Remain Pure in Love and Mercy
The Outcome of False Teachers (1-3)
After Jude opened his letter with the customary and essential greetings of grace (1-2), he moved quickly to make certain they knew he was concerned about how they were contending for the faith (3).
Those Who Had Perverted Grace (4-7)
He mentioned those who had perverted God's grace, using it as a means to live sensually, removing Christ as Lord over their souls in the process and turning the gospel of Jesus into a feel-good message (4).
Jude reminisced that his own brother Jesus had been the One in Egypt during the Moses period doing all the saving, but then Jude added the dagger—after all the saving, He had to destroy those who did not believe rightly the grace of God (5).
Jude then moved to the example of angels, those from the godly line of Seth (Genesis 6:1-4), who decided to marry the women of the ungodly line of Cain (Genesis). Enoch, referenced in Genesis 4 and 5, wrote a historical but not biblical text, the Book of Enoch. Enoch went to great lengths to describe the pact a hundred of the godly line of Seth (angels) made to marry wives from the line of Cain and bear children. These marriages produced great giants who opened the “secrets of Heaven” and introduced into the world chaos, violence, and immorality. Enoch described the horror of the earth during those times as leading up to the necessary destruction of the earth by flood in the days of Noah. Jude wanted the church to heed the seriousness of the issue; those men, once as godly as the angels, who had unlocked the “mysteries of Heaven,” were now being kept in chains under gloomy darkness awaiting Judgment Day (6).
Jude piled on the example of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who indulged in sexual immorality and became front-runner examples of those to be punished with eternal fire (7).
Those Perverting Grace (8-16)
Jude then turned his aim to the present teachers seemingly exalting their dreams above the gospel, which led to three basic behaviors:
They defiled flesh, meaning they infected their bodies and the bodies of others with improper sexual behavior.
They rejected authority, meaning they abolished or declared existing authority to be invalid.
They blasphemed, meaning they spoke to injure and defame those living to bring glory to God (8).
Jude took a moment to clarify the virtue of respect using the Archangel Michael, who was in a debate with the devil, seeking to resolve whom the body of Moses belonged to (Deuteronomy 34:5-7). Michael would not address the devil in a slanderous tone but ended the heated discussion leaving the rebuke of the devil to Jesus (9).
Jude then made the point that these false teachers had no respect for authority, and because of their inability or unwillingness to listen, they did what their animal instincts told them to do (living by their lust), and in the process were destroyed (10).
Jude continued to feature those false teachers, comparing them to some Old Testament examples:
Walking in the way of Cain, a murderer (Genesis 4)
Abandoning themselves to the error of Balaam, who taught Moab how to get Israel to participate in sexual sin and idolatry (Numbers 22-25)
Ending up perishing as in the rebellion of Korah, who sought to overthrow Moses’ leadership (Numbers 16)
For these references, Jude used the term “woe” or horror of horrors (11).
Jude then jumped into metaphors of what these leaders were like:
Hidden reefs - shipwrecking lives as they fellowshipped around food
Shepherds - feeding themselves instead of the sheep
Waterless clouds - promising much but delivering little, as they were not driven to provide rain
Fruitless trees - dead because their lives yielded nothing spiritual to feed on and they had been uprooted from Christ (12)
Wild waves - leaving foam and debris as symbols of the shame resulting from the damage their waves had done to the shoreline
Wandering stars - not trustworthy points of light to navigate by (13)
Jude ended this list by simply saying these ungodly teachers and those joining with them were awaiting God, with an innumerable number of His holy ones, and His execution of judgment against them (14-15).
Finally, Jude signed off on his comments about these false teachers by describing them as negative, dissatisfied, desire-driven boasters using celebrity status to gain an advantage (16).
Those Who Live in the Grace of God (17-23)
Jude reminded them that all the apostles had been prophesying the coming of these sarcastic false teachers driven by their lusts, absent of God’s Spirit, and creating division wherever they went (17-19). They had no reason to be surprised.
On the other hand, those who lived in the grace of God could build up their fidelity and allegiance to Christ through praying in the Holy Spirit (20). This could be a way to say praying in tongues, but it likely referred to much more (1 Corinthians 14:14-15).
They also kept themselves in God's love by waiting on God to show mercy everywhere possible, which would lead to eternal life (21). They were especially to be showing mercy to those who hesitated (indecisive), those in trials (fire), and those stained by immorality.
Judgment is always the knee-jerk response of those not devoted to Christ. Jude’s great call to the saints was instead to show mercy to the undeserving. Don’t overreact, pray in the Spirit, build up your devotion to Christ (faith), and keep yourself in Yahweh's hesed—steadfast, faithful love—so your heart is always postured toward mercy (22-23).
The Promise to Those Living in the Grace of God (24-25)
Jude then diverted their focus from what they could do about remaining true and turned their attention back onto Jesus, who could preserve them from apostasy (stumbling) and make their life fully sacrificed to God (blameless) (24).
Finally, Jude assured the Jesus-followers that all power and wonder came through the Person of Jesus Christ. He called them to look to Jesus and give their hearts to Him in allegiant trust, and in so doing, they would be renouncing the fatal teaching of following their “good inclinations.” Following “good inclinations” destroyed the heart’s capacity to be formed by Jesus and governed by mercy (25).
Piecemeal Proverbs (22:17-31:9)
We come now to the last chapter of Proverbs attributed to the author King Lemuel (1). Little is known of him, but he was likely a foreign king with a godly mother whose advice he honored enough to write down that it might be remembered. A king's mother was often respected more than a king's wives, likely due to a king having only one mother, which was not necessarily true of his wives.
He opens his proverbs with a call to refrain from immoral behavior and sexual impulses (2-3). Next, he calls his son to conquer an addiction to alcohol. This appeal applies to any leader, not to give him/herself to alcohol yet to practice sensitivity in relationship to those who perish, for their need to drink is obvious (4-7). Lastly, he calls for him to be a defender of the poor and helpless, to make sure they are not taken advantage of (8-9).
Principled Wife Proverb (31:10-31)
After giving a great deal of attention to unfaithful women, Proverbs ends with what a faithful wife looks like. This portion of the book is 22 verses in length, each verse beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet; thus it is in an acrostic form lost to the English reader.
Some consider this section to be a handbook for a husband on finding a good wife or for a wife on becoming a good wife, while still others consider the wife here to be a metaphor for wisdom.
While there are many ways to look at this portion of Proverbs, let me simply arrange it in a chiasmus for easy contrast and comparison, for certainly the subjects are repeated in the first and bottom half of this acrostic.
A) A good wife is of great value (10)
B) A husband is enriched by a good wife (11-12)
C) A virtuous wife is industrious and works hard (13-19)
D) A virtuous wife is kind to the poor (20)
E) She has no fear of present difficulties (21)
F) She dresses herself with beauty (22)
G) Her husband is respected (23)
F) She dresses others for profit (24)
E) She has no fear of future unpredictability (25)
D) A virtuous wife is kind with her words (20)
C) A virtuous wife suffers nothing due to laziness (27)
B) A husband praises her (28-29)
A) A good wife should be greatly rewarded (30-31)