Nobody likes conflict. One of the ugly things in local church life, and in church history, is when Christians squabble and fight amongst each other. So the idea of looking together at a letter in the New Testament that tells Christians to fight for the true version of Christianity and to oppose wrong versions doesn't sit comfortably with us.
This is the letter that Jude hoped he would never have to write, but he did. If you look at verse 3, you see that he wanted — had been wanting for some time — to write a lovely, encouraging letter all about the wonderful, precious truths that we share: I was eager to write to you about the salvation that we share. Well, he still gets to write about that, but his focus has changed, and his purpose for writing has changed. Now he has to write to urge us to contend for the faith — to fight, to struggle, to wrestle — because distortions of the true faith have crept in.
And if you're here this morning as somebody who is still looking into the Christian faith, it may be that a letter all about how Christians will sometimes squabble and fight amongst themselves may even put you off Christianity. It's possible it could, if we don't understand it correctly. It's the letter that Jude didn't really want to write. It's one that, if we're honest, maybe we'd rather not read — but not once we understand why this matters. Not once we understand why we have to contend and fight for the true faith.
And so, the passage we're looking at this morning — which is verses 3-7 — is Jude introducing his material. And in these verses, he's telling us why it matters that we contend for the faith. Why do major distortions of the Christian faith matter? Why is the Christian truth something that is worth fighting for?
What's happened is that people have slipped in subtly. This happened in Jude's day; it's happened in our own day. Major denominations in this country and around the world are seeing people beginning to sort of weedle their way in, in an attempt to change and alter the truth that is being taught and held out within those denominations. And it could happen that people slither into Trinity Church with the intention — articulated or not — of changing subtly what it is that we teach and believe here.
Jude wants to warn us that we are not immune from this happening. And so, to see why this matters, Jude has three things to tell us about the twisting of Christian truth that has been going on.
1. Twisted from what God has entrusted
Twisted from what God has entrusted — this is verse 3: Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people.
So the faith — that is, the body of truth that Christians believe. We might often say the gospel — the faith that was entrusted. That is to say, God has given it to us on trust. It is God's truth, not ours. He has given it to us to look after, protect, and pass on.
For a number of months over winter, as we were in the process of moving house, we were living in a house that belonged to somebody else. We paid them some money to have use of it, but we were very aware as we did that, that the house we were living in was not ours. It was somebody else's. And so we looked after it as if it were our own home — precisely because it wasn't ours, we took special care to make sure we looked after it well for the people it belonged to.
This is God's truth, not ours, and so we look after it especially carefully — the faith entrusted, and entrusted once for all.
So God has spoken once, to one generation in the first century, so that his truth could be known throughout all generations. God does not speak freshly to each generation to tell that generation the particular message that they need. Neither does he repeat the same message to each generation, just in case one generation received the truth slightly muddled and distorted — saying it again just to make sure. No. God spoke once, two thousand years ago, and that spoken once for all is for everybody, all down through history.
Now that little phrase, once for all — you might recognise that it's in 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 18: For Christ suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
So God had one thing to do to bring all people — all through the ages — back to himself, who trust in him. That was that the Lord Jesus should suffer and die and rise again, carrying the sins of all of God's people for all ages. And then God hand-picked a group who were alive at the time and gave them the gift of his Spirit to ensure they had perfect recall of everything that had happened and what it meant, and could pass it on with a hundred percent accuracy. And then they wrote it down — it's here. And then it's up to us to pass on that once for all entrusted message about the once for all rescue plan of God, so that people could know how they could be saved.
It's why it's so disastrous if people take this truth and twist it and distort it — because they are taking away from other people the opportunity to hear God's only plan as to how people can be saved.
We've just had to go through the process that you have to go through every five or ten years of replacing a passport. In our house, one of us had a passport that's expiring — it needs to be renewed. Now, a passport is a document that you look after, is it not? Because if you lose it, it's an expensive menace to get it replaced — it's another seventy or so quid and a palaver and whatever. So you look after it. You don't kind of drop it in the shredder just for fun to see what happens and if you can glue it back together. You treat your passport with some respect.
But if you should lose it, there is a mechanism to get another one. All is not lost. But just imagine if there was no way ever to get another passport. If you lost it, you could never get it back — gone. You would really look after that. You would know exactly where you put it. You'd lock it away. You'd always put it back in that spot every time you finished with it. You wouldn't go flipping through your past visas, seeing where you've been on holiday when you're in the bath — just, you know, for the fun of it. Because what if you dropped it? It wouldn't go anywhere near the shredder. It wouldn't go on the kitchen counter when you're cooking. You would really look after that — because there is no way to get it back.
God has acted in history, once for all time, to enact a plan to save the world. There's only one plan, and there's only one message about how that plan can be accessed and people can be saved for all eternity. There's no way to get another if we mess it up and lose it. So we look after it — twisted from the plan that God has entrusted.
2. Twisted to deny Jesus is Lord
Twisted to deny Jesus is Lord — this is verse four: For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among them. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Listen to the three descriptions of these people and what they do.
Ungodly
Number one: they are ungodly. Now, that's kind of just a headline that the other two descriptions will put some flesh on for us, but the headline itself is also important, as we will see.
They are teaching that how you live doesn't matter. But here's the thing: their own lifestyle is ungodly. That means that the particular thing they're teaching is incredibly convenient if your own lifestyle is not one that God approves of. It is really convenient if your message happens to be that that doesn't matter, because nobody's going to challenge you to change the way you live — which is not what they want.
The study of philosophy — some of you may be doing a Philosophy A-level — was not a subject that I had available to me when I was at school. But philosophy is about studying the great thinkers of the past, how they put the world together and understand how things work. And you study all kinds of people like Immanuel Kant, Rousseau and others.
Someone once gave me a little tip when it comes to philosophy. He said this: if you want to understand what it is the particular philosopher taught, you need to get to know the story of their life — the way they lived. Once you understand that, you will see exactly why they taught what they taught.
See, this is how the rot that Jude is warning about begins. We all have sins and weaknesses; none of us is perfect. So how tempting it is to look for a church that will not challenge what happen to be your particular points of weakness — just won't address those topics — or to pressure your current church to go quiet on those areas. Ungodly.
Pervert the grace of God
Second description: may pervert the grace of our God into a licence for immorality.
God's grace is a wonderful thing. The precious thing about being a Christian is God's grace. It's the truth — that God promises you, if you're a Christian, full and free forgiveness for everything that you have ever done wrong and everything that you ever will do wrong in the future. Wonderful. But it could be an excuse to just live however you like.
You won't have noticed this, maybe, until I pointed it out to you — and then you will notice it. Every year, there are a lot of roadworks in the UK every March. Do you know why? On April the 1st, every local council has their roadworks budget reset. Which means, if they haven't spent all the money allocated to roadworks by March the 31st, they lose it. So they suddenly spend the whole of March closing every street, digging up every road. You can't get through Forge Valley, you can't get through all the alternate routes — they're all shut at once. Why? They don't want to lose their roadworks budgets. They know that it will get reset the following day. So it's a case of use it or lose it. So they use it.
If you knew that your financial bank account was going to be reset tomorrow, and your balance would be exactly five thousand pounds, what would you do today? You would spend every last penny on it. If you knew that tomorrow God is going to reset your spiritual bank account and wipe the slate clean, what would you do today? You'd indulge every desire that you could. But that would be a hideous twisting of the grace of God.
That is not why God gives us his grace, his forgiveness. His plan is to transform us. He wants to make us beautiful. He wants to conform us into the likeness of his Son — not give us an excuse to become sinful, indulgent, and selfish people.
Deny Jesus Christ
And third description for these people: they deny Jesus Christ, our only Sovereign and Lord.
So Jesus here is given two titles: Sovereign and Lord. Jesus is often given two titles in the New Testament. In our speech, just not these two. Normally, we speak of Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. But here: Sovereign and Lord.
You see, nobody is doubting that Jesus is our Saviour — that's not the bit that's going wrong. What's going wrong is that people are denying that Jesus is the Lord. So we have two titles that are both about how in charge Jesus is. "Lord" is the one we're more familiar with. "Sovereign" — that's a much more lofty title. It's a stronger word. And he is our only Sovereign and Lord — and they're denying this.
Now, they're not denying it explicitly. Nobody's standing up and saying, "Jesus is not Lord." No, no, no. Remember: they secretly slipped in. Their aim is to remain unnoticed. It would be far too obvious if the minister of a church stood up and said, "For our first song this morning, we're going to sing 'Jesus isn't Lord; creation's voice says nothing'." You'd go, hang on, something smells off here. "'Oh Lord my God, how great thou art'" — no, no, no, hang on. This is wrong. Far too obvious.
But this is Titus 1:16, which says, "They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds." When someone wants to become a Christian, we traditionally explain to them they need to understand that Jesus is their Lord and their Saviour. And that's correct. But many people find it much easier to accept that they need a Saviour than that they need a Lord.
Now don't misunderstand me, please. We're not saying in order to become a Christian it's like passing a test and you have to have done 100% of the things that Jesus says you must do — then you're good enough and you can be a Christian. No, it doesn't work like that. It's grace — it's free of charge.
But we are saying that until you have realised that Jesus is Lord as well as Saviour, you haven't really understood what it means for him to be your Saviour — and you haven't become a Christian. And the denominations of our Western world are being overrun with people who want to offer a gospel in which Jesus is Saviour, but he is not Lord.
We call people to trust him, to express faith — but we go quiet when it comes to calling people to repent. Remember, Jesus arrived in Galilee — Mark 1:14–15 — "The time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel."
And yet, the denominations today are full of people who want to say, "Believe the good news." We go much quieter when it comes to repentance. And in particular, we seem to be going quiet on repentance when it comes to the area of sex and relationships. It's as if we've done a little amnesty with people, and said, "This is an area of our life where we promise that Jesus won't touch it. You can do what you like there. It's okay, you're safe — we won't tell you to change there."
Now, that's disastrous. You see, the message you start to hear is that the gospel is that Jesus loves you as you are, forgives you as you are, accepts you as you are. That is wonderfully true. But not if you then don't say the next thing — which is that he wants to then take you from where you are and begin a rebuilding project, and rebuild your life.
We cannot say to people, "You don't need to listen to what God has to say, what Jesus has to say, in this area of life. It's okay, you can filter that bit out." Disastrous.
When it comes to a false teaching, I always say to people: don't necessarily look for what they say — look for what it is that they don't say. What do they never talk about?
So here's one talk I came across recently from a leader of a local church. I won't tell you which one. They were preaching on the Great Commission — Matthew chapter 28. They had three things to say. Number one: preach the gospel. Number two: make disciples. Number three: Jesus will be with us to the end of the age.
Lovely — and you have Matthew 28, and you realise there was no mention at all of "teaching people to obey everything that he's commanded." Now, one talk does not a false teacher make. Maybe that particular church minister simply has done what we all do sometimes — which is just not notice what's in the text. Okay, so don't rush to hasty judgements and write whole ministries off just because that one talk missed something off.
But if recurrently a preacher never tells people to repent and to do what Jesus commands, then something's really off.
Jesus is Lord. Jesus only saves because he is Lord. And that's why it's so tragic when the gospel gets twisted to deny Jesus' Lordship — because you end up with a god you cannot say.
So: in the past, twisted from what God has entrusted. In the present, twisted to deny Jesus is Lord. And then, looking into the future — twisted, leading to condemnation.
3. Twisted, leading to condemnation
So verse 4 tells us that their condemnation was written long ago. And then he tells us how. He gives us three examples.
Israel in the desert
Example number one is Israel in the desert. This tells you that there is such a thing as saved Christians who later don't believe. They get destroyed. So that's verse 5:
"Though you already know this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe."
God delivered his people at the Exodus. Literally, the word is "saved" then. But then some of them did not trust God's promises, and so they fell in the desert. You can read about this in Numbers 14, but also, crucially, in Numbers 25.
So, once saved, always saved? No. Yes, if you are one of those on God's list who will guaranteed get to heaven, then yes — you will come to faith, you will persevere, you'll be in heaven. Absolutely guaranteed, yes. But go to church? Always saved? No. Sing the songs, go to the conferences, read the books? Always saved? No.
We thought about that in Jeremiah chapter 7. The people go, "I'm in the temple! Of course I'm safe!" No.
The angels long ago
Example number two, in verse 6: the angels long ago. This tells us that there is such a thing as people in authority not staying within their bounds, and they are awaiting the Day of Judgement.
So here's verse 6:
"The angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgement on the great day."
Now, it's not clear exactly what he's talking about here, but this is where we learn in the New Testament that the devil and the demons were once good angels, but who rebelled and who fell. So the angels who had genuine authority in God's created order did not want to stay within the bounds that God had set and do God's work for him. No — they wanted to be rule-makers themselves and stray beyond those bounds. And as a result, they're on remand, he says. They are imprisoned in darkness, bound in chains, waiting for sentencing, which will occur on the final day. And the Book of Revelation tells that their sentence will be to be cast into the lake of fire.
That's the angels.
Four cities near the Dead Sea
And then the third example is that four cities near the Dead Sea — Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboyim. And these tell us that there is such a thing as behaviour that rebels against God's ways, and this leads to punishment of eternal fire.
So here's verse 7:
"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."
You can read this story in Genesis 18 and 19. Sodom and Gomorrah were notoriously wicked cities. They had many sins, including an abject failure of hospitality and the hatred of foreigners. So many things Sodom and Gomorrah did.
God sent some angels down to the cities to find out if things were as bad as the reputation said. Abraham's nephew Lot had chosen that this would be a good city to live in. The angels went to go and stay with Lot for the night. The entire town turned up and attempted a homosexual gang rape on the angels. So the angels then grabbed Lot and his family, yanked them out of the city — literally by the scruffs of their necks — before fire fell from heaven and destroyed those cities.
If you go today to where those cities once stood, it is still a blackened mess.
Now, what they suffered was a one-off destruction of fire. But Jude says that this is an example — it's a small-scale demo of what is coming to everybody who rebels against God and his ways. And Jude says that that is eternal fire.
So let's just put this whole picture together.
Jude is telling us that if you are numbered amongst God's people here this morning, but then don't believe, you will be judged. If you are in authority — teaching authority — and don't stay within the bounds of that (God is in charge, not you), you will be judged. And if you choose a lifestyle that is not according to God's will, you will be judged.
Here's the point: those teachers in Jude's day have done all three. And so he says their condemnation was written about long ago.
Now here's the point: those who are led astray by their teaching will also be judged. You see, why would you follow these people down a path that certainly leads to their judgement, their punishment, and their condemnation? They claim to offer you a path to life and liberation — but it is the opposite. So why would you follow that?
People today who play with and twist and distort God's truth often seem to treat it as if it is a joke. I've met people describing the position of someone like us in this church — wanting to hold on to the Bible — as if it's just laughing and dismissing what we're trying to do. This is no laughing matter. They are playing with fire — and I mean that literally.
Conclusion
Twisted — that leads to condemnation. Twisted from what God entrusted. Twisted to deny Jesus as Lord. And twisted to condemnation.
Disagreement and fighting amongst Christians is ugly. And when we disagree and squabble over minor things, you know what? We need to repent of that and learn again how to love each other in spite of our differences.
But when we're talking about major distortions of God — then the salvation of the truth of God, of the gospel, the salvation of the world — is at stake. This is God's once-for-all plan to save the world being twisted into something that says you can live how you please — which sets both the teachers and those who follow them onto a path to hell.
So what does this all mean for us?
Well, again, let me just speak briefly to those of you who are with us, who are still looking into the Christian faith — trying to decide if this is for you. Let me say to you: make sure you're looking at the real thing. That when you're going to work out if this is for you, look at the real thing. Just check that. Make sure you're being taught the Bible, and not that certain parts of it are irrelevant or out of date.
And also, be aware of your own heart. You will, at times, be hugely drawn to teaching that is convenient and that you know won't challenge you. Don't be lured by that. Investigate the real thing, and you'll discover this is salvation and life. It really is for you. But it will change you.
But for those of us who are Christians — and it's not just why Jude wrote this letter. He didn't just write it so that we would hold on. He did that — we'll get to that in verse 20 and verse 21 in a couple of weeks' time: "Keep yourselves..." But it's more than that. He wrote it that we would contend.
Now, this is a word drawn from the world of sport. So we are to wrestle, fight, train, work, labour, strive — to ensure that God's true gospel is believed, is lived out, is passed on to those who don't yet know Jesus, and then delivered intact to the next generation.
And we'll learn how in the next couple of weeks. But we have to make sure we hold on to the true gospel and are not being led astray. We need to make sure that we hold out the true gospel to others who need to hear it.
If we have any teaching role — in church or at home — and that's most of us, we need to make sure it's the true gospel that we're teaching. And insofar as we have any role in holding churches or organisations accountable for what gets taught, we take that responsibility seriously.
Jude's letter may sit uncomfortably with us for a number of reasons, but let's not hear that it doesn't matter if the Christian faith gets twisted. This is God's good news to save a condemned world to eternal life. It matters. The good news is too wonderful and too important for this not to matter.