Jude 5-16 Seven Snapshots of Judgment - Part 1

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series, Short Letters, Big Stuff, a study in 2nd and 3rd John, and also Jude. Let's listen in.

Well, hello, Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm so grateful that people are able to tune in with this YouTube channel. And again, I've said this every week for the last few weeks, but I'm so thankful for technology, the chance that we have to hear together from God's Word.

I can hardly wait for this building to be full again. Right now, I'm actually, you guys know it, and just get it out on the floor. Like, I'm preaching to an empty room right now, except Spencer's sitting behind the camera.

So, but aside from that, we're just looking forward to the time when this place is full and we can have a celebration together. I'm actually thinking, like, maybe we can actually just really literally have a celebration.

We can have a Sunday evening service or whenever we actually get back into it and just make it a big celebration. But I miss you guys. And I know that you miss each other as well. But I want to encourage you.

I've just been hearing really great things about the way that you're loving each other, continuing to reach out to one another. And just ask that you continue to do that. Some of you may be aware that a few other pastors throughout the United States have continued to have services during this time.

And even in the news this past week, I know the news changes so quickly that this might be so totally last week. But there were even a couple of pastors that were arrested by state local authorities for continuing to have services.

And I want to be clear that I personally believe that it's tragic for the church to appear uncaring and unloving during this time of pandemic and tragedy around us. To love our neighbor as ourself during this time looks like doing our best to prevent the virus from spreading through us.

We do not want to be the cause of other people's suffering. And so I think the church looks poor and we make Christ look poor when we demand our rights and stand on this kind of ground where we are running the risk of putting other people in our community at risk.

And so please work hard to love others this week by reaching out through technology. God has given us this ability to remain moderately connected and virtually connected through technology. So continue to reach out and use some of the old forms.

Grab the phone. And I personally don't love phone conversations, but man, I've talked on the phone a lot more in the last couple of weeks. And so use the phone, use technology. But also I encourage all of us to heed the stay home, stay safe policies of our leadership and just continue to hunker down and do that as long as we need to, to see this thing through.

Jude, Judgment, and the Need to Get the Message Right

And now as we're going to turn our attention to the text of this week, I recommend that you strap on your safety harness because this is going to be a really bumpy ride. Jude is going to be taking us on a lengthy tour of judgment.

And I want to start off by saying at the outset that I planned on preaching from Jude verse 5 all the way through Jude 16. And this is one of the only times in the history of our church, in the history of my preaching, that I literally was sitting down writing this and decided to just cut it in half.

So this is going to be a two-part series called Seven Snapshots of Judgment. We're going to take the first three, then we're going to take four next week. And we're going to be really looking at Jude 5 through 10 this morning.

But I thought a lot about this week. I thought about standing up here and being through the interwebs to your devices and standing up here and giving a message that amounts really to a hard core declaration of God's just judgments of people down through the ages.

He is just, he is holy, he is righteous in his wrath towards sin. And I studied this text that really at the end of the day explains the rebellious nature of sinful people apart from God and then his just judgment of them.

So this message will strike you. I think that really two people, two different kinds of people are going to have two different kinds of reactions to this. And I think it's going to be pretty radical reactions to this message.

I think there's a group of people that this will strike as tone deaf in our current situation. You know, God, how can you be talking about judgment at a time like this? How can you not be giving an encouraging, up-building message during this time?

How tone deaf of you to not recognize what the world needs around us right now? The world just needs a positive message. God's got you. He's holding on to you. He's going to take care of this. Or you're going to find this imminently necessary.

You're going to see the value of looking at God as he is, as he's revealed himself in Scripture. And imagine that there's going to be very few of you that are going to listen to this message and go, man, I think he could have tweaked the introduction just a little bit.

Point two was a little off and I think he could have corrected that a little bit. I think that this is a message for a radical response and a radical sense of feeling. And my hope here is not to preach to inform you.

It's to preach to motivate you. That's really the goal of every time that I preach. I want the word of God to transform and to change lives. Not just merely to give you some knowledge so that you can win at Bible trivia.

It's so that you actually are moved in yourself. And so that's my prayer this morning is that you are moved by the message of God's word. By seeing him as he's revealed himself in the pages of Scripture.

And recognizing that that has an impact on where we live here in this current context. And so this text of Jude is highlighting for us why it is so important that the church gets the message right. We need to get the message right.

And I believe that now more than ever we are at risk of getting the message wrong. I think that at times of crisis our hearts are divided and it's very easy for us to give our hearts over to sloppy theology and sloppy thoughts of God.

I believe that the majority of the message that's going out from churches right now, well-meaning churches, is that God's got this and he does. That's not a false message. That's not completely wrong.

But there's more to it than that. The message that I hear out in our culture and online is trust him. Trust him and then he will protect you. Do something and then he's got you. Come to Jesus and no COVID -19 will touch your house.

You see what I think we lean over into and the risk that this text is going to address for us is the idea of a vending machine God or a genie in the bottle. There's this vending machine of miracles called God and if you just put the right coin in, obedience, faith, or God forbid that even someone preached that it's literal money you put in the vending machine.

You sow your seed of a thousand dollars and pick your miracle. I'll choose A2, no COVID.

And that's the kind of mindset that is out there today. I'm hearing it.

I saw a video and yes I'll name a name. I saw a video online of Kenneth Copeland this week shouting down COVID -19. Shouting down Satan and rebuking him and even demanding from God. Does he use the word demand?

I'm not putting words in his mouth. I demand, I demand, I demand a cure he says to the almighty God. Putting in his coins and saying you give me what I pay for. You give me what I'm saying, you owe us God.

But our text, the text we're going to be looking at today moves us back into the realm of the reality of judgment. And even I would say by the end of this message he's going to demonstrate to us that there's a very thin line and I would call that thin line between the judged and the redeemed and it is a line of repentance.

You see when we come into contact with this text it's a terrifying text because I read the sins of the people that are condemned in this text and I see my own sins. I am just as worthy of anybody that we're going to talk about being judged today.

I'm just as worthy of them as judgment. The only difference is a faith and a repentance that has been given to me by the almighty God. And so our text is going to give us that reality of a God who is right and just to judge.

Now let me be direct church. I'm talking to you. I do not know if COVID -19 is a judgment by God. I can't say yes or no to that. I don't have that kind of information. But what I can tell you, what I can tell you from the pages of scripture is that it is not unlike our God to send judgment.

It is not unlike our God to use pestilence. It is not unlike our God to use earthquakes and wars and famines. It is not unlike him to do all that he can to shake us awake to his holiness, to his righteousness, to his majesty and back away from the things that comfort us to the things that force us to lean on him and to see him as highest, to see him as the one who is lifted up.

It's not unlike our God to send judgment. And further COVID -19 isn't a monster that's raging through throughout the world that caught God off guard. He was taking a nap and all of a sudden he woke up and he's like, what's this crisis?

Oh my goodness. I better scramble and try to get a cure. I better hurry up and get a vaccine. He's just a little bit behind, but he'll get there. Right? No, he is sovereign. And he is free. And that's where the vending machine idea breaks down is that God is free.

He's not a machine that you put input in and get the same input out. He is a person who has will and desire. He is the most free one. So in moment by moment is able and free to do as he sees fit to bring about the best ends possible.

You see, when some people came to Jesus during a tragedy, there was a tower that fell on a bunch of people in Jerusalem and some people in the crowd came to him. And the assumption on their part was that these people who had this tower fall on them, apparently it was a big news headline news in Jerusalem of the day.

And so this tower fell. And the implication and the assumption on the part of the people asking Jesus questions was that those people who had the tower fall were worse sinners than all. It'd be like somebody coming up to a religious leader today and saying, well, aren't those who are dying of COVID?

They must be really bad sinners. Right? And Jesus rather turned it on his head and told the crowds listening to him. They ought to consider themselves. When you see tragedy, when you see devastation, when your culture is turned on its head.

Don't don't look out to the other sinners. Look to your own heart. And call them to repent. What is repentance? Repentance is turning away from our sin, turning to God and turning away from our sin. Take an honest assessment regarding your own relationship to sin.

And then confess it to God and fight. And that's what we're looking at in our text this morning. Judas telling us, church, take sin seriously. He is answering the charge that some of us might put to him after the introduction.

Come on, they really can't be that bad. Oh, really? It's not that bad in the church. You know, remember, he's addressing the church here. And, you know, it's like somebody might ask you, why are you using this kind of language that contends for the face?

Like if this is a battle or something. I mean, we just get up in the morning, have our coffee, sit down, read the Bible and move on our day. And it's really not that bad. You're overreacting. So what if a few people in the church are leading people with false teaching, leading them into sin, whatever, you know, life goes on.

The world just keeps spinning. But recast human character. Our God is a consuming fire. Full of mercy and full of grace to any who would repent of their sin and run to him for rescue. But consigning anyone to the flames and outer darkness who remain in rebellion against him.

That is our God as revealed in scripture. You can invent one that makes you more comfortable than that if you'd like. But not uphold to all the pages of scripture. I want to suggest to you that, and I'm being honest about this, this is not a message I would have chosen for this season.

But I think it's exactly the message, recast, that we need to hear this morning. So open your Bibles if you're not already there. To Jude verses 5. And I'm going to go ahead and read the entire thing both weeks.

Just so that you see where things are flowing and you get the whole flow of the whole paragraph. There's a couple of paragraphs even though we're going to be only looking primarily at Jude 5 through 10.

But again if you need to pause this to get a Bible so that you can follow along. Let's read Jude 5 through 16 together recast. And this is God's holy word. A word that is describing him, a word that is explaining him to us.

A word that is meant to transform and change us.

Jude 5 through 16.

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt. Afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling.

He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire.

Serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fighting. Yet in like manner these people also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority and blaspheme the glorious ones. 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 rebuked you. But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand. And they are destroyed by all that they like unreasoning animals understand instinctively.

Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of Cain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feast and they feast with you without fear.

Shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, 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 darkness has been reserved forever.

It was also about these that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying, Behold the Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way.

And of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own simple desires. They are loud mouth boasters showing their racism to gain advantage.

Let's pray. Father this is a heavy text and it indicts us. Certainly it indicts false teachers, it indicts a specific subset of the church in Jude's time where he was identifying that these are the kind of people who were creeping around the church.

And I don't doubt that it's the same way today. So Father I pray that you would open our eyes and open our ears to the reality of who you are. That we would allow your word to dictate and to direct us in terms of your character.

I confess that I have had lower thoughts of you than what is true of you. I pray that you would open our eyes to your majesty, to your glory, to your just judgment. That you would put us in our place today.

And as we think about what we're going through as a culture and what we're going through as a society and this COVID -19 and I ask that you would help us to think rightly about you in the midst of this.

I confess to thinking a lot of thoughts about me, a lot of thoughts about the church, a lot of thoughts about people that I love. But I pray that you would even now be turning our minds and our hearts to you.

And what you desire to change in us as a result of coming in contact with this very stern and very severe world. I ask this in Jesus name, amen. Alright, we'll buckle up as we take a tour of some of the past judgments of God.

You might want to get some coffee or settle in here for a little bit. But again I'm just going to remind you to put on your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Our tour today is a two part tour.

This week there's going to be Easter. Spencer's going to be preaching next week and he's going to have an opportunity to bring the word. So we basically have a judgment with resurrection sandwich. So it's a serious text on judgment.

Text about the resurrection and celebrating Easter together. Another text about judgment. And I think that that's good because we need the full picture of what God is doing and is moving towards here in our world.

So we have seven snapshots. We're going to get a close view of seven snapshots of really human rebellions that resulted in judgment. And I encourage you to keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.

There's going to be fire. There's going to be brimstone. There will be the earth opening up and swallowing people whole by the end of this text. And so it's a tough ride. Yeah, keep your arms in. Remember that last week how Jude started.

And I think it's really good for us to go back there for just a moment. Because remember that this is a very short letter. It's very easy. You can sit down and you can read it in one sitting. But Jude started with encouragement.

He reminded the church that we are the called. That we are beloved in the Father. And we are those who are kept, held securely by the hands of God, kept for Jesus Christ. He needs to remind the church of this because of what he's about to say about judgment for those who are not all in with Jesus.

Because the flames will get hot and the images in this text look very lifelike if you put yourself in the shoes of the people that lived these accounts. You see, when I get close to these stories, I begin to tremble.

I begin to quake. Because I realize how my sin deserves this treatment. This is not a far removed judgment for me. Because the sins that he's spelling out are sins that my heart is just as prone to dive into.

So we need to be reminded that we are those who are called by God. Called out from this judgment. Placed into the love of the Father. And kept by the Father for the Son. Kept in His love. Kept in the place of security.

Kept in the place. Because as we read these texts, our hearts are going to be quick to shed the gospel and fear. But remember that also in Jude verse 3, he encourages us to contend for the faith. To contend for the gospel.

And now he's going to really through this text, it's an extended explanation of why we should contend for the faith. And it is this simply stated judgment is real. Never is there a time that the church needs this message more than in a crisis.

Right now we need to be brought back to the basics of our faith. Basics like humanity is a rebellious lot, all of us. We have all rejected God's authority. But He has called us back to Himself by the love of His Son Jesus Christ.

So that anybody by faith, putting their trust in Jesus can have our punishment and our judgment placed over on the Son. So that we, yes, get to go free. Because He has accepted our punishment on His own shoulders there in the cross.

But Jude wants to remind the church, wants to remind us in this text, exactly what was Jesus bearing for us. What does sin cost? And he also wants to remind us that when it comes to judgment, Jesus ain't playing.

He's not playing around with us. And so in verse 5, we're buckled in, we're moving down the track. Let's have our first stop and look at our first snapshot. And Jude takes us to the exodus. Real people, real lives, real history.

God's people were slaves in Egypt and God saw their plight. And through Moses and a bunch of plagues, He led them out of Egypt with His strong arm of salvation. He led them through the Red Sea on dry ground.

He proved Himself to them time and time again, giving them water from the rock and manna from the sky and quail. And just constantly being their God, giving them victory over Amalekites. And constantly bringing them progressively towards that length that He was promising to them.

We even here find out in our text, amazingly, and I can't get into a lot of detail, but Jesus Himself had a hand in that exodus according to the text. But the people refused to believe that God would give them the land of promise.

They got right up to the border and sent some spies in. When the spies came back, 10 of them gave a terrible report. We were like grasshoppers, they're giants, they've got these fortified cities. There is absolutely no way that a people like us can conquer a land like that, was the report.

And so they said, God, you're not big enough. God, there is no way that you can conquer this land through us. They said, no, we've got to turn around and head back to Egypt. And so God said, you want to head back after we've done all this, after I've proven myself to you time and time again?

So what did He do? He let an entire generation die off in the wilderness. He said, you will not see the land of promise because you did not trust Him. You didn't believe Him. And the point being here in the book of Jude, if you bring it to the church, God didn't protect even the very people He had let out during the Exodus from judgment.

They didn't trust Him by faith. They were not all in with God, by the way. I want to be clear about that. It says right in the text, they didn't believe Him.

They enjoyed His benefits.

They enjoyed His manna. And you notice that throughout the text of the Exodus, you'll notice that when things were going good, they were okay. But the moment that the food ran out, the moment that any little thing that inconvenienced them, and they were right back at God's throat.

Right back at grumbling, right back at complaining, right back at forging gold and cash to bow down to and rebel against to. As soon as they thought God wasn't watching, they were quick to rebel against Him.

And He did not let them see the land of promise because of their lack of faith. We'll move on down the tracks and our second stop is found in verse 6. It's a strange stop that would have been familiar to the ears of the Jews during Jews' time, but certainly not to ours.

It's not something that we relate to very well. They had some traditions that were built up around angels. And here what Jude is doing is literally saying some of those traditions are actually true. They were based in fact.

There were angels who rejected the high positions that they had been given by God. And instead of accepting the role that God gave to them, they left heaven to come down to earth. He said, God, you don't know what you're doing putting us here.

We're going down there. And even these angels, as high as they were, are not exempt from the judgment of God. And I just want to point out the context of this is kind of strange. Some people go back to Genesis chapter 6 where the sons of God intermarry with the daughters of Eve and all this stuff.

That's not it. Jude is not explicit about that and it very well may be that context. But I don't think that it's helpful for us to get into all of that, all of the nuances of that. What the text here is really indicting them for is leaving their place of authority.

And leaving the position that God had given to them. And going their own way. And what is the fate of those angels? I don't know all the context and all the ins and outs of this. But what is clear is that they are currently being kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness.

Where they're in a holding cell of sorts until the great and final day of judgment. When their judgment will be final. The point being, in the second stop, God's judgment is real toward those who would rebel against his authority.

Regardless of how high they're standing. Even the angels themselves are not above the judgment of the Almighty God. Our third stop, down the trail further, an uncomfortable place. A place of proverbial judgment.

A byword of the era, down through the ages of Judaism and even on into our modern time. When you mention Sodom and Gomorrah, it's proverbial as a place of judgment in history. And I want to just tell you real quick, just a side note.

If you have young children and you don't want to answer some funny questions. Then you might just decide to skip this point and come back later. Now I've got all the kids' attention because they're paying attention to me.

But technology is great so you can pause this. You can come back and listen to this section later. You can get your kids occupied with something else or whatever. But I'm not going to be overly graphic in what I say here or anything.

But my hunch is that you would end up with a couple of questions from younger elementary students. And I leave that up to the parents. And so I don't want to be teaching your kids about anything that you're not comfortable with.

So give me just a second. You can pause it. Hopefully you found the remote control. And then they are Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities. The text is very clear. Indulged in, the word is indulged, in sexual immorality.

And further it goes on to say they pursued unnatural desires. According to the text in Genesis, we know exactly what that means. They demanded sexual relations with men. Now they didn't know that they were angels.

And you'll hear all kinds of attempts to explain away the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were just inhospitable. Well there's texts that talk about their inhospitable-ness. Inhospitality. They weren't very kind to strangers.

So there was something going on there. But there is all kinds of indication. Fundamental to this and other texts and even ancient Jewish texts that identify the sexual nature of this sin. And the fact that they didn't know that these men visiting Lot were angels demonstrate that their sin could not have been merely pursuing sexual relations with an angel.

But really at the end of the day, we know very clearly from Old Testament law that homosexual actions were a sin. To behave in that way, to act that out, was a sin. And so it's interesting that both the sexual acts here in Jude and the pursuit of those desires are mentioned here in the text.

Both indulging in sexual immorality and unnatural desires. And I want to point out that the delineation between indulging and pursuing in verse 7 highlights the reality. Hear me carefully church. This is not a very popular message in our culture.

But that fueling lust for things that are forbidden by God is also a sin. Enticing ourselves toward sexual prohibitions by God is itself sin. So that entertaining pornography or entertaining extramarital fantasies even in our minds or even fueling and pursuing homosexual desires even despite indulging in them are in themselves sin.

The lusts of our mind are sin. But let me be careful to also give this caveat. We cannot remove our desires. God can. We can pray for that. But at the end of the day, it's not so clear that the goal is to remove the desire but we can and must seek to subdue them and seek to squelch illicit desire.

And all of us know this to be true. It's just that sexuality becomes so charged in our culture. And so we all know, for example, that if you're driving down the road and somebody comes in real fast and cuts you off that your urge to pull up beside them and run them off the road is not a godly desire.

Now that desire might come in or even just to drag past them and fly number one at them. You might be tempted to do all kinds of things in that situation but you know fully that you ought to subdue that illicit desire.

We do it all the time. I hope you do. I hope you don't say every irritant word that comes into your mind and every thought that crosses your mind. You know that there are things that you ought not to entertain in your heart.

And further, when a person cuts you off we ought to be moving towards a place where we go, I bet they're in a hurry. I've been in a hurry before. I have probably cut people off in the same way that they just did because I knew I was in a hurry and I cut myself some slack.

So maybe I could be gracious to them. So that even the desire, the rage that can come into our hearts at times even that must be dealt with and continually warred against. I believe that everybody listening to this right now knows the difference between having an illicit desire that pops into your mind and pursuing that illicit desire.

Running with it. Meditating on it. Playing with it. Thinking about it. And even further, we certainly know the difference between having an illicit desire pop up into our mind and indulging in sexual immorality.

Vast differences between those. Well, these cities served as an example by undergoing punishment of fire. Eternal fire. The terrifying thought. Can you feel the heat from those flames? As the cars roll past this judgment.

The picture is one of condemnation and eternal punishment. Recast, the judgment of God is real and sin is not to be trifled with. It is not something to be played with. So now as we come into verse 8 it's a good time to let you know that occasionally in this tour the lights come up, the car, the ride comes to a stop and we get a little hiatus, we get a chance to pause and check on our status.

Like I said, a type of hiatus from this grueling tour but these breaks are not easy because when the lights come up the focus goes off of the judgment and off of those sinners out there and the lights come up and the spotlight comes to us.

Comes to us, church. Remember that Paul... Jude is writing this to the church. He's writing this to us. He's saying that people like this are in us. They're among us. He wants us to consider Jude, is it me?

Am I the one that you're warning? Am I the one that you're drawing into this? And he wants us to think about this. They're not easy breaks because they serve as a chance to bring this judgment home. Jude says that those who have crept into the church are noticed promoting immorality.

That those who have crept into the church rejecting Jesus and his authority and abusing grace as he mentioned earlier in verse 4. They are similar to these first three snapshots. Yet in a like manner, these people he says in verse 8.

He goes on in verse 8 to describe them as their dreamers. What does it mean that they're dreamers? Well, they claim authority from their own visions. Rather than checking in with God's word and checking in with God's prophets and his apostles they are authorities in and of themselves.

They lead people into sexual sin. Through their abuse of grace saying things like it doesn't matter what you do God's grace will cover you. You sin today, just ask for forgiveness tomorrow. It's no big deal.

And what they do is they kid-bluff sin. They make sin look like no big deal. Jesus already died. It's okay. In some cases, in our culture people who bear the title Christian even are in the process of making sin a virtue.

Further he goes on to describe them as they reject authority. They don't recognize and stay in their lanes. But they eventually get off into boosting their own authority way above where it belongs. And this is shown through a strange phrase at the end of verse 8.

You need to look at the text because this gets crazy between the end of verse 8 and verse 9. It's a crazy story. They blaspheme, it says in the text, they blaspheme glorious ones. And glorious ones, there's really no way around it in context.

Glorious ones means angels. So they blaspheme angels. And how in the world does a person blaspheme an angel? What in the world? Do people do that? Is that a real thing? I'm glad you asked, said Jude. Look at verse 9 for his answer.

He's going to answer it. You can read verse 9 probably a few times and you're still probably not any closer to an answer. Because it's a really confusing text. It's really bizarre. So let me explain the picture that Jude is painting.

Jude is painting, let's back up for just a second and remember who he's talking about. In verse 8, he's painting a picture of a type of person. And this is a type of person who is very, very crazy self-confident.

They reject all other authorities. They don't even like hierarchy, except the notion that maybe they're on top. They are rebellious against God. And they trust in their own words. And here, what he's getting at is they even place themselves higher than angels.

So Jude tells a story that's not found in the Old Testament in verse 9 about the burial of the body of Moses. Now we have a valley is named in Deuteronomy where the body of Moses is buried. But it says in that context, nobody knows.

Nobody knows where. Well, how does nobody know? Doesn't the guy who buried him know? Well, the fact of the matter is nobody buried him. God himself took care of that. And apparently, he did so through meteors.

Michael, the archangel, was the one who was responsible according to this text to bury the body of Moses. Strange, bizarre, but I believe true. Some people look back to the text that they assume that Jude is quoting here and then cast aspersions on that text and all that.