a book is referenced in the Bible does not mean that the Bible is citing it as scripture.
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How do we know that? Because Paul cites pagan writers when he is quoting in Acts, when he's quoting at the Areopagus, he quotes pagan writers.
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Does that mean that the pagan books were supposed to be in the Bible? No.
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Just because a book is cited in the Bible.
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In fact, if you go back to the Old Testament and you read through 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, they talk about books that we don't have.
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The books of the wars of the kings and all these different books that we don't have them because they're not biblical.
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They're not inspired by God, but they're still cited in the Bible.
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But never are they cited with these words.
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They're never cited with the phrase, thus saith the Lord, or it is written.
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Those two phrases are the phrases that are almost always associated with words that are biblical.
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It is written, or thus saith the Lord.
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The other book that's mentioned here is the Assumption of Moses.
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And the Assumption of Moses is where we get this story about Moses's body being fought over by Satan and the Archangel Michael.
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And if you're interested in either one of those books or looking into them, I can give you some resources.
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Or I have an entire thing here I can't read through because I don't have time.
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But if you want to learn more about them, send me an email.
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I'll send you this page that I have here that has some more information about them.
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But let me just read this very quickly.
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Jude intermingled citations of Scripture with unscriptural works, which has caused no end of question and consternation.
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It even caused the early church to look upon his work with suspicion.
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Remember when I first started talking about these books, I said Jude was considered to be a questionable book because he used citations of books that they knew weren't Scripture.
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But Jude eventually received the universal recognition of the church because it is from God and the church recognized it.
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But that doesn't mean that everything he cites is from the Bible.
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How many of you plan to come Sunday night? Awesome, I'm glad.
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On Sunday night, our first night of the new study on the Old Testament, one of the things we're gonna talk about is why we don't accept the Apocrypha.
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See, here's the thing.
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The Apocrypha does include books that are historical.
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The Maccabees are history books, they're valuable.
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The Book of Wisdom, the Book of Tobit, these are books that have some value in them.
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In fact, the early church fathers often cited the history of these books because it was relatively recent history, right? It was only from the last couple hundred years.
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So we have these historical books, but they're not biblical books.
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And we need to be able to distinguish between what is God-breathed and what is mere history.
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Enoch is not God-breathed.
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The Assumption of Moses or the Testament of Moses is not God-breathed.
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They are extra biblical citations that Jude makes so that we understand what the point he's making.
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And when we get to the exposition of Jude, I'll try to help you understand why he's using them to make his point.
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All right, we went through a lot tonight.
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I hope it was helpful.
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Hope it wasn't too confusing.
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And I know I got a little bit off on the question of the relationship of 2 Peter and Jude, but I do hope you look at that.
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And if you have any questions or anything, feel free to ask me afterwards.
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I'd love to talk to you.
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We're gonna end with a quick prayer, and then I'm gonna invite Brother Andy to come up, and he's gonna actually pray over those who are sick.
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And we will end tonight.
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So let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time of study.
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Pray that it's been useful and helpful.
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Pray that you'll use this to inspire us to wanna come back, wanna learn more, wanna dive deeper into the book of Jude.
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In Jesus' name, amen.