Jude 17-25 English Standard Version (ESV)
A Call to Persevere
17 But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” 19 It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. 20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

Doxology
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

We'll finish up the book of Jude here.  I recommend reading the entire book in one sitting if you can, but I simply split it up for the sake of how long the commentary was getting in the last blog.

Again we return to the idea of living in the end times and how the ungodly will feel even more emboldened to scoff and mock God with their words, their actions and their passions.  This is contrasted with the Christian who will build each other up instead of causing divisions and live by faith praying in the Holy Spirit instead of being devoid of the Spirit.

Jude then reminds us that we need to keep ourselves in the love of God (this goes back to the idea of abiding that we've talked about already).  It's something that we must actively do, even though it's something passive.  We must actively choose to find our rest in God's finished work.  We must choose to patiently wait for God's mercy (not getting what we do deserve) which will ultimately be fulfilled when we spend eternity in heaven with God.  Because we want mercy from God, we must be people who show mercy to others and because we wish to experience eternal life, we must want that for others and be about the work of the Great Commission.....going into all the world preaching the gospel to and making disciples of all people groups, teaching them to obey everything that has been commanded to them, but we must do so without corrupting ourselves and in so doing make God out to be a liar (essentially saying He didn't have the power to convert us and make us new) and lose our testimony and ruin the reputation of God in the process.

The book of Jude concludes with one of the most beautiful doxologies that many churches regularly use for their benediction. Christ is the one that gets all the praise and all the glory here and we simply enjoy the benefits of His protection and being presented to God blameless--not because of our work but because of His work that He has done on our behalf.  The Father has greatly exalted the Son so that Jesus will receive all the glory, majesty, dominion and authority--this is the way it has been, the way it is, and the way that it always will be.  Then Jude closes with the word "Amen" meaning we can all in agreement say "this is the truth."

For now, we're done talking about living in the end times.  We'll come back to this from time to time, but we will continue talking about living the Christian life and instructions that are given to Christians on how to live together, how to worship together and how to interact with those outside the Church.

Jude English Standard Version (ESV)
Greeting
1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,
To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:
2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Judgment on False Teachers
​3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5 Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day-- 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
8 Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. 9 But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” 10 But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. 11 Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. 12 These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 16 These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.

This is another one of the shorter letters to the Church that doesn't contain any chapters--just verses.  The author of this book is the half-brother of Jesus though he humbly doesn't refer to himself that way, he instead refers to himself as the brother of James (not the one that was the leader of the Church in Jerusalem that was killed in the book of Acts, but the one that was the author of the book of James that we're going to look at next after Jude).  Other than this the opening is very standard for many of the epistles--a blessing to those who belonged to the group of people it was intended for.

Unlike most books of the Bible it seems like Jude started off wanting to write one thing but was compelled by the Holy Spirit to write something completely different.  He originally wanted to write a letter of encouragement, but instead ended up writing a vigorous exhortation to contend for the faith because we are living in the last days.

Jude immediately gets to the point....false teachers who had no part being accepted into the Church have crept in and have perverted the Church to be about sensuality (probably involving sexual acts as part of the "worship service" as was done in many pagan temples)and a religion that denied the deity and lordship of Christ and seemed to be more about self-gratification than being a servant of the King of Kings (that doesn't really sound that different than some of the "churches" and "Christians" that exist today).

Next comes one of the most interesting claims about Jesus in all of the New Testament.  Jude says that it was Jesus who led the children of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt.  How could this be when those events being described happened in the book of Exodus?  Is Jude saying that Jesus was alive then?  Weren't they led by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire sometimes called the Shekinah glory? We can unpack this more as we come upon other additional references like this throughout the New Testament, but the main point here is that God did not spare His own people or His own angels from judgement when they rebelled, nor did He make excuses for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who did not know Him when they rebelled and we saw just a taste of what the eternal punishment for those who live their entire lives in rebellion against God would look like.

​So what does that have to do with us?  Jude continues to say those sins are still around today and are being welcomed by some of the "Christian" churches--people turning to divination and witchcraft to see visions and dreams that are not from God, people living sensual, sexually immoral lives possibly even to the point of accepting all kinds of sexual sin as a form of worship that they thought God would accept, and mortal men thinking they have the power to command and control angelic forces--more specifically demons--only to be destroyed by them when the demons control them.  When we return to the gospels and the book of Acts, we'll see many "demonized" people (sometimes called "demon-possessed," but "demonized" is a more correct translation).

Starting in verse 11, Jude gives additional examples of bad examples that people are following.  Cain, Balaam and Korah.  Most probably know about Cain and Abel, but as a refresher, Cain brought an unacceptable sacrifice and was angry that God accepted his brother's sacrifice, but didn't accept his because he brought the wrong kind of gift with the wrong kind of heart.  God gave Cain several chances to repent asking him what he was upset about, telling him that if he did what was right he would also be accepted, and then telling him that sin was crouching at his door and wanting to be master over him.  Cain in a jealous rage killed his brother and tried to lied to God about it and was cast out from among his family
We've talked about Balaam before, so I won't go into it again.  Korah is probably new to you though.  He was part of the priestly family, but he didn't like the duties he and his family were assigned.  It was the order that God had set up that some families within the tribe of Levi would be responsible for different duties.  Only Aaron and his sons could enter the Holy Place to offer incense, but Korah decided that he should be able to do that too if he wanted to.  There was more to this rebellion though than simply wanting a different job--these rebellious people thought they should be able to approach God any way they wanted to and make God accept them on their terms.  God's answer?  It's something you should read for yourself in Numbers 16.  These types of false teachers and false prophets are described as "hidden reefs"--probably one of the most dangerous things to a sailor--shepherds who eat their own sheep,  clouds that look like they will provide needed rain but are all show and produce nothing and are driven every which way by the wind, and trees that are doubly-dead because they have no root and no fruit.  They are like the waves of the sea that stir things up or like a shooting star that looks bright for a moment but quickly burns out.  All of these people have nothing but darkness (separation from the "light" of God's presence and blessing).

With all these bad examples, it's time for some good ones for us to follow instead.  Enoch was a righteous man living among wicked people.  He spoke these words before the Flood that was the first judgement on sin, but these words could very well be spoken today in advance of God's coming judgment where the wrath of God will be poured out from heaven against all ungodliness in the Tribulation and the final judgement known as "The Day of the Lord" both in the Old Testament and New Testament.  Jude seems to be saying that he sees that this this what the world and the Church needs to hear.  We need to have an urgency about calling sin what it is, pointing people to the salvation that God provides and the coming judgement for those that stand in opposition to God.

Surprisingly, I've only covered about half of the book so far.  The best is yet to come, so stay tuned for the next blog where I hope to finish up the book of Jude.