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"Seriousness: the Foundation of
Holiness" Text Comment v. 14 What follows is a quotation from The Book of Enoch, a fairly close citation of chapter 1 v. 9 of that book, a work written in the 1st century BC and quite popular in Jude's day. We spoke last week about Jude's use of non-canonical writings. We have considered Jude over the past two Lord's Day mornings in regard to the central theme of this short letter written by the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jude wrote to urge these Christians to contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. And we spoke about how we are to do that and how we are to prevent the inroads of error in our own hearts and in our common life as a Christian congregation. But before leaving this letter I wanted to consider with you Jude's manner, the tone and the tenor of this letter he wrote. For I think there is a very important lesson in that too. Perhaps you have thought about it as we have read the letter through these three Sunday mornings; perhaps you noticed, as I suppose most sensitive readers notice -- whether or not they put the thought into words -- how serious Jude is, how solemn, and how grave. In other ways we have already referred to the urgency with which Jude wrote this letter, but I want us now to stop and think about that seriousness, that way that Jude wrote to communicate the gravity of the issue he was addressing. The Bible, of course, is a book of terrible seriousness. It is a very solemn book. It is a book full of death and judgment and divine wrath, a book of sin and human fall and the terrible consequences of that. It is a book of love and joy as well, but always a serious love and a solemn joy, for the folly of man, the wages of sin and the wrath of God are never far away even when joy is the subject. Perhaps in another day I wouldn't have thought to return to Jude a third time to consider just this, the manner, the tone of Jude's address, the unrelenting seriousness of his argument, but we live in a day when that seriousness so characteristic of the Bible is fast disappearing from Christianity as we know it. Preaching on divine holiness and wrath is becoming less and less common as every survey indicates -- it has disappeared altogether on so-called Christian television --, preaching on sin and its virulent evil is widely regarded as counter-productive to Christian outreach, and stern reminders of the necessity of obedience are likewise supposed to make the church unpopular and, so, ineffective. There has sprung up in the church of God -- I don't say that people necessarily intended this or even recognize that it has occurred -- the idea that there are many things in the Bible that, though they may be true and valuable and, even, essential in their way, are not necessary to preach and teach. One can select from the Bible's doctrines those that seem most apropos of the interests of modern people, the people we are trying to reach; one can leave out of account, at least for a long time, teaching of the Bible that would be hard for our contemporaries to face, still more to accept and believe. And so there has been a great deal of "toning down" the Bible in our time, of taming and domesticating the Word of God. There are large areas of the Bible's teaching that never surface on Christian television and hardly ever surface in a growing number of Christian pulpits where it would still be confessed that the Bible is the Word of God and all that it contains is true. And much of that which no longer surfaces is that where the Bible is just so serious as Jude is here, that which makes the Bible "the hammer that breaks the rocks into pieces." For ourselves, we cannot think that this is wise or right or safe or faithful to God. The doctrines that are being shaved or muted or ignored in our day have never been popular or acceptable to sinful people, but in those doctrines in the past has consisted a great part of the Church's power and influence over the minds and hearts of men and over the cultures in which the Church was present. It is the truth that sets men free, not half the truth, and even the half that is still being preached today lacks power and relevance and point without the other half. No one truly understands God's love who does not know the wrath from which that love rescued us. No one understands his own sin and guilt who does not appreciate what punishments that same sin will bring down on the heads of others no more guilty. And so on. Seriousness is the very nature of Christianity, a Christianity that is not solemn and urgent and grave as Jude is here is not another form of Christianity, it is not genuine Christianity at all. Richard Baxter, the great Puritan, put it this way: "Seriousness is the very thing wherein consists our sincerity. If thou art not serious, thou art not a Christian. It is not only a high degree in Christianity, but the very life and essence of it. As fencers upon a stage differ from soldiers fighting for their lives, so hypocrites differ from serious Christians." [Saints' Rest, p. 46] So, how do we see this seriousness in Jude? In what does it consist? I. We can begin by taking note of the harshness with which Jude characterizes those whose teaching is opposed to the truth and holiness of God because of the severity of the impending judgments of God. It is what is at stake that determines Jude's tone. Now, it is true that these are men who presume to speak as Christians and who are insinuating killing errors into the church by reason of their standing as Christians. The Bible does not usually speak so harshly against unbelievers per se. It condemns them and their unbelief and wickedness of life, but not with the same severity of tone. There is recognition of the ignorance of the unbeliever, however culpable he may remain for his sins. But, Jude shows no such moderation in his condemnation of these false teachers and in that he is only following in his elder brother and master's footsteps and those of the prophets before him. He has taken his tone from Jesus in Matthew 23 and from Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah. These men are not merely of a different viewpoint. They are evil. It is not simply that different Christians don't always see eye to eye, these men are to be damned for the falsehoods they teach. It is not only that they are mistaken, Jude feels free to impute the basest and lowest motives to them: they are selfish, arrogant, libertines who are happy to take others to hell with them if they can profit meantime. Many Christians are today uncomfortable with this. It seems uncharitable or, even worse, it is not urbane, courteous, and respectful -- values much prized in our culture. But, of course, all such concerns are immaterial if one accepts that the issue is eternal damnation such as Jude says that it is. There is no indefiniteness in Jude for the sake of unity among all professing Christians; not when heaven and hell are at stake. And that is precisely what he argues is at stake. He speaks of Israel perishing in the wilderness, of the angels that rebelled being bound with everlasting chains and kept in outer darkness, and of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; he reminds us of Korah's rebellion and leaves us to remember how the ground opened up to swallow Korah and Dathan and their followers. This is what awaits those who think and live as these men do -- no matter what they call themselves! Jude is yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater because there really is a fire and unless the patrons escape they will be consumed. Did you hear on the news this last week the replaying of the 911 calls that came from those caught in the apartment house fire in Bremerton two weeks ago? Did you hear the panic, the terror in those voices. We know what is appropriate in a time of great peril, we know how matters of life and death call for a different tone of voice. Looming over Jude's letter and over the entire Bible and over the Christian faith is that divine judgment, that damnation, that looms over this world and everyone in this world who is not a faithful follower of Jesus Christ! John Donne thought of that damnation this way: "What gnashing is not comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be excluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God." Dante, you remember, sees the entrance to hell as though a gate, a gate that speaks this way in Canto III of the Inferno: Through me you pass into the city of Woe; Another poet looks into that dismal country and writes: In that lone land of deep despair No wonders to the dead are shewn, And what did our Savior say, of heaven, but, by implication, of hell as well -- so much did he speak of that terrible judgment, where the worm does not die or the fire go out, there where men will weep and wail and gnash their teeth -- "If it were not true, I would have told you!" A perfect model of the unbelieving mind to the very end of his life, Voltaire was lying on his deathbed when a lampshade on the bedside table caught fire. "What," he quipped, "the flames already?" He scorned Christianity because he scorned its threat of divine wrath! What does he think now? This, the Voltaire who predicted that Christianity would disappear from educated Europe by the end of the next generation, but whose house in Paris today is occupied by an office of the French Bible Society! The world knows of hell -- here are too many intimations of it in this world, but it suppresses that truth. When life and death for ever and ever, when eternal bliss and everlasting woe are the issue, seriousness and gravity and solemnity are not only appropriate, they are the measure of faith and sincerity and honesty. Jude is as solemn as he is because he is a Christian believer and was guided by the truth of God about the impending judgment of God. II. We see Jude's seriousness also, in the second place, in the danger, the peril he sees in sin: the way it catches up a person, unmans and corrupts him. Jude does not take the view that so long as a person in the church is well-disposed and likeable he is surely safe in the arms of Jesus. He worries, because his elder brother taught him to worry, about the threat that sin poses to those who live before the face of a holy God. You are used to hearing those words, my friends, "holiness of God," but you and I hardly know what these words mean. Our decadent and self-satisfied age and our own sinful hearts ill-prepare us to measure and grasp God's holiness. For so much of the time it is as if there was not to be found in the Bible that terrible teaching that is addressed to us and found so often in Holy Scripture. We are so sentimental -- always subtly transforming in our minds the truth of Holy Scripture into that form we want it to have, with that emphasis that we prefer. It is much of the time as if Jesus never warned us that he would reject and drive away from himself and from heaven many who called him "Lord" when they were in this world, even many who were thought to be his servants -- "Lord, did we not cast out demons in your Name?" -- because for all of their profession and for all that they were regarded as Christians, they did not, in fact, do the will of the Father in heaven. Do you lie in bed at night and shudder to realize that there is that in your life, perhaps many times over, there is that in your life that would give reason for Christ to say to you "Depart from me, I never knew you," that you could not answer back to him, because not all who say "Lord, Lord" enter the kingdom of God, but only those who do the will of their Father in heaven? Remember how he proposes to separate the sheep and the goats on the Day of Days: the sheep will be those who cared for the needy in Christ's name. And what does he say: "Blessed are the pure for they shall see God." Think of the five foolish virgins in the Lord's terrible parable, the parable he taught just a few days before his crucifixion when he was as solemnized as ever a man has been in this world and when the issues of eternity weighed as heavily on him as ever they have weighed on a man. Those virgins had lamps, they had oil, they too wanted to greet the bridegroom and were willing to go out at midnight to meet him, they fell asleep, but, then, so did the wise virgins. The only difference was that the foolish virgins took no extra oil in their lamps and when their lamps went out, they had to go looking for more oil. In a sophisticated study of that parable, Moises Silva, late of Westminster Seminary, tells us that the oil here stands for obedience and good works. It was while they were looking for oil that the bridegroom returned -- and, for that, brothers and sisters, the Lord Christ himself shut the door of his banquet hall against the foolish virgins forever and ever. The same one who says, "I am the door" also says, "The door is shut!" That is the holiness of God. And yet, we seem barely concerned that our lives are lived in indifference to this holiness: whether in regard to the Lord's Day, or sexual purity, or hunger and thirst for righteousness, or the care of the needy, or the faithful undertaking of the responsibilities of a husband or a father, a wife or a mother, an elder or a deacon, a worker or an employer, a friend, a Christian brother or sister. And we are just beginning. What of statements such as these: "If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my Father who is in heaven; but if you will not confess me before men, neither will I confess you before my Father." [Matthew 10:32] Or, "It would be better for a man to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of God's little ones to sin." [Luke 17:2] Chrysostom was just taking seriously what the Bible says so emphatically and so frequently when he wrote that he did not think that many of the ministers of the Christian church would be saved. What else should a man think who reads "it is required of a steward that he be found faithful," and "to whom much is given, much is required," and "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." You would not gather from the life of the evangelical ministry today that anyone is overmuch worried about that prospect! It worries me that it does not worry me more! And to the lukewarm believers in Laodicea, the same Lord Jesus who hung on the cross for the sins and the salvation of his people, said, "I am about to spit you out of my mouth." This is the same Lord Christ who struck dead poor Uzzah for stretching out his hand to balance the ark of the covenant when he thought it was about to fall. No wonder we read that David was afraid of the Lord that day. This is the same Lord Christ who judged his people with such a holy fury that on more than one occasion in the history of the people of God mothers were reduced to eating their children -- exactly the judgment God had promised He would bring upon them. And if you are, now, in your heart, objecting to this emphasis or feeling that I should balance it with other teaching from the Bible, ask yourself why that is. Why is the Bible so full of this teaching about God and fearing God? About how evil God thinks sin to be and how terrible its consequences, even in the lives of those who live in the Church of God. Why is there so much in God's holy book we do not prefer to consider? No wonder that Paul, even Paul -- if ever there was a man who could take his own salvation for granted it was Paul -- that Paul should say "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, since we know what it is to fear the Lord, we persuade men." But, that is not the most startling statement from his immortal pen. No, it is this. In 1 Corinthians 9, where he is speaking of his own practice of self-denial for the sake of his ministry and, still more, for the sake of his own salvation, he writes: I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize! Paul knew the holiness of God and of Christ; he feared that holiness as much as he loved it. He was like Jude in that respect. He understood that sin was nothing to be trifled with, that no Christian should ever make peace with sin in his life or in his church for fear of what it might lead to, for fear of what it might do to him and to his loved ones. Even the champion of justification by faith through the righteousness of Christ worried that the holiness of God might overwhelm him as it overwhelmed so many others who thought themselves safe. And that made him utterly serious about his own salvation, taking to heart every one of that multitude of warnings against laxity and lukewarmness and indifference to holy things and alertness to the attractions of false teaching that he found in the Bible. He was a man who "trembled at God's Word," which the Bible says is the identifying mark of the one the Lord esteems [Isaiah 66:2]. And if Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, felt he must take God's Word with such terrible seriousness, how much more you and I. That is the fear of God; that is what you and I need, and what Christianity desperately needs in our day. Without that holy fear, without that active consciousness of the majesty and holiness of God, that holiness which must forever consume sinners, and will consume vast multitudes of men and women who lived their lives in the church of God, all our talk about the grace and mercy of God and the love of Christ is empty rhetoric, pious window-dressing for the modern techniques we use to seek our own pleasure. Take away the divine holiness and a true fear of God and what we mean by God's grace is nothing other than mere leniency, it is no longer the titanic thing that stands this entire universe on its head and turns sinners like you and me into people who are working out their salvation with fear and trembling knowing that it is the holy God himself who is in us both to will and to act according to his good purpose. Jude here sees sin in that light. And no wonder then his solemnity and gravity and seriousness. Believing in hell and in the holiness of God, believing as we have been taught to believe by our Savior and his prophets and apostles, can anyone think that Jude has spoken too harshly in his letter? Did he overstate his concern? Did he let his passion run away with him? If you and I were informed, for the first time, that the angels of God had six wings and then were asked how they used their wings, we would say, "Why, they fly with them, exerting themselves to the utmost in the service of God." We would not imagine that these angels who always live before the face of God and are familiar with the divine glory still use two of their wings to cover their faces as unworthy to look upon God and two of their wings to cover their feet as unworthy to serve Him and use only the remaining two to fly! But that is the truth of the matter as Isaiah himself tells us. Ponder that. Consider that. Take some time to think about that! And then listen to Jude once more warn us all to take our Christian life and our obligation for the Christian life of others so terribly seriously! |
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