Join us as we delve into the short yet powerful book of Jude with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. Learn about the warnings against false teachings and the encouragement found within, as Jude alerts the church of his time—and ours—of the urgent need to stand firm in faith. Discover how Jude, brother of James and a servant of Jesus Christ, conveyed his message with profound implications for understanding apostolic teachings and the inescapable love of God.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. We’re headed to the New Testament book for a brief but powerful study in the book of Jude. You know, Jude wrote this letter to warn the church that false teaching was creeping in, as well as a general falling away from the truth. Dr. McGee says few books have more to say to our generation than this little letter from Jude. Does that grab your attention? Well, it certainly does mine. So turn to the book of Jude, and as you do, let’s hear more of Dr. McGee’s continuing discussion on God’s covenant with David.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now we come today back to that covenant God made with David. And it’s such a wonderful passage. I spent a little time with it last time. It’s over in 2 Samuel, the 7th chapter, at verse 8. And this is where a prophet was wrong. And he’s going to have to go back and correct himself because he told David to go ahead and build a house to God. God said, no, wait a minute. I’ve got another message for David. And here’s part of it. Now, he says, now, therefore, so shalt thou say unto my servant David, thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheep coat, from following the sheep to be ruler over my people Israel. My, all the way from out with the sheep on the hillside to a throne in the palace in Jerusalem is a long ways for any man to go. But David has made the trip. And he says now to David, And I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth. And you notice God takes credit for doing all of this. And we today, many of us Christians, take credit for what we do. Frankly, if anything is done for God, and let me make it personal, anything that McGee does in the flesh, God hates it and he doesn’t want it. It’s only what the Holy Spirit can do through an individual, and God will get credit for that. Now, let me read on. He says, Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel. I’ll plant them that they may dwell in a place of their own and move no more. Neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more as before time. That time has not come, but God has made that promise to these people, and he will certainly keep it. And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, and have caused thee to rest from all thine enemies, also the Lord telleth thee that he’ll make thee an house. Isn’t that just like the Lord? David says, I want to build God a house. And now God says, no, I’m not going to let you build a house because he’s a bloody man. His hands are bloody. But he says, I’m going to build you a house. Just like the Lord, isn’t it? You can’t outdo him in giving. And verse 12, and he says, “…when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers.” David is not the man. “…I will set up thy seat after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” That was Solomon. Now he says, I’ll be his father. He shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I’ll chasten him with the rod of man and with the stripes of the children of man. And that reaches on down to the line of David, to the Lord Jesus Christ. And how can it refer to him when it says, if he commit iniquity? Well, the scripture says he was made sin for us who knew no sin. He did not commit iniquity, but I did. And that was made over to him. And so God punished him. I’ll chasten him with the rod of man and with the stripes of the children of man. But my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee. Thy throne shall be established forever.” Now, I’m not going any farther than that, but that is an unconditional promise that God made to David that in his line that would come one and that that kingdom will be established forever. And do you know that became the theme song of all these prophets? That’s the reason all of them that we’ve been looking at have been talking about the kingdom that’s coming. What kingdom are they talking about? This one that God vouchsafed to David. This is the thing that the prophets are constantly talking about. And the New Testament opens on that note. It says the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, tying these two great covenants together. And the Lord Jesus has come to fulfill that. And may I say to you that the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the very theme of prophecy. It all centers about him. He is the subject of prophecy. There’d be no prophecy without him. That’s so important for us to see here. And that’s the kingdom that we’re talking about. And that is the Davidic covenant that God made, an eternal kingdom. It’s not safe to these people. And that was never fulfilled in the church, never intended to be.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, open our hearts and minds to receive your truth. Thank you for the gift of your son, Jesus Christ, which is the central message of your entire word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. We’re off to Jude on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, today, friends, we come to another one of the remarkable little books of the Bible. Now, for some time, we’ve spent a great deal of time in these very brief books of the Bible that are ordinarily either ignored or passed over rather quickly because they are brief. And that’s been my custom, very frankly, when every time I’ve gone through the Bible before, I get near the end, and we generally run in late, and I just start moving fast. Well, we’re not doing that this time, as you have noted. We are taking our time, and we’re finding each one of them is just like working in a gold mine. Because all kinds of rich nuggets are there just for the mining. And we’re spending our time here in these small books. Now as we come to the little book of Jude, it’s another one of these very remarkable little books. So I would like to put down an introduction to this little book at first, that you and I might be able to understand something of its contents. The writer of this book is Jude. That is the English form of the name Judas. Now, Judas here was the brother of James, and he was also a half-brother, of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have seen that. And there are three Jameses. There are many that find four, and that’s all right. I frankly go along with that, but I only use three in my notes and outlines because I think that makes a proper division. And then when we come to Jude, or Judas here, we find there are three Judases that are mentioned in the Scripture. And we find that this man, along with James, that is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus. Now, I want to turn to a Scripture that will be helpful to us in this connection. It’s over in the 13th chapter of Matthew in verse 55. And it says here, is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? So James and Judas that we have, the writer of the epistle of James and the writer of the epistle of Jude or Judas here is a half-brother of the Lord. Now there are two other Judases. The one that’s infamous and best known, of course, Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles who betrayed the Lord. Now, there was another apostle by the name of Judas. And the way that he’s distinguished is in John 14, verse 22, where it says, Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot. Well, the way he’s distinguished is he’s just not Judas Iscariot, but he’s another apostle with the name of Judas. Now, we believe, therefore, that the Judas here is actually the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you will note that he doesn’t identify himself in that way. And we also noted James followed the same pattern. By the way, he did not attempt to identify himself as the brother. He called himself James, a servant of God. Now, Judas here calls himself Judas, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. So he identifies himself to us, I think, rather clearly here, who he is. He is the half-brother by Mary, and that Mary was the mother of Judas, mother of Jesus, but not the same father by any means. So that what we have here is a man that calls himself The servant, and the word for servant is bond slave. He calls himself the bond slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Now, why didn’t James and Judas seek to capitalize on their relationship, their actually blood relationship to Jesus, having the same mother? Well, I think the reason is quite obvious. They took the position because neither one of these men believed in Jesus until after his resurrection. That is the thing that called it to their attention and confirmed them and convicted them that he was who he claimed to be. Up to that time, they thought that he’d just gone off on religion, that he was beside himself. and that he was not who he claimed to be. But after his resurrection, they became believers. So you see, it would be possible to have been brought up in the home with Jesus in the days of his flesh and not have recognized him. In fact, I have used, as many of you know, one of the Psalms to depict that period of the silent years. that his own brethren did not recognize him and ridiculed him. He was very much alone, apparently, in the years as he grew up yonder in Nazareth. Now, the reason that I say that is obvious is this. that as Paul put it, we know him no longer after the flesh. Though we have known him, we don’t know him any longer after the flesh. And Judas now, though a half-brother recognizes he’s the glorified Christ, and that that human relationship is not meaningful to him in any way. He had to come to Christ, had to come as a sinner, Accept him as Savior just as anyone else did. And this, by the way, is a marvelous answer of both James and Judas. To the thing that arose after the apostles, there was a period in there when the family of Jesus was treated in a rather superstitious and a sacred way, as if they were something special. Well, actually, they were not. They were just human beings. I’ve always felt that Protestantism actually ignored Mary. She was a wonderful person. It was no accident that she was chosen of God to bear the Son of God. But that does not mean that she is to be lifted above women. She takes her place, as she very frankly says, among women. And therefore, she’s blessed among women, but never above women. So that period through which the church went, it was a brief period when all the family was lifted to a very high position. And certainly Judas and James would oppose that because they themselves take the position of being just a bond slave of Jesus Christ. And he identifies himself that way and a brother of James. Now he says to them… that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. Now, the word sanctified actually is not in our better manuscripts. And some of our best scholars have called attention to it, the New Scofield Reference Bible. And they have a good note on this. They say literally that it should be translated like this, Call beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. In other words, the word sanctified is actually the word beloved or loved of God. Now, this is something that we need to know very carefully because it’s very important here. He calls himself a bond slave of Jesus Christ. And again, let me, as we move along, say this again, that he absolutely does not claim a blood relationship as if that would give him a superiority. And that ought to lay to rest the notion that arose in the early church after the apostles. It came along in that post-apostolic period of treating all the family as if they were sort of super-dupers, you know. But Vinson, the outstanding Greek scholar, says that Jude does not allude to his relationship to the Lord may be explained by the fact that the natural relationship in his mind would be subordinate to the spiritual relationship. And that such a designation would not be of any value. And Dean Alford puts it like this. They have been in harmony with those later and superstitious feelings with which the next and following ages regarded our Lord’s earthly relatives. That’s important. Now we move on to them that are sanctified by God. Now, both Nestle and Westcott and Hart who have, I suppose, the best Greek texts that we have today, they use the verb agapao, to love, instead of hagiazo, to sanctify. And that, I think scholars agree, is accurate. And it makes it just a little bit more precious to our hearts that are sanctified by God the Father, that are beloved by God the Father. Now, I would like to share with you the translation of Dr. Wiest, the late Greek scholar at the Moody Bible Institute. And he has given us a translation in many places. though it is a little involved, it certainly brings out the original meaning. And he had a knack for that. So I’m going to read that now in the translation he has. “‘Jude, a bond-slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James,’ to those who by God the Father have been loved and are in a state of being the permanent objects of his love and who for Jesus Christ have been guarded are in a permanent state of being carefully watched to those who are called the called ones. Now, this is a very important passage of Scripture, by the way. They’ve been loved. And I would like to dwell on this for just a moment, because they’re beloved of God the Father, and they are preserved for Jesus Christ. and called. Now, there’s several words there that I must deal with in this text, because they’re very important to see. The first word here is preserved. That word is the word that you’re going to find that gives us the key to this little book. Actually, this little book is going to present the apostasy as it’s presented nowhere in Scripture, and how frightful that it is But he doesn’t write just to frighten the daylights out of you. He doesn’t write just to draw a vivid picture, which he does, of the apostasy. But he gives this dark background in order that he might give assurance in days of apostasy. And in other words, he uses here the word keep five times. That’s what the word preserve means. They’re kept in Jesus Christ. And it means that God is the one that keeps them. You find it again in verse 6, the angels who are kept. And then you’ll find it again when you get down to verse 21. Keep yourselves in the love of God. And then in verse 24, now unto him that’s able to keep you from falling. Now, this has to do with the keeping power of God to keep those that are his own. And you can call it anything you want to, but it gives assurance of salvation to the believer, even in the dark days of apostasy. And as we are going to see, I believe that we are in the apostasy today. But how much farther we’ll go in it before the rapture, I do not know. And I’m sure that no one else knows. But we are definitely in times of apostasy. And this word here, that we are preserved, it can be translated kept. But the interesting thing is about preserved, There are two ways of preserving things in the physical world. One is with vinegar and one is with sugar. Now, there are a lot of saints today that I think they’re preserved all right, but they’re preserved in vinegar and they act that way and they have a vinegar disposition. And then there are those that are preserved in sugar and they are sugar and spice and everything is nice. And they’re not just all women either, by the way. They are another group of saints. But I would not want to say that they’re not saints of God, because they’re preserved in vinegar, because I think that they are. And the perseverance… of the saints here is by His grace which preserves or keeps them. They overcame Him. How? By the blood of the Lamb. That’s the only way that they’re going to make it through the Great Tribulation. Those that are here, they will overcome by the blood of the Lamb. And that’s the only way we are going to overcome today. There’ll be no merit in us. And I do have to resort back to the illustration that the Lord Jesus himself gave. I am, he says, the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Then he goes on to talk about his sheep. He says, my sheep hear my voice. I know them and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish. Now, if the sheep are saved, It’s no merit to them. If they are kept, the merit goes to the shepherd. Because a sheep cannot defend himself. He doesn’t have sharp teeth. He has no fangs. Can’t fight that way. And he doesn’t have any claws. And he can’t run. If he was like a jackrabbit, can’t defend himself either. But a jackrabbit can get away from trouble. But a sheep can’t even do that. A sheep is helpless. unless it has a good shepherd. And if a sheep can say, I’m saved, and I know that I’m saved, the sheep is not boasting. All the sheep is saying is, I’m boasting I’ve got a good shepherd. I’ve got a wonderful shepherd. And my friend, if you are saying that you’re not sure, then you really are reflecting on your shepherd because he says that he can keep you. He says, no created thing is going to take them out of my hand and my father’s hand. We’re going to hold on to you. Now, it’s not a question whether I can hold on. It’s a question whether he can hold on. And he says he can. And it’s a matter of trusting him. You see, assurance of salvation rests upon the word of God. and what God has said. And it’s a question of whether you believe him, whether you trust him or not. It all rests upon that, because he’s made it very clear that you have a sure salvation. And here we are presented with the dark days of apostasy, and he still says that he’s able to keep them. Now, not only are they preserved in Jesus Christ, We’re safe in him. We are today accepted in the beloved. No one can pluck us out of his hand. He says here, and call. This word call, though it has in it the thought of an invitation that is sent out and accepted. It’s more than that. The word call actually, as it’s used in the scripture, is not only an invitation that is sent out But it’s an invitation that has been accepted and been made real because of the Spirit of God. And let me give you Paul’s statement of this. He says in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, verse 22, For the Jews require a sign, the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. Under the Jews, a stumbling block. But under the Greeks, foolishness. but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Now, if you have found in Christ the wisdom and power of God, and you’ve trusted him, you’re the call, my friend. And that’s what he’s talking about. This is the invitation that has been sent out. And when it’s accepted and believed, then you’re the call. That’s exactly what he means here, and it’s what Paul means, because Paul spelled it out for us. Now, until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
Jesus paid it all, all to be my own. Sin had left the crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 02 :
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