Jude 1 – 7 “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, To those who are called, loved by God the Father, and kept in Jesus Christ: Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Beloved, although I made every effort to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt it necessary to write and urge you to contend earnestly for the faith entrusted once for all to the saints. For certain men have crept in among you unnoticed—ungodly ones who were designated long ago for condemnation. They turn the grace of our God into a license for immorality, and they deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Although you are fully aware of this, I want to remind you that after Jesus had delivered His people out of the land of Egypt, He destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day. In like manner, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display as an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire.”
He’s politically incorrect, but for years Yosemite Sam was a beloved Looney Tunes Cartoon figure with bristling mustaches, blazing guns, and a hair trigger temper. It didn’t take much to get Sam riled up and he spoke his mind, no matter what! Jude the disciple sounds a lot like Yosemite Sam.
Who was Jude? Scholars think it most likely that he was a brother or half brother to Jesus and that his name originally was Judas. But English translations shorten it to Jude to avoid confusing the writer of this epistle with Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. In the beginning, none of Jesus’s brothers believed in Him, but after His death and resurrection, they believed and many of them became missionary teachers. Chuck Swindoll says, “From this scant portrait, we begin to picture Jude as a man who lived in skepticism for a time but eventually came to a powerful faith in Jesus. And as he traveled on behalf of the gospel—telling the story in city after city with his name Judas butting up against that of Judas Iscariot—he would stand as a living example of faithfulness, a stark contrast to the betrayer.”
This epistle is one of the shortest books of the Bible. Just like Yosemite Sam, Jude has no time for “varmints,” that is, evil doers. While the Apostle John was writing to warn churches of false doctrine, his warnings sound positively mild by comparison with Jude’s! Again, Swindoll says, “Jude’s edgy brevity communicates the urgency of his notion that false teachers needed to be condemned and removed from the church. Few words meant that Jude would not waste space dancing around the issue. He saw within the church people and practices that were worthy of condemnation, including rejecting authority and seeking to please themselves. In response to these errors, Jude marshaled much biblical imagery to make clear what he thought of it all—anything from Cain killing his brother Abel to the punishment of the sinful people who populated Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Jude sees the church in danger, poised on the edge of a theological and moral cliff, and is doing everything he can to sound a warning. In the old days, trumpets were used to announce all kinds of things, but there were certain trumpet calls that told people they were under attack. The Book of Jude is a verbal trumpet call to righteousness.
One of the challenges facing Christians today is that of political correctness. Those who wish to pursue their own morality attempt to control others by shaming them and labeling them. But ironically, the same people who have demanded that cartoon figures such as Yosemite Sam be withdrawn find nothing wrong with children playing violent computer games such as Grand Theft Auto.
Christians have always found themselves opposing popular culture in every age. Standing for righteousness has never been easy. More than a century ago, James Russell Lowell wrote a poem entitled “Once to Every Man and Nation” At the time, Lowell was writing to oppose slavery. Here is the first verse of that poem:
Once to ev’ry man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
‘Twixt that darkness and that light.
The choices have never changed: bowing to popular culture or standing for righteousness. And the choices have never been easy.
PRAYER: Father God, show us your goodness! Show us your truth! Show us your righteousness! And help us never to waver and never to bow to the pressure of culture. Forever, O Lord, your Word is settled in heaven! Let your Word be engraved on our hearts and let us follow hard after you all the days of our lives. In the matchless Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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