Wow. The last letter. We’ve come a long way this year. There were times I didn’t think we were going to make it (genealogies, anyone?). I had to hang a note on my wall to remind myself that “prophecy” was a noun and “prophesy” was a verb. And now we have flown through the New Testament. One more letter and then...Revelation (dun dun dun...)
Yes, I’m stalling. Revelation looms large in the not-at-all distant future. And it scares me.
Ok, enough...on to the epistle from Jude, which was written by another half-brother of Jesus. It’s a very short letter, but it focuses on a great many negative examples from the scriptures. It could be subtitled: “How not to act as a believer.” The believers have been infected by (get ready for a shock) false teachers who “revile things they do not understand” (v 10).
Jude lists unbelievers through the ages and their fates: Egyptians, fallen angels, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain, Balaam, Korah. God has sent prophets since the early days (Jude quotes the book of Enoch, which is neither in the Bible nor the Apocrypha) to warn these unbelievers and false teachers of their fate. We have read this countless times. The apostles also warned Jude’s generation of believers about false teachers who would come.
So what are the believers supposed to do in the face of this opposition? The same thing true believers have always done: “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v 22).
I will use Jude’s final words to close, since they are the best benediction in all of the letters, Jude 24-25:
“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, 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.”
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