Jude 3-19, CEB - Dear friends, I wanted very much to write to you concerning the salvation we share. Instead, I must write to urge you to fight for the faith delivered once and for all to God’s holy people. Godless people have slipped in among you. They turn the grace of our God into unrestrained immorality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Judgment was passed against them a long time ago.
I want to remind you of something you already know very
well. The Lord, who once saved a people out of Egypt, later destroyed those who
didn’t maintain their faith. I remind
you too of the angels who didn’t keep their position of authority but deserted
their own home. The Lord has kept them in eternal chains in the underworld
until the judgment of the great day. In
the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and neighboring towns practiced immoral sexual
relations and pursued other sexual urges. By undergoing the punishment of
eternal fire, they serve as a warning.
Yet, even knowing this, these dreamers in the same way
pollute themselves, reject authority, and slander the angels. The archangel Michael, when he argued with the
devil about Moses’ body, did not dare charge him with slander. Instead, he
said, “The Lord rebuke you!” But these
people slander whatever they don’t understand. They are destroyed by what they
know instinctively, as though they were irrational animals.
They are damned, for they follow in the footsteps of
Cain. For profit they give themselves over to Balaam’s error. They are
destroyed in the uprising of Korah. These people are like jagged rocks just below
the surface of the water waiting to snag you when they join your love feasts.
They feast with you without reverence. They care only for themselves. They are
waterless clouds carried along by the winds; fruitless autumn trees, twice
dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea
foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom the darkness of the
underworld is reserved forever.
Enoch, who lived seven generations after Adam, prophesied
about these people when he said, “See, the Lord comes with his countless holy
ones, to execute judgment on everyone and to convict everyone about every
ungodly deed they have committed in their ungodliness as well as all the harsh
things that sinful ungodly people have said against him.” These are faultfinding grumblers, living
according to their own desires. They speak arrogant words and they show
partiality to people when they want a favor in return.
But you, dear friends, remember the words spoken
beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the
end time scoffers will come living according to their own ungodly desires.” These people create divisions. Since they
don’t have the Spirit, they are worldly.
Today’s
passage in Jude is a bit strange in that some of it references material not in
the Christian Bible. It’s important to
note a few things about this. First, just
because it’s not in the Bible we have now doesn’t make it irrelevant or not
useful. I am helped and my knowledge/wisdom
has grown from reading LOTS of material that is not in the Bible. Second, this material is in the Hebrew
scriptures. Because of this, it helps us
understand the assumptions and faith of the people to which Jude was writing. Jude prefaces these references by saying, I
want to remind you of something you already know very well.” Third, there is a reason this material Jude
references is not in our Christian scriptures.
The reason is that the worldwide Christian community, through ecumenical
councils in the early centuries of the Christian church, made the decision that
this material does not represent the core of the Christian faith as well as
other material that was deemed authoritative.
We should hold all of this in mind when we listen to Jude.
What
shouldn’t get lost in all that is that Jude is making a point by citing these
strange stories that is valid and, by the way, WAS deemed authoritative by
those same ecumenical councils. The
examples Jude uses are all people who teach and/or profess one thing and deny what
they teach by their actions. In other
words, they lack integrity. Further, God
takes such a lack of integrity seriously.
Because God takes that seriously, we should too. Character matters. We should not follow leaders whose lives do
not model the life they teach and preach.
Leaders are never without error, but there should be a general integrity
between what they say and what they do. When
this integrity is missing, we should be wary.
Jude’s
warnings should also prompt us to examine ourselves for gaps in integrity. Do I engage in behavior that I know is not
best because I know God will forgive me?
Am I tempted to manipulate and/or massage the message of scripture in
order to justify actions that I know are not the best? Do I engage in divisive behavior because I
care more about being seen as right than I do about people that God dearly
loves? These are difficult questions to
ask ourselves, but doing so will refine and deepen the faith we hold dear.
Questions: Ponder the
questions in the last paragraph.
Prayer: Examine me,
God! Look at my heart! Put me to the
test! Know my anxious thoughts! Look to see if there is any hurtful way in me, then
lead me on the eternal path! Amen. (Ps 139:23-24)
Prayer Focus: Pray
for the leaders of your faith community today.
Song: Won’t Back Down
– Tom Petty
No comments:
Post a Comment