JUDGMENT REMINDERS (PART 6)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord’s love, they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain. They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots. They are like wild waves of the sea, churning up the foam of their shameful deeds. They are like wandering stars, doomed forever to blackest darkness.

Jude 1:12-13 NLT

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As we have seen over the past five messages, a large part of the Epistle of Jude is focused on warning his readers, fellow Christian believers, about the infiltration of the ungodly into their ranks. This warning goes into great detail regarding the character traits of these people who dishonor God by not considering His will for their lives, always placing their own desires first. And given that Jude, the half brother of Jesus, uses a lot of references to events and figures in the Old Testament, it is believed that his audience was largely Jewish converts to Christianity.

As we come to today’s passage in what is the sixth message in this series titled “Judgment Reminders”, we find Jude continuing to call out the ungodly with a list of comparisons, much like we saw in yesterday’s message. The difference here is that the associations are with things and not people. Look again at his words found in verses 12 and 13.

When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord’s love, they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain. They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots. They are like wild waves of the sea, churning up the foam of their shameful deeds. They are like wandering stars, doomed forever to blackest darkness.

How can one get an understanding of what the ungodly are like?

Let’s break down these words into the separate comparisons found within.

1. The ungodly are like reefs that can shipwreck.

When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord’s love, they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you.

When ships get closer to the coastline, they need to always be wary of dangers that can lurk under the water’s surface and one of those dangers is reefs. These days, nautical charts used for navigation have reefs marked out and identified but no such resource was available in biblical times. And so unfortunately, more than a few ships found themselves striking reefs and destroying their vessels.

Here, Jude is making the point that the ungodly can often disguise themselves within a Christian body, lurking under the surface undetected while entering into fellowship with true believers. Ultimately, once a relationship is formed through fellowship, a Christian’s reputation can be damaged once the ungodly person’s sinfulness is exposed. Call it a spiritual shipwreck caused by assumed guilt through association.

2. The ungodly are like shameless shepherds who only care for themselves.

They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain.

A shepherd is solely responsible to care for the sheep in their flock. That’s it.

True shepherds are selfless, dedicating themselves to ensuring their sheep are nurtured and protected, even willing to put themselves in harm’s way in the process. And as we find Jesus sharing in one of his parables, legitimate shepherds see everyone of the sheep within the flock as important, so much so that they would be willing to leave 99 sheep behind to seek one that has gone astray (Matthew 18:12-14).

The ungodly share no qualities of these real shepherds. They shamelessly care only for themselves and their own gain so no one should ever expect that they will go out of their way to do anything of benefit for another, much like a cloud would just blow over the land and not provide the needed gift of rain.

3. At their core, the ungodly are dead in their faith.  

They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots.

At the heart of the harvest season, trees bear wonderful fruit that nourishes and sustains the health of those who enjoy its tasty gifts. But the ungodly can’t be compared to these trees because the last thing they do is produce anything of spiritual value. Rather, they “bear no fruit” because they aren’t rooted in God and as a result are dead in their faith and disconnected from His Spirit, the Spirit that produces the fruit He desires (Galatians 5:22-23).

4. The ungodly are skilled at carrying out shameful deeds.

They are like wild waves of the sea, churning up the foam of their shameful deeds.

Not rooted in the Lord and dead in their faith, the ungodly are guided by Satan. They carry out his will and way which always leads one down the road of sin where the accumulation of “shameful deeds” builds to a place where they are clearly evident much like the foam produced by the churning “wild waves of the sea”.

5. The ungodly essentially live a doomed existence.

They are like wandering stars, doomed forever to blackest darkness.

Think about what we know about space and the universe beyond planet earth.

There, we find shooting stars, stars that don’t remain fixed in one place, shining brightly so to be easily located and identified. These are the “wandering stars” we read about at the end of this passage, stars that illuminate for a brief moment as they “shoot” across space, only to be “doomed forever to blackest darkness”.

Like these shooting stars, the ungodly only exist for a short time before God commits them to their destiny, the doom found in the eternal darkness and damnation of Hell.

Why did Jude spend so much time focusing on the ungodly?

I believe there are two reasons.

First, the intent is to warn Christian believers to avoid association with those who choose to partner with Satan and be dead in their faith through loving sin and wickedness more than God and His righteousness.

But the other reason this letter is important is that it exposes the judgment God will bring on the ungodly and it would be my hope and prayer that if this letter was read by someone who had previously rejected God, that they would repent of their sin and change the course of their life, not just for the present but forever.

As we’ll see in tomorrow’s message, Jude still isn’t finished on this subject and I hope you’ll come back to read the next message in the series.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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