Three Categories of Apostates

[0:00] The passages we'll cover tonight are verses 5, 6, and 7.

[0:19] ! I was trying to whet your appetite a little bit for what was to come.

[0:34] And these are the three that we're going to study tonight. I'm going to read from the Legacy Standard Bible because they use a lot of the original language from Greek and Hebrew.

[0:47] Starting in verse 5 of Jude. Now I want to remind you, though you know all things, that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

[1:11] And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He is kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

[1:23] Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having indulged in the same way as these in gross sexual immorality and having gone after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

[1:48] You may remember last week I mentioned that apostates are people who join a church, may stand up and acknowledge that the Bible is God's Word and therefore it's true.

[2:08] But at some point, they reject that idea and they turn aside from the faith and no longer hold to the truth of Scripture.

[2:23] Unfortunately, these charlatans have risen in many churches by that time to positions of great influence, though now they no longer believe.

[2:40] They may be pastors, elders, deacons, Sunday school teachers. Could be just about anybody in the church and they're leading people astray.

[2:51] Jude, verses 5-7 closely parallels 2 Peter, chapter 2, and verses 3-10. We don't know if Jude wrote a commentary on Peter or Peter wrote a commentary on Jude, but Jude tells his readers that they already know these things because in both Peter's work and Jude's letter, this information was familiar to them.

[3:24] So this evening, we're going to examine in some detail these three groups of apostates mentioned by Jude. And I think the lesson to be learned here for all believers down through the ages to our own time is those who defect from the truth will face horrifying divine judgment.

[3:53] I remember a lady that was in our church and this was a long time ago and she quit all of a sudden.

[4:04] And our pastor, I don't remember which one it was, he called her and he went to see her and said, what happened? She said, well, I'm studying line dancing and they meet on Sunday morning.

[4:16] I've never line danced. I don't know if that's fun or not. The first group of apostates we'll look at this evening are those of ancient Israel. And Jude says this, now I want to remind you, though you know all things, that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

[4:47] That's always an exciting study when you're a little kid in vacation Bible school or Sunday school, talk about the Passover.

[4:59] We don't need to be reminded that God miraculously saved Israel from their bondage in Egypt and having delivered them from Egypt.

[5:17] God then led them through the wilderness and the Jewish nation experienced many trials. This was the story of the redemption of a people and was memorialized by the story of the Passover.

[5:39] God warned the Hebrew people that the angel of death was going to visit the land of Egypt and he would kill the firstborn child or the firstborn animals of every family unless they adhered to a command.

[6:02] And they were commanded, the Hebrews were commanded to cover the doorposts and lentil of their homes with the blood of a lamb.

[6:16] We've got a door back there. The doorpost is vertical and up above there is horizontal. They were to smear the blood of an innocent lamb that was sacrificed on that door.

[6:31] And this was a visual sign and I'll just say what I believe. We talk about the angel of death visited Egypt. I think God visited the land of Egypt and the visual sign for God to pass over that home was to see that blood applied sparing the firstborn from death.

[7:00] I'm convinced that angel, capital A, was the second person of the Trinity. And let me say this, one day he's going to look at our doorposts and see if the blood has been applied.

[7:14] And if it has been, he will pass you over. You won't die. You'll never die. It's an amazing story though on the Passover.

[7:27] So we have a vivid picture of redemption. God saved them out of the land of Egypt and you remember how they got there.

[7:40] You remember Joseph and he was sold into slavery and ended up in Potiphar's house and it was an amazing story. And to this day, the Passover is a reminder of how God loves and protects His true believers.

[8:01] But it came with a warning. It was not all-inclusive. Many Egyptians died as did many Hebrews who didn't adhere to that.

[8:17] They said, well, I'm not going to... that's silly. I'm not going to kill a lamb and put blood on my door. Listen to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10.

[8:34] I'm reading verses 1-6. For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers. Let me say right there, when you read in the Bible and it says, I do not want you to be ignorant, you can mark it down, they were ignorant.

[8:49] That's a real nice way of telling you're really ignorant on this. And Paul uses that a lot. But, I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and passed through the sea.

[9:08] You remember, God protect them with a pillar of fire at night and the cloud and they were able to walk through the Red Sea and I actually had been there and swam there.

[9:19] I should have brought that. I've got a beautiful rock that I dove down and got... it's not deep, but I got off the bottom and I got off the bottom of the sea. Now, whether that was the exact place, you know, that they passed over, I don't know.

[9:34] I do remember, anyway, he was debating an atheist on the Red Sea and the Hebrews passing over didn't get their feet wet.

[9:45] You know, the story closed up when the Egyptian army and they were all drowned. And this guy said, well, first of all, the atheist said that wasn't the Red Sea, it was the Sea of Reeds.

[9:56] And it's about an inch and a half deep. And this brother of ours said, that's an amazing miracle. God drowned the entire Egyptian army in an inch and a half of water.

[10:11] They all drowned. All of them, it says, were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. they all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them.

[10:33] This rock followed them as they traveled through the wilderness and then they'd go and that rock was Jesus and it provided them water. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased.

[10:51] For they were struck down in the wilderness. You remember the story of the Hebrews that murmured against God? He brought us out here to kill us. We don't have any water, He gave them water. We don't have any food, He gave them manna.

[11:03] We're tired of manna, He gave them quail. I like quail. And these things happened as examples for us back in Corinthians so that we would not crave all evil things as they also craved.

[11:22] So Paul has issued a warning there to whom is he warning this to? It is made to any person that would corrupt the Word of God. By the way, that's what apostates do.

[11:35] They corrupt the Word of God. And it includes apostates in Israel, but it also includes apostates in the church today.

[11:46] Now, I don't recommend you make a habit of trying to tune in and listen to any of those guys, but they're all over television. They're everywhere. In fact, after rescuing the Hebrew people from Egypt and delivering them from Pharaoh, Jude tells us this, subsequently they were destroyed those who did not believe.

[12:16] Believe is important. It's a Greek word in the New Testament, pistou. It means trust. Commit your life to something.

[12:28] We think it's, oh, you just have to, in your mind, it's intellectual assent. Yeah, I believe it. I believe that. Let's move on. No. You don't move on. It's crucial that we believe.

[12:42] And this truth is vividly detailed in the Old Testament book of Numbers. I'm very well aware that that's not a place we hang out very often.

[12:54] But I want to read in the book of Numbers chapter 14, beginning in verse 26, Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, how long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling?

[13:15] And who are they grumbling against? They were grumbling against God. I've heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they're making against me.

[13:25] say to them, as I live, declares Yahweh, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you, your corpses will fall in the wilderness, even all your numbered men according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward who have grumbled against me.

[13:54] Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to make you dwell except Caleb, the son of Jehunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun, not a Catholic nun, spelled the same way though.

[14:12] Your little ones, however, who you said would become plunder, I will bring them in. So if you're twenty years or old and have been grumbling, you're in big trouble.

[14:23] But if you're younger, kids or whatever, God says, I'll bring them in so that they will know the land which you have rejected. But as for you, your corpses will fall in the wilderness.

[14:41] And your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness. And they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until your corpses come to an end in the wilderness.

[14:57] According to the number of days which you have spied out the land, forty days, for every day that you shall bear your guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know my opposition.

[15:11] I, Yahweh, have spoken. Surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered against me. In this wilderness they shall come to an end.

[15:24] And there they will die. As for the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land and who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing them a bad report concerning the land, even those men who brought out the very bad report of the land died by a plague before Yahweh.

[15:50] but Joshua and Caleb remained alive out of the men who were sent to spy out the land. You remember that story?

[16:01] He sent all these guys in and two guys came back and said, we can take these guys. This land is for the, God said, it's ours, we can take it. And all the rest of them said, no, there are too many of them, they're too big, they're giants, had all these excuses.

[16:17] They didn't go in. except Joshua and Caleb. Who were the people that fell and died in the wilderness?

[16:32] These were the very people who heard what God expected of them. They witnessed what God was capable of doing and to those who failed to believe.

[16:48] And in fact, the scriptures tell us elsewhere, their bones were left lying in the desert being bleached by the sun. That's a frightening thought.

[17:03] That's what happened to them. God will condemn and destroy any and all such rejecters rejecters of His word.

[17:18] So the lesson for us is that there were apostates in Israel and they were destroyed by God for their unbelief.

[17:31] They'd been through a lot over the years with Egypt and now they're all happy because they're leaving but they didn't believe. The second group I want to talk about is apostate angels.

[17:45] Jude talks about it in the sixth verse. And we learn that God destroys apostate angels. And angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper abode He is kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

[18:15] This is the second example that Jude gives us. And it is the destruction of angels who defect from the truth.

[18:31] And we call them apostate angels. angels. We had apostate Israel. Now we're dealing with apostate angels. And from that we can conclude He didn't identify them much further than that.

[18:48] They were apostate angels. But they were known to their readers back then. If you research various commentaries on the book of Jude you will get various opinions on who these apostate angels are.

[19:06] A few commentators say we can't identify these angels so we shouldn't try. That view has a great weakness.

[19:17] In Jude 5 he said you know all things. That seems to imply that they should have known who these angels were and what they had done to deserve the status of condemned apostates.

[19:38] Since Jude is writing at the beginning of the New Testament era logic demands that this story concerning apostate angels must have originated in the Old Testament.

[19:49] I mean that makes sense. There are actually two Old Testament scenarios that might fit Jude's apostate angel story.

[20:05] And one certainly is the original fall of Lucifer. You remember Lucifer was an exalted angel, a created being. I asked a group one time who's the most exalted created being in heaven.

[20:20] They said Jesus real fast. I said he wasn't created. He's always existing. He's eternal. But Lucifer is another one to deal with.

[20:36] Lucifer was an exalted angel. He was an important angel. He fell. He fell hard. He announced that he was going to be like the Most High God or above the Most High God.

[20:55] Essentially Luther didn't want much. He just wanted to take over the whole universe from God. I would buy into that. This is who is being talked about in Jude.

[21:11] But I think we got a major problem which seems to me to negate this possibility that we're talking about Lucifer. Jude said that the apostate angels were taken into custody and confined to eternal bonds under darkness awaiting judgment.

[21:33] moment. Well, when Lucifer fell, he took with him one-third of the angelic host. They threw in with Lucifer.

[21:45] That amazes me. How stupid can you get? But they threw in with Lucifer, cast their lot with him, but they weren't confined.

[22:00] They weren't confined. They will be someday reading the book of Revelation toward the end. Their future is in the lake of fire. But for now, Lucifer and the fallen angels, which by the way, we now refer to as demons, they're roaming around the earth, creating havoc.

[22:24] And so that makes huge reference to them far from plausible. They're not in confinement. We have the third possibility, and there are equally some uncomfortable reasons for this one, but it is concerning Genesis chapter 6 verses 1 to 4.

[22:47] Let me just read it to you. Now, it happened when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were good in appearance, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

[23:07] Then Yahweh said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he indeed is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years. The Nephthilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.

[23:29] These were the mighty men of old, men of renown. And Peter makes a brief reference to this in one verse, 2 Peter 2 4, for if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the pit, and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for final judgment.

[23:53] So, the third possibility makes a lot of sense to me, but there's a major problem. And the problem is that clearly angels, whether fallen or holy, don't procreate.

[24:14] They don't go around having babies, as far as what I read in the Bible. They were created as sexless beings. Dr.

[24:25] MacArthur seemed to hold the view that these guys did enter into human women. Later, he acknowledged that while angels do not create it, he speculated these demons may have possessed fallen men who did that for them.

[24:50] But I can't point to a verse of Scripture that supports that. This quote from Dr. MacArthur is instructive, but it still doesn't solve the dilemma.

[25:04] This is what John said, John MacArthur, Jude described two aspects of angels falling. First, they did not keep their own domain.

[25:18] Instead of staying in their own realm of authority given by God, they went outside it. Second, they abandoned their proper abode. With Lucifer, they rebelled against the created role and their place in heaven.

[25:35] When God expelled them from heaven for the rebellion, some continued in their downward fall to the point of taking masculine human form and cohabitating with human women to produce a generation of demon-influenced, thoroughly corrupt children.

[25:59] Whatever came from these people or angels, whatever they were, Christ did not atone for them on the cross. MacArthur calls them corrupt children.

[26:12] God sent those particular apostate angels or demons to a place under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Peter wrote that God committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment.

[26:30] That's a difficult passage. Our former pastor and a great man of God, Dr. Coleman, he said, I take exception with John's conclusions there. Because angels don't procreate.

[26:44] Maybe this is one of those dilemmas that we'll either learn about it in heaven or we won't even care by the time we get there. There is one more group of apostates that Jude refers to.

[26:58] And we certainly don't want to leave them out because most of us are familiar with this group. It's apostate Gentiles. We have Jews, we have angels, and now we have Gentiles.

[27:11] And in Jude verse 7 it says this, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them having indulged in the same way as these in gross sexual immorality and having gone after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

[27:35] chapter 4. This is our third reminder of the judgment that is going to be placed on apostates. There were apostate cities in Abraham and Lot's day that infected God's earth, corrupted it.

[27:59] Two of those cities was named Sodom and Gomorrah, but if you read that in the Old Testament closely, you find out there were five such cities, kind of sister cities.

[28:10] And there was gross immorality in those two cities and the cities around them. And the sin that they committed was every bit as horrific as that of the angels.

[28:32] But at least here we can kind of figure out what sin they were committing. Here is an account in Genesis 19. God sent two angels to Sodom.

[28:46] And in the evening, Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. That means he was a public official. Lot saw them. That's the nephew of Abraham.

[29:00] And rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. And he said to these two, my lords, please turn aside.

[29:17] into your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet, then you may rise early and go on your way.

[29:30] Lot did not want these two visitors entering and sleeping on the streets of Sodom. God said, and these were angels.

[29:44] Whether Lot had already figured that out or not, I don't know. They said to him, no, but we shall spend the night in the square, in the public arena.

[30:01] We'll just spend the night here. water. And it tells us that Lot pressed them strongly. So finally they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made a feast for them, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

[30:26] But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom surrounded the house from young to old, and all the people from every quarter, and they called to Lot and said to them, where are the men who came to you tonight?

[30:49] Bring them out that we may know them. You know what that means. They didn't want to meet them and learn their name, they wanted to have sex with them, men with men.

[31:05] Where are they? Bring them out to us. But Lot went to them at the doorway, and he shut the door behind them, and he said, my brothers, please do not act wickedly.

[31:20] I'm amazed that Lot did this, but now behold, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you so that you can do to them what is good in your eyes.

[31:33] I only do nothing to these men in as much as they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, step aside.

[31:44] Furthermore, they said, this one came to sojourn, and already he's acting like a judge. Now we will treat you more wickedly than them.

[31:57] So they pressed hard against him, against Lot, and stepped up to break the door, but the men, that's the two angels, reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house and shut the door.

[32:10] And you know the story. These men were sodomites, were struck with blindness. they couldn't see.

[32:24] From small to great, and they wearied themselves trying to find the door. They couldn't see it. The men of this region, the Bible says, went after strange flesh.

[32:39] You know, I've seen this on television, depicted in a Hollywood production. And I'm thinking, I wonder how this is going to end.

[32:53] Of course, we know that God rained down fire and brimstone on those five cities and destroyed everybody in them except Lot and his two daughters and his wife, and his wife didn't even survive because she looked back against the command of the angels.

[33:10] But on TV it said, we don't know what destroyed these five cities, but it clearly was not God because God loves homosexuals. He made them the way they are.

[33:22] He applauds this. Doesn't say that at all. These men went after strange flesh. They engaged in unsavory, illicit, sexual misconduct.

[33:39] Men with men. If you want to read about that, when you go home tonight, get out your Bible, turn to Romans chapter 1, begin in verse 18, and go to the end of that chapter.

[34:00] Three times it says, and God gave them over. God gave them over. God gave them over. And the first group He gave over was women, who had turned out to be lesbians.

[34:16] And why did He name them first? Because women are the last to fall in most cultures because of the mothering instinct. But God gave them over.

[34:28] And then He gave over men who engaged with men. This is what Romans 1.27 says, Males abandoned the natural function of the female and burned in their desire toward one another.

[34:49] Males with males committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their heir. What's the due penalty for engaging in homosexual conduct?

[35:09] Well, there may be an earthly penalty and perhaps it's AIDS or some sexually transmitted disease and there is a heavenly punishment.

[35:22] Paul writes, many times the homosexual will not inherit the kingdom of God. America's in a lot of trouble. The world is in a lot of trouble.

[35:33] I guarantee you, England's in a lot of trouble. Scotland, home of Scottish Reformation. This stuff's going on everywhere, so widespread.

[35:46] So what is the penalty for apostates? Punishment of eternal fire.

[35:59] What's the penalty for those who support apostates? Probably the same penalty. God's serious about this. And we need to be as well.

[36:09] Thank you.