Jude vs 5-7 God Always Judges Apostasy
Jude · Andrew Molloy · Nov 21, 2021
Jude, No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926192575449

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, hello, everybody. Hi, Andrew. I kept on my presentation saying Jude 1, 5 or Jude 1, 6. I know. So I got used to it. So we're studying Jude 5, 6, and 7 verses. And here are the verses. Let me read it. Verse five, now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. and the angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulge in gross immorality, and when after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire, So that's some happy thoughts there. So just a brief review, Jude opens up with, you know, opening verse one and two, we studied a couple of weeks ago, but then in verse three, he tells us the purpose of his letter, which he was telling his beloved audience to fight earnestly and contend earnestly for the body of truth, the faith, the definite article of faith, so the body of truth about the Lord Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and his taking care of the sin issue. Then he tells them in verse four of Jude that certain ungodly men have crept into these churches wherever they were, denying the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He calls them ungodly men or certain men. As you recall from two weeks ago, Macaulay says there's two parties in the book of Jude. It's the beloved and it's the certain men or ungodly men. So, that's what he's doing here. And the word ungodly for these apostate men is used six times in this short epistle. It's only 25 verses, but the word occurs six times, the word asbes, or asabes. which is a really good definition is destitute of reverential awe toward God, is that Greek word ungodly, or it's impious, as you see there. Now, in 5, 6, and 7, he brings up three specific, three examples of ungodliness. One is the Israelites in the wilderness.

The second is the fallen angels, which is in verse 6. And then the third example is Sodom and Gomorrah in verse 7. I'm not going to Today's focus is on this first six issue, kind of the hardest issue. Sodom and Gomorrah, we're not going to go into that so much because everyone knows that story very well. It's in everyone's lexicon of, you know, you know what happened. And it's well documented in Genesis there.

So, the Israelites were in the desert, and they were twice saved. One saved from the angel of death at Passover, right? The angel of the Lord passed them over. So they were saved out of that through that Passover meal. They left Egypt. And then they experienced a second saving, and that's crossing the Red Sea to get away from the Egyptian army. And that's where they were baptized into Moses. So they were a saved people. in the desert there. They were delivered from certain death, you know, at least twice, but then they experienced more death, as we'll see later in the study here.

En route to Canaan, and Canaan is a picture of heaven for the Israelites, for the Jewish nation, they fell victim to apostasy, that generation. Macaulay says, apostates manifest their ungodliness in two ways in the New Testament. And I looked this up, and it's very true, and we'll see a lot of this this morning. By murmuring, so apostates, one, murmur. you can see the example from John 6, 41, therefore the Jews were grumbling about him, the Lord Jesus Christ, because he said, I am the bread that came down out of heaven.

And they were, you know, grumbling about that statement that he made. And two, they complained, their complainers, Mark 7, 5, the Pharisees, you know, the disciples weren't doing the ceremonial washing of their hands. So, in Mark 7, 5, the Pharisees, you know, brought that up to Jesus and said, hey, why aren't your disciples washing their hands like they're supposed to? And Jesus then reprimands them for that because that wasn't in the law, that was a part of the traditions of the Jews.

So, they grumble and they murmur and they complain. And we see that exact same here in this, the narrative of Israel in the desert. And we're going to just look at some of these narratives from Numbers, and it'll illustrate it perfectly what's going on here in Jude 5. Jude 5 is now, I desire to remind you, so you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, that's our subject here in verse 5, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. So numbers 11, now the people became like those who complain, there's our complain word, of adversity in the hearing of the Lord.

And when the Lord heard it, his anger kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them, and he consumed some of them on the outskirts of the camp. The people therefore cried out to Moses. Moses prayed to the Lord and the fire died out. So that the name of the place is called Taberah because the fire of the Lord burnt among them.

We see another instance of this in Numbers 12 with this Miriam, who I think was Aaron's wife. Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of this Cushite woman who is Miriam, whom Aaron had married, they both said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well? And the Lord heard it.

Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth. Suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, you three come out to the tent of the meeting. So he called them out for a meeting. That would be scary if the Lord God called you out outside the door for a meeting. So the three of them came out and the Lord came down on a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent. And he called Aaron and Miriam and they both came forward and it turns out that the Lord then struck Miriam with leprosy because they were questioning why God only spoke through Moses. Here's numbers 14, the people rebelling.

Would that we had, yeah, here they are complaining about being delivered out of Egypt. Would that we had died in the land of Egypt? Or would that we had died in this wilderness? Why is the Lord bringing us into the land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? So they said to one another, let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt. So they were gonna fire Moses and get their own leader.

And this is very bad. This is an insurrection, much worse than the January 6th insurrection, you know, in Washington. Okay. Andrew? Yeah. Miriam, I think is Moses's sister. Oh, Moses, yeah. Oh, and not Aaron's wife? No. Oh, okay. His sister. His sister, okay. So Miriam is the sister of, I stand corrected, yeah, of, yeah, I don't know even if Aaron had a wife, but Miriam is the sister of, that makes sense. So even Moses' sister was rebelling apparently, huh? That's amazing. Numbers 21, five and six, the people spoke against God and Moses.

Why have you brought us up out of the land of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food, no water, and we loathe this miserable food. So the Lord sent fiery serpents, this is the story of the brazen serpents among the people and they bit the people and many people in Israel died. And then just kind of ending this narrative of Jude 5, look at what he says in Numbers 11, four, the rabble who are among them had greedy desires. And also the sons of Israel wept again and said, who will give us meat to eat?

Now they want meat. We remember the fish that we used to eat in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. Sounds pretty good. But now our appetite is gone. There's nothing at all to look at except this manna. So they're complaining about that. The Lord gives them meat. He gives them quail in the wilderness.

But he also then kind of zaps some people there and destroys some people there for complaining there in Numbers 11.4. Now we come to the end of this wilderness wandering, almost, at Kedesh Barnea, and in Numbers 13, 30, Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and Caleb said, we should all, by all means, we should go up and take possession of the land. for we will surely overcome it. But the other men, the spies who went up to spy out the land, who had gone up with Caleb, said, we are not able to go up against these people, for they are too strong for us. So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, the land through which we have gone in spying it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. Oh, this is important. Pay attention to this, what they're kind of saying about these people in this land. The land has inhabitants that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. This is important. There also we saw Nephilim, the sons of Anak, are part of the Nephilim. And we became like grasshoppers in our own sight. So we were in their sight as grasshoppers, is what that's saying.

Finally, Since, and this is at Kadesh Barnea, finally, God says, my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it. Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out to the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. So here at Kadesh Barnea, he's, they're about, they have a chance to enter into Canaan, into the land of, the promised land. But, you know, the spies gave a bad report.

Caleb and Joshua gave a, they said, we can do this. Let's do this thing. Let's roll. But the other said, no, there's too many giants there. So God is telling them to turn around and go back down south. You can't go in. And I think then they tried to go in, and they got pummeled by the Amalekites there.

So here's the end of this. this narrative of the Israelites in the desert, in Numbers 14, 26, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, how long shall I bear with this evil generation who are grumbling against me? I've heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are making against me. Say to them, and there's the word complaining again, they're apostates. say to them is, as I live, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you. And here in 29, this is important, this is the destruction, your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from 20 years old and upward, who have grumbled against me.

Surely you shall not come to the land that is for to settle you, because Caleb the son of Jacuna, and Joshua son of Nun, except for Caleb and Joshua. Your children, however, who you said would become prey, I will bring them in, and they will know the land which you have rejected. But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. And then let me skip down to 35.

In this wilderness, they shall be destroyed, and there they will die. So there, if you look up to Jude 5, the grumbling and the complaining and the apostasy led to them subsequently being destroyed in the desert, those who did not believe. Even though Israel was a promised people, they just lost their, so he took everyone 20 and younger in and they wandered through the desert another, I think 38 years from where this is. This journey could have taken them like 11 days, I read, but they, it took them four years.

So here is just a map of what happened. It kind of helps. So the red line going down south this past along the Gulf of Suez there. and you see Mount Sinai there down at the bottom, and then they come back up, and they come up all the way, and I've circled it, Kadesh Barnea, that was where this all occurred, and they could have gone right up, the red line says they could have gone right up to Jerusalem from Kadesh Barnea, but they did not. See, he made them wander again around the wilderness of sin for 40 years. I have this in yellow, Some maps have it that they went farther down south. And you see this, because this map that I got doesn't have them crossing the Red Sea, but in yellow I put in, you see where they think they crossed right there in the Gulf of Aqaba.

And then they came up. So, then eventually Caleb and Joshua went up through Moab, that blue arrow, and they settled at this place called Gilgal, right? And then you can see it, you can almost see it, they crossed the Jordan River way up there near this town called Heshbon. And that's where they finally enter the land after four years. So, that's where we're talking about this morning in verse five. Okay, verse six. Here's the example of the angels. And the angels, who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

Now, this second example of the angels is either the angels who are a third of the whole company of angels who fell with Satan, the fallen angels. It's either them or it's men who are sons of Seth intermarrying with the daughters of Cain. A lot of commentators think that it's not angels, it's actual sons of God who are men from the line of Seth. So, they think that in Genesis 6, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, so they took wives from themselves, whomever they chose. And that's an explanation.

Then the third explanation for these, who are these angels, who did not keep their own domain, is they are fallen angels. And the sons of men in Genesis six, or the sons of God in Genesis six, are angels who left their domain. So it's a group, it's a subset of the third of the fallen angel set, who came to earth and they dwelled on earth and they lived as humans.

And they took wives and they became these giants, these Nephilim. So, Genesis 6, 4, then Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. So, They're either angels or they're actual human men.

Constable, in our commentary that we kind of go off of for this study, favors C. And he refers to this apocryphal book of Enoch. And I looked into this and looked at this book. It's on the internet. You can look at it and read it. And it's pretty short, and it's pretty clear on this matter. So, Wiest in his commentary, Ironside in his commentary, William Kelly in his commentary, also favor the fact that these are actual angels who impregnated women.

Normally, we wouldn't go outside of Scripture to look at this, but Jude does in verse 14 and 15. He quotes from the book of Enoch. And in 14, it says, it was about these men that Enoch, the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon them all and convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds, which they have done in an ungodly way. There's our ungodly word. and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against them. So, look this up in this Book of Enoch, and this is an exact quote from this apocryphal Book of Enoch, which is interesting, and it's put into our canon of scripture. So, since Jude quotes from this Book of Enoch, Let me do here the same and illustrate that these are special class of angels and not the ones that are freely roaming about the earth now between heaven and earth and who are with Satan and are free to go back and forth. But these are the ones that, there's this little subset of angels that God took and he has them in bonds right now, waiting for the later judgment. We compare this to Genesis six. So this is from the book of Enoch.

And it came to pass that when the children of men multiplied in those days, And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied, that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. So those are the daughters of men. And the angels, so it's very clear on this, the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them and said to one of them, come, let us choose wives from among the children of men, as we get children.

And then they have a leader, oh, a couple of these leaders, these angels get together and make a pact. I won't read it all, but they make a pact to do these things. And they bound themselves together to go to earth and become men and have children. And it lists all their names there at the end, you see. So, these are apparently powerful angels.

And then in going on in this book of Enoch, and all the others together with them took themselves wives, each one for himself. And they began to go into them and defile themselves with them. And they taught them charms and enchantments and the cutting of roots and made them acquainted with plants.

And they became pregnant and they bear great giants whose height was 3000 Ls. And they consumed all the acquisitions of men. So they were, they were, they consumed a lot of stuff, you know, they were kind of a burden on society. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against the men and then devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds and beasts and reptiles and fish and devoured one another's flesh and drink. They became cannibals here. So the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones. So, you know, this is not, this is very, in Genesis 6, it just mentions this very briefly, but this seems to provide a lot of the detail about what happened there. why God was so incensed that, you know, the end of all flesh had come before him.

And I have one more quote here from this extreme godlessness at the time of the flood. Anyway, this quote from, I think it's chapter, let's see, chapter eight. Let's see. get it up here. Oh yeah, Chapter 8 of this Book of Enoch. It just says that these angels, who are now men, taught mankind all this stuff about jewelry making, and use of autonomy, and costly stones, and coloring tinctures, and it was just an astrology, and about the constellations, so this was godless stuff, is what's going on here.

So, there it is, the Book of Enoch. Yeah, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it seems like even though we got some really good guys hanging their hat on this, I just wonder, we're kind of looking at this book outside of scripture and saying, well, this is a true account. And because we have some words in Genesis 6 that seem to indicate that, but the bee approach, which says these are human men.

One of the key questions here, has God allowed, is that a possibility that two different classes of his creation, that could happen? And I don't know, my first thought is it seems, You know, impossible, but I don't know. But it does cause pause for thought. So just the B approaches, I tend to favor that one. The C one, it seems like you're hanging your head on this scripture account.

And by the B approach, you mean that they're human men, their sons of Seth. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and to tell you the truth, Roger, I thought that too. And I remember in Peter, when we were studying the same thing, I was of that opinion too, but then... Well, it is persuasive, seeing this thing, but then you wonder, well, men are capable of making up all kinds of interesting things. Yeah. But then, when I found out that, you know, Jude quotes from this book, Enoch, and you're like, whoa, okay. So it doesn't quote, doesn't quote the parts that you read. And that's right, exactly. But it could, it Genesis six seems to be it kind of buying, they seem to be parallel. Right. And then just in In the book of Enoch, it goes into great detail. And I think that God, in putting together scripture, doesn't want people to dwell on the detail. Or you could argue that the question is, the sons of God, who is that referring to? And the daughters of men, who is that? Is that godly men, human men?

But when you make that angel, you jump into a whole new realm here. Well, yeah. And then in Job, the book of Job, there's these sons of God, too, that come. And they're always with, if you read about the sons of God in Job, they're like fallen angel because they're with satan and it's like so it's a good argument you know they you um so yeah job is also sort of a text that seems to say that there was some there's some angelic activity going on uh during this genesis before the flood right um So anyway, these angels, and they're clearly angels here in Jude 6, right? We're dealing with angels. In this case, they are, obviously. Yeah, right.

This word proper abode, that's the new American standard. In King James, it's first estate. So it means beginning. And Vincent says that beginning as the four corners of a sheet are the beginnings of a sheet, or the four corners of a sheet are the beginnings of a sheet. That's how this first estate is sort of described. A secondary meaning is sovereignty or dominion or magistrate, or the beginning or first place of power. And so, Paul renders this first estate or proper abode as principalities.

It's a designation of dignity, which the angels foresaw. First Estate is also a place of the angels' habitation, the realm of higher spiritual beings that God created in the creation of the world. They had a special place, it was a privileged place, and these angels were originally created for this heavenly and glorious scene, and they were ministers of God, weren't they, at the creation.

This is the place that these angels abandoned in verse six of Jude. Note that the word for they did not keep their own domain, that's the word, our word tereo, which they did not regard their place of habitation, they did not attend to it as their own state, they did not guard it carefully. So that God, in turn, kept, or tereo, He's guarding them closely, keeping them for this future judgment. And right now they're under these eternal bonds under darkness, waiting for this judgment day.

A parallel verse is, for if God spared not the angels that sinned, from 1 Peter 2.6, but cast them down into hell and delivered them unto the change of the darkness to be reserved unto judgment.

So, Constable says that these appear to be different fallen angels from Satan's agents who are at work in the world today, namely the demons who have considerable freedom, you know, to come to earth and go back to heaven and go between earth and heaven and do all these things.

So on to verse seven, now we are into the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative. Verse seven, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in great immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Note that the just as is a comparison, and there's two comparisons of this phrase in the same way, that preposition. And it's just as and in the same way as verse 6's angels abandoning their proper estate or their first estate. The men of Sodom and Gomorrah did the same thing.

So I made the observation, I made this observation, and I wasn't too sure about it, but it's 1A. I say that the angels leaving their heavenly abode to become flesh, this seems to be compared to men leaving their first estate. they're first created by God a state, which is to be men, to be joined to women as one flesh in marriage, or abiding with God's created order of the natural function of man and the natural function of women and that status quo. So, you know, a man leaving the natural functions of a woman and going after other men is kind of leaving your own estate, which God placed you in at the creation. Then Wiest, I found, agrees with this, which I was pretty pleased.

So he says, the sense of the entire passage, verse six and seven, is that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, in like manner to these, the angels, have given themselves over to fornication and have gone after strange flesh. That means that the sin of the fallen angels was fornication. This sin on the part of the angels is described in the words, going after strange flesh. The word strange is heteros, which is another of a different kind. That is, these angels transgressed the limits of their own natures to invade the realm of created beings of a different nature.

The invasion took the form of fornication, the cohabitation with beings of a different nature from theirs. So, yeah, as you can see, Roger, it's, and Wiest is on that C kind of explanation heavily too. Well, the question kind of comes down, is that something that God has permitted, that two classes of his creation, you know, that's a struggle. Maybe they had that desire, they had that sinful desire, but could that really Could something happen?

I don't know. And that's one of the questions. And one of my questions is, an angel is a spiritual being, right? Only spirit. So how can they do this? How do they get a body? Yeah. Did they, was it like, did they just, like, Inhabit another man's body, you know, it's like possession. Yeah, I don't know It's yeah, who knows?

We say that's what God digit Destroyed the earth the flood and that was a complete destruction other than Noah and his family Right and with that all the things that we certainly maybe wouldn't understand what did take place? Yeah, really bad And God did, he really, he wiped out the entire earth with the flood. So, you know, my question is, and, you know, you hear of people saying, well, he was trying to get rid of these Nephilim, right? And he had to do that. It's just an interesting thing, you know, but, But the explanation, the explanation couldn't certainly apply to that they were just men.

So I make the point here in verse seven that Sodom and Gomorrah is mentioned approximately 22 times in the Bible in reference to destruction for immorality and apostasy. A complete destruction too, wasn't it? Yeah, but a localized wasn't very localized. Christ refers to Sodom and Gomorrah being judged five times. I make an observation here that there's punishment and judgment in two parts. One is physical destruction.

You think of the Israelites in the desert. And then if we're talking about these angels who came to earth, they got destroyed in the flood, or whoever were the sons of God, whether they were men or angels, destruction in the flood, and then Sodom and Gomorrah were physically burned, you know, by fire and sulfur. And then the second aspect of judgment is or the second phase is eternal judgment and punishment of the soul and spirit. So the first you get physically destroyed, but your soul and spirit are eternal. So those go to the great white throne judgment and they're judged there. Or if we're saying that these angels, the subset of angels went down to the earth, They got destroyed with flood and they'll be, they're under bonds now and they'll have a judgment at the close of the millennial kingdom. So the Israelites, the angels who left their realm and Sodom and Gomorrah were at once punished with physical death, but there's a coming future judgment as well.

It's hard to, I make the point here in point three, it's hard to separate whether the certain men or the ungodly men in this letter of Jude, the apostates are saved or unsaved, because you think about the Israelites in the desert, you know, they were, after crossing the Red Sea, they were a saved company of people, but people rebelled. So, it's hard to say whether, you know, they believed in their, actually believed in their hearts, whether they were ever saved or whether they were always unbelievers. So, and there's different commentary about both of those. But it's pretty sobering to say that, you know, even in our lives, we can have these apostate thoughts.

Paul, in reference to what we're studying in Corinthians, the man who took up with his mother-in-law, he was definitely, he was, he was, Paul was able to say to him about him delivered him over to be, his flesh to be, have destruction, right? He says, I have delivered, I have decided to deliver such a one, such a man, to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he was a saved individual, but his body was destroyed. Or, He was going in that direction, and Roger, correct me if I'm wrong, he repented.

Right, actually we're going to see that shortly in 2 Corinthians. So there you see even this saved individual has this sort of same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah. So you see it is pretty sobering to think about that. So let's see. Oh, I have a, just in ending, I have a, we don't have to go into it, what time is it? 9.45. 9.45.

I'll stop here, but I'll leave this as an addendum here, what J.B. Stoney says about apostasy. He says that the beginning of apostasy is, God has these blessings, and the focus of man will be on the blessings. And he'll get so wrapped up in the blessings that he overlooks God. God should be the object, but the blessings become the thing. And that's how men apostatize. It's also kind of- We worship the creation rather than the creator. Right, right. So he says that very well here, and you can read that on your own there.

But there we go. So yeah, what a, uh, yeah, that's a, that's a heavy subsection there. Wow. A heavy bunch. And then we'll get a good job. Yeah. Well, we'll see. So, so I was of the company back when we started Peter of, you know, again, being sons of Seth and now, uh, I don't know. I'm so annoyed. Okay. And I know that, uh, Bob was. Yeah, I understand. Angel. I think it was you and I who were that. Yeah, I think we are. And as we study God's word, you know, hopefully we come to the correct conclusion. Yeah. Yeah. So it's up in there, but it's a, it's an argument that, yeah, it's a good argument. Yeah. So, yeah, anyway. So, yeah, let me close this out here. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together.

We pray for continuing wisdom in this book of Jude and the the just immense things that it says about what happened back in the world of Genesis and your judgment upon these people and these angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, and we just again recognize your holiness and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.