Rejecting God’s Authority?

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That's cornerstonerbc.com. Well, grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, we're going to be continuing with our intermittent studies through Jude's epistle. And today we'll be addressing verses eight through 10.

With these verses, I want to consider this question. Are you rejecting God's authority? Now I've been finding Jude to be a truly fascinating book, but it is also sometimes quite dark and challenging. It deals with some very heavy subject matter and also just raises a lot of questions that don't necessarily have very straightforward answers. I think we'll find that we'll be facing some of those today.

So far, we've seen the first three sections of Jude. We've paused in verse one to consider the identity of Jude's audience. He writes to those who are called, beloved, and kept for Jesus. And I spoke about how these words beautifully capture the identity of the Christian. Who we are is defined entirely by God's grace toward us.

We next consider the concept of contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. This is Jude's central message for the Christians he's writing to. The spiritual health and orthodoxy of the churches is threatened by false brethren and false teachers. And he is urgently calling the faithful to contend for the faith against this threat. And then last time we saw how Jude reminds us of God's judgment with three historical examples, Israel in the wilderness, rebellious angels, and Sodom and Gomorrah.

The warning implicit in these examples was that even though we might be greatly blessed by God, we will with certainty face judgment if we refuse repentance and embrace sin and unbelief. But as I said, today we're moving on to a new section, verses 8 through 10, where Jude is going to be dealing with concepts of authority, submission, and rebellion, as he starts describing these false brethren who have crept into the church. What we'll see is that these false brethren rebel against rightful authority, while claiming an authority of their own, leading to their spiritual destruction, whereas the Christian is to submit in every way to God's authority. My goal today is just to exhort you to a humble and reverent submission to God by asking you this question. Are you rejecting God's authority?

Jewel will help us answer this question by giving us some very striking examples of what it looks like to pridefully reject God's authority, and then also an example of what it looks like to humbly submit to God's authority. So let's read our text. We're going to read the whole letter because it's nice and short. But remember, we're focusing on verses 8 through 10. So this is Jude's epistle from the English Standard Version.

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation. Ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality, and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, He is kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you, but these people blaspheme all they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them, for they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain, to Balaam's error, and perished in Cora's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted.

wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires. They are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favouritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in the most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire.

To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. So as I said, today I want to exhort you to a humble submission to God. Do you submit to God's authority or are you rejecting God's authority?

The concept of submission to authority can be a difficult one to address in this day and age because our culture has been so thoroughly steeped in the idea that we are all absolutely equal. You might have heard this called egalitarianism. This is the idea of a kind of absolute equality that blurs all distinctions, rejects all hierarchies, and makes each person an independent agent governed only by their personal desires. Of course, those of us who have read our Bibles know that this is a recipe for disaster, because when left to ourselves, we have the unfortunate tendency to choose precisely what's worst for us. We're not meant to live as these isolated, self-governed individuals.

Instead, God has ordained a whole network of hierarchies and relationships of authority and submission, and has embedded this structure into creation itself. I'm sure you have several examples in your head already. We could mention authority in the family. Children are to submit to the authority of their parents. The wife submits to her husband, who acts as head over his household.

Scripture, it turns out, is relentlessly patriarchal and That is actually a good thing, whatever anyone might tell you. We could also mention, though, the authority of civil government. The Apostle Peter instructs Christians to honor the emperor. And Paul famously writes this to the Romans, that every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

There are also structures of authority in the church. The congregation collectively has a kind of authority. Biblically, we see this in matters of church discipline, for example. The matter is to be brought to the church and dealt with by the church. The elders of the church, also called the pastors or overseers or bishops, also have authority.

In Hebrews, we read, obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will give an account. And of course, Christ is ultimately the head of the church. He is the chief shepherd or the chief pastor, if you will. And he rules his church today by his spirit and through his word. So scripture is authoritative as the instrument by which Christ exercises his authority.

And no doubt we could add to all of these examples, but I think you get the idea. We find ourselves embedded in a whole system of overlapping authorities, ordained by God, and Christian obedience means humbly recognizing our place in this system, submitting to those God has placed over us, and also with godly wisdom and love, exercising authority over those placed under us. In all of this, it is, of course, God's authority that is ultimate. It is to him that we're ultimately obeying where we submit ourselves to any lesser authority. But because of our sinful natures, we tend to be discontent under authority.

The egalitarianism we grow up with certainly doesn't help, but the truth is that we are born with a rebellious nature. And even as Christians, brought under the Lordship of Christ, we continue to wrestle with this tendency to rebel. The sinful heart wants to be ultimate. It wants to dislodge God off his throne and sit there in his place. But of course that's absurd.

Think about it for just a moment. A human being, this puny creature, wants to overrule his maker, the sovereign lord of the universe, who is the source and sustainer of all that is real and good and true. The presumption is staggering. The arrogance is monumental. But that's each and every one of us, until we bow the knee to Christ in every aspect of our lives.

Now in our text today, Jude is describing for us the type of person with precisely this attitude toward God. These are people who have crept into the church, but utterly reject God's authority or seeking to impose their own. By the time we get to verse 8, Jude has already told us about this problem in the churches he's writing to. He wants faithful Christians to stand up and contend for the true faith against these pretenders who pervert grace into sensuality and deny the Lord Jesus. And he's given us, in the previous section, a very clear and terrifying reminder that God judges sin.

Condemnation awaits these people if they do not repent. And now in this next section, and really all the way through to verse 19, Jude is going to be fleshing out his description of these false brethren. I think we can learn a lot from this section about the nature of sin and what it does to us. Jude wanted these churches to wake up to the seriousness of the situation that they've allowed to fester. He wanted them to be prepared to recognize and deal with a problem.

And I suspect he also wanted them to be provoked to self-examination. Do we find these tendencies within ourselves? If we want to learn how to live an obedient Christian life, we can learn a lot from seeing how not to live. And that's how I want to apply what we learned today from verses eight through 10. As we hear about these false brethren, we need to ask ourselves, are we submitted to God's authority or are we rejecting God's authority like these false brethren?

To answer this crucial question, we'll need to know what this looks like. What does it look like to submit to God's authority? What does it look like then to rebel? Jude will show us. He gives us examples of rebellion in verse 8.

and an example of submission to God's authority in verse nine. So here's our roadmap for this afternoon. We'll first consider verse eight, where Jude explains what rebellion looks like for these false brethren. They show their rejection of God's authority in four different areas. First, they reject God's authority in scripture.

They replace true revelation from God with their own private false revelation. This then becomes the foundation and justification for all the other ways that they reject God's authority. Secondly, then, they reject God's authority over their bodies and instead give themselves over to be slaves to their bodily instincts. Thirdly, they reject God's authority to ordain lesser authorities by utterly rejecting authority in general. That is, they refuse to submit to any rightful authority.

And finally, they reject God's authority over demons. Rather than appealing to God's authority over the demons for their protection, they have such pride in their own spiritual authority that they just mock and blaspheme the demons instead. To say it again briefly, they reject God's authority in scripture, over their bodies, in ordaining lesser authorities, and over demons. And this is a very vivid portrait of what it looks like to reject God's authority. And then in verse 9, Jude will show us what it looks like to be fully submitted to God's authority.

We'll hear the story of Michael the Archangel contending with the devil and how rather than presuming to assert his own authority over the devil, Michael humbly defers to God's authority. He says, the Lord rebuke you. And this is how we should live as Christians, giving everything in our lives over to God and living in light of his sovereign lordship over us. So we have an example of rejecting God's authority in verse eight, an example of humble submission to God's authority in verse nine. In this light, we can examine ourselves.

Are we submitting to God's authority? So let's get started. Let's just read our passage again, just verses 8 through 10. When the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

So Jude is addressing the issue of false brethren in the church. Remember, these are people who have entered the church. who are outwardly participating in the church, but inwardly deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. So Jude's now going to show us how these false brethren rebel against God's authority. So let's pay attention to verse eight.

He says that these people, relying on their dreams, do three things. Defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. Relying on their dreams is an interesting detail. And this is where we're going to see how they reject God's authority in scripture. What seems to be happening is that these people are claiming to have received revelation from God through dreams, and they are relying on these dreams to justify their false teachings and sinful behavior.

Prophetic dreaming was one way that God really did reveal himself in the New Testament era. You might remember that Peter quotes the prophet Joel in Acts chapter two as something that was being fulfilled then and there at Pentecost. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. But of course, were there really were true revelatory dreams from God? This is something very easy for the enemies of God to mistake or to fabricate.

Some people might just invent dreams maliciously to manipulate people. Others might experience ordinary dreams generated by the brain and mistake them for supernatural dreams. Or in the very worst case, the dream might really have a supernatural origin. but originate in a spirit who is not the Holy Spirit. That is, we might be dealing with genuine demonic deception.

Now, a sure way to know if a dream is not from God is if it contradicts prior revelation. And since these dreams are being used to justify what God has very clearly called sin in scripture, then it is certain that what is being claimed here is false revelation. So we have these false brethren in the church claiming to have received dreams from God. when they certainly haven't. And much like the many cult leaders of the past and present, these people are appealing to these dreams to corrupt the faith.

They have rejected God's authority as exercised through the scriptures and the teaching of the apostles and substituted a different authority, one that very conveniently for them just happens to stoke their spiritual pride and permits them to indulge in every lust of the flesh. So what they're really doing while claiming to follow God is setting themselves up as an alternative authority. We're receiving these prophetic dreams, they might say. We have more spiritual insight than you, so you should obviously listen to us. But if you do listen to them, that means you're not listening to scripture.

So this is very insidious, but very typical of those who would reject God's authority. In every case, you'll find that real divine revelation, namely scripture, is undermined and something else is exalted as the real authority. Sometimes that's some additional claim of revelation like the Book of Mormon or the Quran, but other times it's scholars or scientists or some other supposed authority who rejects or reinterprets scripture. This is a pattern that we see time and time again with false teachers. So having rejected God's authority in scripture, replacing it with their own authority through these supposed prophetic dreams, this leads these false brethren to other manifestations of rebellion.

First, we hear that their dreams lead them to defile the flesh. This will give us a clue as to what the real authority behind these supposed dreams really is. We've already heard in verse four that these people pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. Judas also just mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire. And then he says in like manner, these people defile the flesh.

It's pretty common in the New Testament for sexual immorality to be associated with false teachers. This is part of the broader problem of antinomianism. We've spoken about this before. This is a twisting of the gospel that says, well, salvation is not by works. I can live however I please, and God will just forgive me.

Antinomianism rejects any role for God's law in informing how we should live the Christian life. So this comes up a lot with false teachers who will always twist doctrine in a way that suits their sinful passions. You see this in Revelation. John writes with messages from the Lord to seven churches. He writes this one to the church in Thyatira.

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. So like Jude's false brethren, here we have someone claiming divine revelation, while teaching this false antinomian doctrine. The Apostle Peter also writes this about false teachers, saying, And once again, this is an issue of rejecting God's authority. Who gets to decide what I do with my body? Well, God does.

He says, thou shalt not commit adultery. He says, the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. In first Corinthians chapter six, we read the body was not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and that you are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. But these people rebel against God's authority over their bodies.

They might appeal to these prophetic dreams to excuse themselves before others, but here we see what their real authority is. Ultimately, it's their sinful flesh. In verse 10 of Jude, we read, they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. By submitting themselves to obey the impulses of the flesh, they have become like animals, irrational slaves to instinct. You see, sin is dehumanizing.

We were made to be rational beings. The mind was meant to rule over the bodily appetites according to what God has told us is good and right. That's why scripture so often calls us to self-control. Much of what sets us apart from the animals is that we can reason and deliberate, and we can say no to our flesh where an animal would just act on instinct. We tend to think of this only in terms of sexual desire, but scripture's call to master our impulses covers far more than that.

What about our appetite for food, for example? Scripture condemns gluttony. We don't talk about that all that much, but I do think we probably should. God made the appetites of hunger and thirst so that we would be motivated to seek the sustenance needed for survival. And he very graciously made it so that we can actually enjoy the process of eating, so that what we need to do is something that we actually want to do.

And that's a very good thing. But what happens when our desires are disordered, as all our desires are to some extent since the fall? What happens when we want more than we need? Can we say no, or are we slaves to our stomachs? We can extend this to all kinds of pleasures that we have in this life.

What about the little dopamine hits that we get when you scroll through social media, or play video games, or go shopping, or whatever happens to be for you? Be clear, it's not wrong to enjoy things or to have hobbies. Recreation is good and we can thank God for the time that we can relax and enjoy what he's given us. But we should not become slaves to pleasure. Are all our desires subjected to the will of God?

Or are we too often, or do we too often just act on instinct to please the flesh? This line of thinking was quite convicting to me as I was preparing this. Upon reflection, there's a lot more in my life that resembles the pattern of these false teachers. than I would have been first willing to guess. It's humbling, but as always, we can throw ourselves on the grace of God for forgiveness and to find freedom from sinful habits.

But back to these false brethren in Jude, I think it's ironic that in exalting themselves and asserting their own authority, They're actually degrading themselves, defiling themselves, inserting freedom from God's authority. They've actually just made themselves slaves to mere instinct, like animals. Peter says, they themselves are slaves to corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. So this is something really important to understand.

Autonomy is a lie. You cannot be your own master. We are created beings. We didn't make ourselves. We didn't determine our own natures.

We cannot free ourselves from the constraints of what we are. And what we are is made according to God's plan and for God's purposes. We were made to glorify God. We were made to enjoy him forever. We were made to obey and live in holiness.

But since our first parents rebelled in the garden, every human being with one Significant exception has entered into this world with a corrupted and broken nature. We are all born into this state of slavery to corruption. And we can either remain in this horrible degrading slavery or in Christ to be restored to submission to God and the holiness for which we were made. We are either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ. And being a slave to Christ is true freedom.

Not freedom to do just anything, not freedom to sin, but freedom to live as we were made to live in loving submission to our rightful King. This means not submitting ourselves to bodily passions, but submitting our bodily passions to God. It means not acting on instinct, but acting deliberately and thoughtfully in love for God and his goodness. But of course, these false brethren, have chosen to remain in their sin, which is what they understand instinctively. And by this, they are destroyed, as we read in verse 10.

So these people reject God's authority over their bodies. We read next, these false brethren reject authority. We've been analysing this whole passage in terms of rejection of God's authority. And here we have something like that stated explicitly, but we're not told exactly what authority Jude has in mind. The word authority on its own is not very specific.

It might also be translated government or dominion. If you want to be very literal, lordship. This does fit with what Jude tells us in verse four, how these people deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. So Jude might be referring specifically to the lordship of Christ in this in this verse, but it also seems plausible that he's referring to lordship or authority in abstract. These people will chafe under any authority.

They don't want anyone to tell them what to do. And that's what happens when you have such contempt for God's ultimate authority. The whole network of lesser authorities that he has established will necessarily be rejected as well. So they're rejecting God's authority to ordain lesser authorities. So might these people be subverting authority within families?

I actually think that probably is the case, since they're promoting sexual immorality. That would completely destroy the right structure and ordering of the home, which is to be built upon the faithfulness between husband and his wife. And if that's so, that's ultimately denying God's authority, who has told us how he wants families to be ordered. But might these people also be rejecting civil authorities? Are they inciting sedition against the government?

Well, there's no real evidence of that in the context of Jude, but I do think it's possible. And if it were so, that's rejecting God's authority, who instituted civil government. And are they rejecting church authority? Maybe casting doubt on certain apostles or undermining the local elders? That seems likely, I think, given what they're promoting.

You might have a church with faithful elders preaching the word, but if there's people infiltrating the church, claiming this new prophetic revelation, I'm sure you can see how that would be very subversive to the authority of the elders. And if that's so, yet again, that's ultimately rejecting God's authority, because that's the form of church government he had ordained. So whatever the exact situation is in these churches, there's clearly a significant problem. When you reject rightful, righteous authority, the only substitute is unrighteous authority. And we've seen that in asserting their own authority, they've actually only submitted themselves to slavery, to their own passions, which will only bring about their destruction.

So these people have rejected God's authority in scripture over their bodies to appoint subordinate authorities. Now we're going to see how they reject God's authority over demons. So the final thing Jude tells us in verse eight is that these people blaspheme the glorious ones, which is quite puzzling at first glance. So let's see if we can understand it. First, the word blaspheme could be misleading, because in modern English this is almost always used of something that is insulting or irreverent toward God specifically.

But the underlying Greek word is much broader than that, even though it often does refer to blasphemy against God. Other translations might be a little more helpful here. Some say, speak evil of, or slander, or insult, or revile. The idea is a harsh or disrespectful mocking, insulting, or criticizing. So these people are speaking in this insulting way about glorious ones.

The ESV is being fairly literal here. Where other translations have something different, what they're doing is trying to offer you an interpretation. So you might have them that are in authority, or dignitaries, or even angelic majesties. But what Jude actually wrote is effectively glorious ones. So who or what are these glorious ones?

Various ideas have been put forward. Maybe this is human authorities, meaning they're glorious or majestic by virtue of their power and office. But it seems most likely, I think, that these are spiritual or angelic beings who, by virtue of having a powerful spiritual nature, will naturally have a kind of glory. But even more strangely, I think the context demands that Jude is referring particularly to evil angelic beings, that is, demons. This might sound strange, but there are some very solid reasons to think this.

First consider the counterexample Jude will give, where we have Michael the archangel refusing to blaspheme the devil. If these two situations are supposed to be parallel, then Jude is making Satan one of these glorious ones. The parallel is even stronger when we compare Jude to the parallel passage in 2 Peter. Let's turn there and have a look. So this is 2 Peter chapter 2, and we'll start in the second half of verse 10.

It says, Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. So notice that Peter, like Jude, is commenting on the behavior of the false brethren in the church. In both passages, we hear that they blaspheme glorious ones. And Peter also provides a counterexample to prove his point.

He says, angels, the greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them. The difference is just that Jude gives us a concrete example. The Archangel Michael did not blaspheme the devil, whereas Peter keeps it general. Angels do not blaspheme the glorious ones. So the parallel suggests very strongly that the devil is one of these glorious ones.

And notice how Peter treats the angels as distinct from the glorious ones. So it can't just mean spiritual beings in general. The good angels are excluded. And so we're clearly talking about evil spiritual beings or demons. So the angels probably have a good reason to pronounce a judgment against them.

But they don't. At least they don't do so in a reviling or insulting way. The false brethren, on the other hand, do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. But they clearly should. These beings are powerful and fearful.

Not even angels are so bold to mock and insult them before the Lord. And if we hear how scripture talks about these beings, I think we'll start to understand why. This is Ephesians chapter 6, verses 11 and 12. Paul writes this. put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So Paul describes these powerful evil spiritual beings. These are rulers and authorities, cosmic powers. This is terrifying. These are beings far beyond us in power and strength, such that we cannot hope to face them without having the whole armour of God, that is, without being equipped and protected by God himself.

These are mighty beings who wield great power and authority. We've been talking about righteous authority so far, so we have to be very clear and make a distinction here. This kind of authority is very different. We are not morally obligated to obey these authorities. In fact, we're commanded to stand against them.

The authority that these beings wield is the corrupt, usurped authority of a kidnapper or a tyrant halting hostages. The shocking truth, though, is that the human race has entered into this tyranny voluntarily, and on the whole, remain voluntarily. Mankind was subjected to this authority when Adam and Eve chose to listen to Satan rather than God. From that moment, the world was cursed and subjected to the influence of Satan. Of course, God didn't give up any of his sovereignty when this happened.

But as part of the curse, he gave humanity over to Satan's power. That's why Paul can call Satan the god of this world or the prince of the power of the air. Satan is permitted for a time to reign over the wicked. And this is why salvation is sometimes described in terms of a transfer of citizenship from one kingdom to another. Paul says, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness, transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son.

With his victory on the cross, Christ has bound the strong man and has been plundering his goods. He has been plundering Satan's kingdom from that moment to this very day, as he adds soul after soul to his kingdom through the proclamation of the gospel. So in Christ, we change sides. Now we fight against those spiritual forces that once held us captive. But here's the key point for this passage.

How are we to engage in this spiritual warfare? Paul says we wrestle against these powers and principalities. These are our enemies. So is it really wrong to blaspheme demons? Well, yes.

Here's what I think is happening. These people have developed such a colossal pride and confidence in their own spiritual authority that they think they can face these spiritual forces of evil on their own. Jude tells us in verse 10 that they do this out of ignorance. These people blaspheme all they do not understand. And that's very clear.

They're not afraid. They don't realise their danger. If they understood, they would be utterly crushed with fear. But they think the demons are subject to them, like they were to Christ's disciples. And so they feel entitled to wage spiritual warfare with careless, blasphemous words.

They taunt these demons, insult them, make light of their might and power. And remember, these people have rejected God's authority. They deny the Lord. They haven't put on the full armor of God, so spiritually speaking, they're stark naked before these cosmic powers. This is like walking up to some monstrous wild beast, perhaps like a vast ravenous lion, and just poking it in the nose, laughing at it, ruffling its mane, or maybe slapping it in the rump.

What would become of you if you did that? I don't think it's going to go very well. The absurd overconfidence of these people makes them incredibly vulnerable to demonic influence. Once again, it's ironic that when you arrogantly claim authority for yourself, that ends up pulling you deeper into slavery. Slavery to the flesh.

Slavery even to demons. And that's why, by the way, we should be very concerned when professing Christians think they can rebuke Satan or mock demons. You see this more in charismatic or Pentecostal circles. But wherever you see it, it's just not biblical and it's certainly not safe. We're never, never told to do this.

But I don't want to suggest that the main problem with doing this is just the risk of bad consequences. This is not just dangerous. The deeper spiritual problem here is that doing it dishonours God. Reviling and abusive language comes from a heart of pride, one that is not humble and wants to sit on God's throne as judge. When we're submitted to God and we live in light of his greatness and our weakness, we approach all situations with humility.

We don't arrogantly assert ourselves, even over our enemies. Instead, we need to call out to God and give the situation over to him. What we're going to see next is a positive example of exactly this. So this brings us to verse nine, let's read it. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you.

Jude provides this story as a counterpoint to what he's just charged the false brethren with doing. They blaspheme the glorious ones, rejecting God's authority over demons. But here's what we're meant to do instead, if we want to submit to God's authority. We have a story involving an archangel called Michael in a confrontation with Satan. We hear about Michael only a few times in scripture.

In Revelation, for example, he leads the heavenly host of angels in battle against the dragon and his angels. To be an archangel means to be a chief or ruling angel. Arch has the same meaning in the words monarch or archbishop. So this is an angel of particularly high rank or authority. We learn the most about Michael in the Old Testament book of Daniel.

There, Michael is called one of the chief princes and identified as the chief prince in charge of Israel. The implication in Daniel is that there are these angelic authorities that have charge over particular nations, some being good and some being evil. Scripture doesn't elaborate on this, so we should resist the temptation to speculate too much. But the key idea for our purposes is just that Michael is someone with a lot of power and authority, a lot more than the pretended authority of the false brethren. So this is going to be important for Jude's point.

Before we get to that, though, I think we have to acknowledge this particular story about Michael is not recorded anywhere else in scripture. So the question naturally arises, where is Jude getting this from? It's pretty clear to me that we're supposed to understand this to be a historical event, something that really happened. If this were just a legend, the moral weight of the example would be lost. It also seems likely that this is a story that Jude's original audience would have been quite familiar with.

Jude doesn't write this as though he's revealing something brand new that no one has heard about before, but more like he's reminding us of something that we've already heard about, like the other historical examples that he brings up. So this is a story that's well known, but not known from scripture, is probably part of a popular Jewish tradition that would have been very well known for the time. Some writers in the early church tell us that there was a similar account of this event recorded in the non-biblical book called the Assumption of Moses, of which only a few fragments remain today. But this raises a lot of questions. Is Jude quoting this book?

Is he endorsing it? Does that mean that we have to assume the whole book is trustworthy? And we'll have very much the same questions when we come to the passage about Enoch later in Jude, which also appears to come from another non-biblical text, in this case, the book of Enoch. So what do we do with this? Well, I hope to address the issue more thoroughly if the Lord allows and we eventually get to the Enoch passage.

But here are a few basic thoughts that should help us think a little more clearly about this issue. It's crucially important that we avoid two equal and opposite errors. That is, if we assume that Jude is endorsing these books, we'll fall into one of two errors. Either, on one side, we'll reject Jude as being authentic scripture, because we're convinced that Assumption and Enoch, these two apocryphal books, can't be genuine, and that Jude is wrong to endorse them. But we really don't want to be doing that.

Jude is, of course, part of our settled canon of scripture. Or on the other side, we might be convinced that Jude is scripture, and so we'll just accept these books, not necessarily as scripture, but at least as reliable historical records. But we really don't want to do that either. If you look at these books, they're obviously filled with myths and legends and human fabrication. But thankfully, we can avoid either conclusion, because both rest on a false premise.

That is, Jude, and by extension the Holy Spirit, is simply not endorsing these books as wholes. The most we can say for sure is that he's endorsing the historicity of these specific events that he mentions. And that's all we need to say. We can trust that the Holy Spirit led Jude's mind to these particular stories, not only because they were true, but also useful to make his argument. There's no justification for going any further than that.

Now, how these true stories came to be mixed up in all the other wild myths and legends, we can't say for sure. I tend to suspect that these were true stories passed down in the Jewish tradition for a long time before they were later taken up into these apocryphal texts and mixed up with all the other strange material. There's nothing to say that these kinds of traditions can't occasionally preserve something true, and that seems to be the case here. So hopefully that clears up some of your questions, but let's go back to the text and we'll see what Jude is trying to tell us with a story. So let's hear verse nine again.

So Michael, this chief angel, is contending with the devil over the body of Moses. Moses had died, and all that we're told in the Old Testament is that God buries him. But no one knows exactly where his grave is. At some point after this, it seems the devil wanted Moses's body for some nefarious purpose. Michael is sent to stop him.

What's crucial here is what Michael, one, refrains from doing, and then two, what he does do. What he does not do is presumed to pronounce a blasphemous judgment. I like the way that the New King James puts it. It says, dare not bring against him a reviling accusation. Now clearly, Satan thoroughly deserved to be accused.

He's doing something very twisted and evil. It would feel very natural, I think, from a human point of view, to curse and accuse someone if you caught them doing something like that. If I put myself in that situation, I imagine the reviling words would just spring to my mouth almost without thinking. Just the sheer outrage. You hideous monster.

You vile, perverse, wretched thing. You could probably say a lot worse. The sinful nature that remains, even in the Christian, naturally leads to that kind of cursing or reviling. What's really wrong with it is that it comes from a place of pride and presumption. When you use that kind of language, you're daring to think yourself in such a high place as to bring this kind of judgment to bear.

But we're not in such a high place. So is anyone able to do this without sinning? I think if any creature in all creation had the might and authority to dare bring an accusation against the devil, it would be Michael, the greatest of the holy angels. But he doesn't. He's humble and he knows he is not the ultimate judge.

Rather than cursing the devil himself in his own power and authority, appeals to God and says, the Lord rebuke you. He doesn't impose his own authority. He knows it's not his place, but he defers completely to God's authority, the rightful judge. So when Michael refrains from cursing the devil, it's not because he respects the devil. Rather, it's because he has such a profound reverence for God.

He respects God's authority. So you can see the stark contrast between this and what the false brethren were doing. Those who have cast off God's authority are so puffed up with pride that they do dare to pronounce a blasphemous judgment against these mighty cosmic powers they cannot begin to comprehend. But the godly know who they are. We are lowly creatures, very weak, very vulnerable.

Even the mighty Archangel Michael knows his limitations. But also like Michael, we should contend with the powers and principalities. Humility does not mean that we have to step out of the fight. Resist the devil and he will flee from you is a promise that we have from the Lord. But we shouldn't do this with any pretended authority of our own, but humbly, appealing to God.

And it is only if we are submitted to his power and his authority that we can possibly hope for victory. To bring this message to a close, I'd just like to reflect on what we've seen and bring it all together. I began by asking the question, are you rejecting God's authority? And now we've seen what it looks like to pridefully reject God's authority. And on the other hand, what it looks like to humbly submit to God's authority.

Judas told us about the rebellious false brethren in the church. The first thing we saw was that they reject God's authority expressed in scripture. These people rely on false prophetic dreams to justify their sin. This means they're exalting their own supposed revelations above what has already been revealed. If this is what we're not meant to do, the opposite is what we should do.

Submission to God means a diligent obedience to his word. So are we? Are we obeying the word? If so, we won't be going after dreams and visions. We won't be exalting ourselves as prophets.

He has given us what we need to know. He's told us what it is to live a godly life. And if we trust scripture, we will easily reject false prophets who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality, like these people were doing. Next. We saw that these false brethren defile the flesh, rejecting God's authority over their bodies.

We saw how they became so corrupted that they're mere slaves to instinct, obeying their passions like irrational animals. Does this describe us? The Christian's body belongs to the Lord. In humble reverence for the Lord, we are supposed to submit our every desire to his authority. We also saw how these people reject God's authority to ordain lesser authorities.

In their rebellion against God, They rebel against all rightful authorities. But for us, of course, if we are submitted to God, we will place ourselves into submission to all rightful authorities that God has placed over us. In the family, in the civil sphere and in the church, to obey God's ordained authorities is to obey God himself. Are we doing that? And finally, we saw how these false brethren reject God's authority over demons.

They blaspheme the glorious ones, meaning the powers and principalities over this present darkness. In their pride and in their arrogance, they revile these powers, but in doing so, they reject God's authority, the only authority able to deliver us from such mighty beings. The story of the Archangel Michael shows us how we ought to wage our spiritual warfare. We don't assert ourselves. We need to humbly appeal to God's authority and to his authority over the demons as judge.

The Lord rebuke you. So what a difference there is between a life in submission to God and a life in rebellion. The Christian is called to a humble submission to God, and that is to inform our whole lives. And it's easy to say that, but do we live that way consistently? Are we really submitted to God in everything and in every way?

That's what really struck me as I studied this passage and considered how to apply it to myself. There are so many ways that we can fail. So many ways that we do fail. The False Brethren Jude talks about fail in very big and dramatic ways. But there are far more subtle ways.

The very same sinful inclinations can manifest even in the life of a Christian. I spoke about the little ways that our desires for pleasures can dominate us. Even pleasures that are not intrinsically sinful to enjoy, but can become a problem because they control us and demand more than God would have us give. These are such subtle sins because they're so easy for us to rationalise to ourselves and to hide from others. And think even about this idea of blaspheming demons.

If you're in the habit of doing that, you should sort that out. But more likely, we speak reviling words about other human beings. Maybe they've done real wrong to us, but we have to guard our tongues. If it's wrong to mock and insult demons, if it's not our place to condemn them, How much worse is it when we insult our fellow man and presume to stand in God's place as judge over them? So we all fail.

We fail to fully submit to God's authority. Let's not be content with that. Just as we call on the Lord to wage war against these principalities and powers, we also need to call on him to wage war on our own sin, on every way that we fail to honour his glory and majesty and rightful authority. The good news is that he's very gracious. When we come to him in the name of Jesus, he does forgive us and day by day renew us after the image of his son, his son who showed us the ultimate example of humble submission.

He took the form of a servant and humbled himself, becoming obedient even to a shameful death, a death for us, for our forgiveness and our redemption. Amen.