Hey Jude! (1st Friday of Advent)

Raise your right hand if you’ve read the book of Jude in the last year? Ever? Hmm, a few hands. I must confess that Jude isn’t high up on my list of favorite books of the Bible. While I have read it in the past year, until today if you’d asked me to give you a summary of this short letter, I’d have had to make something up and hoped it sounded convincing. (Which it might have if you hadn’t read the letter either!) Well, for the next two days were going to dive into Jude!

Today, as we look at the first sixteen verses, we find a sobering message smack dab in the middle of our joyful Advent celebration. It seems that the ol’ sourpuss Jude is giving a stern warning to his fellow believers. Apparently some apostates had snuck into the local community of believers and were dragging the saints into sin. Not a good thing! The problem that the believers faced was simple: how to identify these losers. You see, these were no run-of-the-mill evil people. Nope, they were people who’d converted to Christianity only to return to their wicked ways. Jude rightly notes that they were cheapening God’s grace, turning it into a license to do whatever they wanted to–after all, God would forgive them, right?

It was this kind of attitude that really lit Judas’ fire and he rightly takes the apostates to task. He calls them the "twice dead," which makes sense when we realize that these "believers" had publically converted/been "born again" only to once again die in their sin. Now, lest we get all self-righteous on these blokes, lets remember that all of us have at one time or another cheapened God’s grace. We all continue to struggle with sin, and if we are honest, when it comes to some sins we don’t struggle too much because we rather like the sinful behavior.

So, what to do? I don’t think that there is an easy answer when it comes to avoiding sin–it is simply impossible. What I can say is that if we don’t keep our eyes fixed on God and our hearts attuned to the working of the Holy Spirit we have no chance at defeating our sinful, selfish impulses. Worse, we end up making a mockery of Jesus’ birth when we decide that God’s grace (a gift that came at the expense of Jesus’ death) is easy and cheap.

Jude 1:1-16 (NIV)

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,
To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by
Jesus Christ:
Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 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.

In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals—these are the very things that destroy them.

Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion.

These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him." These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.