The Danger of Apostasy: Jude 1:8-9

SPEAKER 02 : 0:03

The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:17

Welcome to Through the Bible. I’m Steve Schwartz, and I’m so glad that you’re here with us as we set off for another great adventure through God’s Word. Now, in just a moment, our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, is going to guide us through Jude 8 and 9, where we’re going to learn more about the growing problem of apostasy in the church. Now, if you’re just joining us, apostasy, maybe it sounds a little intimidating, that word, but really it simply means that It’s a turning away or standing apart from the truth. And it was a serious concern in the early church, and it’s just as relevant in our world today. So to get us started, here’s a quick introduction by Dr. McGee.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:53

We have come today to a very important part of this little book of Jude. That doesn’t mean to say the rest of it’s not important, but this is unusually important because Because it not only enables us to understand God, but it enables us to understand ourselves. One of the great problems today that men and women have is not the problem of understanding God. The problem is they don’t understand themselves. They don’t really know who they are. Now, God can identify you. God has your photograph. and your fingerprints, and he can tell you who you are, and furthermore, he can help you a great deal because he has something to offer to you.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:49

Well, that was a great intro. God knows, loves, and has something to offer each of us. And that’s the message that we’re sharing near and far, and one that’s really resonating with folks who are hearing it for the first time, particularly in our home groups. Wouldn’t you agree, Greg?

SPEAKER 04 : 2:04

I couldn’t agree more, Steve. And we love talking about our home groups. It’s such a simple concept. It’s just people gathering in homes, worshiping, praying for one another and reaching out to their community. And then at the heart of it is the teaching of through the Bible in their mother tongue.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:22

Yeah. Yeah. And then hopefully some discussion questions and some interaction. So it really is a great opportunity to gather around the word of God. And we’ve seen it be a genesis for many churches. And that’s exciting.

SPEAKER 04 : 2:33

Yeah, and it’s hard for us who are in this theologically rich environment here in North America to understand how revolutionary it is when somebody just systematically teaches the Bible. It’s like the clouds open and people just experience the Christian life at a whole new level.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:51

Yeah. Now, here’s a letter. This is from Meena from Uttarakhand, India, who wrote this. And Uttarakhand, I don’t get a lot of… Yeah, we haven’t heard a lot from that part of India. Okay. I lead a Wansari radio home group. It is a blessing to learn God’s word in my own language. That’s so key. He probably knows Hindi, but when he calls his own language, he or she, his own language, it is the Uttarakhand language. I continue. I was especially touched by the recent messages on the suffering and love of Jesus. These teachings helped me feel how much he sacrificed to save us. I now understand God’s deep love for me clearly. Please pray that I may become a useful instrument for God’s purpose and glory.

SPEAKER 04 : 3:31

Hmm. And I’m pretty sure we have never read a response in that language in the 50 years we’ve been doing global ministry.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:38

I certainly don’t remember it.

SPEAKER 04 : 3:40

So isn’t that exciting that God is letting us get to these folks in their heart language, their mother tongue? Yeah. Now let’s go to Gujarat, a place that we have both been. I even forgot my own children. A pastor came and prayed for me and took me to Sunday prayer meetings. Slowly, I started to recover and fully healed after hearing God’s word. I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Now we attend a radio home group where I’m learning more about the Bible and God’s promises. This has helped me grow in my faith.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:27

Man, that is just such an encouragement. And we see how oftentimes in that culture, people turn to traditional healers, which is probably a witch doctor or some riff on that. And it doesn’t work. And through that opening, the Lord ends up coming and changing a life.

SPEAKER 04 : 4:42

Yeah, and once again, we often don’t think about the occult practices here in North America because we’re more secular, but there’s a lot of occultism, a lot of dark stuff going on around the world. And so this lady literally was not only delivered physically, but spiritually she was delivered from some pretty dark stuff.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:01

Greg, unfortunately, we’ve got other testimonies from Bangladesh and other places. Why don’t you pray for us as we begin?

SPEAKER 04 : 5:07

Father, we’re so honored and humbled that we just get to play a small part in the spiritual journey of literally thousands upon thousands of people in all these different languages. We pray you keep us faithful, keep us humble, and help us to serve you well. In Jesus’ name, amen.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:27

We’re off to Jude 8 as we make our way through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

SPEAKER 01 : 5:32

Now, friends, we’ve come down to verse 8 here in the little epistle of Jude. And I sometimes say chapter 1, but actually there’s only one chapter here. So you can say chapter 1, verse 8, or just say verse 8, because there’ll not be another verse 8 in the epistle of Jude, that is for sure. Now, he’s going to identify for us again these apostate teachers in verse 4, He told us something about them, that they were ungodly men that had already been written about by the other apostles, and that they were ungodly men. That is, that they left God out of their lives. They turned the grace of our God into wantonness. They went into actually what could be called arrogant sin or arrogant immorality. That is, they… flaunted it before the world. Then they also denied the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, who He is and what He’s done for us. Now we are told something else about them. Here are some other ways to identify them. He says, “…in like manner also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.” Now, there are four points of identification here that he gives to us. And again, these are the ones that we’re to beware of. As he puts it back in verse 4, they crept in unawares. That is, they came in sideways. They came in the side door. They slipped into the church. They came in under false colors. Their credentials and their creed were not the same. They pretended to be something that they were not. Now he identifies them further. The word filth, if you notice, is in italics, and it actually is not in the better manuscripts. You can leave it out. We don’t need it. They’re dreamers. That is, they live in an unreal world. a world that does not exist. My feeling is that the liberal has never dealt really with reality. It’s rather romantic. It sounds good on paper. It’s nice to be able to solve all your problems with positive thinking, but there’s a lot of power in negative thinking also. We need some folk that’ll learn how to say no as well as say yes. And we need to recognize also that these are dreamers in the sense that they will not face up to reality. They do not do it at all. This was something that I took out years ago of the Woman’s Home Companions. My wife took it, and I saw this in it, and I clipped it out. And this must have been 15 years ago, because it goes back to a group of liberals that have since disappeared from the scene. There’s a new crop, however, abroad in the land. I’m going to read this editorially. It says a pledge… And the pledge is this, to have no part in any war has been taken by a large body of leading Protestant clergymen in the East. Among them are some of the wisest and most influential ministers we have, men such as Fosdick, Holmes, and Sockman in New York City, for example. This covenant of peace group declares that war settles no issues, is futile and suicidal, and is a denial of God and the teachings of Christ. It asserts that the chain of evil which holds us to war can and must be broken now. Now, here’s the comment. This is a noble doctrine. However, much events may lead us to differ with it. When these bold and sincere men stand in their pulpits and preach this rejection of all war, let us remember that these clergymen, by their record, have earned the right to their belief in a great democracy. Suppression of the clergy in war and peace can never justly become an instrument of policy as it has under the dictators.” Now, they call it a noble doctrine, but one that they couldn’t agree with. May I say that that was carried over recently in the Vietnam War? It got us in a great deal of difficulty. That type of thinking and these protest meetings that it inspired in this country prolonged the war and actually led to the killing of a great many more American boys that would not have been killed. The very fact that they… talked as they did about peace and that type of thing. Now, may I say to you, that is to not realize we live in a big, bad world, and that reality is is something that you have to rub your nose into it. It’s something that you just can’t ignore. Even these steel-belted tires today have to get down and go over the rough places, and some of them go flat, by the way, so that these men are dreamers. They are dealing with that which is not real at all. It’s nice for them to say that as long as we have a big navy and long as we have atom bombs. It’s nice to sit back in the cloister of the church and be able to make brave statements like this. but it just doesn’t work out. I have a notion that these same men, if they were around, and the new crop that are around, I have a notion that they stay out of the ghetto and the other places at night, although they may talk very bravely in the daytime. I’ve observed that one church that I know of that boasted of how they wanted to work among the minority groups. Well, they’ve closed the church that was down in a minority group, and I think they made a big mistake in doing it, by the way. Now, these men are dreamers. And for that reason, they have gotten into the church, and they use the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine making the statement here that this is a denial of the teachings of Christ to have war. Well, he made the statement that a strong man armed keepeth his house. That’s the way you’re going to protect your own. It’s by being armed. And he also said that a king that’s going to war, he’s going to sit down and figure out. He didn’t say it was wrong to figure out. He said he better figure out. And if he’s smart, he will figure out how he’s going to carry on that war. May I say to you that it’s just a failure to face up to what the Lord Jesus Christ really taught, you see. You and I are living in a world, and he told his disciples when he sent them out one time to preach, that they were to take nothing with them, not even a pocketbook. Now, when they return and they’re to go to the ends of the earth, he says, now, I want to tell you, be sure to take your pocketbook and all your American Express and diner’s cards and all your gasoline cards. Better take them with you. And also, it might be well to have a sword, now he said. You’ll need a sword to protect yourself. May I say to you, what nonsense. These are dreamers that talk like this. It sounds good. This matter of saying, I don’t want to have part in war. All of us can say that. That’s sort of like mother. An apple pie and a flag. We’re all for it, you see. It’s all great to have no part in war. But we got to face up to reality also. Now, that’s a deception, you see, that they bring. And it’s nice to preach that to a well-heeled crowd on Sunday morning when there’s no war and everything seems peaceable. I know that’s really a nice thing to give. Then the second thing about them, they defile the flesh. You notice that they defile the flesh. And that is something to note. That is, they engage… in base and abnormal immorality. That is the thing that he has in mind here. That is the strange flesh that he was talking about in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. You see that God judged the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. And also the angels are a warning because they’re going to be judged. They are help for judgment. And God would not let even his own people that he brought out of Egypt enter the promised land because of unbelief. So that these are examples to us today, and we better recognize the fact that God will judge this new, not morality, but it’s not new immorality either. In fact, there’s nothing new about it. Goes back to Sodom and Gomorrah, goes back to the days of Noah. Now, also, it says they despise dominion. That means they reject authority. That is the crowd that wants to get rid of the death penalty. That’s the crowd that wants to come up with something that turns everybody loose and you do your thing in your own way. And we’re seeing what is taking place. Society is broken out like a cancer in the body politic. We thought we were a civilized people. Well, we are nothing in the world but a group of savages, the way that things are moving. Now, it’s because of this matter of despising dominion, that is, to reject authority. We want certain laws repealed. We don’t want divorce. There’s no reason to have these divorce laws. Let’s just let them stop living together. And that is something that breaks right across the morality of any nation, for the home is the bedrock of any people. And then the fourth thing is We’re told here, and I read it, they speak evil of dignities. Now, that means they disrespect dignities. That is, they protest against rules and those in authority. In other words, they take it out on the police as they represent authority. or they take it out upon men in high positions. The president and the governors and the mayors, they are made responsible for anything that happens in the nation or the state or the city, regardless of whether they’re responsible or not. Why? Because there’s been a loss of respect for authority today. Now, I grant you that Some of them haven’t been worthy of the respect, but the office certainly demands respect, and he’s going to give an example of that. But now let’s notice again these apostates that have come into the church. They came in the side door. They are ungodly. They turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. They denied the Lord Jesus Christ, and they’re dreamers, and they defile the flesh. They despise dominion. They have disrespect for dignities. And that is the thing that characterizes them. And they’re dangerous because of the way they come in. For ten long and weary years, the Greeks laid siege to the city of Troy. But they did not make a dent on the fortifications, and they seemed impregnable. They could not make an entrance to the city. Then there came forth a suggestion, and the suggestion was to build a wooden horse and leave it outside the gate, but have some soldiers conceal inside and then pretend to sail away. And so they made the wooden horse. Soldiers were put inside. and the wooden horse was put by the gate of the city of Troy. Well, curiosity got the best of them. When they saw the Greeks sailing away, they thought the war was over. Then they went out, saw the horse, decided to pull it inside the city. It was certainly a novelty, something to have. And then that night, the soldiers that were on the inside, while they climbed out, And they were able to unlock the gates of the city from the inside. And in the meantime, under cover of darkness, the fleet of Greek ships returned. And they had only pretended to sail away. And what an entire army of mighty men could not do from the outside in 10 years, a few soldiers did from the inside. And you see, that’s the way the church has been harmed today and taken over by liberalism. Actually, the church has never been harmed from the outside. Persecution caused it to grow by leaps and bounds. And today we are witnessing the destruction of the church from the inside. It’s an inside job. And Christ was betrayed. from the inside to the outside. Have you ever noticed that? One of his own betrayed him over to his nation. His nation betrayed him over to the Romans, and the Romans brought him to the cross. That’s the way the church is being betrayed today. How? These are the ones that have gotten in. Now, it says that they have disrespect for dignities. And notice what is told here in verse 9. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. Now this, to my judgment, is one of the most unusual verses in Scripture. Now, I’m not going in any detail about Satan. Satan and demons, we’re going to save until we get to the book of Revelation, and I intend to go into a great deal of detail about the creation of Satan, the character of Satan, the cosmos of Satan, the conflict with Satan, and the conclusion of his career. We’ll look at that. But he was a creature of God and apparently the highest creature that God created. And then evil was found in him. Now, don’t think that evil meant that at that time he was going out and steal something. The evil that was in him was that he put his will against the will of God. He was lifted up by pride and he wanted to become independent of God. That was the thing that he attempted to do and actually thought he could dethrone God and certainly part of his universe. As far as this world is concerned, God has permitted him to carry on this rebellion. And God has a high and holy purpose in it. But this creature still believes he’ll be able to take a segment of God’s created universe and that it will be under him. And I’m sure this earth is that which he wants as part of his. Now, he did not want Moses to be buried there. And the reason was that Moses was to be raised to enter into the promised land. You remember to appear at the Mount of Transfiguration along with Elijah. So when the angel buried Moses there, we’re told Michael, the archangel, was in contention with the devil, and he disputed about the body of Moses. Now, he dared not bring against him a railing accusation. He didn’t curse him. He didn’t call him a long list of names. And I’m sure that many of us would have been perfectly willing to have done that. We really would have read the riot act to him. But Michael didn’t. And you know why? Michael’s an archangel. But all he did, he said, the Lord rebuke you. And he didn’t go into a long tirade of epithets of condemnation. He could have. Why? He had respect unto his office, his position. He’d been created the highest creature. You and I need to learn that. We haven’t learned it. A great many believers have not learned to bow to God, even now. My friend, you and I are creatures. He’s the creator. What right have you and I really to question anything that he does? Now, don’t misunderstand me. If you think I piously accept everything that comes my way, you’re wrong. I talk back to him many times, and I want to know why he lets this happen to me, and why this took place, and all that sort of thing. Maybe you do that. But we need to recognize that God is the Creator. He’s also our Redeemer. He’s also the one who loves us. But our God is high, holy, And lift it up. And he’s a just, righteous God. He never makes any mistakes. He never does anything wrong. Everything he does is right. And you and I can trust him. But do we do that? Do we respect his authority? Respect this person? How about the Lord Jesus Christ? He is going to say in that day, you said, Lord, Lord, but you didn’t do the things I commanded you. Each one went his own way, did that which was right in his own eye. And that’s mankind. That’s the picture of the world. How about you? And how about me today? What a lesson Michael the archangel is. Well, we leave right off there today, but we’ll pick up at verse 10, a little epistle of Jude next time. Until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:09

To learn more, click on How Can I Know God in our app or over at ttb.org or just call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE and we’ll send you a few resources by mail. And of course, you can join us next time as the Bible bus rolls along in Jude. I’m Steve Schwetz, and as always, I’ll save a seat just for you.

SPEAKER 02 : 25:31

All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:50

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