Looking out for False Teachers

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I’m going to ask you to turn with me to the book of Jude. The book of Jude tonight, we’re going to continue on with the study that we began last week, where we began to talk a little bit about warning and false teachers, which Jude wrote about himself in this book. And I introduced you to an idea called antinomianism, that sometimes the word is not familiar, but the teaching definitely is.

it’s a widespread doctrine even today. It wasn’t just something limited to the earliest days of Christianity. People today, in many quarters, want to believe that God’s standards have changed, God’s law has changed, that because of the grace of God, we’re just free to do whatever we want.

When they teach that, when they believe that, we’ve actually taken the grace of Jesus Christ and we have misapplied it in an unbiblical way. And so Jude wrote this warning to the early churches, and it’s a warning that we need to be aware of too, because the things they were dealing with are things that we deal with also. So tonight we’re going to look at a few verses in the book of Jude from verse 5 to verse 11, and continue on with this study.

Let’s read it together. Jude verse 5 through verse 11. It says, Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe.

And the angels who did not keep their own position but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day. Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. In the same way, these people, relying on their dreams, defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones.

Yet when Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil in an argument about Moses’ body, he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him, but said, The Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme anything they do not understand, and what they do understand, by instinct, like irrational animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, have plunged into Balaam’s error for profit, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion.

So again, when he keeps saying And these people, he’s referring to the false teachers that have snuck in, sneaked into the churches, and have begun promoting this idea that because of the grace of Jesus Christ, we just get to run amok and live however we want. And comparing them to these Old Testament stories, Jude offered several examples of God’s judgment on those who rejected God’s word in order to go their own way. It’s sort of like with our own children when we would give them warnings for their behavior.

A lot of times with my kids, I’ll say, do you remember what happened last time you did X, Y, or Z? Did that work out well for you? And sometimes it’s because I gave them a consequence.

Sometimes it was just the result of natural consequences that come from wild behavior or reckless behavior or disobedient behavior of some sort. But there’s always a consequence. Did you enjoy the consequences last time?

So Jude is doing the same thing, saying, hey, these people that are practicing this today and they’re teaching this today, here are some examples from history of people who were doing the same thing and it didn’t work out particularly well for them. And he gave three examples here. One was from verse 5 of the Israelites.

And he says the Israelites were saved from slavery in Egypt. By the way, I find it very interesting that in verse 5 he says Jesus saved a people out of Egypt. Now for some people, even in some churches, they say, well, Jesus never claimed to be God.

And the Bible doesn’t explicitly say that Jesus is God, or that doctrine came about later. Now think about it, back in the Old Testament, who was it who actually delivered the Israelites out of Egypt? it wasn’t Moses he was just the instrument of deliverance who was it that delivered the Israelites out of Egypt God very good sometimes I ask questions I’m afraid you think they’re going to be trick questions I’m looking to trip you up no it was God God’s the one who delivered them out of Egypt and Jude says Jesus delivered a people out of Egypt now that doesn’t mean that Jesus is the father that just means that when God was involved Jesus was involved.

When God used Moses, when God led the Israelites out of Egypt, when God led the Israelites into the promised land, Jesus was every bit as much God as the Father was, and he was every bit as much involved. And by the way, again, that’s quite an admission from Jude, who was the half brother of Jesus. Remember Jude and James both did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah during his earthly ministry.

And I asked you last week, just sort of the rhetorical question, I’m not looking for an answer. What would it take you to convince you that your sibling was God, right? It would have to be something pretty miraculous that, in fact, it was the resurrection that convinced them that Jesus was who he said he was.

So now this is not just an apostle saying that Jesus was God. This is somebody who grew up with him. Somebody who knew him better than almost anybody said Jesus saved a people out of Egypt.

So he gives this example of the Israelites being saved from slavery in Egypt. I believe you all know the story. They were in bondage in Egypt.

They cried out to God. God heard them. God raised up a deliverer in Moses, and through a series of events, God showed himself mighty through plagues and wonders and signs and miracles until the day that Pharaoh finally relented and let the Israelites go.

God used Moses as his instrument, but God delivered them out of Egypt, and then when Pharaoh changed his mind, God still did battle on behalf of the Israelites until they were home free. There’s no natural explanation for what happened. God did battle for the Israelites.

And yet what happened? Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe. We know from the rest of the story there were people who made it out of Egypt and still didn’t believe God.

As a matter of fact, every time, it’s so irritating. As you read through the book of Exodus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, as you read through these stories, it gets so irritating. It’s like being on a road trip and hearing the kids in the backseat, are we there yet?

Ask that one more time, okay? The question they were always asking is, why would God lead us out of Egypt just to let us die in the wilderness? They got a little thirsty, and they began to panic because they didn’t trust God.

And so they, instead of saying, oh, God will provide, they naturally went to, oh, I’m thirsty. God has abandoned us. All hope is lost. And he just left us out here to die in the desert.

They did it so many times. And there were times that they broke into open revolt against God because of that. There were times they went to worship golden calves in the midst of that because of their unbelief.

There were times that some of them rose in rebellion against Moses. It was just a bad situation. And in many of these circumstances of unbelief, we see God punishing those who didn’t believe.

And we see in some cases that because of their lack of belief, they were destroyed. Some of them, because of their lack of belief, because of their lack of faith, they didn’t get to go into the promised land. Isn’t it a shame to see the miraculous works of God, to see God’s hand at work doing something as amazing and unexpected as delivering them from the promised land, I’m sorry, delivering them from slavery, and still not having the faith that God’s going to do what he said so that you spend all that time.

You get brought out of slavery just to die in the desert and not get to enter into the promised land. Just because some died in the desert, died in the wilderness, doesn’t mean that God’s promises were invalidated because he still brought the nation into the promised land. But we see the Israelites, even though they had seen God’s hand at work, they had seen these things with their own eyes.

They still many, many times rejected Him to go their own way. And the result was judgment. Then we see in verse 6, He talks about the angels who did not keep their own position, but abandoned their proper dwelling.

the Bible describes fallen angels what we today would often call demons but there were fallen angels who tried to usurp a place in heaven that was not theirs Isaiah appears to talk about that rebellion led by Lucifer led by Satan where he tried to usurp God’s position I don’t know how he thought he possibly could take God’s place, but he tried, and he was cast down. He was cast out of heaven. These angels that didn’t remember their own position, these created beings, they were created to serve God.

They were created to be in His presence, and yet that wasn’t enough for them, so they abandoned their own place to try to take what was not theirs. And we know from some of this that some of them are already in chains in eternal bondage because of what they did. Now we also know from Scripture that some of them are not yet in chains.

Because the Bible says of Satan that he goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. The Bible indicates that in Jesus’ day there were demons that were possessing people and causing no end of trouble. We don’t know the full story here, but Jude, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says some of these are already in chains.

Some of these are already in bondage. Some of these are already receiving their judgment. And we also know that those who are not yet will.

Those who are not yet in darkness and bound in chains will be thrown into the lake of fire before it’s all said and done. So even those that haven’t received their judgment, their judgment is no less certain. And then we see the example in verse 7 of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Sodom and Gomorrah were wealthy, powerful cities. in that day and age.

They were pretty much the cosmopolitan center of that part of the world, it sounds like. That’s where people wanted to be. Now, they may have been no larger than Seminole.

They may have been smaller than Seminole. But for that time, there were enough people together. There was stuff happening.

That was the happening place. Lot wanted to be there. When Abraham and Lot went their separate ways, Abraham said, I’ll give you the choice of which side of the river you want to be on because there wasn’t enough pasture to support both of their herds and flocks, and so they decided to split up.

He said, I’ll give you first choice, and Lot chose the side where Sodom and Gomorrah were, and we see from the book of Genesis, he moved his tents closer to Sodom and Gomorrah until he ended up living there, and that didn’t work out well for him. But it was a place that had a draw that people wanted to be there, And for these cities to be so wealthy and powerful, you know, in the Old Testament context, if you were wealthy and powerful, it was a sign of God’s favor on you. Which, incidentally, is why a lot of the health and wealth preachers like to preach Old Testament passages and promises and take them out of context.

Because there was that idea that if God loved you, it would show up in your bank account. And so for these cities to be as wealthy and prosperous as they were, We know these cities were blessed by God. That’s how things worked at that time.

And yet they rejected God in favor of sexual immorality. And they were destroyed. Now, when I say they were blessed by God, I mean to start with, they had a lot to be thankful to God for.

And yet instead, they turned to every manner of behavior that defied God. and I’ve heard so-called Bible scholars question what we would understand as the interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis they say that wasn’t really about sexual assault that wasn’t about perversion that was about unhospitable behavior anybody else heard this? It was because they were unhospitable towards strangers.

Okay, the Bible does teach that we’re supposed to be hospitable toward strangers and foreigners. And I have no problem with that. And I understand that hospitality is understood quite differently in Middle Eastern cultures than it is here.

You know, one of the worst things you can do is turn your back on a stranger seeking help. You know, hospitality is an incredibly valued virtue. And yet the Bible is so clear about what happened before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

And right here, the Bible is clear, where Jude, again, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these words being breathed out by God as Jude wrote them down, he said the cities were destroyed for sexual immorality and perversion. It wasn’t that they were bad hosts. It was that they had decided that even though God’s word said this, we’re going to choose something else instead.

Each of these cases, in each of these cases, The examples that he gives are of people or things, in the case of the angels, who were blessed by God, and who knew what God’s word said, who knew what God’s order of things was, and yet in each of these cases, they rejected what God’s word said, they rejected the order that God had instituted and established, and they experienced the judgment of God as a result. Two things that all three of these examples have in common is that they started out being blessed by God, and they ended up being judged by God, and what happened in between the blessing and the judgment was sin. And so what Jude is telling us, the lesson that he’s giving us here in using these three examples, when addressing the problem of these false teachers, the lesson he’s giving us is that God is not okay with sin.

I know, that’s a very basic lesson. You may think, why did I need to come to church tonight and hear that? That’s basic stuff.

Because we need that reminder. Because we can easily convince ourselves that God’s okay with just, well, this sin. That’s just a little sin.

Or it’s just a little bit of sin. Now, the lesson here is God is not okay with sin. Now, that was important because it was a warning, again, against this spread of these antinomian teachers in the Christian community, they were coming in and saying sin was okay because of the grace of God.

I mean, Jesus died for our sins. So it’s already covered. It’s already forgiven.

So enjoy. God bless. Go do what you will.

And we hear that attitude sometimes. I’ve heard people say, well, I know it’s wrong, but God will forgive me. Okay, you’re correct, it is wrong.

And you’re correct, God will forgive you because of Jesus if you’re repentant. But the problem there is that’s not a repentant attitude. Now, repentance doesn’t mean, I’ve got this under control and I’ll never sin again.

no even people who are repentant sin the difference is an antinomian says oh I’m so glad I have that grace of god so I can go out and sin somebody who’s repentant says I am so glad I have the grace of god because I hate this sin why do I keep doing this you know it’s a difference in attitude and jude had already warned them earlier in the letter about these teachers who were coming into the churches, they were trying to build a following by convincing people that grace gives them the opportunity to live however they wanted. And that message had some popularity in their day, just as it has some popularity in our day. Imagine that, tell people they can do whatever they want, and they’re glad to hear it, right?

It’s not a surprising thing. So no matter how subtle, and these teachers came in and they’d try to be subtle and they’d be sneaky and crafty with their message and try to hook people in. But no matter how subtle they tried to be, their true colors always came shining through.

You could always eventually identify the antinomian teacher. And the Bible says here, Jude writes about some signs that would identify them. There are a few signs that identify them.

In verse 8, we see how they were hostile toward any authority outside themselves that might put any kind of boundaries on their behavior. So whether it was the word of God, whether it was the authority of the church, whether it was their parents telling them no, any kind of the government, any kind of authority that might put any kind of limit on them, they immediately bristled against that. They were hostile.

Verse 8 says, these same people relying on their dreams defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones. They did not care who they slandered in their rejection of authority. Because for them, they were the highest authority.

By the way, anybody you listen to, if they are the authority in what they are preaching and teaching, if they hold themselves up to be a preacher or teacher, even of God’s word, and they are in any way, shape, or form the authority in what they’re preaching or teaching, that is a dangerous person that you ought not to listen to. If I ever get to the point where I’m preaching and I’m the authority and my opinion is what matters, stop listening to me. Get rid of me.

Okay, clear enough? The authority is the word of God. Because if it’s God’s word, then when he speaks, it speaks.

When it speaks, he speaks. But they didn’t have any use for any other authority outside of themselves. You know, you can look at this story that he used in verse 9 of the story of Michael.

And again, we’re not entirely sure where this story comes from. Some people have suggested some books that are not considered scripture, and some wonder from that, well, why is that book not in scripture? Well, Paul quoted from Greek poets, and it didn’t mean that was inspired scripture.

Sometimes it’s referring to something that people in the culture would understand. He’s not saying this is inspired scripture, but he’s saying, hey, it’s just like the story over here of Michael and Satan. Okay.

And, and the idea of Michael, the archangel Michael, arguing with Satan over the body of Moses. And for what reason, we don’t, we don’t totally understand. But the point is here, Michael is one of God’s angels.

And he could basically stand there and say, Satan, you, you know, call him every name in the book. But he doesn’t. He says, the Lord rebuke you.

Even for Michael, in dealing with Satan, he didn’t stand on his own authority and his own word to condemn even Satan, who deserves it. Now he said, the Lord rebuke you. It was about God’s authority.

He deferred to God’s authority even in that. So he’s using this story that they would have been familiar with to say, that’s the godly response. Even if you’re dealing with somebody evil, you defer to God’s authority where these people over here are saying, I am the authority.

They rejected God’s word because they gave credence to their own authority. Don’t miss this in verse 8. He said, these same people, in the same way these people relying on their dreams defile their flesh.

So just comes to them. Sometimes it’s dreams, maybe voices in their heads, maybe feelings. I’ve heard people say things about God.

Okay, that’s interesting. Where’d you get that? Well, sometimes God just gives me things.

Okay. All right. I hope you have something a little than that.

I’m going to go with the authority of his written word, but if you’re basing it on a feeling, that’s up to you. But they were basing their teachings on their dreams, and they were okay with that, because you can interpret your dreams however you want to. It’s all subjective.

It’s all feelings. Well, I feel like this is true. If that’s where they’re getting their ideas from, they’re still relying on themselves as their ultimate authority.

And if you’re your own highest authority in what you teach and in what you believe, you don’t ever have to be wrong. You realize that? If you get to decide what’s right and wrong, you don’t ever have to be wrong.

That’s one of the inconvenient things about being a Bible-believing Christian, is that sometimes I’m wrong. What I mean is sometimes I go to the Scriptures, actually a lot of times I go to the Scriptures and I see things where it calls out my own behavior and my own attitude. And I realized as I’m reading it, oh, okay, there are things I need to change.

When you’re your own authority, you don’t have that. You can do whatever you want. So I said, these antinomian teachers, you’d know them because they’re their own highest authority.

They reject the authority of the word of God. They may pay lip service to it. Even today, people will pay lip service to the authority of God’s word, but then they turn around and interpret it according to whatever they feel like and whatever interpretation suits them.

So the antinomian teachers will be hostile toward any authority that puts boundaries on their behavior. He says in verse 10, they can’t be reasoned with. They can’t be reasoned with because they do what they want to do.

You don’t have the authority to challenge them. He says, these people blaspheme anything they do not understand and what they do understand by instinct like irrational animals. By these things, they are destroyed.

By the way, I just want to remind you, these are Jude’s words and ultimately God’s words, not mine. He called them irrational animals. So when they’re confronted with God’s word, they’re going to challenge it.

They’re going to blaspheme rather than trying to understand what God’s word says. When somebody comes along speaking the word of God and tries to put any kind of boundaries on their behavior, they react with ferocity. You see that sometimes in our world.

You speak even in a loving way about what God’s word says. And some people will react with unimaginable hostility. And he said they act on instinct like animals.

Now, by the way, I’m not intending to call out everyone outside these four walls as animals. And I don’t know that that’s the intent of Jude here either. He’s talking specifically about the antinomian teacher.

those who were leading people to follow these ideas and behave as they did. So he said they would reject, they’d be hostile toward any authority. He said they couldn’t be reasoned with because they just base everything on instinct and feeling and they’re hostile and blasphemous when they’re confronted.

But he also said they’re not motivated. It teaches us here that they’re not motivated by a love of God or a love of his truth because it tells us in verse 11 what they are motivated by. Excuse me.

It tells us in verse 11 what they are motivated by. Three different things. And he uses again here three different examples.

Cain, Balaam, and Korah. So if you’re familiar with the story of Cain, what did he do to his brother Abel? He killed him because he was jealous.

He was jealous of his sacrifice. He was jealous in the moment, and he acted on this rash impulse to go out and kill his brother in a fit of jealous rage. And there are people who what they teach is motivated by their passions.

Now that word doesn’t necessarily, the way I’m using that word doesn’t necessarily have the sexual connotation that a lot of people would put on it. When I say passions, I mean those strong desires, those strong instincts. I’m using it in the way that we would in the law, a crime of passion, where the emotions just take over and the feeling of the moment, and that’s what motivates them, and that’s what drives them forward.

Some people will teach false doctrine because they’re driven by their passions to do so. Maybe they’re living lives of sin and they’re under conviction, and so to assuage their own conscience, they teach other people and try to convince other people in order to convince themselves that it’s okay, that it’s justified. and they’re driven by their passions and what they teach.

Sometimes they’re driven by their greed, the story of Balaam. Now, we know that story mostly because of the talking donkey. But what took place there in the story of Balaam in the book of Numbers is Balaam was essentially a prophet for profit.

He was hired by a pagan king to go out and curse God’s people. And he knew he shouldn’t, but he talked himself into it because the money was just too good. and he was headed out to curse God’s people because the price was right.

Some people teach things that are untrue because they’re motivated not by love of God and his truth, but they’re motivated by greed. Again, this is not Jared’s opinion. This is what Jude said when he talks about here the error of Balaam.

They plunged into Balaam’s error for profit. Then he said there would be others who would be motivated by their ambition. Now we get that because he doesn’t use the word ambition, but he said they’ve perished in Korah’s rebellion.

The story of Korah’s rebellion is another interesting story from the life of Moses. There were a group of people who were led by Korah to challenge Moses. They got the idea, why should the Israelites be led just by Moses?

God could speak to any of us. Maybe God speaks to me. Maybe Israel should listen to me.

And Korah got upset because Moses got all the attention. Moses had all the prestige and he thought, well, maybe I could set myself up to be an equal to Moses. Maybe I could bring Moses down a peg or two.

And he led a rebellion of people who were behind him to try to challenge Moses for the leadership of Israel. Now, the problem was God wasn’t speaking to Korah the way he spoke to Moses. And a challenge was instituted where they would bring out censers full of incense, and they would wait for God to show them a sign.

But as they’re gathered together in front of the people of Israel, they’re warned. A warning went forward to the people of Israel saying, Get away from Korah and his supporters. Get away from Korah and his fellow rebels.

This is your warning. Get away from them now. And suddenly the ground split open.

By the way, Moses had told them that God would do something like this if Korah did not in fact speak for God. Suddenly the ground splits open and Korah and his followers fall into the open abyss, which closes back in on them and the earth swallows them. Korah’s problem was that his ambition was more important to him than what God was actually saying.

So that’s an example of people teaching false things because they’re motivated by ambition. And folks, even people that start out well, can get off kilter when their motivation switches from their love of God and his truth to any one of these things, whether it’s their passions, their greed, or their ambition. And they can easily fall into teaching false doctrines.

So what makes the. . .

He spent some time here identifying how you’d notice these antinomian teachers. These teachers that said, you can sin as much as you want because there’s grace, because there’s forgiveness. Now, what makes this so dangerous, why he’s so intent on warning them and warning us, what makes this so dangerous is that this antinomian promise of sin without consequences, this promise, this empty promise, is appealing to our flesh.

It sounds really good to the human sin nature. Wait a minute. So you’re telling me that I can have Jesus and be forgiven and go to heaven and I can still sin as much as I want?

I mean, to the flesh, that sounds like a great deal. I can live however I want and totally escape the consequences. I mean, that always works, right? That’s always how the world works.

But that empty promise sounds just promising enough that it can easily hook our flesh. It can easily drag us in. If we think, if we’re not walking in the Spirit, if we’re not walking with Jesus, if we’re not invested in the Word of God, then it’s easy to fall into that idea of, wait a minute, it’s just a little sin.

God won’t mind that. By the way, I’m not saying you lose your salvation, but there is still a lot to lose. As Christians, we still have a lot to lose.

It’s easy to fall into that trap of, oh, it’s just a little sin. God won’t mind. And besides, he’ll forgive me.

Jesus already paid for it. It’s an alluring promise to the flesh, and only Jesus can set us free from it. Only Jesus can rescue us from that false promise, from that empty promise.

These false teachers that were there in Jude’s day, just like they do now, they were promising fun and freedom to the people, but what their message actually delivered was bondage to sin and separation from God and death and judgment and nothing good lay at the end of that road, no matter what they promised. The message is attractive to our human nature, but it will destroy us, and only Jesus is our means of escape. And I want to be clear to say we need to resist antinomianism.

It’s not an embrace of legalism. I talked about those two last week, hopefully you remember. They’re two extremes.

Legalism teaches obedience to the law as a means to make God happy and not to make God happy, but to earn God’s favor and be in a relationship with God. That basically we can be good enough and we should be good enough, we must be good enough in order to have a relationship with God. Antinomianism is the far opposite extreme that says there is no law, there are no standards, God doesn’t care what we do because there’s grace.

And somewhere in the middle is the biblical understanding to say God does have standards and we’ve fallen short of them and that’s why we need grace. Because we can’t ever be good enough to live up to God’s standards over here on this side. We couldn’t.

That’s why Jesus had to die to pay for our sins. And yet there is still God’s standard over here that we strive for, not because that’s how we get him to love us, not because it makes us any more valuable as a child of God, not because it gets us one step closer to heaven, but we try to obey him because we love him and we want to glorify him. That’s the biblical view of grace and the law.

And either one of these is an unbiblical extreme. So when I’m telling you we resist antinomianism, we resist this idea that we can live however we want because there’s grace, it doesn’t mean we go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and say we embrace the law and forget about grace. All right?

We want to be right here in the middle with God’s word. We need God’s grace for forgiveness of sin, and we need God’s grace for the st

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