Introduction: We learn about the beginning of the Church Age in the Bible's Acts of the Apostles. In Jude, which may be called the "Acts of the Apostates," we learn about the end of the Church Age. This short one chapter epistle, with its foreboding forewarning of end-time apostasy, serves as the vestibule to the book of Revelation.
According to Maxwell Coder, “Jude is the only book in all God’s Word entirely devoted to the great apostasy which is to come upon Christendom before the Lord Jesus Christ returns.” If the growing apostasy in the contemporary church is a but a prelude to the Biblically predicted great apostasy of the end-time (Luke 18:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:3; 1 Timothy 4:1-3; 2 Peter 2:1-22), then, this final epistle of the New Testament is essential reading for God’s present-day remnant, which is comprised of all who refuse to bow the knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:3-5).
Jude 1:1a — Although Jude introduces himself as “a brother of James,” the leader of the church in Jerusalem, he does not introduce himself as the half-brother of our Lord. Instead, he humbly introduces himself as merely “a servant of Jesus Christ.”
That Mary had other children after Jesus, her virgin born son, such as James and Jude, disproves Catholicism’s false doctrine of her Perpetual Virginity.
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Jude 1:1b — This epistle was written to those called by God the Spirit, beloved by God the Father, and kept by God the Son.
The eternal security of Christians is not dependent upon our hold on Christ, but upon Christ's hold on us.
Jude 1:2 — As Christians we not only need God’s mercy, peace, and love added to our lives, but multiplied in our lives.
We need mercy multiplied when we fail, peace multiplied when we are fearful, and love multiplied when we feel forsaken.
Jude 1:3a — Our “common salvation” is not commonplace, but held in commonality by all who are saved. Although our salvation experience may differ, the essence of our salvation is always the same.
All of God’s saints are saved the same way, by grace through faith, and with the same salvation, which is given to us by God through the work of Christ rather than gained by us from God through our own works.
Jude 1:3b — Christians are called to contend for the Christian Faith, which was once and for all delivered to the saints, for if we fail to do so, as its sole stewards and custodians, true Christianity will be compromised, corrupted, and cease from the earth.
Christianity is only one generation away from extinction!
Jude 1:4 — There are fifth columnists in the church who promote ungodliness, pervert God’s grace into license, deny Christ’s Lordship, and are doomed and predestined to perdition.
To disobey the Lord is to deny His Lordship, for the second you say “No” to Jesus, He ceases to be your Lord.
Jude 1:5-7 — If God did not spare Sodomites, angels, and His own people who sinned, how can today's smug and unrepentant sinners presume that they will be spared by such an unsparing God?
Both the angels, “who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation,” as well as the cities of “Sodom and Gomorrah,” serve “in like manner” as fearful examples of the “eternal fire” God has reserved for all who are guilty of sexual perversion.
READ THE SONS OF GOD AND THE DAUGHTERS OF MEN
Jude 1:8 — Apostates are easily detected by their filthy dreams, their defiled flesh, their despising of spiritual dominion, and their denial of human accountability to divine authority.
All men have a spiritual authority, whether they realize it or not. Everyone has someone or something that they base their beliefs and behavior on. However, if they despise and deny the Bible, God’s infallible and inerrant Word, as their spiritual authority, they will ultimately answer to God, to whom they are accountable, for disbelieving and disobeying His Word. (John 12:48)
Jude 1:9a — The location of Moses' grave is unknown. If not, it would have become a shrine where the Hebrews would have committed idolatry to an interred and idolized Moses. This explains the battle over Moses' body between the archangel Michael and the devil. (Deuteronomy 34:1-8)
If the site of Moses’ grave was known, the devil would make it into a monument where multitudes would gather to idolize the Moses of God rather than to worship the God of Moses.
Jude 1:9b — If Michael, the Archangel of God, did not get flippant in his fight with the devil, we certainly shouldn't get to big for our britches when we find ourselves embroiled in a battle with Beelzebub.
Although we are commanded by the Lord to resist the devil, we are to call upon the Lord to rebuke the devil, just as the archangel Michael did. (James 4:7)
Jude 1:10 — This fallen world is the sole reality to apostates, who not only are ruled over by their natural beastly instincts, but also run around in the ignorance of their spiritual blindness railing against anything otherworldly.
Contrary to the Apostle Paul’s admonition for us to live our lives focused on primary reality—the invisible, spiritual, heavenly, and eternal—apostates live their lives focused on secondary reality—the visible, physical, earthly, and temporal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
Jude 1:11a — Apostates go the way of Cain, believing God is appeased by the produce of their own hands. (Genesis 4:1-10)
Apostates, like Cain, who seek acceptance with God on the basis of their own produce, practice a “cutthroat Christianity,” as is proven by the fact that the blood of many a slain Abel, who was accepted by God on the basis Christ’s propitiation, has cried out from the ground to God after being slain by Cain-like religionists down through the ages.
Jude 1:11b — I'm afraid there are many Balaams in present-day pulpits, men who greedily pursue their own gain rather than genuinely pursue God's glory.
"Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice." (A. W. Tozer)
Jude 1:11c — Apostates, who try to usurp apostleship, like Korah, who tried to usurp Moses’ leadership, will perish like Korah did, suddenly in their superciliousness and sedition. (Numbers 16:1-34)
Apostates always undermine church leaders to usurp church leadership, woo congregations to win them over, and scorn sound doctrine to spread false doctrine.
Jude 1:12a — Apostates are sores on the body of Christ that must be swiftly and surgically removed, lest they fester and infect the whole body.
Apostates are like a cancer in the body of Christ, the more they’re allowed to feed themselves off the body, the larger and more lethal to the body they become.
Jude 1:12b — Apostates are like promising clouds without any precipitation, which are blown about by every wind of false doctrines. (Ephesians 4:14)
There is no such thing as a silver lining in the dark clouds of spiritual apostasy.
Jude 1:12c — The good fruit of an apostate is as nonexistent as that of a rotten tree pulled up by the roots.
Although the fruit of an apostate’s teaching may at first appear tantalizing, it will eventually prove to be as terrible and foul as that of a twice dead tree.
Jude 1:13a — Apostates are like raging waves, in that they are always foaming out shameful deeds.
As the Apostle Paul predicts in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, a tsunami of apostasy is about to break over our whole end-time world. (2 Thessalonians 2:8-12)
Jude 1:13b — Although Apostates may flicker, like twinkling stars in the night, they are forever doomed to the blackness of darkness.
Apostates are like stars, which appear to wander across the nighttime sky, in that the ignominy of Apostates is their instability.
Jude 1:14-15 — Like Enoch, who was caught up to the Lord before He judged the prediluviane world with a flood, Christians should so walk with the Lord as to be caught up to Him before He judges the end-time world with fire. (see also Genesis 5:21-24; 2 Peter 3:3-7)
Notice, it is upon all the ungodly, who for all of their ungodly works and words, not upon the godly, who, like Enoch, have walked with God and are not appointed to wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9), that God’s fiery wrath on an end-time and Christ-rejecting world will be poured out.
Jude 1:16 — Apostates are base and bestial bellyachers, braggarts, and bootlickers.
This verse furnishes us with a fourfold way to find apostates who’ve infiltrated the church. They will be fault-finders, who fault others, but see themselves as flawless. They will be followers of their own lusts rather than of our Lord. They will incessantly flaunt themselves, in hopes of winning our admiration. And they will insincerely flatter us, in hopes of winning our allegiance.
Jude 1:17-19 — End-time apostates will be sensualists who scoff at the Holy Scripture, spurn the Holy Spirit, and are enslaved by their sinful lusts.
Jude is undoubtedly referring here to the foreboding forewarnings of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter, who forewarned us that in the last days men would walk after their own lusts, as well as scoff at sound doctrine and the promise of Christ’s Second Coming. (2 Timothy 4:3; 2 Peter 3:3-4)
Jude 1:20a — It is not in the strength of the Christian’s own personal faith that he is to build himself up, but on the solid foundation of the “holy” Christian faith. The strength of our faith is not built on its amount—its quantity—but on its object—its quality.
To build up your faith in false beliefs and unsound doctrines rather than in the fundamental beliefs and sound doctrines of the Christian Faith is to build a sepulchral for your soul.
Jude 1:20b — For a Christian to be built up by his prayer life, he must not just pray periodically to God, but perpetually in the Spirit of God. There is no strength for the saint in a selfish prayer, but only in a Spirit-filled one!
Our Christian faith, which was birthed with a prayer prayed under the Spirit’s conviction, is continually built up by prayers prayed under the Spirit’s compulsion.
Jude 1:21a — The Christian need not worry about keeping himself in love with God, as long as he keeps himself in the love of God. In other words, it is the knowledge of Christ’s incomprehensible love for the Christian that keeps the Christian indelibly in love with Christ!
Eternal life cannot be sought on the basis of our merits, but only on the basis of Christ’s mercy. In other words, it’s given to us on the basis of Christ’s work for us, never on the basis of our works for Christ.
Jude 1:21-23 — While we look to Christ for our forgiveness, we are to keep ourselves in God's favor by being softhearted in our witness to the doubter and hard-nosed in our witness to the defiant.
If you can win them at all, you can’t win those with clinched fists in the face of Christ with kid gloves, but only with fire tongs.
Jude 1:24 — As Christians, our eternal security is not dependent upon our hold on Christ, but upon Christ's hold on us. It is Christ who keeps us from falling, who will present us faultless in glory, and who will assure us of fabulous and forever joy.
It is not up to us, but up to Christ, who gives us the gift of salvation, to guarantee it; otherwise, it’s no gift at all, but a mere loan we have to maintain.
Jude 1:24-25 — God's eternal guarantee of the gift of our salvation guarantees Him all the glory for it now and forever!
Since it is to Christ that we owe our eternal security, it is to Him that we owe our eternal praise.
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