The Certainty of Judgement

Good afternoon to all, grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, we do have the privilege of turning again to the little epistle of Jude, which you find right at the end of your New Testaments, just before the book of Revelation. In this case today, we have some very serious and sobering concepts to consider, as we usually do from Jude. And today I want to consider the certainty of judgment. We're now reaching verses 14 and 15 of Jude's epistle, which is where Jude is going to tell us about an ancient prophecy from a prophet by the name of Enoch.

This prophecy speaks for the future coming of the Lord Jesus in judgment. So today we're going to be hearing about the second coming of Christ, how he's coming to execute the wrath of God upon sinful mankind. This of course is going to be very applicable to the situation that Jude has been addressing in the church, the situation where there are false believers who have infiltrated the church. These are people who profess faith and are actively involved in the church, but inwardly these people are abandoned to sin, they reject the truth, and they deny the Lord. Jude doesn't have a particular name that he gives these people, but they fit the description of what Peter calls false teachers.

But because Jude's emphasis has not so much been on their teaching, I've been using the broader term of false brethren. I call them false brethren because they claim to be brethren. They might even look like brethren, but they're not. Their profession of faith is a dangerous lie. So Jude is writing to warn the churches about this threat.

and urged them to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It's in this context that Jude speaks to us about the second coming of Christ in judgment. As he emphasizes time and time again, these people who have crept into the church are sinners who will face God's judgment. This is the main theme that I want to reflect on today, the certainty of this judgment. We'll see that Jude absolutely insists on the church dealing with this problem of false brethren and contending for the faith in light of the certainty of coming judgment.

Before we get to that, of course, I do want to pray and then we will read the text. So let's do that. Let's address our Lord. Lord God, you are good and your steadfast love indeed endures forever. You made all things Lord and all things belong to you.

Even our very souls, Lord, are yours, and our hearts are in your hands. So, Lord, I ask that you would turn our hearts toward you this afternoon. Open our ears to hear your voice, and our hearts to heed your instructions. Be gracious to us that we would hear these things and learn wisdom from your mouth, that by your word we would be encouraged that you would correct us and convict us and point us to Christ. So help us, Lord.

Help me to speak and help my Brethren to hear, may whatever I say that is true and right and good, may that be applied to your people, may it bear fruit for your glory. Thank you, Lord. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. So I'm going to now read the whole letter of Jude.

It's nice and short, so we'll get through it. But remember, we're focusing on verses 14 and 15. So this is the epistle of St. Jude. 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 the 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, O 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 Korah'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, 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 favoritism 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 your 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, to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen. So today we're going to be considering Enoch's prophecy of final judgment and Jude's application of this prophecy to the false brethren that he knows about in the church.

So as usual, Jude is asking us to come face to face with some very challenging and uncomfortable truths. The fact of the wrath of God against sin is easily one of the most despised teachings of the Church to the wider world. And actually, and sadly, you'll find that it's actually one of the most despised teachings in the broader Christian world as well. Almost everywhere you go you'll find professing Christians downplaying this doctrine, softening this doctrine, or even rejecting it altogether. But it is often the case that many of the most challenging and uncomfortable truths are also the most important, and that's very much true of God's wrath against sinners.

I would contend that it's actually one of those central pillars of the Gospel message. You simply can't preach the Gospel without it. It's right there, even at the heart of that one Bible verse that everyone knows. John 3.16 is famous for its declaration of God's love for the world.

We have to remember what else it says. So the Gospel places before us two outcomes. We can remain in our sins and perish. or we can believe and have everlasting life in Christ. The good news of salvation in Christ is only good and sweet when we understand what we're being saved from.

We have to realize that apart from Christ, we are condemned already. We are condemned to perish for our sins. And that is the fate that we all thoroughly deserve. If anyone refuses to acknowledge this, realize that the very character of God is at stake. Is God good?

Is he righteous? Is he just? Is he holy? If so, God must hate sin and must judge sinners. If anyone has a God that doesn't, I submit to you that that imaginary God is nothing more than an evil demon entirely unworthy of worship.

But of course the real God, the only living and true God is good and holy and just. And so he will judge sin as the scriptures testify with perfect consistency from Genesis through to Revelation. And as I think we've seen, this has also been a persistent theme in the epistle of Jude. Consider verse four of Jude. He says of the false brethren that they long ago were designated for this condemnation.

In verses five through seven, Jude makes the point of reminding us of God's past judgments with three examples. He destroyed those he did not believe who were saved out of Egypt. Rebellious angels are kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Sodom and Gomorrah serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. And then in verse 10, we're told that the false brethren are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

We also hear that they're like wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. That's from verse 13. And then of course we come to our verses today recounting Enoch's prophecy of judgment. So Jude is not being hard to understand. He has an important point that he wants to make abundantly clear.

Those in the church who don't believe, who deny the Lord and remain in their sins, will certainly face God's wrath. There's no getting around it. God has judged before and will certainly judge again. It was predestined, it was prophesied, and thus will certainly come to pass. This is Jude's emphasis.

He wants churches to be reminded of this fact. He wants them to respond to the problem of false brethren in the church in light of this fact. That's going to be the focus of my message today then. The certainty of judgment. There's another important issue that's raised by this text that I don't think we can pass over.

That's the issue of where this prophecy that's attributed to Enoch actually comes from. The prophecy that Jude talks about isn't found anywhere else in scripture. So where is Jude getting this prophecy? Is Jude quoting some apocryphal text? Perhaps the book of Enoch?

You might have heard of it. And what would we make of it, if so? So we're going to have to address this, and that's what I want to do first. We'll consider questions about Jude's source for this passage about Enoch and whether he's telling us about real history. And then we'll look closely at this prophecy itself.

What I want to emphasize is the idea that judgment is sure and certain. And this will be seen from the great antiquity of this prophecy and also the universal language that he uses. All will be judged and all the ungodly will be found guilty. There's no escape. No one will be left out.

Every ungodly deed will be brought forward. This will then lead us to a discussion about the reason the ungodly will be convicted, namely their ungodliness. We'll see how this describes false brethren in contrast to true Christians and what this means for us in dealing with sin and contending for the faith in the context of the church. So let's get into it. Let's hear the passage again.

So it's clear in our minds. Let's read verses 14 and 15 of Jude's epistle. 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. So Jude is telling us about a prophecy from Enoch who is called the seventh from Adam. Enoch is one of those fascinating biblical characters who make a big impression even though we're told almost nothing about them.

He's mentioned very briefly in Genesis chapter five as part of a genealogy. You can actually turn there and have a look. Genesis chapter five gives us the generations from Adam through Seth to Noah. If we count Adam himself as the first generation, we count seven generations on and Enoch is the seventh. the sequence.

Hence he's the seventh from Adam as Jude tells us. So this is very early in history of the human race. Enoch is a father of Bethuselah and great-grandfather of Noah. And this is what we hear about him if we turn to Genesis chapter 5 and to verse 21. This is what we hear.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Bethuselah. Enoch walked Let me say that again. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, but God took him.

It's that last line that makes Enoch particularly special in this list. He walked with God. And God took him. Nothing more is said. It's very mysterious.

He was a holy man, evidently. He walked with God, suggesting he lived in deep communion with God. And God took him, meaning, apparently, that God took him up to heaven directly, without first passing through death. The book of Hebrews explains it this way. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.

And he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. But from scripture, that's all we know about Enoch apart from this passage in Jude.

Without Jude, we wouldn't know that he was a prophet. We certainly wouldn't know that he prophesied about the final judgment. So the obvious question is, where did Jude get this? When New Testament authors reference something in history, it's usually a reference to something in scripture. So this does stand out as a bit unusual and even a bit puzzling.

An easy answer we might be tempted to give is just that God must have just shown it to him as direct revelation. And while this is possible, I don't think it's very likely. For one thing, Jude gives us no indication that he's giving us new information. He brings it up without any introduction or explanation. He could have said, I had a vision or I saw a revelation or something like that, but he doesn't.

He seems to expect his readers would just accept what he's saying. without any further explanation, as though they'd heard the story before. It would also be very unusual for God to reveal some entirely new and unknown detail about the distant past just for Jude to make a point about the final judgment. That would be quite out of place and would probably distract from the argument that Jude is trying to make, simply because it would raise so many questions. So it's much more likely that Jude is drawing this bit of history from some public source that would have been well known at the time, whether something written down or passed around by word of mouth.

So it seems to make sense to say that Jude is probably drawing from some tradition about Enoch that was well known among the Jews in his day. And interestingly, we can, in fact, identify a source that contains a reference to this exact prophecy. If you have a study Bible or read a modern commentary, they'll tell you about a text called the Book of Enoch, or sometimes called First Enoch, because there are actually several texts from the ancient world that are attributed to Enoch. Now First Enoch is an unusual book. I did read parts of it in preparation for today, and to be honest, it's pretty weird.

I couldn't help but think about that passage in Titus where Paul warns about people who are devoting themselves to Jewish myths. Well, the book of Enoch is full of these weird Jewish myths. It talks a lot about angels and demons and Nephilim. These are things that fascinate people today. And it was no different in the time of Jesus and the apostles.

People would get really drawn into these kinds of theories and speculations. You can imagine how easy it would be for these kinds of myths to come about. You just need to read that reference to Enoch in Genesis and your mind starts racing. What was his story? You start speculating about his life and all the things that he might have done.

So by Jesus' time, the Jews had lots of myths and legends about all the most fascinating biblical stories. The problem was, of course, that very little of it was grounded in what God had actually revealed. So most of it was nonsense. The danger was that it tended to distract people from the central truths of the faith and draw the church into needless debates and controversies. And that's what Paul was so concerned about.

This kind of thing is a danger for us all when we're not content with what God has actually revealed. The kind of thing that we do when we go running after hidden knowledge and secret insights is a way of madness. We need to remember what Moses says to the people of Israel. The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. So we need to be content with what God has actually revealed and leave the mysteries of scripture as mysteries.

Now the book of Enoch contains a lot of speculation, fairly human speculation that's trying to fill this gap about those secret things that ought to belong to God. Apparently it's a patchwork of texts cobbled together from different time periods. The scholars usually date the earlier portions that contain the prophecy that Jude is referring to, to a few hundred years before the time of Jude. The book might very well contain some nuggets of earlier traditions, and in fact I'm going to argue that it does. But on the whole, it very clearly was not written by the historical Enoch.

It's much more recent than that. So for very good reason, it was never widely accepted among the early Christians, although some of them did cite the book and were aware of it. It wasn't accepted as scripture by the Jews. And even our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends who like to have a few extra books in their Old Testaments don't include the book of Enoch. And so that should tell us something about how the church has received this book over time.

But amongst all the weirdness of First Enoch, There is a passage that is remarkably similar to what we have in Jude. It's nearly a direct quote. So is this where Jude is drawing from? And if so, it's going to raise a lot of questions. So I've just told you that it's full of Jewish myths and speculations.

That's naturally going to raise questions about what Jude's doing. Why would he be quoting from such an unreliable text? Well first of all, we can't be perfectly certain that Jude is citing 1st Enoch directly. Maybe the writers of 1st Enoch and Jude are both drawing on some unknown third source. It's also quite possible, even very likely, that Jude is in fact aware of 1st Enoch and intentionally citing it.

So we do have to face up to this uncomfortable idea. It's uncomfortable because of course we want to hold to the highest view of scripture as God's own word. This is breathed out by God. The human writers spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And if this is God speaking, it must be perfectly truthful and trustworthy.

He knows all truth because he determines all truth. And God is not a man that he should lie. So scripture is entirely without error. Everything scripture affirms as truth is truth. So whatever God is affirming here through Jude must be true.

But how can that be if Jude is quoting from this weird book of Enoch? There's clearly fall of myths and falsehoods. Clearly doesn't trace to Enoch himself, so it's effectively a forgery. So is Jude endorsing this book? What's going on?

Some people try to get around this by saying that Jude's only using this story as an illustration. We're not meant to understand that Enoch really said these things, but because it's a story lots of people know, he's using it to illustrate a point. It might be similar to how a modern preacher might reference a modern story as a sermon illustration. Like I could mention Frodo and Sam, or Lucy and Aslan, and many of you would understand what I'm talking about without assuming that I'm referring to historical fact. But I don't think that works yet.

Jude cites this prophecy in a very straightforward way. He ties it directly into history, telling us it was Enoch VII from Adam who spoke these words. An Enoch is not a fictional character. Jude identifies the Enoch of the prophecy with the Enoch of biblical history. There's nothing from the text itself that would tell us this isn't just a straightforward historical fact.

So I don't think that we can take this as just a fictitious illustration. Instead, I think it's much better to simply affirm that what Jude quotes here is true. He's telling us real history. But this doesn't mean that we have to accept the whole book of Enoch. That would be an error.

There are some people out there who hear that Jude is citing this book, and they get all excited and think this book of Enoch contains all these important insights that we can learn from. But Jude doesn't mention the book. He doesn't say that it's any good or that we shouldn't read it. He simply affirms, and this means that God affirms, that Enoch made this particular prophecy. And that's all we're justified in concluding from this text.

To go any further would be to go beyond what is written. Because to take a quote from some text and to agree with that quote is not the same as agreeing with the whole text. I hope that makes sense, but maybe you doubt that that's true. Maybe you feel like quoting a text usually does imply that you have some value for that text as a whole. But I can prove to you that's not always the case.

Because there's a similar answer, there's a similar example, I should say, from the Apostle Paul. And I want to show you this to prove five points. So let's go to Acts chapter 17. Acts chapter 17 is where Paul is in Athens addressing an audience of pagan philosophers. When addressing a Jewish audience, of course, he reads them straight from the scripture, to point to Christ and the gospel.

But the pagans don't have this background. So instead of going straight to the scriptures, Paul tries to find some points of common ground, some points of contact with their worldview and their culture, to help bring them into an understanding of the gospel message. So he begins by pointing out to their altar, they're pointing out their altar to the unknown God, and then he's going to build up from there. In the course of his argument, he's going to quote from two pagan poets in verse 28, and he clearly agrees with these quotes. Let's read it.

So Acts chapter 17, and let's look at verse 28. He says this, For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Now both quotes are perfectly true, as Paul applies them to the one true God of Holy Scripture. But if we look at those quotes in context, we might be rather surprised. The first quote comes from a text praising Zeus as immortal.

This is the same text actually that Paul quotes in Titus about cretins being liars. So this is a text that Paul is quite familiar with. The second quote is from an astrological text, also praising Zeus. Here's a bit of what it says. This is unusual, we don't usually quote pagans in the pulpit here, but this is what it says.

From Zeus let us begin. Him do immortals never leave unnamed. Full of Zeus are all the streets and all the marketplaces of men. Full is the sea and the havens thereof. Always we have need of Zeus, for we are also his offspring.

So do we conclude from this that Paul approves of these texts? These texts that are full of idolatrous worship? Does this mean that Paul worships Zeus or thinks that Zeus is equivalent to the Christian God? Well, of course not. By no means, Paul would say.

Notice how quickly he condemns their idolatry in the next verse. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. I think what Paul is doing here is just recognizing that the Greeks had perceived some truth about God from the natural world. They knew something about his eternal power and divine nature, because God has revealed that to everyone, as we read in Romans chapter one. But in their rebellion, these pagan poets have true knowledge, but suppress it, not by denying it completely, but by misapplying it to their idols.

So Paul can rightly take these statements from pagan sources, affirm them as true, without embracing the whole context in which they're found. Just because he affirms these specific statements doesn't mean he likes or approves of the whole text. Not at all. So Jude might very well be doing something similar. In the providence of God and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he has come, by some means, to believe that this particular story about Enoch is true.

And because it's relevant to his argument, he's going to use it, affirm that it's true, without leading us to accept anything else in the book of Enoch or wherever else that he might have heard this story. The question, of course, that remains is how this little fragment of truth about Enoch's prophecy was preserved. got mixed up later on with all the other false myths and legends in First Enoch. Fact is, we don't know the answer to that question. But what we do know is that God is sovereign over all the messiness of human history.

He's sovereign over human traditions. He's sovereign over the writing of every book. So it's not impossible to imagine that some nugget of truth was preserved in the traditions of the Jews over the centuries and only later got mixed up with all the other false myths and legends. And that very much seems to be the case here. So my point is that this shouldn't trouble us.

It might be puzzling, but we can trust God and we can trust his word. We're under no obligation to put stock in the book of Enoch or any other Jewish myths, just because certain elements of them happen to be affirmed in the New Testament. So hopefully that's helpful. Well, I do want to move on and we'll look at what this text is actually saying. All right.

So verse 14 of Jude is where Jude is going to tell us that Enoch prophesied about a false brethren. He says, it was about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied. Of course, when we hear the content of the prophecy, we'll know that Enoch is not referring to these people specifically, thousands of years in the future. He's talking about the ungodly collectively, which Jude recognizes definitely includes the false brethren that he's referring to. He's already been calling them ungodly people in verse four.

So Jude's very deliberately lumping these people in with the whole mass of ungodly people who have ever lived. The content of this prophecy is quite straightforward. First, he says, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his holy ones. So he's referring to the second coming of the Lord in glory. Second, we're told what he comes to do, and that's to execute judgment.

This is his purpose and intention in coming. Next we learn that this judgment is universal. Note what it says. To execute judgment on all. No one is exempt.

But finally, while all are judged, the outcome is not identical for all. All will be judged, but only the ungodly will be convicted. The word convicted in this case refers to a formal legal verdict of guilt. The judge finds them guilty, and they are convicted of ungodly deeds. Notice again the universality.

All the ungodly will be convicted. None will escape. No one will walk free. So the first thing I want to notice is that there's nothing in this prophecy that we don't already know from other texts of scripture. The idea of ten thousands of holy ones comes straight from the Old Testament.

In Deuteronomy chapter 33, Moses says this to the people. The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us. He shone forth from Mount Paran He came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand. So holy ones refers to the heavenly host, the angelic army of the Lord. And the idea of Christ coming with a host of angels is affirmed repeatedly in the New Testament.

Jesus says this in Mark chapter eight, for whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And this coming is very explicitly tied to his coming in judgment. Christ is the one who is to judge the living and the dead, as Paul writes to Timothy. He describes this further in 2 Thessalonians. This is a longer passage, so I think we can turn along to read this one.

2 Thessalonians in chapter one, and we're going to start with verse five. So let's go to 2 Thessalonians chapter one in verse five. This is what St. Paul says. This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, inflaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

So this day, this day of wrath, is a day of relief for the saints, glory for Christ, but judgment for the wicked. This is the teaching of Christ and his apostles. And the churches receiving Jude's letter know this very well. So when Jude wants to talk about the second coming of Christ, the judge of living and the dead, he could have easily just referred to this teaching. that it already received without appealing to Enoch's prophecy.

So we could reasonably ask, why does he turn to Enoch for this information, this old, very ancient prophecy, this very obscure prophecy? Why would he turn to this? Well, what he emphasises is the timing. Enoch, the seventh from Adam. He's making very clear that this is very early, before the flood, only generations away from creation and the fall of man.

So he's deliberately diving as deep into history as he can go, appealing to one of the very first prophets. And this is very significant to Jude's point. Remember how he's been emphasizing that judgment of the false brethren was foreordained and predestined. Verse 4 says they long ago were designated for this condemnation. The idea is that their condemnation has been set and determined and decided, not just recently, but long ago, which gives clear indication of permanence.

This is a fixed and certain decree that judgment is coming. And so by pointing all the way back to Enoch's prophecy, Jude is powerfully demonstrating the certainty of judgment. God's full and final judgment of sin is not some new or recent determination. It's not God merely reacting to recent events. So it's not something that can change.

If it was something that had only been announced recently, you could at least be tempted to imagine that God might change his mind. If it was a brand new declaration, It might sound like God is simply responding to recent events and that subsequent events might change the outcome. And therefore, you might imagine that the outcome that the Lord has said in his prophecies may not come to pass. And yet, by citing Enoch's prophecy, Judah's showing us that the final judgment has indeed been announced to the world a very, very long time ago. Even in the centuries leading up to the flood, which was that first great worldwide catastrophe of judgment.

Even then, final and greater judgment had been already planned and announced. We know theologically, of course, that God has ordained and decreed all things that come to pass. With God, there is no plan B. He doesn't change his mind. He's never merely reacting to what creatures do.

He's never surprised by the events of history. But because of our limitations as creatures in understanding eternal things, he's going to confirm to us the certainty of coming judgment by telling us and showing us that it was settled long ago. What was determined in eternity was announced in ages past and now has been confirmed by Christ and his apostles. And so there can be absolutely no doubt that judgment is coming. Another aspect of the certainty of judgment is not only that it's certain to happen, that it's certain to happen to you.

This is something else that Enoch's prophecy is emphasizing. Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all. The apostle Paul explains it like this. For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.

So each of us will give an account of himself to God. He says this in the epistle to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. So judgment is universal. Every single person, without exception, will give an account for his deeds.

And Christ, in turn, will give what justice demands. So judgment is certain, and it's certain to happen to you. Looking then to the rest of verse 15, we're going to see that the focus shifts from all without exception to all the ungodly. Here Enoch is going to explain the reasons that all the ungodly will be judged in contrast to the godly. Unsurprisingly, the reason is identified as ungodliness.

He says, the Lord will convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness, for they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. The repetition of ungodly makes it awkward to read, but it very much emphasizes the point. To be ungodly is to be impious or irreverent, to reject God and true religion. All sin is ungodliness, and all the ungodly, all sinners, will be convicted. Notice how thorough the judgment is.

All their deeds of ungodliness. Every deed. Each one. Not just the big outrageous public sins that cause a scandal. No, every secret deed will be brought to light.

and not just the deeds themselves will be judged, but also the ungodly way in which they're committed. I'm not sure it's possible to do deeds of ungodliness in a way that isn't ungodly, but this again just communicates that the ungodly will, how thoroughly the ungodly will be judged. To God, it matters not just what you do, but how you do it. And not even words are exempt, he adds, and of all the harsh things that ungodly citives have spoken against him. So blasphemy against God or against the person of Christ is particularly in mind.

We've already heard about how Jude's false brethren are blasphemers, not just against God. They blaspheme glorious ones, which I understand to be a reference to demonic powers. They blaspheme all they do not understand, as Jude says in verse 10. And in verse 16, we hear that they're grumblers, malcontents, even loud-mouthed boasters. So Jude has in mind people who are especially guilty of sinning with their mouths.

We learn from the rest of scripture that it's not just words spoken against the Lord that are judged. Though those are the most serious. Jesus tells us on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they speak. Every careless word. So don't think to yourself that you can excuse yourself by just saying that you didn't really mean it.

No, even those words that you spoke carelessly, will be brought into judgment. Every ungodly word will be held against you, because it's what comes out of a man that defiles a man, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Your words, even your careless words, reflect the sinful reality of your heart. So once again, there's no escape. Every single human being will face judgment, and every single ungodly human being will be convicted.

Judgment is certain. Now in light of that, probably wondering, who then can be saved? Perhaps you're thinking of your own life and feeling uncomfortably aware of how many ungodly deeds that you've done in ungodly ways, of how many ungodly words you've spoken. And you'd be right to think that way. Considered in and of yourself, and evaluated according to your own deeds and merits, you would be convicted of ungodliness.

I would be. As Paul quotes in Romans chapter 3, as it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.

All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. So how is it that anyone on that day that Christ comes again could be avoiding this conviction of ungodliness?

How could anyone at all be welcomed by Christ with love and acceptance on that day of judgment? Well, most of us here, I hope, most of us here have heard the answer, and what a glorious answer it is. We believe in the one who justifies the ungodly. Let's remind ourselves of how the apostle Paul explains this in Romans chapter four. This is a crucial text where Paul contrasts what is earned as a wage, that is what we deserve, with what is received as a gift.

We read this starting in verse four of chapter four. So that's Romans chapter four and verse four. He says this. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. So how is it that anyone of the whole ungodly mass of humanity can be counted righteous on the day of judgment? Well, only if all those deeds of ungodliness committed in such an ungodly way are truly and fully forgiven.

Only if those sins are covered and the Lord has declared that those sins will never again be counted against you. This is only for those who are united to Christ by faith. Those who believe in the one who justifies the ungodly. Because he lived a righteous life on their behalf. He died the death of one convicted of ungodliness in their place.

He rose again victorious. The victory that would be theirs by faith. If you believe and you trust in Christ alone for your salvation, God has put away your sin forever. Your transgression was nailed to the cross. He no longer sees you as ungodly.

You are counted righteous. He sees only the perfect godliness of Christ. And so we read in Romans 8 verse one, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And the Lord himself says this in John's gospel, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment at his past from death to life.

This is a crucial distinction between the false brethren and true brethren within the Church. What sets them apart is that some truly belong to Christ, while others only claim to. And so the false brethren remain in their sins, and on the Day of Judgment they will be convicted for their ungodliness that they cling to rather than turning to Christ, whom they profess outwardly but inwardly deny. So Jude has shown us that judgment is certain. It's certain to happen and it's certain to happen to you.

All will be judged and all the ungodly will be convicted of their ungodliness. Only those cleansed from their ungodliness by the blood of Christ. will be spared. I finally wanted to reflect on how this fits into Jude's overall purpose. He's writing about false brethren and specifically applying Enoch's prophecy to them.

So what he's telling us has to be relevant to this issue of false brethren within the church. So how does the certainty of judgment inform how we deal with false brethren in the church? Well, I think it's helpful to look at the actual imperatives, so you could say instructions that Jude gives to the church. So let's have a look. In verse three, he says he's appealing to the church to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

This is his central overarching command to the church. And then there are a few times that he urges the church to remember. In verse five, he says, I want to remind you of the implication that we need to remember what we once knew about the past judgments of God. And in verse 17, he says, you must remember, beloved, predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have to remember their predictions of the scoffers in the last times.

And then in verse 20, he's urging the faithful of the church to build themselves up in the faith and pray in the Holy Spirit in order to keep themselves in the love of God. So he's calling the church here to perseverance. Finally, in 22 and 23, he calls for the faithful to show mercy, to snatch people out of the fire. So put briefly, Jude wants the church to contend, to remember, persevere, and show mercy. telling us about Enoch's prophecy, fits in with his call to the church to remember various things.

It's not just about knowing facts, but it's about having these facts at the forefront of our minds and acting upon them. He's urging us to remember and therefore live in light of the final judgment. And this directly informs his other three instructions. The looming reality of the coming judgment becomes the motivator and rationale for everything else that he wants the church to do. Consider, for example, the call to contend for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, Why should we do that?

Why should we care that the faith is being corrupted by certain people? Well, if we understand that judgment is coming. and we know that the only way of salvation is through the true and authentic Christian faith, then we should know why. The faith is truth. It's truth about ourselves, about God, about Christ and his work for our salvation.

The faith includes the saving gospel and all its implications. It includes God's law and shows us how we ought to live. The Christian faith delivered to the church by the apostles of Christ is our lifeline, our light in the darkness. It's that narrow way of Christ that leads to safety while all other paths lead to destruction. In that light, the idea that people would be seeking to corrupt the faith should horrify us.

It should fill us with outrage and burning indignation. It's an act of sacrilege, an act of sabotage against that which we find most precious and important. Here's an analogy. Think of a walking trail through a dangerous wilderness. Now on this trail, you might have markers indicating a safe path, avoiding pitfalls and hazards as you go through to the other side.

Now imagine that there are warning signs along this path, like crocodile infested waters, do not swim, or hazardous cliffs, or even unstable rocks, do not climb. These are important signs if you want to stay safe as you go through the wilderness. But what would you feel if you learned that someone had removed the markers, keeping people on the safe path? What if this person painted over the signs warning about crocodiles and instead wrote, no crocodiles, safe to swim. What if they wrote on the sign above the dangerous cliff face, stable rocks, easy climb?

That person would be luring people to their deaths. What a disgusting, murderous act of sabotage that would be. There would be anger and outrage. It would be a matter of urgent, extreme urgency to fix those signs and arrest the person responsible. Well, the authentic biblical faith is just like those signs.

The faith shows us Christ, who is himself, the way, the truth, and the life the only way to the Father, the only safe path through this life and into the life to come. So the true faith warns us of spiritual hazards and pitfalls to avoid. It shows us where we ought to go. So when people tamper with the faith, they're doing something far worse than the one who tampers with warning signs on a walking trail. These are spiritual murderers, because they're not just leading people to death, they're luring them to eternal death.

When it comes to the faith, eternal life is at stake. So one thing that Jude's doing when he reminds us of the certainty of judgment is reminding us that we're dealing with a controversy in which the stakes cannot be higher. This is a matter of eternal life or death. We can't afford to ignore it or minimize it because we're dealing with eternal destiny of human souls. That's why we must contend for the faith.

The same idea that motivates Jude's call to perseverance. Jude turns to the faithful of the church and reminds them to look after their own faith. Be diligent with the means of grace, be building up your holy faith, be praying in the Holy Spirit. This is the way the Lord will keep you for himself. The battle for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, isn't just an external battle that we fight against false doctrine or false teachers or false brethren.

It also has to be a battle fought within the heart and mind of every single believer. We have to keep the faith personally, each one of us holding to that truth that was delivered and entrusted to us. And the reality of the certainty of judgment finally motivates us to act with mercy. I've emphasized this several times before, so I won't need to say much here. But Jude calls us to have mercy on doubters and on sinners.

These are people who get caught up and drawn into false teaching and to sin. These people need our help. As Paul writes to the Galatians, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. If we see someone in this kind of urgent spiritual danger, it should move us to act if we understand the certainty of coming judgment. In closing, let me just remind you of what we've covered.

We've spent some time, first of all, answering the main question that almost everyone has about these verses, and that's, where's this from? Judah's telling us about this ancient prophecy of Enoch, but there's nowhere else in the rest of Scripture that tells us these same things. It seems to come out of nowhere, which is very puzzling to readers of the Scriptures. But we then heard how there's a very similar prophecy attributed to Enoch in the non-Biblical text called the Book of Enoch, which could very well be Jude's source. In light of this, I made a few points.

First, the way that Jude quotes and applies his prophecy leads us to think that this is meant to be historical. We are meant to understand that the real historical Enoch really prophesied about the coming of Christ in judgment. And secondly, the Book of Enoch on the whole is not trustworthy. It's full of traditions and legends that are mostly the result of Jewish speculation over the centuries. So how can we accept what Jude's saying while not accepting the whole book of Enoch?

Well, I argued that even if Jude is quoting from the book of Enoch, we don't have to understand this to be an endorsement of the book as a whole. Jude only requires us to affirm the truth of this specific quote, just like the Apostle Paul affirms quotes from pagan poets without agreeing with everything those poets ever wrote. After that discussion, we then looked at the prophecy itself as Jude reports it. And I argued that the main point of citing this prophecy is to show us that final judgment is a settled reality from the very beginning. And he does this.

ancientry of this poem, this prophecy, and then also by the universal language that he uses. The Lord is coming to execute judgment on all and all the ungodly will be convicted of all their ungodliness. The judgment is universal in its scope and exhaustively thorough. We saw how the only way for sinners to escape being convicted along with the ungodly is to believe in the one who justifies the ungodly and receive the forgiveness of Christ. We finally looked at the significance of the fact that judgment is certain.

Do you want the church to contend for the faith, persevere in the faith, show mercy with the urgency of those who know that judgment is coming and that Jesus is the only way of escape? The psalmist asked the Lord to teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Because the truth is our days are very short. And we know that it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. So let's remember that judgment is certain, and from that, let us learn wisdom.

Our Lord will certainly come to judge the living and the dead, so let's live like we actually believe that. Let the certainty of judgment drive you to seek the Lord every day, because he is both the judge and the only one who can deliver you from judgment. Let it inspire your thanksgiving, worship, and sincere repentance. Let it inform how you bear witness to the gospel and share the mercy of Christ with the lost. Because when we understand the certainty of judgment, we'll know just how precious our Savior Jesus is.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for Jude and his ministry to your church long ago. Thank you that you preserved this writing, even to this day, that we could learn from it and benefit from it and be reminded of the great truths of your word and of your gospel as we study it together. I ask, Lord, that the truths that we've heard today will not be forgotten and discarded, but live in our hearts, sprout up, and bear fruit for your glory.

Glorify yourself, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen.