We are living in perilous times! I cannot imagine a more difficult time in which to live for the glory of God, seeking to do the will of God. I cannot imagine a more difficult time in which to faithfully preach the gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace and glory in Christ.
ABOUNDING UNGODLINESSThis is a very religious generation. Most everyone you know professes some kind of faith. Yet, the moral decadence around us is astonishing! The self-centered lawlessness of this age is shocking! There is, in our generation as never before, a general contempt for authority, which is just an outward expression of man’s contempt for God. – Where is the child who respects the authority of his parents? – Where is the student who respects the authority of his teachers? – Where is the wife who respects the authority of her husband? – Where is the man who respects the authority of civil government?
Yet, this is the most religious generation that has ever lived. The biggest business in America is big business religion. We have more religion and more ungodliness, more churches and more corruption, more preachers and more pornography, more “Christians” and more convicts than any nation on earth!
I look at these things and I hurt. My soul is vexed with the godliness of our society. I am grieved for the glory of God and the truth of God. And I hurt for you who are trying to serve God, trying to walk with God, trying to honor God in this day. As I look at the world around me, I constantly ask myself, “What’s Going On?” Do you?
AN APOSTATE GENERATIONI am afraid that I know the answer to that question. Western Civilization, as we know it in this day, is under the judgment of God. We are living in an apostate religious world!
That is a fact that cannot be disputed by anyone with spiritual perception and understanding in Divine Truth The New Testament plainly teaches us that before Christ comes, as this dispensation is drawn to a rapid conclusion, there will be a general, universal, wholesale departure from the faith of the gospel.
GOD’S SILENCENothing is so evident to me in this age as the silence of God (Amos 8:11-12).
(Amos 8:11-12) Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: (12) And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
Thank God, he yet has his 7,000 prophets who have not bowed to Baal! But they are scattered far and wide!
ANTICHRISTThe religion of this age is the religion of antichrist. Never before in history have all professedly “Christian” churches of the world so openly denied the gospel of Christ. I am not talking about the apostasy of Rome. Romanism has always been apostate. Papacy was antichrist from the beginning. But in our day the children of Rome are rapidly returning home to their harlot mother, not in name, but in belief and practice.
The major tenets of all organized religions in the “Christian world” are purely Roman doctrines.
This is precisely what God told us would happen in these last days (1 Tim. 4:1-5; 2 Thess. 2:1-8). Truly, these are perilous times!
JUDICIAL REPROBATIONThe apostate religion of this day is the result of God’s judicial reprobation. Rolfe Barnard once said, “This is a reprobate age, an age that cannot be explained apart from the judgment of God.” And Bro. Barnard was right.
This is one of the most solemn things in all the Word of God. When God gives men the light of the gospel and they refuse to walk in it, they are in danger of being reprobate, cut off, and given over to satanic deception. And this is the work of God!
Illustration: Ephraim (Hosea 4:17)Do you understand what reprobation is? – Reprobation is the work of God, fixing it so that those who would not receive his truth cannot receive his truth (Pro. 1:23-32).
FALSE PROPHETSIt is Christ himself who turns Satan loose upon the nations of the world (Rev. 20:3-5).
It is God the Holy Spirit who ceases to restrain the powers of darkness (2 Thess. 2:7-8).
It is God the Father who sends men a strong delusion that they should believe a lie (2 Thess 2:9-12).
Can you imagine anything more solemn? The scriptures tell us that God almighty sovereignly employs Satan and his hellish imps to secure the damnation of those who hear but refuse to receive the love of the truth!
Are there any marks by which the messengers of Satan may be identified and distinguished from God’s true servants? Most definitely! The man of sin will be revealed (2 Thess. 2:1), but not to the world. Only discerning souls, taught of God can identify him. Those false prophets by whom Satan deceives the souls of men are identified for us by divine inspiration in Jude’s Epistle.
Jude is describing apostate religious leaders who have crept into the church. Read verse 4.
(Jude 1:4) For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
These are preachers, teachers and religious leaders who sneak into local churches, disguised as the servants of Christ; but they are messengers of Satan, apostate from the faith of the gospel.
There are a lot of people who have walked away from the truth, but Jude is talking about men who have walked away from the truth and now go about propagating Satan’s lies, men under the judgment of God, whose damnation is just, and men seeking to destroy the souls of men in the name of serving them. We are warned to beware of such men throughout the Book of God. But nowhere is Scripture do we have a more graphic and instructive description of false prophets than that which the Holy Spirit gives us in the Book of Jude.
In verse 4 he identifies them as deceitful, ungodly wretches who sneak into churches, having abandoned the faith of the gospel, but pretending to be gospel preachers, men who preach a mixture of works and grace, asserting that the preaching of salvation by grace alone will lead to lasciviousness. These preachers of works righteousness, deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
In verses 5, 6, and 7, he gives us examples of apostasy, reminding us of things with which all who read the Scriptures are familiar…
Apostasy is nothing new. False religion has been around since the fall of Adam. As God has always judged it in the past, he will continue to do so until he has at last destroyed the great whore, Babylon.The Israelites who perished in the wilderness (v. 5).
The angels that fell (v. 6).
And Sodom and Gomorrha, who refused the gospel Lot preached to them (v. 7).
Now, let’s look at verse 8. Here Jude is continuing to identify those false prophets mentioned in verse 4. Let’s read verses 4 and 8 together.
(Jude 1:4) For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Jude 1:8) Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
He continues to identify the same men in verses 9-11.
“LIKEWISE”(Jude 1:9-11) Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. (10) But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. (11) Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.
Tonight, we will focus our attention on verse 8. Our text opens with two words of comparison – “Likewise also.” In other words, Jude is saying “The false prophets I warn you to beware of are just like those fallen Israelites, fallen angels, and fallen Sodomites. They are men under the judgment of God, whose damnation is just. – They defile the flesh, like Sodomites, despise dominion like the fallen angels, and blaspheme (speak evil of) God, like Israel.”
“FILTHY DREAMERS”(Jude 1:8) Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
Now, let’s look at Jude’s fourfold description of these false prophets. He tells us first that they are “filthy dreamers.”
In the Old Testament and during the apostolic era, God spoke to men in dreams, revealing his purpose and his word by dreams. But the specific word here used for “dreamers” refers to men “beguiled and deluded by dreams.”
“DEFILE THE FLESH”The Lord God describes them in Jeremiah 23. (Jeremiah 23:25) I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.
(Jeremiah 23:27-28) Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal. (28) The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD.
(Jeremiah 23:32) Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the LORD.
These false prophets are blind, sleeping dogs, self-serving, greedy dreamers. (Philippians 3:1-2) Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. (2) Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.
(Isaiah 56:10-11) His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. (11) Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter.
The word here translated “filthy dreamers” refers to men who are in a confused state of the mind, whose imagination is abnormal, being held captive by ungodly sensuality, making them blind and deaf to reality and truth.
They are called “filthy dreamers” because they “turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness,” because they tell us that the preaching of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, the message of salvation as the work of pure, free grace in Christ, without anything performed by men leads to ungodliness. The doctrine they proclaim is according to their own filthy flesh. They are, as Peter says, “scoffers, walking after their own lusts” (2 Pet. 3:3; 2 Pet. 2:10, 12, 18, 20).
(2 Peter 2:10) But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
(2 Peter 2:12) But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.
(2 Peter 2:18) For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.
2 Peter 2:20) For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
God’s servants are not sleeping dogs who proclaim dreams, but vigilant watchmen over your souls who proclaim the Word of Divine Revelation. – “He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD”
Next, Jude tells us that these false prophets, these “filthy dreamers,” are men who “defile the flesh.” The word “defile” means to pollute and corrupt; but its primary meaning is “to dye with another color.”
Without question, anytime men and women are persuaded that righteousness is something they can perform, unrighteousness always follows. Those who preach salvation by works always produce works of unrighteousness. That was the case in the earliest days following our Lord’s earthly ministry; and that is the case today.
The Corinthians were taught that by abstaining from fleshly pleasure, they could make themselves holy (1 Cor. 7). The result was incest, divisions, and fornication.
A distinct feature of their rituals elements of sexual sacramentalism, including homosexual intercourse, smearing of hands with menstrual blood and semen, and consumption of the same as a variant of eucharist. They extracted fetuses from pregnant women and consumed them, particularly if the women accidentally became pregnant during related sexual rituals.
The third thing Jude tells us about these “filthy dreamers” is that they “despise dominion.” They set aside, refuse, and reject dominion. Quite literally, the word means “They despise the Lord, the One who has dominion.”
Of course, those who despise God’s dominion, and teach others to do so, despise all authority and dominion.
It is characteristic of apostate religionists to rebel because they are agents of Satan, who himself rebels against the government of the Almighty.
That which Jude here speaks of is the fact that all false prophets, and all who reject God’s revelation of himself in the gospel, preach what they do and practice what they do, because they despised God’s dominion. – That is the root of all rebellion and sin (Ps. 14:1-4).
(Psalms 14:1-4) The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. (2) The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. (3) They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (4) Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.
The last thing revealed about these false prophets, these “filthy dreamers,” is the fact that they “speak evil of dignities.” The word translated “speak evil of” is “blaspheme.” The word “dignities” is “glories.” In other words, Jude tells us that these men, in the doctrine they preach (freewill, works salvation), blaspheme all that concerns the glory of God. They speak evil of Christ, who is the revelation of the glory of God. They speak evil of the gospel of Christ by which the glory of God is revealed to us. Let me show you how they blaspheme Christ, the glory of God.
1. The Christ they preach, the Christ of modern, freewill, works religion loves everybody in the universe and wants to save them all.
We are told that Christ loves all men alike, desires the salvation of all men alike, and is gracious to all men alike. That makes the love, will, and grace of Christ helpless and useless. But that language cannot be applied to the Christ of the Bible.
The true Christ, the Christ of the Bible, the saving Christ loves his people, wills and prays for the salvation of his people, and is gracious to his people, the people unconditionally chosen unto salvation from eternity, whom he came to save (Ps. 5:5; 7:11; 11:5; Matt. 1:21; 11:27; John 10:16; John 17:9-10; Acts 13:48; Rom. 9:21-24; Eph. 1:3-6).
2. The Christ of modern, freewill, works religion tries to save everyone.
We are told that he offers salvation to every sinner and does everything he can to save them all; but that his offer is rejected and his work is frustrated by the will of those who refuse to come to him and be saved.
The Christ of this Book does not merely offer salvation. He performs it! Grace is not an offer. It is an operation! The Son of God effectually calls to himself all his elect, his sheep, and sovereignly works salvation in them by the irresistible power and omnipotent grace of his Holy Spirit. Not one of them will be lost. Is this, or is it not the teaching of Holy Scripture? (Psa. 65:4; 110:3; Isa. 55:11; John 5:21; 6:37-40; 10:3, 25-30; 17:2; Phil. 2:13)
3. The false Christ of Arminianism cannot regenerate and save anyone who does not first choose to be saved by him.
We are told that man has a freewill, but that Christ’s will is bound by and must wait upon man’s will because it would not be right for him to violate man’s will!
The true, saving Christ, the Christ of God does violate man’s imaginary freewill; and I am very thankful that he does. Had he not violated my freewill, I would be lost or in hell now!
The same is true of you. He sovereignly regenerates and saves every chosen, redeemed sinner. His operations of grace are totally independent of the will and choice of the sinner. Apart from his work of grace in us, spiritually dead sinners never would or could believe on him and come to him in faith.
Faith is not our contribution to the work of salvation. Our faith in him is the result, not the cause of God’s saving operations. “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (John 3:3-7; 6:44, 65; 15:16; Acts 11:18; Rom. 2:4; 9:16; Eph. 2:1-4, 8-10; Phil. 1:6, 29; Col. 2:12; Heb. 12:2).
4. The false Christ of modern, Arminian, freewill, works, man-centered religion died on the cross for everyone in the world, to make it possible for everyone in the world to be saved, but actually secured no one’s salvation by his death.
We are told that Christ by his death made it possible for all men to be redeemed, justified, and saved, but that his death has no efficacy and saving power for anyone until they believe on him. Thus, we are informed that the Son of God died in vain for all who perish in unbelief. Though he tried to save them, he failed!
The Christ of God is not a frustrated failure! He died for God’s elect and effectually put away our sins by the sacrifice of himself. Having satisfied the justice of God for us, he obtained eternal redemption and salvation for us. We were and are forever pardoned, justified, and sanctified by his blood (Isa. 42:4; 53:8; Matt. 20:28; John 10:14-15, 26; Acts 20:28; Rom. 5:9-10; Eph. 5:25; Heb. 9:12; 10:10-14; 1 Peter 3:18; Rev. 5:9-10).
5. The false Christ of Arminianism loses many who have been saved by him because they do not hang on, hold out, or persevere to the end.
Among the heretical Baptists of our day, some do grant that the sinner has what has come to be called “eternal security.” But it is not security based upon the will, work, and purpose of God in Christ. It is not security based upon the blood of Christ, or the operations of his Spirit. According to the freewiller, all these things are done for all people alike. So their doctrine of “eternal security” is a declaration of security based upon the choice and will of man, not the choice and will of God.
The true Christ, the saving Christ, the Christ of the Bible preserves his chosen, redeemed, called ones by his almighty grace, so that they cannot fall away and perish at last. We are kept in life, grace, and faith by the immutability of his will, the power of his blood, the perfection of his righteousness, the efficacy of his grace, the seal of his Spirit, and the perfection of his intercession (Mal.3:6;John 5:24;10:26-29;Rom.8:28-39;I Pet.1:2-5; Jude 24-25).
At first glance, the Christ of modern, Arminian, freewill, works religion may seem to closely resemble the true Christ, the Christ of Scripture. But he does not.
Those who believe on and serve the false Christ of freewill, works religion do not believe on and serve the Christ of the Bible. They are deceived. They are lost. And they shall forever perish under the wrath of God, unless they come to know and trust the Christ of God, who saves his people from their sins by himself. We must, as we fear God and care for the souls of men, have no fellowship with and give no credibility to Arminian, freewill, works religion (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1; Rev. 18:4).
(2 Corinthians 6:14-18) Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? (15) And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? (16) And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (17) Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, (18) And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
(2 Corinthians 7:1) Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
(Revelation 18:4) And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
We must, in these days of darkness, deception, and delusion, proclaim the Christ of God in all his saving fullness, grace, and glory. He alone is able to save (Rom. 1:15-17).
(Romans 1:15-17) So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. (16) For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (17) For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Let us ever adore, praise, and extol the Lord Jesus Christ alone and completely as our great Savior (Isa. 59:16)
(Isaiah 59:16) And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him.
(Philippians 3:1-2) Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. (2) Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.
(Colossians 2:8) Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
(Jude 1:4) For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Jude 1:8) Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.