Jude (2012)

God judges the unbelief of unbelievers AND unbelieving believers. Jude is addressing believers in the church about unbelieving false teachers who have invaded their church and challenges them to defend the faith. Identify Jude’s description of them throughout this book that proves they are unbelievers. Understand the three phases of “saving” for the believer and how it can relate to deliverance, specifically the Passover event. Understand why God judged the unbelief of most of the twelve sent to spy out the Land before entering it and how this resulted in God's judgment of an entire generation of believers. God will forgive and forgive, but a time comes when strongholds of unbelief result in consequences for the believer.

It was Jude’s intention to write about soteriology, but the Holy Spirit challenges him to deal with false teachers who had infiltrated this congregation. Find out how two systems of thought, autonomy and antagonism toward God, assert themselves in a culture and influence thought independent from Biblical Truth. Review rationalism, empiricism and mysticism as viewpoints centered on man’s abilities and how faith undergirds these viewpoints. It is the object of faith that separates this faith from Biblical faith. What is the flaw in multiculturalism? How do we know these false teachers are unbelievers, succeeding as saboteurs, fitting in in order to corrupt Truth? How does Jude describe these men and God’s judgment on them in the succeeding verses?

We all grow up in cultures and subcultures which cause us to view the world through a distinctive lens. Parents can protect children through creating a spiritual filter, presetting a mental attitude which confronts every lie with absolute Truth. This allows children to create a defense to worldly exposures prior to being bombarded with them. In order to counter bad ideas we must know what they are and prepare to do battle with the ways they creep into our thinking. Contending for the faith is an intense, daily struggle which demands knowledge of the opposition and an even more thorough reinforcement of Truth. See the contrast between Biblical Christianity and Post Modernism which has invaded our culture and threatened the foundation of our Truth.

We are involved in a high priority battle for Truth. In order to know what we are up against we must study philosophical trends in history and how they formed the cultures of their times. Learn about basic thoughts and methods in Rationalism, Empiricism, Mysticism, Modernism and Post Modern thought. We cannot escape the influence of our own culture and how it serves to dictate behavior. But that’s our challenge. In our study of God’s Word we are called upon to filter out truth from the lie. This is hard work. The movement in our lifetime from Modernism to Post Modern thought is devastating. The consequence for such thought is the complete destruction of that culture. Knowing Truth is not enough. Truth will illuminate error and courage is required to confront the lie.

The authority of scripture is, in every age, challenged by Satan. First we must know scripture with enough maturity to allow us to judge every corner of our own thinking to know where our own thinking is wrong. In order to step out and handle the opposition, Jude strongly encourages us to put up a good fight. This lesson expands comprehensively on the challenge within the word “contend” and how, within the framework of our culture, we can contend aggressively without becoming contentious.

Is God’s Word truth? Does the Bible contradict itself or need human correction? Are there two creation stories which give us an argument for multiple authors with one redactor who edits the text, possibly adding or changing elements to improve upon what was originally written? May we read more deeply into scripture for secondary meanings and compare that to ideas of other interpreters? Learn what it means to trust God’s original, written revelation as sufficient, inerrant truth.

When Jude exhorts believers to contend for the faith, it is necessary to understand just what it is that warrants such energy and devotion. Do we believe that the Word of God is the validation point from which to proceed in order to persevere in the midst of opposition or are we motivated by man’s Higher Criticism and Darwinism? In order to rely on the Word of God as the control point, we need to understand the Doctrine of Inspiration as the presupposition that supports Truth.

Jude’s exhortation to contend earnestly for the faith is a concept packed with vitality, hyper-vigilance and struggle that has internal, external and eternal effects. The battle for inerrancy of scripture, preservation of the faith without dilution, rejection of apostasy, authority of the Bible and identification of false teachers demands an understanding of essentials and nonessentials of the faith. See how the historical emergence of fundamentalism came about to counter the effects of modernism in Christian theology.