Acts 1:1-11 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Acts 1:1-11

• Acts 1:1-3
• I wrote the first narrative, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day he was taken up, after he had given instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After he had suffered, he also presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
  • As we mentioned the last couple of weeks, we don’t know much about the identity of Theophilus. In Luke’s Gospel he is also named and is described as “most excellent”. This designation suggests that he was a person of some status
  • Theophilus was a common name in the first century, and the custom of dedicating important literary works to someone was also common
  • Luke describes his Gospel as “the former book” or “first narrative” because he sees Acts as the second volume of his work
    • Any document which covered more than one roll of papyrus might be referred to as a “book”
    • In this case Luke uses “first” or “former” (prõton) to mean the first of two volumes. He aptly summarizes the content of the Gospel as “all that Jesus began to do and teach.” Both His miracles and His sayings are recorded there
    • The word “began” probably does not mean that Acts represents a continuation of this ministry. The phrase is a Hebrew expression implying that the former book deals with what Jesus did and taught “from the beginning”
    • Events recorded in the Gospel of Luke lead up to the day Jesus was “taken up to heaven.” Fittingly enough, Luke’s Gospel ends where the Book of Acts begins—the ascension of Jesus. The disciples watched Jesus ascend into heaven, but only after He appeared to them over a span of forty days
    • During this time, Jesus gave instructions to His disciples through the Holy Spirit. Jesus had previously testified that the Holy Spirit was working through Him. Acts continues this theme here by noting that Jesus’ final instructions to the Apostles were delivered under the guidance of the Spirit. Later in Acts the Spirit’s role in Jesus’ ministry of miracles and healing will be mentioned
    • The time of this instruction was a period “after His suffering.” During the next forty days after His death and resurrection, Jesus made appearances to the apostles. He would come and go again in such a way that those who saw Him were convinced that this was the Jesus whom they had known. The word for “convincing proofs” (tekmẽrion) is a term which was used in logic to speak of a demonstration of evidence clinching the case. The sight of the risen Lord and their experiences with Him were all the evidence needed to conclude that Jesus was alive again
    • Demonstrating that He was alive was not the only reason that Christ appeared to His apostles. He also spent this time telling them things about the Kingdom of God. The term “kingdom” is used to speak of God’s reign or run, whether in heaven or on earth. His subjects include all whose allegiance is to Christ. The Kingdom of God was important in the preaching of Jesus and continued to be emphasized by His early disciples
• Acts 1:4-8
• 4 While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father’s promise. “Which,” he said, “you have heard me speak about; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.” 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
  • Included among these “things about the Kingdom of God” which Christ taught His disciples was the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus used an occasion of eating with His disciples to issue His command. Luke also describes another resurrection appearance which involved a meal. Luke 24:42-43, “42 So they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.” In the present context one particular concern is mentioned by Luke. Jesus wanted His discipled to be ready for the coming of the Holy Spirit
  • By commanding them to wait in Jerusalem, Jesus was fulfilling expectations which extended back to the OT prophets
    • Isaiah 2:3 predicted, “The Law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” His own teaching had confirmed this anticipation. Jesus had told them they would “receive power from on high”. Jerusalem would be the place. Though they might be tempted to leave Jerusalem and go back to Galilee or to avoid persecution by returning to their previous way of life, Jesus was telling them to stay in the city
  • The “power from on high” of which Jesus had spoken would arrive shortly. As to the specific nature of this power, the only words from Jesus we have are the well-known passages from John 14-16
    • There Jesus encouraged His disciples not to think of His separation from them as a reason to lose heart. He promised them that the Father will send “another Counselor” who would guide them into all truth. Here Jesus was contrasting the coming gift of the Spirit with what was found in the baptism of John. The apostles would experience a power that was unlike anything experienced by those baptized by John
  • Luke 3:16 records the testimony of John the Baptist
    • When baptizing those who came to him, John told the people that the one coming after him would baptize them “with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Now Jesus was reminding the apostles of this promise. What Jesus was predicting for the apostles would be more than they could imagine. The Holy Spirit was going to be poured out from heaven in a way that would include flames of fire. The days of fulfillment described by the OT prophets were dawning
  • It is easy to see what the apostles thought about the coming of the Spirit
    • Evidently His description of the outpouring of the Spirit caused them to begin thinking about the end of the age. One the day of Jesus’ ascension the group was conversing on the Mount of Olives. The apostles saw their opportunity to ask a burning questions. Would this time be the moment for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel
    • The form of their question indicates that they expected a political reign
      • “Restore” suggests a return to the national independence enjoyed under former kings. On numerous occasions the apostles had shown that this expectation dominated their thinking. They were eager to see the restoration of dominion to Israel and to share positions of authority in the new political order. Even at their last supper with Jesus this issue had surfaced.
      • Without confronting their misconception directly, Jesus was now reminding them that their position did not permit them such privileged information. They would not be given details about “the times or dates” for the fulfillment of God’s purposes. Their concern was not to speculate as to when, but to commit themselves as to what their role would be in the Lord’s completing of His divine plan
  • “My witnesses” is what Jesus said they would be
    • With its background in the courtroom, “witness” (martyria) implies the act of testifying. They would serve as proclaimers of the earthly ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. As eyewitnesses they were in the perfect position to do so
  • The OT prophet had called on Israel to be God’s witnesses in the world
    • Their failure in this mission made the ministry of Jesus even more essential. If Israel would not become the “servant of the Lord,” then Jesus, and those whom He commissioned, must take up the task
  • The apostles were to become Christ’s witness-bearers
    • The extent of this witnessing would be worldwide. Beginning in Jerusalem they would proclaim the gospel in ever-widening geographical circles. It would be proclaimed also in “all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 thus becomes 4th them of the entire book
    • Roughly speaking, Acts 1-7 describes the impact of the gospel in Jerusalem. Then, Acts 8-12 carries the account forward, depicting the effects of the gospel in several places in Judea and Samaria. Lastly, Acts 13-28 highlights the spread of the gospel to major cities of the whole Roman Empire, the ends of the civilized word
  • We must note certain things about this Christ witness
    • First, a witness is someone that says: “I know this is true.” IN a court of law, hearsay is not accepted as evidence; witnesses must give an account of their own personal  experiences. A witness does not say “I think so”, but “I know.”
    • Second, the real witness is not of words but of deeds. When the journalist Sir Henry Morton Stanley had discovered David Livingstone in central Africa and had spent some time with him, he said: “If I had been with him any longer, I would have been compelled to be a Christian—and he never spoke to me about it at all.” The witness of Livingstone’s life was irresistible 
  • Proclaiming the gospel on such a broad scale was an incredible undertaking
    • Sufferings and hardships would accompany the apostles on the way. Help from God was vital. Thus Jesus addressed the very real need of the apostles when he reminded them of what the Father had promised for them. They would receive power in the form of the Holy Spirit. Only then could they serve as witnesses. With this power (dynamis)—the very power which worked in the ministry of Christ on earth—the apostles would be propelled into the activity of witnessing. Such proclamation of the Christ would lead to a restored Israel in spiritual glory as the kingdom was advanced on a universal scale
  • Without the Spirit there could be no witnessing for Jesus. Yet without the focus of witnessing for Jesus the power of the Spirit has no purpose. Wherever disciples of Jesus become distracted from their witness for Him, the power is drained away
• Acts 1:9-11
• 9 After he had said this, he was taken up as they were watching, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going, they were gazing into heaven, and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you have seen him going into heaven.”
  • The words of Jesus had hardly been spoken before the apostles were witnessing Jesus being lifted toward heaven
    • The language indicates that the even occurred before their very eyes. Christ’s ascension was unlike His many resurrection appearances to the disciples in which He suddenly appeared and then just as suddenly disappeared (as He did on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24). Neither is there any sign of external forces such as a whirlwind or heavenly wonder. No earthly power assisted the ascension.Rather, Jesus simply began lifting into heaven in a way that may be described as dignified or majestic
  • A cloud appeared after He began to ascend, and hid Jesus from their gaze
    • The apostle may well have remembered that during the transfiguration of Christ it was a cloud which enveloped them, covering the brilliance of His glory. The appearance of such a cloud also sparks memories of the OT accounts of the nation of Israel being led in the wilderness by the cloud from which the force of God was heard or the temple filled with the cloud of God’s glory
  • Intently gazing on the unfolding drama in the sky, the apostles were interrupted by two men standing beside them
    • It was obvious they were angels because of their white garments. The message of the heavenly visitors was filled with rebuke and promise. Addressing the apostles as “men of Galilee,” the angels were calling attention to the fact that the apostles, except for Judas Iscariot, were not only native Galileans, but they also had spent most of their time with Jesus in Galilee. The questions put to the apostles contains a hint of rebuke. Why were they standing there as if Jesus would become visible again? This ascension was not like the transfiguration. Then Jesus was present the moment the cloud was gone. Those days were over. The apostles would have to say good-by to the experience of having Jesus with them in the flesh. But this did not mean He would be far from them when they stood before their persecutors or when the call came for ministry
  • More importantly, Jesus Christ would be back again
    • The words of the two angels also contained a promise. Jesus is coming again. But the promise is quite specific. The one who will come again is “this same Jesus.” He is the very one who ministered with them, and was taken from them in the crucifixion, resurrection, and finally, the ascension. His return would be a personal coming
  • The ascension of Jesus Christ is, then, a meaningful moment in the purposes of God
    • It prepares the way for such NT doctrines as the exultation of Christ as heavenly king and the role of Christ as mediator. Without the ascension of Jesus His existence would be confined to this world. His acceptance into the presence of God assures believers that His mission has been accomplished. His exaltation at the right hand of God means that His new status as Lord and Christ has been confirmed by God

Introduction To Acts Continued (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Introduction to Acts Continued

• Theme of Acts
  • Acts opens with a statement from Jesus which seems to set the tone for the entire work. Jesus promises the Apostles that they will receive power in the form of the Holy Spirit. He then tells them that they will  “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This theme of being a witness for the gospel is carried throughout the Book of Acts
  • Consider the following verses:
    • 1:22; the replacement for Judas had to be a witness of Christ’s resurrection
      • 22 beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us—from among these, it is necessary that one become a witness with us of his resurrection.”
    • 2:32; Peters sermon on Pentecost emphasized that the apostles were witnesses of the resurrection
      • 32 “God has raised this Jesus; we are all witnesses of this.
    • 3:15; after healing the beggar Peter proclaimed the resurrected Christ and that the apostles were witnesses
      • 15 You killed the source of life, whom God raised from the dead; we are witnesses of this.
    • 4:20; the apostles told the Jewish authorities they could not help proclaiming what they had seen and heard
      • 20 for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
    • 5:32; when the apostles were again persecuted they said they must obey God because they were witnesses along with the Holy Spirit
      • 32 We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
    • 8:25; Peter and John went to Samaria where they “testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord”
      • 25 So, after they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they traveled back to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
    • 10:39; Peter proclaimed to Cornelius that he was a witness to the ministry of Jesus
      • 39 We ourselves are witnesses of everything he did in both the Judean country and in Jerusalem, and yet they killed him by hanging him on a tree.
    • 13:31; Paul told the crowd in Pisidian Antioch that Jesus’ followers had witnessed Christ’s resurrection
      • 31 and he appeared for many days to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.
    • 22:15; Ananias went to Paul with the message that Paul would be a witness to all men of what he had seen and heard
      • 15 since you will be a witness for him to all people of what you have seen and heard.
    • 23:11; God appeared to Paul encouraging him that he would testify in Rome concerning the Lord
      • 11 The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, “Have courage! For as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so it is necessary for you to testify in Rome.”
    • These references don’t include the numerous passages in which individuals are found witnessing falsely
  • As witnesses for Christ carried the gospel toward the far reaches of the world, the church advance everywhere. This them is also important in Acts. The expansion of the church is presented in a historical context. Luke even dates some of the events in his record by using key Roman names and events as reference points.
  • As Acts 1:8 indicates, Luke shows how the gospel prevailed wherever it was proclaimed. In Jerusalem, huge numbers were baptized on the Day of Pentecost. Later, thousands were added, even though the believers were being persecuted by the Jewish authorities. Such incidents as the striking down of Ananias and Sapphira and the dissension over the ministry to the Hellenistic widows did not slow down the rapid increase of converts to the gospel
  • Beyond the walls of Jerusalem, the gospel also found fertile ground for growth. After the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, the church in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria experienced peace and saw its numbers increasing. Peter’s work in Lydda bore rich fruit and his raising of Tabitha in Joppa brought many to believe in the Lord
  • The ever-widening influence of the gospel was felt beyond Judea and Samaria as well. Antioch saw increasing numbers of believers especially among the Gentile populations. The cities of southern Galatia felt the gospel’s impact as Paul and Barnabas evangelized in places like Lystra, Iconium, and Derbe. Later, Paul and Silas revisited these cities and more growth came. On this same missionary journey Paul and Silas even crossed into Macedonia where the results were the same. The gospel continued to conquer hearts and minds for Christ with each passing day
  • Through all of Luke’s record, the role of the Holy Spirit is highlighted. From the Day of Pentecost when He was poured out, the Spirit was essential to God’s purposes for the proclamation of the gospel. When the men were chosen administer the benevolence to widows, Stephen was appointed because he was a man full of “faith and of the Holy Spirit”. In Samaria the new converts received a visit from the apostles who placed their hands on them, granting them the power of the Holy Spirit. This was a power which Simon the Sorcerer wanted to buy. Philip heard from the Spirit that he was to go to the chariot of the Ethiopian. While Peter was preaching to Cornelius, the Holy Spirit came on the listeners, interrupting Peter’s address. Barnabas and Saul were first selected as missionaries at Antioch when the Spirit spoke to the church. Their travels were guided by the Holy Spirit and in Ephesus Paul rebaptized believers who had not received the Spirit. When Paul addressed the Ephesian elders, he reminded them that they had become leaders because of the Spirit’s ministry
  • While Acts emphasizes that the apostles received the power of the Spirit, it also emphasizes how they used this power. They faithfully bore witness for Christ. Acts underscores the work of the apostles, or at least some of the apostles
    • Roughly speaking,  1-12 focuses on the work of Peter. His role in the choosing of a successor for Judas and the preaching on the Day of Pentecost open the book. Almost every chapter which follows contains some report on the work of Peter. He and John heal the lame man, and then stand before the Sanhedrin. He confronts Ananias and Sapphira and Simon the Sorcerer. He experiences the vision which results in the preaching to Cornelius and the conversion of his family. He then defends his actions before the church leaders in Jerusalem. Finally, he miraculously escapes imprisonment by Herod
    • With Acts 13 the spotlight shifts to Paul. Paul and Barnabas are sent from Antioch as missionaries. Their report at the Jerusalem conference is crucial, and though they cannot agree any John Mark, a second missionary journey is undertaken by Paul and Silas. The second journey is followed immediately by a third, and then comes the account of Paul’s tragic visit to Jerusalem and his arrest in the temple 
    • The rest f the book describes the series of hearings Paul endures and his transport to Caesarea and on to Rome. Paul’s ministry as a Roman prisoner is the focus of the final comment in Acts. For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ
• The Purpose of Acts
  • For years scholars have puzzled over why Luke produced Acts. Comparing the opening of Acts with that of Luke’s Gospel shows that a particular disciple named Theophilus was central to Luke’s motives. But we mentioned last week that we don’t know anything about Theophilus
    • We can only speculate who Theophilus was. Luke 1:3 calls him “most honorable Theophilus”. The phrase literally means “Your Excellency” and indicates a man high up in the service of the Roman government. There are three possibilities
      • Theophilus may not be a real name at all
        • In this time, it might have been dangerous to be a Christian. Theophilus comes from two Greek words—theos, which means God, and philein, which means to love. It may be that Luke wrote to someone who loved God, whose real name he did not mention for safety’s sake
      • If Theophilus was a real person, he must have been a high government official
        • Perhaps Luke wrote to show him that Christianity was a lovely thing and that Christians were good people. Maybe his writing was an attempt to persuade a government official not to persecute Christians
      • Based on the fact that Luke was a doctor, there is another theory
        • Doctors in these days were often slaves. It has been suggested that Luke was the doctor of Theophilus, and that Theophilus had been healed by Luke’s skill. Then Theophilus, as a thank you, gave Luke his freedom. Then, it may be, that Luke wanted to show how grateful he was for this gift; and since the most precious thing he had was the story of Jesus, he wrote it down and sent it
  • Luke implies in the opening of the gospel that he had carefully researched his material. He was concerned to provide a proper sequence of events. He shows awareness of other accounts which have been written concerning Jesus 
  • One purpose often noted is a historical one. Luke wanted to provide a historical record of the events of Jesus’ life and the progress of the first-century church. Though some scholars argue that his reasons had to do with his concerns  about the return of Christ, it is possible that he saw the end of the apostolic age coming. Perhaps Luke wanted a written record of the apostles’ work in carrying on the ministry of Jesus
  • The immediate purpose of Luke may be indicated in his words in the opening of the gospel. He tells Theophilus that he writes so that this believer will know the certainty of things he had been taught. This comment may indicate that the two-volume work was meant for Christian instruction
  • The apologetic value of Acts has often been noted. Some have wondered if Luke’s work was intended to serve as a defense brief for Paul as he stood before Caesar. The problem with this suggestion is that Luke includes so much material that has nothing to do with Paul’s defense. Why wud he include the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of the Lord? Why would he focus on the Apostle Peter in the early chapters of Acts? Acts would be very tedious reading if the main purpose were a defense of Paul
  • Nevertheless, it is true that much of Acts emphasizes that the believers posed no threat to the Roman Empire. When the apostles are summoned before  the Jerusalem authorities, their only crime is healing the lame man. When Stephen is martyred, his only fault is his zeal for the faith. Peter’s imprisonment at the hands of Herod Agrippa I is due to no fault of the Apostle. Paul’s hearing before Gallio is a matter of questions about the Jewish Law. The series of trials experienced by Paul repeatedly emphasizes his innocence. The cumulative effect of these statements establishes that the church was never any real threat to Caesar
  • Beyond these purposes, Acts has a theological purpose. Luke intends to show how the apostles began the work Jesus initiated on the earth. Acts 1:1 describes Luke’s Gospel as an account of all that Jesus began to do an teach. Acts intends to describe how the apostles continued this this work of Jesus. The Gospel begins in Jerusalem and fans out over the whole Roman world to the Imperial City itself. The salvation of the Lord is, in Paul’s language, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. Acts records how God used human means to send out the divine message of salvation in Christ

Introduction to Acts (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Introduction to Acts

• Outside of the gospels, Acts can be considered the most important book in the NT. It is the simple truth that, if we did not posses Acts, we would have no information about the early Church outside of what we can deduce from the letters of Paul
• There are two ways of writing history
  • There is the way which attempts to trace the course of events from week to week and day to day; and there is the way which opens a series of windows and gives us vivid glimpses of the great moments and personalities of any period. Acts seems to fit into the second category
• Many call this The Acts of the Apostles. But the book neither gives nor claims to give an exhaustive account of the acts of the apostles. Apart from Paul, only three apostles are mentioned in t. In Acts 12:2, we are told in one brief sentence that James, the brother of John, was executed by Herod. John appears in the narrative, but never speaks. It is only about Peter that the book gives any real information—and very soon, as a leading player, he passes from the scene
  • In the Greek, there is no “The” before Acts; the correct title is Acts of Apostolic Men; and what Acts aims to do is to give us a series of typical exploits of the heroic figures of the early Church
• The Author
  • Although the book never says, from the earliest times Luke has been held to be its writer. About Luke we really know very little; there are only three references to him in the NT—Colossians 4:14, Philemon 24, II Timothy 4:11
  • From these, we can say two things with certainty. First, Luke was a doctor; second, he was one of Paul’s most valued helpers and loyal friends, for he was a companion of Paul in his last imprisonment
  • We can deduce the fact that he was a Gentile from Colossians. In 4:11, a list of mentions and greetings is concluded from men of Jewish background, and in verse 12, a new list begins. We naturally conclude this new list is of Gentiles. So we have the very interesting fact that Luke is the only Gentile author in the NT
• The Recipient
  • Luke wrote both his gospel and Acts to a man named Theophilus. We can only speculate who Theophilus was. Luke 1:3 calls him “most honorable Theophilus”. The phrase literally means “Your Excellency” and indicates a man high up in the service of the Roman government. There are three possibilities
    • Theophilus may not be a real name at all
      • In this time, it might have been dangerous to be a Christian. Theophilus comes from two Greek words—theos, which means God, and philein, which means to love. It may be that Luke wrote to someone who loved God, whose real name he did not mention for safety’s sake
    • If Theophilus was a real person, he must have been a high government official
      • Perhaps Luke wrote to show him that Christianity was a lovely thing and that Christians were good people. Maybe his writing was an attempt to persuade a government official not to persecute Christians
    • Based on the fact that Luke was a doctor, there is another theory
      • Doctors in these days were often slaves. It has been suggested that Luke was the doctor of Theophilus, and that Theophilus had been healed by Luke’s skill. Then Theophilus, as a thank you, gave Luke his freedom. Then, it may be, that Luke wanted to show how grateful he was for this gift; and since the most precious thing he had was the story of Jesus, he wrote it down and sent it
• The Aim in Writing Acts
  • One of his reasons was to comment Christianity to the Roman government
    • Over and over, he goes out of his way to show how courteous Roman magistrates were to Paul. In 13:12, Sergius Paulus, the governor of Cyprus, becomes a Christians. In 18:12, Gallio is absolutely fair minded in Corinth. In 16:35, the magistrates at Philippi discover their mistake and apologize publicly to Paul. In 19:31, the provincial officials in Ephesus are shown to be concerned that no harm should come to Paul
    • Luke was pointing out that in the years before he wrote, Roman officials had often been well-disposed and always just and fair to Christianity
    • Further, Luke takes pains to show that Christians were good and loyal citizens and had always been regarded as such. In 18:14 Gallio declares that there is no question of crime or villainy. In 19:37, the secretary of Ephesus gives the Christians a good report. In 23:29, Claudius Lysias is careful to say that he has nothing against Paul. In 25:25, Festus declares that Paul has done nothing worthy of death and in the same chapter Festus and Agrippa agree that Paul might well have been released had he not appealed to Caesar
    • Luke was writing in the days when Christians were disliked and persecuted; and he told his story in such a way as to show that the Roman magistrates had always been perfectly fair to Christianity and the they had never regarded the Christians as evil. In fact, the very interesting suggestion has been made that Acts is nothing other than the brief prepared for Paul’s defense when he stood trial before Caesar
  • One of Luke’s aims was to show that Christianity was for all people of every country
    • This was one of the things that many Jews found hard to grasp. They had the idea that they were God’s chosen people and that God had no use for any other nation. Luke sets out to prove otherwise. He shows Philip preaching to the Samaritans; he shows Stephen making Christianity universal and being killed for it; he shows Peter accepting Cornelius into the Church; he shows the Christians preaching to the Gentiles at Antioch; he shows Paul traveling far and wide winning men and women of every kind for Chris; and in Acts 15 he shows the Church making the monumental decision to accept the Gentiles on equal terms with the Jews
  • But these were merely secondary aims. Luke’s chief purpose is set out in the words of the risen Christ in 1:8; “…you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
    • It was to show the expansion of Christianity—to show how that religion which began in a little corner of Palestine had in just over 30 years reached Rome
    • The Church historian C. H. Turner has pointed out that Acts falls into six panels, each ending with what might be called a progress report. The six are as follows
      • 1:1-6:7; this tells of the church at Jerusalem and the preaching of Peter; and it finishes with the summary; “7 So the word of God spread, the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.”
      • 6:8-9:31; this describes the spread of Christianity through Palestine and the martyrdom of Stephen, followed by the preaching in Samaria. It ends with the summary; “31 So the church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.”
      • 9:32-12:24; this includes the conversion of Paul, the extension of the Church to Antioch, and the reception of Cornelius into the Church by Peter. Its summary is: “24 But the word of God spread and multiplied.”
      • 12:25-16:5; this tells too the extension of the church through Asia Minor and the preaching tour of Galatia. It ends; “5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.”
      • 16:6-19:20; This describes the extension of the Church to Europe and the work of Paul in great Gentile cities like Corinth and Ephesus. Its summary; “20 In this way the word of the Lord spread and prevailed.”
      • 19:21-28:31; this tells of the arrival of Paul in Rome and his imprisonment there. It ends with Paul “31 proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.”
    • This plan of Acts answers its most puzzling question—why does it finish where it does? It finishes with Paul in prison awaiting judgement. We would have like to know what happened to him; and the end remains a mystery. But Luke stopped there because he had achieved his purpose; he had shown how Christianity began in Jerusalem and swept across the world until it reached Rome. One NT scholar has said that the title of Acts might be: “How they brought the Good News from Jerusalem to Rome.”
• Luke’s Sources
  • Luke was a historian, and the sources from which a historian draws information are all important. Where did Luke get his facts? We actually see two parts to this in Acts
    • There are the first fifteen chapters, describing events of which Luke had no personal knowledge. He most probably had access to two sources
      • There were the records of the local churches. They may never have been set down in writing, but the churches had their stories. In this section, we can distinguish three records
        • There is the record of the Jerusalem church, which is found in chapters 1-5 and in 15-16. There is the record of the church at Caesarea, which covers 8:26-40 and 9:31-10:48. There is the record of the church at Antioch, which includes 11:19-30 and 12:25-14:28
      • It is very likely that there were cycles of stories which were the Acts of Peter, the Acts of John, the Acts of Philip, and the Acts of Stephen. Beyond a doubt, Lukes’ friendship with Paul would bring him into touch with all the great figures of all the churches, and their stories would be at his disposal
    • There are chapters 16-28. Luke had personal knowledge of much that is included in this section
      • When we read Acts, we notice a strange thing. Most of the time, Luke’s narrative is in the third-person plural; but in certain passages it changes over to the first-person plural, and they becomes we. On all these occasions, Luke apparently was present, and  in these passages we have eyewitness accounts
      • As for the times when he was not present, many were the hours he must have spent in prison with Paul, and many were the stories Paul must have told him. There can have been no great figure Luke did not know, and in every case he must have gotten his story from someone who was there
  • When we read Acts, we may be quite sure that no historian ever had better sources or used those sources more accurately
• Date of writing
  • Acts 1:1 indicates that Luke wanted Acts to serve as the second volume of a two-volume work. For this reason Acts must be dated at the same time or later than the gospel of Luke. The earliest dates that scholars assign to Luke are  in the late 50s. Festus had already ascended to power when Acts was written, an even which is dated in 60. So those things set the earliest Acts could be dated
  • The real question is how late can Acts be dates. Some radical Bible critics have dated Acts as late as 115-130. This date reduces the chances that Luke was the author. Many scholars fix the date between 70-80. The reasons often given for this date have to do with the subject matter of Luke’s gospel, especially Luke 21:5-38. In these verses Jesus speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem. His description is so vivid that many scholars believe Luke must have recorded it after the even had occurred in 70
  • One question which must arise in discussing the dat of Acts has to do with the last verses. Acts closes with a description of Paul under house arrest in Rome. He was taken there to stand trial before Caesar. The account ends by nothing that he remained there “Two whole years” preaching the gospel as he waited for his accusers to arrive. Tradition indicates that he was martyred in Rome during the reign of Nero 54-68. The question to be answered is whether Paul was martyred during this Roman imprisonment. If so, why didn’t Luke record Paul’s death in Acts? Is the absence of any word on Paul’s death significant? Was Luke avoiding the issue in order to preserve his focus on the victorious progress of the church? If so, maybe Acts was meant to end at this point in the story. This would allow for Acts to be written later than the year of Paul’s death. The dat of writing could then be fixed somewhere between 70-80
  • On the other hand, it may be that Luke does not record Paul’s death because it had not occurred when he wrote Acts, meaning that the dating of Acts would be earlier. If Luke finished Acts before Paul’s death occurred, the work must be dated somewhere in the early or mid 60s. Church tradition, especially Jerome and Eusebius, dates Paul’s martyrdom in Rome around 67-68. Many scholars believe, however, that Paul was released from his house arrest described in Acts 28. They argue that he resumed his missionary travels until the day he was once again arrested and take to Rome. They also contend that the Pastoral letters (I & II Timothy, Titus) were written before this second imprisonment. If this is true, then Acts may have been written at the end of Paul’s first imprisonment, or around 63 

Jude 17-25 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Jude 17-25

• Jude 17-19
• 17 But you, dear friends, remember what was predicted by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They told you, “In the end time there will be scoffers living according to their own ungodly desires.” 19 These people create divisions and are worldly, not having the Spirit.
  • Jude points out to his own people that nothing has happened which they might not have expected. The apostles had given warning that evil people would come and such people are now among them
    • The actual words of Jude’s quotation are not in any NT book. He may be doing any one of three things
      • He may be quoting from some apostolic book which we no longer possess
      • He may be quoting not a book but some oral tradition of the apostolic preaching, or some sermon which he himself had heard from the apostles
      • He may be giving the general sense of a passage like I Timothy 4:1-3, “Now the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, 2 through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared. 3 They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods that God created to be received with gratitude by those who believe and know the truth.”
  • In any event, he is telling his people that error was only to be expected in the Church. From this passage we can see some of the characteristics of these evil people
    • They mock at goodness, and their conduct is governed by their own evil desires
      • These two things go together. The opponents of Jude had two characteristics, as we have already seen. They believed that the body, being matter, was evil; and that it made no difference if they satisfied their desires to the full. Further, they argued that since grace could forgive any sin, sin did not matter. These heretics had a third characteristic. They believed that they were the progressive thinkers; and they regarded those who observed the old moral standards as old-fashioned and out of date
      • That point of view is by no means dead. There are still those who believe that the once accepted standards of morality, especially in matters of sex, are quite out of date. Psalm 53:1 states, “The fool says in his heart, “There’s no God.” They are corrupt, and they do vile deeds. There is no one who does good.”
      • In that text, fools does not mean brainless individuals; it means people who are playing the fool. And the fact that they say there is no God is entirely due to wishful thinking. They know that, if there is a God, they are wrong and can expect judgment; therefore, they eliminate God. In the last analysis, those who eliminate the moral law and give free rein to their passions and desires do so because they want to do as they like. They listen to themselves instead of listening to God—and they forget that there will come a day when they will be compelled to listen to Him
    • These evil people have a second characteristic. They set up divisions—they are worldly, not having the Spirit
      • To set up divisions in the Church is always sin. These people set up divisions in two ways
        • As we have already seen, even at the love feasts they had their own little groups. By their conduct, they were steadily destroying fellowship within the Church. They were drawing a circle to shut people out instead of drawing a circle to take them in
        • But they went further. There were certain thinkers in the early Church who had a way of looking at human nature which essentially split people into two classes. To understand this, we have to understand a little bit of Greek psychology
          • To the Greeks, human beings were made up of body (sõma), soul (psuchē), and spirit (pneuma). Sõma was simply a person’s physical construction. Psuchē is more difficult to understand. It was simply physical life; everything that lived and breathed had psuchē. Pneuma, spirit, was quite different, it belonged only to human beings, and was the quality which made them thinking creatures, kin to God, able to speak to God and to hear Him
          • These thinkers went on to argue that everyone possessed psuchē, but very few really possessed pneuma. Only the really intellectual, the elite, possessed pneuma; and only the very few could rise to real religion. The rest must be content to walk on the lower levels of religious experience
          • They therefore divided people into two classes. There were the psuchikoi, who were physically alive but intellectually and spiritually dead. We might call them fleshly creatures. All they possessed was flesh-and-blood life; intellectual progress and spiritual experience were beyond them. There were the pneumatikoi, who were capable of real intellectual knowledge, real knowledge of God and, real spiritual experience. Here was the creation of an intellectual and spiritual aristocracy over against the common mass of people
          • Further, these people who believed themselves to be the pneumatikoi believed that they were exempt from all the ordinary laws governing conduct. Ordinary people might have to observe the accepted standards; but they were above that. For them, sin did not exist; they were so advanced that they could do anything and be none the worse. We may do well to remember that there are still people who believe that they are above the laws, who say in their hearts that it could never happen to them and who believe that they can get away with anything
        • We can now see how cleverly Jude deals with these people who say that the rest of the world are the psuchikoi, while they re the pneumatikoi. Jude takes their words and reverses them. “It’s you that are the flesh dominated ones; it is you who possess no pneuma, no real knowledge and no experience of God.” Jude is saying to these people that although they think of themselves as the only truly religious people, they have no real religion at all. Those whom they despise are much better than they are themselves
        • The truth about these so called intellectual and spiritual people was that they wanted to sin and twisted religion into a justification for sin
• Jude 20-21
• 20 But you, dear friends, as you build yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting expectantly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life.
  • In the previous passage, Jude described the characteristics of error; here he describes the characteristics of goodness
    • Good people build up their lives on the foundation of the most holy faith
      • That is to say, the lives of Christians are founded not on something which they manufactured themselves, but on something which they received. There is a chain in the transmission of the faith. The faith came from Jesus to the apostles; it came from the apostles to the Church; and it comes from the Church to us
      • That means the faith which we hold is not merely someone’s personal opinion; it is a revelation which came from Jesus and was preserved and transmitted within His Church, always under the care and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, from generation to generation
      • The faith is a most holy faith. Again and again, we have seen the meaning of this word holy. Its root meaning is different. That which is holy is different from other things, as the priest is different from other worshipers, the Temple is different from other buildings, the Sabbath is different from other days, and God supremely different from men and women
      • Our faith is different in two ways
        • It is different from other faiths and from philosophies in that it is not made by us but is God-given, not opinion but revelation, not guessing but certainty
        • It is different in that it has the power to make those who believe it different. It is not only a mind changer but a life changer, not only an intellectual belief but also a moral force
    • Good people are people who pray
      • It has been put this way: “Real religion means dependence.” The essence of religion is the admission of our total dependence on God; and prayer is the acknowledging of that dependence, and going to God for the help we need. Christians must be men and women of prayer for at least two reasons
        • They know that they must test everything by the will of God; therefore they must take everything to God for His approval
        • They know that of themselves they can do nothing, but that with God all things are possible; therefore they must always be taking their insufficiency to God’s sufficiency
      • Jude says prayer is to be in the Holy Spirit. What he means is our human prayers are at least sometimes bound to be selfish and blind. It is only when the Holy Spirit takes full possession of us that our desires are so purified that our prayers are right. The truth is that we are bound to pray to God; but He alone can teach us how to pray and what to pray for
    • Good people keep themselves in the love of God
      • Jude is thinking of the old covenant relationship between God and His people as described in Exodus 24:1-8. God came to His people promising that He would be their God and they would be His people; but that relationship depended on their accepting and obeying the law which He gave them
      • “God’s love has it’s own terms of communion” James Moffatt. It is true in one sense that we can never drift beyond God’s love and care; but it is also true that if we desire to remain in close communion with God, we must give Him the perfect love and the perfect obedience which must always go hand in hand
    • Good people wait with expectation
      • They wait for the coming of Jesus Christ in mercy, love, and power; for they know that Christ’s purpose for them is to bring them to live eternal, which is nothing other than the life of God Himself
• Jude 22-23
• 22 Have mercy on those who waver; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; have mercy on others but with fear, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.
  • Even to the worst heretics, even to those most far gone in error, and to those whose beliefs are most dangerous, Christians have a binding duty to not destroy but to save. Their aim must be not to banish them from the Christian Church but to win them back into the Christian fellowship. James Denny of Glasgow Free Church College said that at its simplest, Jesus came to make bad people good. The historian Sir John Seely said: “When the power of reclaiming the lost dies out of the church, it ceases to be the church.” Jude divides those who cause trouble for the Church Ito three classes, to each a different approach is necessary
    • There are those who are flirting with falsehood
      • The are obviously attracted by the wrong way and are on the brink of committing themselves to error, but are still hesitating before taking the final step. They must be argued out of their error while there is time. From this, two things emerge as a duty
        • We must study to be able to defend the faith and to give a reason for the hope that is in us. We must know what we believe so that we can meet error with truth; and we must make ourselves able to defend the faith in such a way that our graciousness and sincerity may win others to it. To do this, we must banish all uncertainty from our minds and all arrogant and intolerance from our approach to others
        • We must be ready to speak in time. Many people would have been saved from error of thought and action if someone else had only spoken in time. Sometimes we hesitate to speak; but there are many times when silence is cowardly and can cause more harm than speaking out could ever cause
    • There are those who have to be snatched from the fire
      • They have actually started out on the wrong way and have to be stopped, forcibly and even against their will. It is all very well to say that we must leave people their freedom and that they have a right to do what they like. All these things are in one sense true, but there are times when people must be saved from themselves
    • There are those whom we must pity and fear at one and the same time
      • Here Jude is thinking of something which is always true. There is danger to the sinner; but there is also danger to the rescuer. Anyone who aims to cure an infectious disease runs the risk of infection. Jude says that we must hate the garment stained by the flesh. He is probably referencing the regulations in Leviticus 13 where it is said that the garment worn by a person discovers to be suffering from leprosy must be burned. The old saying remains true—we must love the sinner but hate the sin. Before we can rescue others, we must be strong in the faith ourselves. Our own feet must be firm on the dry land before we can throw a life vest to the person who is likely to be swept away
      • The simple fact is that the rescue of those in error is not for everyone to attempt. Those who would win others for Christ must themselves be very sure of Him; and those who would fight the disease of sin must themselves have the strong antiseptic of a healthy faith. Ignorance can never be met with ignorance, nor even with partial knowledge; it can be met only by the affirmation; “I know whom I have believed”
• Jude 24-25
• 24 Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.
  • Jude comes to an end with a tremendous ascription of praise
  • Three times in the NT, praise is given to the God who is able
    • In Romans 16:25, Paul gives praise to the God who is able to strengthen us. God is the one person who can give us a foundation for life which nothing and no one can ever shake
    • In Ephesians 3:20, Paul give praise to the God who is able to do far more than we can ever ask or even dream of. He is the God whose grace no one has ever exhausted and on whom no claim can ever be too much
    • Here, Jude offers his praise to the God who is able
      • God is able to keep us from stumbling
        • The word is used both of a sure-footed horse which does not stumble and of a person who does not fall into error. To walk with God is to walk in safety even on the most dangerous and the most slippery path
      • He can make us stand blameless in the presence of His glory
        • The word for without blemish is characteristically a sacrificial word; and it is commonly and technically used of an animal which is without spot or blemish; therefore it is fit to be offered to God. The amazing thing is that when we submit ourselves to God, His grace can make our lives nothing less than a sacrifice fit to offer to Him
      • He can bring us into His presence triumphant
        • Surely the natural way to think of entry into the presence of God is in fear and shame. But by the work of Jesus and in the grace of God, we know that we can go to God with joy and with all fear banished. Through Jesus, God the stern judge has become known to us as God the loving father
  • We note one last thing. Usually we associate the word Savior with Jesus; but here Jude attaches it to God. He is not alone in this, because God is often called Savior in the NT. So we end with the great and comforting certainty that at the back of everything there is a God whose name is Savior. Christians have the joyous certainty that in this world they live in the love of God and that in the next world they go to that love. The love of God is both the atmosphere and the goal of all their living 

Jude 8-16 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Jude 8-16

• Jude 8-9
• 8 In the same way these people—relying on their dreams—defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones. 9 Yet when Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil in an argument about Moses’s body, he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
  • Jude begins this passage by comparing the evil intruders with the false prophets whom Scripture condemns. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 tells us what is to be done with the person described here as “relying on their dreams”, who corrupts the nations and seduces the people from their loyalty to God
  • Such a prophet is to be mercilessly killed. These people whom Jude attacks are false prophets, dreamers of false dreams, seducers of the people and must be treated as such. Their false teaching resulted in two things
    • It made them defile the flesh
      • We have already seen the direction of their teaching on the flesh. First, the flesh was entirely evil, and there fore of no importance; and so the instincts of the body could be given their way without control. Second, the grace of God was all-forgiving and all-sufficient, therefor sin did not matter since grace would forgive every sin. Sin was only the means whereby grace was given its opportunity to operate
    • They despised angels
      • Celestial powers and angelic glories are the names for ranks of angles within the angelic hierarchy. This follows immediately after the citing of Sodom and Gomorrah as dreadful examples; and part of the sin of Sodom was the desire of its people to misuse its angelic visitors
      • The people whom Jude attacks spoke evil of the angels. To prove how terrible a thing that was, Jude cites an instance from the apocryphal book, The Assumption of Moses
        • The story in The Assumption of Moses is this. The death of Moses is told in Deuteronomy 34:1-6. This story goes on to add that the task of burying the body of Moses was given to the archangel Michael The devil argued with Michael about the possession of the body. He based his claim on two grounds. Moses’ body was matter; matter was evil; therefore the body belonged to him, for matter was his domain. Second, Moses was a murderer, because he killed the Egyptian he saw beating an Israeli. And if he was a murderer, the devil had a claim on his body
        • The point Jude is making is Michael was engaged on a task given to him by God; the devil was seeking to stop him and was making claims he had no right to make. But even under those circumstances, Michael spoke no evil of the devil but simply said: “The Lord rebuke you!” If the greatest of the good angels refused to speak evil of the greatest of the evil angels then surely no human may speak evil of any angel
  • We don’t know what the people Jude is writing against were saying about the angels. Perhaps they were saying they did not exist, or they were saying they were evil. 
• Jude 10
• 10 But these people blaspheme anything they do not understand. And what they do understand by instinct—like irrational animals—by these things they are destroyed.
  • Jude says two things about the evil intruders whom he is writing against
    • They criticize everything which they do not understand
      • Anything which is out of their sphere of operation and their experience they disregard as worthless and irrelevant. I Corinthians 2:14; “ 14 But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.” They have no spiritual discernment, therefore they are blind to and contemptuous of all spiritual realities
    • They allow themselves to be corrupted by the things they do understand
      • What they do understand are the sensual instincts which they share with animals. Their way of life is to allow these instincts to have their way; their values are values of the flesh. Jude is describing people who have lost all awareness of spiritual things and for whom the things demanded by their animal instincts are the only standard
    • The terrible thing is that the first condition is the direct result of the second. The tragedy is that no one is born without a sense of the spiritual things; but it is possible to lose that sense so that spiritual things cease to exist
      • We may lose any faculty if we refuse to use it. We discover this in such simple things as games and skills. If we give up playing a game, we lose the ability to play it. If we give up practicing a skill, we lose it. We discover this in such things as abilities. We may know something of a foreign language; but if we never speak or read it, we lose it
      • We can all hear the voice of God; and we all have animal instincts on which the future existence of the race depends. But if we consistently refuse to listen to God and make our instincts the sole force behind our conduct, in the end we will be unable to hear the voice of God and will have nothing left to take control of us but basic desires. It is a terrible thing for people to reach a stage where they are deaf to God and blind to goodness; and that is the stage which the people whom Jude is writing against had reached
• Jude 11
• 11 Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, have plunged into Balaam’s error for profit, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion.
  • Jude now goes to the history of Israel for parallels to the wicked people of his own day; and from it he draws  the examples of three notorious sinners
    • First there is Cain who murdered his brother Abel. In Hebrew traditions, Cain stood for two things
      • He was the first murderer in the history of the world. It may well be that Jude is implying that those who delude others are nothing other than murderers of the souls of men and women, and therefore are spiritual descendants of Cain
      • But Cain came to stand for something more than that. In the writings of Philo, he stands for selfishness. In Rabbinic teachings he is the type of the cynical man. In the Jerusalem Targum, he is the depicted as saying “there is neither judgment nor judge; there is no other world; no good reward will be given to the good and no vengeance take on the wicked; nor is there any pity in the creation or the government of the world.” To the Hebrew thinkers, Cain was the cynical, materialistic unbeliever who believed neither in God nor in the moral order of the world and therefore did exactly as he like
      • So Jude is charging his opponents with defying God and denying the moral order of the world. It remains true that those who choose to sin still have to reckon with God and to lear that no one can defy the moral order of the world and escape the consequences
    • Second is Balaam. IN OT thought, in Jewish teaching, and even in the NT, Balaam is the great example of those who taught Israel to sin. In the OT, there are two stories about him. One is quite clear. The other is more obscure, but much more terrible; and it is this second story which left its mark on Hebrew thought and teaching
      • The first is in Numbers 22-24. There it is told how Barak attempted to persuade Salaam to curse the people of Israel, because he feared their power. Balaam was asked five times and offered large rewards. He refused to be persuaded by Barak; but his envy and greed stand out; it is clear that only the fear of what God would do to him kept him from striking a dreadful bargain. Balaam already emerges from this story as a detestable character
      • In Numbers 25 we find the second story. Israel is seduced into the worship of Baal with dreadful and repulsive moral consequences. As we read later (Numbers 31), it was Balaam who was responsible for that seduction, and he perished miserably because he taught others to sin
      • Out of this composite story, Balaam stands for two things
        • He stands for the greedy and envious person who was prepared to sin in order to gan reward
        • He stands for the evil person who was guilty of the greatest of all sins—that of teaching others to sin
      • So Jude is accusing the wicked people of his own day that they are ready to leave the way of righteousness to make gain, and that they are teaching others to sin. To sin for the sake of gain is bad; but to teach another to sin is the worst sin of all
    • Third there is Korah. His story is in Numbers 16
      • The sin of Torah was that he rebelled against the guidance of Moses when the sons of Aaron and the tribe Levi were made the priests of the nation. That was a decision which Korah was not willing to accept; he wanted to exercise a function which he had no right to exercise; and when he did so, he perished terrible along with all his companions in wickedness. Korah stands for those who refuse to accept authority and reach out for things which they have no right to have. 
      • So Jude is charging his opponents with defying the legitimate authority of the Church and therefore preferring their own way to the way of God. We should remember that, if we take certain things which pride incites us to take, the consequences can be disastrous
• Jude 12-16
• 12 These people are dangerous reefs at your love feasts as they eat with you without reverence. They are shepherds who only look after themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by winds; trees in late autumn—fruitless, twice dead and uprooted. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameful deeds; wandering stars for whom the blackness of darkness is reserved forever. 14 It was about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied: “Look! The Lord comes with tens of thousands of his holy ones 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all the ungodly acts that they have done in an ungodly way, and concerning all the harsh things ungodly sinners have said against him.” 16 These people are discontented grumblers, living according to their desires; their mouths utter arrogant words, flattering people for their own advantage.
  • This is one of the great passages of denunciation and revilement of the NT. It is a blaze of moral indignation at its hottest. James Moffatt writes, “Sky, land, and sea are ransacked for illustrations of the character of these men.” Here is a series of vivid pictures, every one with significance
    • They are like dangerous reefs which threaten to wreck your love feasts
      • This is the one case in which there is doubt about about what Jude is actually saying; but of one there there is not doubt—the evil intruders were a danger to the love feasts
        • The love feast was one of the earliest features of the Church. It was a meal of fellowship had on Sundays, and to it people brought what they could bo be shared. It was a lovely idea that the Christians in each house church could sit down to eat in fellowship together. No doubt there were some who could bring much and others who could bring only a little. For many of the slaves, it was perhaps the only decent meal they ever ate
        • But soon the meal began to go wrong. We can see it going wrong in the church in Corinth, when Paul declares that  there is nothing but division during their shred meals. They are divided into cliques and sections; some have too much while others get nothing to eat; and the meal for some has become a party. Unless this meal was a true fellowship, it was a travesty; and very soon it had begun to misrepresent its name completely
      • Jude’s opponents were making a travesty of the feast. In ordinary Greek the most common meaning for “dangerous reefs” was a submerged or half-submerged rock on which a ship could be easily wrecked. In the love feast, people were very close together in the heart, and there was the kiss of peace. These wicked people were using them as a cover for gratification of their lusts. It is a dreadful thing if people come into the Church and use the opportunities which its fellowship gives for their own ends. These people were like sunken rocks on which the fellowship was in danger of being wrecked
    • These wicked intruders revel in their own cliques and have no feeling of responsibility for anyone except themselves. These two things go together, for they both stress the essential selfishness of these people
      • They revel in their own cliques without a worry. This is exactly the situation which Paul condemns in I Corinthians. The love feast was supposed to be an act of fellowship; and the fellowship was demonstrated by the sharing of all things. Instead of sharing, the wicked kept to their own group and kept to themselves all they had. In I Corinthians, Paul actually goes to the lengths of saying that the love feast could become a drunken party in which people grabbed everything they could get. People can never claim to know what church membership means if, in the Church, they are out for what they can get and they remain within their own little group
      • They are shepherds who only look after themselves. They Greek literally means “shepherding themselves”. The duty of a leader in the Church is to be a shepherd of the flock of God. The fans shepherd cared far more for himself than for the sheep which were supposed to be within his care. Those who feel no responsibility for the welfare of anyone except themselves stand condemned
      • So Jude condemns the selfishness which destroys fellowship and the lack of any sense of responsibility for others
    • They are waterless clouds carried along by the winds and fruitless trees
      • These two phrases go together and they describe people who make great claims but are essentially useless. There were times in Palestine when people would pray for rain. At such a time, a cloud might pass across the sky, bringing with it the promise of rain. But there were times when the promise was only an illusion, the cloud was blown on and the rain never came. In harvest time, there were trees which looked as if they were heavy with fruit, but gave no fruit at all
      • At the heart of this lies a great truth. Promise without performance is useless, and in the NT nothing is so unsparingly condemned as uselessness. No amount of outward show or fine words will take the place of usefulness to others. As it has been put, if a man is not good for something, he’s good for nothing
    • They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameful deeds
      • After a storm, when the waves have been lashing the shore with their frothing spray and their foam, there is always left on the shore a fringe of seaweed and driftwood and all kinds of unsightly litter from the sea. That is always an unattractive scene, but in the case of one sea it is uglier than in any other
      • The waters of the Dead Sea are so full of salt that they strip the bark from any driftwood in them; and when such wood is cast up on the shore, it gleams bleed  and whiee, more like dried bones than wood. The deeds of the wicked are like the useless and unsightly litter which the waves leave scattered on the beach after a storm and which resemble the skeleton-like relics of the Dead Sea storms
    • Wandering stars…
      • This is a picture taken directly from the Book of Enoch. The stars are sometimes identified with he Agnes; and there is a picture of the fate of the stars which, disobedient to God, left their appointed orbit and were destroyed. The fate of the wandering stars is typical of the fate of those who disobey God’s commandments and take their own way
    • Jude then confirms all this with a prophecy; butt he prophecy is again taken from Enoch
    • In verse 16, Jude tells us three characteristics of the evil intruders
      • They are discontented grumblers
        • He uses two pictures, one which the Jewish readers would be very familiar with, and one which the Greeks would be familiar with
          • The first describes the discontented voices of the murmurers and is the same as is so often used in the Greek OT for the murmurings of the Israelites against Moses as he led them through he wilderness. Its very sound describes the low mutter of resentful discontent which roe from the rebellious people. These wicked people in the time of Jude are the modern counterparts of the murmuring Israelites in the desert, people full of sullen complaints agains the guiding hand of God
          • The second is made up of two Greek words—to blame, and one’s allotted fate or life. This was someone who was always grumbling about life in general. Nothing is ever good enough
      • They live according to their desires
        • To them, self discipline and self control are nothing; to them he moral law is only a burden and a nuisance; honor and duty have no claim upon them. They have no desire to serve and no sense of responsibility. Their one value is pleasure, and their only motivating force is desire. If everyone was like that, the world would be in complete chaos
      • They utter arrogant words, yet try to flatter those that can help them
        • It is perfectly possible for them to talk themselves up in front of people they want to impress and also to flatter and butter up those whom they think are important. Jude’s opponents are glorifiers of themselves and flatterers of others, as they think the occasion demands; and their descendants are sometimes still among us

Jude 3-7 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Jude 3-7

• Jude 3
• 3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.
  • Here we find out why Jude is writing the letter. He has been engaged on writing an essay about the Christian faith; but news had come that evil and misguided people had been spreading destructive teaching. He became convinced that he must lay aside his essay and write this letter
  • Jude fully realized his duty to be the watchman of God’s flock. The purity of their faith was there’d, and he rushed to defend both them and the faith
    • That involved setting aside the work on which he had been engaged; but often it is much better to write an article for the the times than an essay for the future. It may be that Jude never again got the chance to write the essay he had planned; but the fact is that he did more for the Church by writing this urgent little letter than he could possibly have done by leaving a long essay on the faith
  • In this passage, there are certain truths about the faith which we hold
    • The faith is something which is delivered to us
      • The facts of the Christian faith are not something which we have discovered for ourselves. In the true sense of the word, they are tradition, something which has been handed down from generation to generation until it has come to us. They go back in an unbroken chain to Jesus Himself
      • There is something to be added to that. The faces of the faith are indeed something which we have not discovered for ourselves. It is, therefore, true that the Christian tradition is not something handed down in the cold print of books; it is something which is passed on from person to person through the generations. The chain of Christian tradition is a living chain whose links are men and women who have experienced the wonder of the facts
    • The Christian faith is something which is once and for all delivered to us
      • There is in it an unchangeable quality. That is not to say that every age does not have to rediscover the Christian faith; but it does say that there is an unchanging nucleus in it—and the permanent center of it is that Jesus came into the world, lived, and died to bring salvation to us
    • The Christian faith is something which is entrusted to God’s consecrated people
      • That is to say, the Christian faith is the possession not of any one person but of the Church. It comes down within the Church, it is preserved within the Church, and it is understood within the Church
    • The Christians faith is something which must be defended
      • Every Christian must be its defender. If the Christian tradition comes down from generation to generation, each must hand it on uncorrupted and undistorted. There are times when that is difficult. The word Jude uses for “contend for” contains the root of our word agony. The defense of the faith may well be a costly thing; but that defense is a duty which falls on every generation of the Church
• Jude 4
• 4 For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.
  • Here is the peril which made Jude lay aside the essay he was about to write and take up his pen to write this burning letter. The threat came from within the Church
  • Certain people had come in by stealth. The Greek is a very expressive word. It is used of the plausible and seductive words of someone who pleads their case cleverly, espying gradually into the minds of a judge and jury; it is used of an outlaw slipping secretly back into the country from which he has been expelled; it is used of the slow and subtle entry of innovations into the life of society, which in the end undermine and break down the ancestral laws
  • It always indicates a stealthy insinuation of something evil iota a society or situation
  • Certain evil people had worked their way into the Church. They were the kind of people for whom judgment was waiting. They were irreverent and godless in their thoughts and in their lives. Jude picks out two characteristics about them
    • They perverted the grace of God into an excuse for sensuality
      • The Greek is a grim and terrible word. Most people try to hide their sin; they have enough respect for common decency not to want to be found out. But those described here are people who are so lost to decency that they  do not care who sees their sin. It is not that they arrogantly and proudly flaunt it; it is simply that they can publicly do the most shameless things, because they have ceased to care for decency at all
      • These people are undoubtedly tinged with Gnosticism and its belief that, since the grace of God was wide enough to cover any sin, they could sin as they liked. The more they sinned, the greater the grace—therefore, why worry about sin? Grace was being perverted into justification for sin
    • They denied our only Lord and Master, Jesus Christ
      • There is more than one way in which people can deny Jesus
        • They can deny Him in times of persecution
        • They can deny Him for the sake of convenience
        • They can deny Him by their lives and conduct
        • They can deny Him by developing false ideas about Him
      • If these people were Gnostics, they would have two mistaken ideas about Jesus. First, since the body, being matter, was evil, they would hold that Jesus only seemed to have a body and was kind of spirit ghost in the apparent shape of a man. The Greek for seem is dokein; and these people were called Docetists. They would deny the real humanity of Jesus Christ
      • Second, they would deny His uniqueness. They believed that there were many stages between the evil matter of this world and the perfect spirit which is God; and they believed that Jesus was only one of the many stages on the way
  • No wonder Jude was alarmed. He was faced with a situation in which some had wormed their way into the Church., and these people were twisting the grace of God into a justification, and even a reason, for sinning in the most blatant way. They denied both the humanity and the uniqueness of Christ
• Jude 5-7
• 5 Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe; 6 and the angels who did not keep their own position but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day. 7 Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
  • Jude issues a warning to the evil intruders who were perverting the belief and conduct of the Church. He tells them  that he is, in fact, doing nothing other than reminding them of things of which they are perfectly well aware. In a sense, it is true to say that all preaching within the Christin Church is not so much bringing new truth as confronting people with truth they already know but have forgotten or are disregarding
  • To understand the first two examples which Jude cites from history, we must understand one thing. The evil people who were corrupting the Church did not regard themselves as enemies of the Church and of Christianity; they regarded themselves as the advanced thinkers, a cut above the ordinary Christian, the the spiritual elite. Jude choose his examples to make clear that, even if people have received the greatest privileges, they may still fall away into disaster, and even those who have received the greatest privileges from God cannot consider themselves safe but must be on constant watch against mistaken beliefs and error
  • The first example is from the history of Israel
    • He takes his story from Numbers 13-14. The mighty hand of God had saved the people from slavery in Egypt What greater act of deliverance could there be than that? The guidance of God had brought the people safely across the desert to the borders of the promised land. What greater demonstration of His providence could there be than that?
    • So, at the very borders of the promised land, at Kadesh-barnea, spies were sent to spy out the land before the final invasion took place. With the exception of Caleb and Joshua, the spies came back with the opinion that the dangers ahead were so terrible, and the people so strong, that they could never win their way into the promised land. The people rejected the report of Caleb and Joshua, who were for going on, and accepted the report of those who insisted that the case was hopeless
    • This was a clear act of disobedience to God and a complete lack of faith in Him. The consequence was that God gave sentence that of these people , with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, all those over the age of 20 would never enter the promised land but would wander in the wilderness until they were dead
    • This was a picture which haunted the minds of both Paul and the writer to the Hebrews. It is the proof that even those who have the greatest privilege can meet with disaster before the end, if they fall away from obedience and lapse from the faith. The Glasgow minister George Johnston Jeffrey tells of a great man who absolutely refused to have his biography written before his death. “I have seen too many men fall out on the last lap.” The Methodist John Wesley ward; “There none presume on past mercies, as if they were out of danger.” In his dream, Joh Bunyan saw that even from the gates of heaven there was a way to hell
    • Jude warns these intruders that, great as their privileges have been, they must still take care in case disaster should come upon them. It is a warning in which each of us would do well to heed
  • The second dreadful example which Jude takes is the fallen angels
    • The Jews had a very highly developed doctrine of angels, the servants of God. In particular, the Jews believed that every nation had its presiding angel. In the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, Deuteronomy 32:8 reads; “When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” That is to say, to each nation there was an angel
    • The Jews believed in a fall of the angels, and much is said about this in the Book of Enoch, which so often lies behind the thought of Jude. In regard to this, there were two lines of traction
      • The first saw the fall of the angels as due to pride and rebelliousness
        • That legend gathered particularly round the name of Lucifer, the light-bringer, the son of the morning. Isaiah 14:12, “Shining morning star, how you have fallen from the heavens! You destroyer of nations, you have been cut down to the ground.” 
        • When the 72 returned from their mission and told Jesus of their successes, He warned them against pride; Luke 10:18, “18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning.”. The idea was that there was a civil war in heaven. The angels rose against God and were cast out; and Lucifer was the leader of the rebellion
      • The second stream of traditions finds its Scriptural echo in Genesis 6:1-4, “When mankind began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves. 3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men.”
      • In this line of thought, the angels, attracted by the beauty of mortal women, left heaven to seduce them and so sinned
    • In the first case, the fall of the angles was due to pride; in the second case, it was due to lust for what was forbidden. In effect, Jude takes the tow ideas and puts them together. He says that the angels left their own rank; that is to say, they aimed at a position which was not for them. He also says that they left their own proper home; that is to say, they came to earth to live with moral women
    • Jude’s warning is clear. Two things brought ruin to the angels—pride and lust. Even though they were angels, and heaven had been their dwelling place, they nonetheless sinned—and, for their sin, they were marked for judgment. To those reading Jude’s words for the first time, the whole line of thought was plain, for Enoch had much to say about the fate of these fallen angels. So, Jude was speaking to his people in terms that they could well understand and was telling them that, if pride and lust ruined the angels in spite of all their privileges, pride and lust could ruin them as well
    • The evil intruders within the church were proud enough to think that they knew better than the church’s teaching and were lustful enough to pervert the grace of God into a justification for blatant immorality. Whatever the ancient background of his words, Jude’s warning is still valid. The pride which knows better than God and the desire for forbidden things are the way to ruin in time and in eternity
  • The third example Jude chose is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
    • Notorious for their sins, these cities were obliterated by the fire of God. The traveller and writer George Adam Smith, in The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, points out that no incident in history ever made such an impression on the Jewish people, and that Sodom and Gomorrah are time and time again used in Scripture as the supreme examples of human isn and the judgment of God; they are used in this way even by Jesus Himself. “The glare of Sodom and Gomorrah is flung down the whole length of Scripture history.”
    • The story of the final wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah is told in Genesis 19:1-11, and the tragic tale of their destruction is told immediately following in 12-28. The sin of Sodom is one of the most horrible stories in history. H. E. Ryle, in his commentary on Genesis, has called it a “repulsive incident”. 
    • Two angelic visitors had come to Lot. He urged them to come in, and they entered his house as his guests. When they were there, the inhabitants of Sodom surrounded the house, demanding that Lot should bring out his visitors that they can have sex with them. What the men of Sodom were intent on was homosexual intercourse with Lot’s two visitors—sodomy, the word in which their sin is commemorated
    • It was after this that Sodom and Gomorrah were obliterated from the face of the earth. The neighboring cities were Zoar, Admah, and Zeboim. This disaster was localized in the dreadful desert region of the Dead Sea, a region which George Adam Smith, who travelled extensively in Palestine, calls: “This awful hollow, this bit of the infernal regions come to the surface, this hell with the sun shining into it.” It was there that the cities were said to have been; and it was said that under that scorched and bare earth there still shouldered an eternal fire of destruction
    • The should is bituminous with oil below, and Adam Smith conjectures that what happened was this: “In this soil took place one of these terrible explosions and firestorm which have broken out in the similar geology of North America. IN such soli reservoirs of oil and gas are formed, and suddenly discharged by their own pressure or by earthquake. The gas explodes, carrying high into the air masses of oil which fall back in fiery rain, and are so inextinguishable that they float afire on water.”
    • It was by such an eruption of fire that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. They awful desert was only a day’s journey from Jerusalem, and this divine judgment on sin was never forgotten
  • So Jude reminds these evil people of the fate of those who in ancient times defied the moral law of God. Jude is insisting that they should remember that sin and judgment go hand in hand, and that they should repent in time

Wednesday Evening Bible Study (Intro to Jude Cont.)

Intro to Jude Cont.

• Jude and the NTThere are questions that we need to review regarding the date and authorship of Jude
  • Jude has some difficulty in getting into the NT at all; it is one of the books whose position was always insecure and which were late in gaining full acceptance as part of the NT. Here is some of the opinions of the great leaders and scholars of the early Church about it
  • Jude is included in the Muratorian Canon, which dates to about 170 and may be regarded as the first semi-official list of the books accepted by the Church. The inclusion of Jude is strange when we remember that the Muratiorian Canon does not include in its list Hebrews and I Peter. But, for a long time thereafter, Jude is spoken of with some doubt
  • In the middle of the third century, the biblical scholar Origen knew and used it, but he was well aware that there were many who questioned its right to be Scripture
  • Eusebius, the great scholar of the middle of the fourth century, made a deliberate examination of the position of the various books which were in use, and he classed Jude among the books which were disputed
  • Jerome, who completed the Latin version f the Bible, the Vulgate, in the early years of the fifth century, had his doubts about Jude; and it is in him that we find one of the reasons for the hesitation which was felt towards it
    • The strange thing about Jude is the way in which it quotes as authorities books which are outside the OT. It uses as Scripture certain books which were written between the OT and NT and were never generally regarded as Scripture
    • Here are two definite instances
      • The reference in verse 9 to Michael arguing with the devil about the body of Moses is taken from an apocryphal book called The Assumption of Moses
      • In verses 14-15, Jude confirms his argument with a quotation from prophecy, as, indeed, is the habit of all the NT writers; but Jude’s quotation is taken from the Book of Enoch, which he appears to regard as Scripture
    • Jerome tells us that it was Jude’s habit of using non-Scriptural books as Scripture which made some people regard him with suspicion; and, towards the end of the third century in Alexandria, it was from the very same charge that the blind theologian Didymus defended him 
    • It is perhaps the strangest thing in Jude that he uses these non-Scriptural books as other NT writers use the prophets; and in verses 17-18 he makes use of a saying of the apostles which is not identifiable at all
    • Jude, then, was one of the books which took a long time to gain an assured place in the NT; but, by the fourth century, its place was secure
• The Date
  • There are definite indications that Jude is not an early book. It speaks of the faith that was once delivered to the saints (3). That way of speaking seems to look back a long way and to come from the time when there was a body of belief that was orthodoxy
  • In verses 17-18, he urges his people to remember the words of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. That seems to come from a time when the apostles were no longer there and the Church was looking back on their teaching
  • The atmosphere of Jude is of a book which looks back
  • Beside that, we have to set the fact that II Peter makes use of Jude to a very large extent
    • Anyone can see that its second chapter has the closest possible connection with Jude. It is quite certain that one of these writers was borrowing from the other. On general grounds, it is much more likely that the author of II Peter would incorporate the whole of Jude into his work than that Jude would, for no apparent reason, take over only one section of II Peter
  • Now if we believe that II Peter uses it, Jude cannot be very late, even if it is not early
  • It is true that Jude looks back on the apostles; but it is also true that, with the exception of John, all the apostles were dead by 70. Taking together the fact that Jude looks back on the apostles and the fact that II Peter uses it, a date about 80-90 would suit the writing of Jude
• The Authorship of Jude
  • Who was the Jude, or Judas, who wrote this letter? He calls himself the servant of Christ and the brother of James;
    • There is the Judas of Damascus in whose house Paul was praying after his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road
    • There is Judas Barsabas, a leading figure in the councils of the Church, who, along with Silas, was the bearer to Antioch of the decision of the Council of Jerusalem when the door of the Church was opened to the Gentiles. This Judas was also a prophet
    • There is Judas Iscariot
    • There is the second Judas in the apostolic band
      • John calls him Judas, not Iscariot. In Luke’s list of the Twelve, there is an apostle called Judas of James in the Greek. This is a very common idiom in Greek, and almost always it means not the brother of, but son of—so that Judas of James in the list of the Twelve is not Judas the brother of James but Judas the son of James
    • There is the Judas who was the brother of Jesus
      • If any of the NT Judases is the writer of this letter, it must be this one, for only he could truly be called the brother of James
      • Is this letter to be taken as a letter of the Judas who was the brother of Jesus? If so, it would give it a special interest. But there are objections
        • If Jude was the brother of Jesus, why does he not say so? Why does he identify himself as Jude the brother of James rather than as Jude the brother of Jesus
          • It would surely be explanation enough to say that he shrank from taking so great a title of hero to himself. Even if it was true that he was the brother of Jesus, he might well prefer in humility to call himself his servant, for Jesus was not only his brother but also his Lord
          • Further, Jude the brother of James would in all probability never have gone outside Palestine in all of his life. The church eh would know would be the one in Jerusalem, and of that church James was the undoubted head. If he was writing to churches in Palestine, hi relationship to James was the natural thing to stress
          • When we come to think of it, it would be more surprising that Jude should call himself the brother of Jesus than that he should call himself the servant of Jesus
        • The objection is raised that Jude calls himself the servant of Jesus and thereby calls himself an apostle
          • “Servants of God” was the OT title for the prophets. God would not do anything without revealing it first to His servants the prophets. What had been a prophetic title in the OT became an apostolic title in the NT
          • Paul speaks of himself as the servant of Jesus (Romans 1:1; Philippians 1:1). In the Pastoral Epistles, he is spoken of as the servant of God (Titus 1:1), and that is also the title which James takes for himself (James 1:1). The conclusion is reached, therefore, that by calling himself the servant of Jesus, Jude is claiming to be an apostle
          • There are two answers to that
            • The title of servant of Jesus is not confined to the Twelve, for it is given by Paul to Timothy (Philippians 1:1)
            • Even if it is regarded as a title confined to the apostles in the wider sense of the word, we find the brother son the Lord associated with the eleven after the ascension (Acts 1:14), and Jude, like the brothers of Jesus were prominent in the missionary work of the Church (I Corinthians 9:5)
            • Such evidence as we have would tend to prove that Jude, the brother of Jesus, was one of the apostolic circle and that the title of servant of Jesus is perfectly applicable to him
        • It is argued that the Jude of Palestine, who was the brother of Jesus, could not have written the Greek of this letter, as he would have been an Aramaic speaker
          • That is not a safe argument. Jude would certainly know Greek, for it was the common language of the ancient world, which people spoke in addition to their own language. The Greek of Jude is unrefined and forceful. It might well have been within Jude’s competence to write it himself; and, even if he could not do so, he may well have had a helper and translator such as Peter had in Silvanus
        • It might be argued that the heresy which Jude is attacking is Gnosticism, and that Gnosticism is much more a Greek than Jewish way of thought—and what wud dJude of Palestine be doing writing to Greeks
          • But an odd fact about this heresy is that it is the very opposite of orthodox Judaism. All Jewish action was controlled by sacred law; the first basic belief of Judaism was that there was one God, and the Jewish belief in angels was highly developed. It is by no means difficult to suppose that, when certain Jews entered the Christian faith, they swung to the other extreme
          • It is easy to imagine Jews, who all their lives had been slaves to the law, suddenly discovering grace and plunging into antinomianism as a reaction against their former legalism, and reacting similarly against the traditional Jewish belief in one God and in angels. In the heretics whose Jude attacks, it is in fact easy to see Jews who had come into the Christian Church more as deserters from Judaism than as truly converted Christians
        • Last, it might be argued that, if this letter had been known to have been the work of Jude the brother of Jesus, it would not have been so long in gaining an entry into the NT
          • But, before the end of the first century, the Church was largely Gentile, and the Jews were regarded as the enemies and the slanderers of the Church. During his lifetime, Jesus’ brothers had in fact been his enemies; and it could well have happened that a letter as Jewish as Jude might have had a struggle against prejudice to get into the NT, even if its author was the brother of Jesus
• Jude, the Brother of Jesus
  • If this letter is not the work of Jude the brother of Jesus, what are the alternative suggestions? There are two
    • The letter is the work of a man called Jude of whom nothing is otherwise known
      • This theory has be meet a double difficulty. First, there is the coincidence that this Jude is also the brother of James. Second, it is hard to explain how so small a letter ever came to have any authority at all, if it is the work of someone quite unknown
    • The letter is pseudonymous
      • That is to say, it was written by someone else and then attached to the name of Jude. That was a common practice in the ancient world. Between the OT and NT, scores of books were written and attached to the names of Moses, Enoch, Baruch, Isaiah, Solomon, and many others. No one saw anything wrong in that. But two things are to be noted about Jude
        • In all such publications, the name to which the book was attached was a famous name; but Jude, the brother of Jesus, was a person who was completely obscure; he is not numbered among the great names of the early Church
          • There is a story that, in the days of the Emperor Domitian, there was a deliberate attempt to see to it that Christianity did not spread. News came to the Roman authorities that certain descendants from the family of Jesus were still alive, among them the grandsons of Jude
          • The Romans felt that it was possible that rebellion might gather around these men, and they were ordered to appear before the Roman courts. When they did so, they were seen to be laborers and land workers, and were dismissed as being unimportant and quite harmless. Obviously, Jude was Jude the obscure, and there could have been no possible reason for attaching a book to the name of a man whom nobody knew
        • When a book was written under a pseudonym, the reader was never left in any doubt as to the person whose name it was being attached to
          • If this letter had ben sued as the work of Jude, the brother of Jesus, he would have certainly been given that Tiel in such a way that no one could mistake it; and yet, in fact, it is quite unclear who the author is
  • Jude is obviously Jewish; its references and allusions are such that only a Jew could understand them. It is simple and unrefined; it is vivid and pictorial. It is clearly not the work of a theologian. It fits Jude the brother of our Lord. It is attached to his name, and there could be no reason for doing that unless he did in fact write it
• Jude 1,2
• 1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: 2 Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
  • Few things tell more about people than the way in which they speak about themselves; few things are more revealing than the titles by which they wish to be known. Jude calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James. That tells us two things about him
    • Jude was a man happy to take second place
      • He was not nearly so well known as James; and he is content to be known as the brother of James. In this, he was the same as Andrew. Andrew was Peter’s brother. He was described by his relationship to a more famous brother. Jude and Andrew might well have been resentful of the brothers in whose shadow they had to live; but both had the great gift of gladly taking second place
    • The only title of honor which Jude would allow himself was the servant of Jesus
      • The Greek means more than servant—it means slave. That is to say, Jude regarded himself as having only one purpose and one distinction in life—to be forever at the disposal of Jesus for service in his cause. The greatest glory which any Christian can attain is to be of use to Jesus Christ
  • In this introduction, Jude uses three words to describe Christians
    • Christians are those who are called by God
      • The Greek for to call has three great areas of use
        • It is the word for summoning a person to office, to duty, and to responsibility. Christians are summoned to a task, to duty, and to responsibility in the service of Christ
        • It is the word for summoning someone to a feast or a festival. It is the word for an invitation to a happy occasion. Christians are people who are summoned to the joy of being the guests of God
        • It is the word for summoning a person to judgement. It is the word for calling people to court to give account of themselves. Christians are in the end summoned to appear before the judgement seat of Christ
      • Christians are those who are beloved in God
        • It is this great fact which determines the nature of the call. The call to men and women is the call to be loved and to love. God calls us to a task; but that task is the service of fellowship, not of tyranny. In the end, God calls us to judgement; but it is the judgement of love as well as of justice
      • Christians are those who are kept by Christ
        • As Christians we are never left alone; Christ is always watching over our lives, and He is our companion on the way
  • Here is a little more detail about this calling of God
    • Paul speaks about being called to be an apostle
      • In Greek, the word means to send out, and an apostle is therefore one who is sent out. That is to say, Christians are the ambassadors of Christ. They are sent out into the world to speak for Christ, to act for Christ, and to live for Christ. By their lives, they commend or fail to commend Christ to others
    • Paul speaks about being called to the be saints
      • The word for saint is also very commonly translated as holy. Its rood ideas is difference. The Sabbath is holy because it is different from other days; God is supremely holy because He is different from us. To be called to be a saint is called to be different. The world has its own standards and its own scale of values. The difference for Christians is that Christ is the only standard and loyalty to Christ the only value
    • Christians are called according to the purpose of God
      • God’s call goes out to everyone, although not everyone accepts it; and this means that, for every individual, God has a purpose. Christians are men and women who submit themselves to the purpose God has for them
  • Paul has a good deal to say about this calling of God, and we can only deal very briefly with it here. It sets before us a great hope. It should be a unifying influence binding people together by the conviction that they all have a part int he purpose of God. It is an upward calling, setting our feet on the way to the stars. It is a heavenly calling, making us think of the things which are invisible and eternal. It is a holy calling, a call to consecration to God. It is a calling which covers ordinary everyday tasks. It is a calling which does not alter, because God does not change His mind. It knows ho human distinctions and cuts across the world’s classifications and judgements. It is something of which Christians must be worthy; and all life must be one long effort to make it secure
  • The calling of God is the privilege, the challenge, and the inspiration of the Christian life

Intro to Jude Part 1 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Intro to Jude (Part 1)

• Jude
• 1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James: To those who are the called, loved by God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. 2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. 3 Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all. 4 For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. 5 Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe; 6 and the angels who did not keep their own position but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day. 7 Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. 8 In the same way these people—relying on their dreams—defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones. 9 Yet when Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil in an argument about Moses’s body, he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10 But these people blaspheme anything they do not understand. And what they do understand by instinct—like irrational animals—by these things they are destroyed. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, have plunged into Balaam’s error for profit, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion. 12 These people are dangerous reefs at your love feasts as they eat with you without reverence. They are shepherds who only look after themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by winds; trees in late autumn—fruitless, twice dead and uprooted. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameful deeds; wandering stars for whom the blackness of darkness is reserved forever. 14 It was about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied: “Look! The Lord comes with tens of thousands of his holy ones 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all the ungodly acts that they have done in an ungodly way, and concerning all the harsh things ungodly sinners have said against him.” 16 These people are discontented grumblers, living according to their desires; their mouths utter arrogant words, flattering people for their own advantage. 17 But you, dear friends, remember what was predicted by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They told you, “In the end time there will be scoffers living according to their own ungodly desires.” 19 These people create divisions and are worldly, not having the Spirit. 20 But you, dear friends, as you build yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting expectantly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life. 22 Have mercy on those who waver; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; have mercy on others but with fear, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. 24 Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.
  • Jude is a bewildering undertaking for most, unless you get to the background and context of the letter. There are two verses which are well-known at the end of the letter, but outside of verses 24 and 25 (read above), Jude is largely unknown and seldom read
  • The reason for its difficulty is that it is written out of a background of thought, against the challenge of a situation, in pictures and with quotations, which are all quite strange to us. Without doubt, it would hit those who read it for the first time like a hammer-blow. It would be like a trumpet-call to defend the faith
  • James Moffatt calls it a fiery cross to rouse the churches. But, as J.B. Mayor, one of its greatest commentators has said, “To a modern reader it is curious rather than edifying with the exception of the beginning and the end.”
  • When we understand Jude’s thought and disentangle the situation against which he was writing, his letter becomes of great interest for the history of the earliest Church and by no means without relevance for today. There have indeed been times in the history of the Church, and especially in its revivals, when Jude was not far from being the most relevant book in the NT. Let’s start with the substance of the letter
  • Meeting the Threat
    • It had been Jude’s intention to write a work on the faith which all Christians share; but that task had to be laid aside in view of the emergence of people whose conduct and thought were a threat to the Church. In view of this situation, the need was not so much to expound the faith as to rally Christians to its defense. Certain individuals who had insinuated themselves into the Church were busily engaged in turning the grace of God into an excuse for open immorality and are denying the only true God and Jesus the Lord. Theses people were immoral in life and heretical in belief
  • The Warnings
    • Against these intruders, Jude marshals his warnings. Let them remember the fate of the Israelites. They had been brought in safety out o fEgypt, but they had never been permitted to enter the promised land because of their lack of belief. Despite receiving the grace of God, it was still possible to lose eternal salvation by drifting into disobedience and faithlessness
    • Some angels with the glory of heaven as their own had come to earth and corrupted mortal women with their lust; and now they were imprisoned in deepest darkness awaiting judgement. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and their destruction in flames is a dreadful warning to everyone who similarly goes astray
  • The Evil Life
    • These intruders are visionaries of evil dreams; they defile their flesh, and they speak evil of the angels. Not even Michael the archangel dared to speak evil even of the evil angels. Michael had been given the task of burying the body of Moses. The devil had tried to stop him and claim the body for himself. Michael had spoken no evil against the devil, even in circumstances like that, but had simply said: “The Lord rebuke you!”
    • Angels must be respected, even when evil and hostile. These evil people condemn everything which they do not understand; and spiritual things are beyond their understanding. They do understand their physical instincts and allow themselves to be governed by them as irrational animals do
    • They are like Cain, the the murderer; like Balaam, whose one desire was for gain and who let the people into sin; they are like Koran, who rebelled against the legitimate authority of Moses and was swallowed up by the earth for his arrogant disobedience
    • They are like the hidden rocks on which a ship may come to grief; they have their own in-group in which they mix with people like themselves, and thus destroy Christian fellowship; they deceive others with their promises, like clouds which promise the longed-for rain and then pass over the sky; they are like fruitless and rootless trees, which have no harvest of good fruit; as the foaming spray of the waves casts the seaweed and the wreckage on the beaches, they cast up shameless deeds like foam; they are like disobedient stars which refuse to keep their appointed orbit and are doomed to darkness. Long ago, the prophet Enoch had described these people and had prophesied their divine destruction. They grumble and speak against all true authority and discipline as the children of Israel murmured against Moses in the desert; they are discontented with the lot which God has appointed to them; they are dictated to by their lusts; their speech is arrogant and proud; they pander to and flatter the great for the sake of gain
  • Words to the Faithful
    • Having made clear his disapproval of the evil intruders in this torrent of denunciation, Jude turns to the faithful. They could have expected all this to happen, for the apostles of Jesus had foretold the rise of evil people. But the duty of all true Christians is to build their lives on the foundation of the most holy faith, to learn to pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, to remember the conditions of the covenant into which the love of God has called them, and to wait for the mercy of Christ
    • As for the false thinkers and those who indulge in loose living, some of them may be saved with pity while they are still hesitating on the brink of their evil ways; others have to be snatched like pieces of burning wood from the fire; and Christians must have that godly fear which will love the sinner but hate the sin, and must avoid contamination from those they seek to save
    • There will be with them the power of God who can keep them from falling and can bring them pure and joyfully into His presence
  • The Heretics
    • Who were the heretics whom Jude blasts, what were their beliefs, and what was their way of life? Jude never tells us. He was not a theologian, but a plain honest leader of the church. He denounces rather than describes the heresies he attacks. He does not seek to argue and refute. But from the letter itself, we can deduce three things about them
      • They were antinomians—people who believed that the moral law did not apply to them
        • Antinomians have existed in every age of the Church. They are people who pervert grace. Their position is that the law is dead and they are under grace. The prescriptions of the law may apply to other people, but they no longer apply to them. They can do absolutely what they like
        • Grace is supreme; it can forgive any sin; the greater the sin, the more the opportunities for grace to abound (Romans 6). The body is of no importance; what matters is the inward heart. All things belong to Christ, and, therefore, all things are theirs. And so, for them there is nothing forbidden
        • So, Jude’s heretics turn the grace of God into an excuse for flagrant immorality; they even indulge in shameless unnatural conduct, as the people of Sodom did. They defile the flesh and do not consider it to be a sin. They allow their animal instincts to rule their lives. With their sensual ways, they are likely to wreck the Love Feasts of the Church. It is by their own lusts that they direct their lives
      • The Denial of God and of Jesus
        • Of the antinomianism and blatant immorality of the heretics whom Jude condemns, there is no doubt. The other two faults with which he charges them are not so obvious in their meaning. He charges them with denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. The closing is to “the only God our Savior”, a phrase which occurs again in Romans 16:27 and I Timothy 1:17. The reiteration of the word only is significant
        • If Jude talks about our only Master and Lord, and about the only God, it is natural to assume that there must have been those who questioned the uniqueness of Jesus and of God. 
        • As so often in the NT, we are again in contact with the type of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism. Its basic idea was that this was idealistic universe, a universe with tow eternal principles in it. From the beginning of time, there had always ben spirit and matter. Spirit was essentially good; matter was essentially evil. Out of this flawed matter, the world was created. Now, God is pure spirit, and could don’t possibly have contact with matter because it was essentially evil
        • How then was creation brought about? God put out a series of divine powers; each of these were further away from Him. At the end of this long chain, remote from God, there was one who was able to touch matter; and it was this distant and secondary god, who actually created the world
        • As they grew more distant from God, they grew more ignorant of Him—and also grew more hostile to Him. The one who created, at the end of the series, was both totally ignorant of and hostile to God
        • Having gone that far, the Gnostics took another step. They identified the true God with the God of the NT, and they identified the secondary, ignorant, and hostile god with the OT. As they saw it, the God of creation was a different being from eh God of revelation and redemption. Christianity, on the other hand, believes in the only God, the one God of creation, providence, and redemption
          • This was the Gnostic explanation of sin. It was because creation was carried out, in the first place, from evil matter, and in the second place, by an ignorant god, that sin, suffering, and all imperfection existed
          • This Gnostic line of thought had one curious but logical result. If the God of the OT was ignorant and hostile to the true God, it must follow that the people whom that ignorant God hurt were in fact good people. Clearly, the hostile God would be hostile to the people who were the true servants of the true God. The Gnostics, therefore, turned the OT upside down and regarded its heroes as villains and its villains as heroes
          • So there was a sect of these Gnostics called the Ophites, because they worshiped the serpent of Eden; and there were those who regarded Cain, Korah, and Balaam as great heroes. It is these very people whom Jude uses as tragic and terrible examples of sin
          • Not only did these heroics deny the oneness God, they also denied our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. That is to say, they denied the uniqueness of Jesus. How does that fit in with the Gnostic ideas as far as they are known to us? According to Gnostic belief, God put out a series of divine powers between Himself and the world. The Gnostics regarded Jesus as one of these divine powers. They did not regard Him as our only Master and Lord; He was only one among the many who were links between God and human beings, although He might be the highest and closest of all
        • One other hint that alludes to the Gnostics. In verse 19, Jude describes them as people who “create divisions and are worldly, not having the Spirit.”
          • Gnostic thought put divisions between those who were ignorant and those who could fully understand God. And the ones that could fully understand God were the elite. It is clear that this kind of belief inevitably produced spiritual snobbery and pride. It introduced into the Church the worst kind of class distinction
        • So the heretics whom Jude attacks were people who denied the oneness of God and split Him into an ignorant creating God and a truly spiritual God. They denied the uniqueness of Jesus and saw Him as only one of the links between God and human beings, and they created class distinctions within the Church and limited fellowship with God to the intellectual few
      • The Denial of the Angels
        • It is further implied that these heretics denied and insulted the angels. It is said they reject authority, and slander glorious ones. The words authority and glorious ones describe ranks in the Jewish hierarchy of angles. Verse 9 is a reference to a story in The Assumption of Moses. If Michale, the archangel, on such an occasion said nothing against the prince of evil angels, clearly no one can speak evil of angels
        • The Jewish belief in angels was very elaborate. Every nation had a protecting angel. Every person had an angel. All the forces nature, the wind, the sea, fire, and all the others were under the control of angels. It could be said that every blade of grass has its angel
        • Clearly, the heretics attacked the angels. It is likely that they said that the angels were the servants of the ignorant and hostile creator God and the Christians must have nothing to do with them. We cannot quite be sure what lies behind this; but to all their other errors, the heretics added the despising of the gangles, and to Jude this seemed an evil thing

Galatians 6 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Galatians 6

• Galatians 6:1-5
• Brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you also won’t be tempted. 2 Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone, and not compare himself with someone else. 5 For each person will have to carry his own load.
  • Paul knew the problems that arise in any Christian society. The best people can slip up. The word Paul uses does not mean a deliberate sin; but a slip that might come to someone on an icy road or a dangerous path
  • Now the danger of those who are really trying to live the Christian life is that they are apt to judge the sins of others harshly. There is an element of hardness in many good people
  • There are many good people to whom you could not go and sob out a story of failure and defeat; they would be bleakly unsympathetic. But Paul says that, if people to slip, the real Christian duty is to get them on their feet again
    • The word he uses for restore is used for making a repair and also for the work of a surgeon in removing some growth or in setting a broken limb. The whole atmosphere of the word lays the stress not on punishment but on cure; the correction is thought of not as a penalty but as putting something right
    • And Paul goes on to say that when we see someone make a mistake we do well to say: “There but for the grace of God I go”
• Galatians 6:6-10
• 6 Let the one who is taught the word share all his good things with the teacher. 7 Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, 8 because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. 9 Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.
  • Paul now becomes intensely practical
    • The Christian Church had its teachers. In those days, the Church was in a very real way a sharing institution. No Christian could bear to have too much while others had too little. So Paul says; “If someone is teaching you the eternal truths, the least you can do is share with that person such material things as you possess.”
    • He goes on to state a grim truth. He insists that life holds the scales with an even balance. If we allow the lower side of our nature to dominate us, in the end we can expect nothing but a harvest of trouble. But, if we keep on walking the high way and doing the fine thing, in the end God will repay
    • Christian never took the threat out of life
      • The Greeks believed in the goddess of retribution, Nemesis; they believed that, when people did wrong, immediately Nemesis was on their trail and sooner or later caught up. All Greek tragedy is a sermon on the text; “The doe shall suffer.” What we do not always remember is this: it is blessedly true that God can and does forgive us for our sins, we still have to bear the consequences of those sins
        • If people sin against their bodies, sooner or later they will pay in ruined health—even if they are forgiven. John B. Gough, who had lived a reckless early life, used to declare in warning: “The scars remain.” And Origen, the third-century Christian scholar and a universalist, believed that, although all would be saved, even then the marks of sin would remain
        • We cannot trade not the forgiveness of God. There is a moral law in the universe. If we break it, we may be forgiven; but, nonetheless, we break it at our peril
        • Paul finishes by reminding his friends that sometimes the duty of generosity may be very trying, but—as Ecclesiastes 11:1 states “Send your bread on the surface of the water, for after many days you may find it.”
• Galatians 6:11-18
• 11 Look at what large letters I use as I write to you in my own handwriting. 12 Those who want to make a good impression in the flesh are the ones who would compel you to be circumcised—but only to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 For even the circumcised don’t keep the law themselves, and yet they want you to be circumcised in order to boast about your flesh. 14 But as for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world. 15 For both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing; what matters instead is a new creation. 16 May peace come to all those who follow this standard, and mercy even to the Israel of God! 17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 18 Brothers and sisters, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.
  • Usually, Paul added only his signature to the letter which the scribe wrote to his dictation; but in this case his heart is running over with such love and anxiety for the Galatians that he writes this whole last paragraph. The large letters he refers to may be due to three things
    • This paragraph may be written large because of its importance, as if it were printed in bold type
    • It may be written large because Paul was not used to writing with a pen, and it was the best that he could do
    • It may be that Paul’s eyes were weak, or that he was suffering from a blinding headache, and all he could produce was the large, sprawling handwriting of someone who could hardly see
  • He comes back to the central point. Those who wanted the Galatians to get themselves circumcised did so for three reasons
    • It would save them from persecution
      • The Romans recognized the Jewish religion and officially allowed Jews to practice it. Circumcision was the indisputable mark of a Jew; and so these people saw in it a passport to safety should persecution arise. Circumcision would keep them safe from both the hatred of the Jews and the law of Rome
    • In the last analysis, by circumcision and by keeping the rules and regulations of the law, they were trying to put on a show that would win the approval of God
      • Paul, however, was quite certain that nothing that individuals could achieve for themselves could win salvation; so, once again, pointing them to the cross, he summons them to stop trying to earn salvation and to trust to the grace which loved them like that
    • Those who wanted the Galatians to be circumcised did not keep all the law themselves
      • No one could. But they wanted to boast about the Galatians as their latest conquests. They wanted to glory in their power over people whose they had reduced to their own legalistic slavery. So, Paul once again lays it down with all the intensity of which he is capable that circumcision and uncircumcision do not matter; what does matter is that act of faith in Christ which opens up a new life
    • “Because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” Two possible meanings
      • The stigmata has always fascinated people
        • It is told of Francis of Assisi that once, as he fasted on a lonely mountain top, he seemed to see the love of God crucified on a cross that stretched across the whole horizon, and as he saw it a sword of grief and pity pierced his heart. Slowly the vision faded, and Francis relaxed; and then, they say, he looked down and there were the marks of the nails in his hands, marks that he bore for the rest of his life. Whether it is truth or legend, we don’t know, for there are more things in this world than our matter-of-fact philosophy dreams of; and some think that Paul had passed through an experience of crucifixion with his Lord so real that he, too, bore the prints of the nails in his hands
      • Often a master branded his slaves with a mark that showed them to be his
        • Most probably, what Paul means is that the scars of the things he had suffered fro Christ are the brands which sho him to be Christ’s slave. In the end, it is not his apostolic authority that he uses as a basis of appeal; it is the wounds he sustained for Christ’s sake. Paul said: “My marks and scars I carry with me to be my witness to him who will now be my rewarder.”
  • After the storm, stress, and intensity of the letter comes the peace of the benediction. Paul has argued, rebuked, and persuaded; but his last word is grace, for him the only word that really mattered

Galatians 5 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Galatians 5

• Galatians 5:1-12
• For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love. 7 You were running well. Who prevented you from being persuaded regarding the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. 10 I myself am persuaded in the Lord you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. 11 Now brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 I wish those who are disturbing you might also let themselves be mutilated!
  • It was Paul’s position that the way of grace and the way of law were mutually exclusive. The way of law makes salvation dependent on human achievement; those who take the way of grace simply cast themselves and their sin upon the mercy of God. Paul went on to argue that if you accepted circumcision, one part of the law, logically you had to accept the whole law
  • Suppose there are people who want to become naturalized citizens of a country and who carefully carry out all the rules and regulations of that country as these affect naturalization. They cannot stop there but are bound to accept all the other rules and regulations as well
    • So Paul argued that if a man were circumcised he had put himself under an obligation to the whole law to which circumcision was the introduction; and, if he took that way, he had automatically turned his back on the way of grace, and, as far as he was concerned, Christ might never have died
  • To Paul, all that mattered was faith, which works through love
    • That is just another way of saying that the essence of Christianity is not law but a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. The Christian faith is founded not on a book but on a person; its dynamic is not obedience to any law but love of Jesus
  • Once, the Galatians had know that; but now they were turning back to the law
    • A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. For the Jews, leaven nearly always stood for evil influence. What Paul is saying is: “This legalistic movement may not have gone very far yet, but you must root it out before it destroys your whole religion.”
  • Paul ends with a very blunt saying
    • Galatia was near Phrygia, and the great worship of that part of the world was of Cybele. It was the practice that priests and really devout worshipers of Cybele mutilated themselves by castration. Paul says: “If you go on in this way, of which circumcision is the beginning, you might as well end up by castrating yourselves like the priests of this goddess.” It is a grim illustration, at which we might raise our eyebrows; but it would be intensely real to the Galatians, who knew all about the priests of Cybele
• Galatians 5:13-15
• 13 For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
  • With this paragraph, Paul’s letter changes its emphasis
    • Up to this point, it has been theological; now it becomes intensely ethical. Paul had a characteristically practical mind. Even when he has been scaling the highest heights of thought, he always ends a letter on a practical note. To him, a theology was not the slightest use unless it could be lived out
    • In Romans, he wrote one of the world’s great theological treatises; and then, quite suddenly, in chapter 12 the theology came down to earth and developed into the most practical advice. The NT scholar Vincent Taylor once said “The test of a good theologian is, can he write a tract?” That is to say, after all the flights of thought, can a theologian reduce it all to something that the ordinary person can understand and do? Paul always triumphantly satisfies that test, just as here the whole matter is brought to the acid test of daily living
  • Paul’s theology always ran one danger
    • When he declared that the end of the reign of the law had come and that the reign of grace had arrived, it was always possible for someone to say; “That, then, means that I can do what I like; all the restraints of are lifted and I can follow my desires wherever they lead me. Law is gone, and grace ensures forgiveness anyway.”
    • But for Paul, there were always two obligations
      • One he doesn’t mention here, but it is implicit in all his thinking. It is the obligation to God. If God loved us like that, then the love of Christ puts us under constraint. I cannot bring discredit to a life which God paid for with His own life
      • There is the obligation to our neighbors. We are free, but our freedom loves its neighbor as itself
    • Christian freedom is not license, for the simple but tremendous reason that Christians are not men and women who have become free to sin, but people who, by the grace of God, have become free not to sin
  • Paul adds a grim bit of advice. “Unless you solve the problem of living together, you will make life impossible.” Selfishness in the end does not bring people respect; it destroys them
• Galatians 5:15-21
• 16 I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
  • No one was ever more conscious of the tension in human nature than Paul
  • For Paul, it was essential that Christian freedom should mean not freedom to indulge the lower side of human nature, but freedom to walk in the life of the Spirit. He gives us a catalog of evil things
    • Sexual immorality
      • It has been said that they one completely new virtue Christianity brought into the world was chastity. Christianity came into a world where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but was regarded as an essential part of everyday life
    • Moral Impurity
      • The word that Paul uses can be used for the puss of an unclean wound, for a tree that has never been pruned, for material which has never been sorted. In its positive form, it is commonly used in housing contracts to describe a house that is left clean and in good condition. But its most significant use is that it is used of that ceremonial cleanness which entitles people to approach their gods. Moral Impurity is that which makes people unfit to come before God, the contamination of life with the things which separate us from Him
    • Promiscuity
      • It has been defined as “readiness for any pleasure. Those who practice it have been said to know no restraint, but to do whatever any whim and lack of respect may suggest. The Jewish historian Josephus ascribed it to Queen Jezebel when she built a temple to Baal in Jerusalem. The idea is of people who are so bound up in their own desire that they have ceased to care what others say or think
    • Idolatry
      • This means the worship of gods which human hands have made. It is the sin in which material things have taken the place of God
    • Sorcery
      • This literally means the use of drugs. It can mean the healing uses of drugs by a doctor; but it can also mean poisoning, and it came to be especially connected with the use of drugs for sorcery, of which the ancient world was full of
    • Hatred
      • The idea is that of the individual who is characteristically hostile to other people; it is the precise opposite of the virtue of the love of Christians for one another and for all people
    • Strife
      • Originally, this word had mainly to do with the rivalry for prizes. It can even be used in a good sense in that connection, but much more commonly it means the rivalry which has resulted in quarreling and wrangling
    • Jealousy
      • This word  that we get our word zeal from, was originally a good word. It mean emulation, the desire to attain to nobility when we see it. But it degenerated; it came to mean the desire to have what someone else has, wrong desire for what is not ours
    • Outbursts of Anger
      • The word Paul uses means bursts of temper. It describes not an anger which lasts but anger which flares up and then dies
    • Selfish Ambition
      • This word has a very illuminating history. It originally meant the work of a hired laborer. So it came to mean work done for pay. It went on to mean canvassing for political or public office, and it describes the person who wants office, not from any motives of service, but for what can be got out of it
    • Dissension
      • Literally the word means a standing apart. After one of his great victories, the British Admiral Lord Nelson attributed it to the fact that he had the happiness to command a band of brothers. Dissension describes a society in which the very opposite is the case where the members fly apart instead of coming together
    • Factions
      • This might be described as clearly focussed disagreement. The word is where we get our word heresy, and originally was not a bad word at all. It comes from the root which means to choose, and it was used for a philosopher’s school of followers or for any group of people who shared a common belief. The tragedy of life is that people who hold different views very often end up by disliking not each other’s views but each other. It should be possible to hold different views and yet remain friends
    • Envy
      • This word is a mean word. The Greek dramatist Euripides called it the greatest of all diseases. The essence of it is that it doesn’t describe the spirit which desires, nobly or ignobly, to have what someone else has, it describes the spirit which grudges the fact that the other person has these things at all. It does not so much want the things for itself; it merely wants to take them from the other. The Stoics defined it as “grief at someone else’s good”. The 4th century Church father Basil the Great called it “grief at your neighbor’s good fortune”. It is the quality not so much of the jealous but rather the embittered mind
    • Drunkenness
      • In the ancient word, this was not a common vice. The Greeks drank more wine than they did milk; even the children drank wine. But they drank it in the proportion of 3 parts water to 2 parts wine. Both Greeks and Christians would have condemned drunkenness as a thing which turned people into animals
    • Carousing
      • This word has an interesting history. It was a group of friends who accompanied the victor of the games after his victory. They danced, laughed, and sang his praises. It also described the devotees of Bacchus, god of wine. It describes what in England in the early decades of the 19th century would have been called a rout. It means unrestrained revelry, enjoyment that has degenerated and is out of control
  • When we get to the root meaning of these words, we see that life has not changed so very much
• Galatians 5:22-26
• 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. 24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
  • As in the previous verses Paul set out the evil things characteristic of the flesh, the lower side of human nature, so now he sets out the lovely things which are the fruit of the Spirit
    • Love
      • The NT word for love is agape. This is not a word which is commonly used in classical Greek. In Greek there are four words for love
        • Eros means the love between the sexes; it is the love which has passion in it. It is never used in the NT at all
        • Philia is the warm love which we feel for our nearest and dearest; it is love from the heart
        • Storgē rather means affection and is especially used of the love of parents and children
        • Agape means unconquerable benevolence. It means that, no matter what people may do to us by way of insult, injury, or humiliation, we will never seek anything else but their highest good. It is therefore a feeling of the mind as much as of the heart; it concerns the will as much as emotions. It describes the deliberate effore—which we can make only with the help of God—Neve to seek anything but the best even for those who seek the worst for us
    • Joy
      • The characteristic of this word is that it most often describes that joy which has a basis in religion. It is not the joy that comes from earthly things, still less from triumphing over someone else in competition. It is a joy whose foundation is God
    • Peace
      • This word had two interesting usages. It was used of the serenity which a country enjoyed under eh just and generous government of a good emperor; and it was used of the good order of a town or village. Usually in the NT it stands for the Hebrew shalom and means not just freedom form trouble but everything that makes for a person’s highest good. Here, it means that tranquillity of heart which derives from the all-pervading consciousness that our times are in the hands of God
    • Patience
      • The word is used by the writer of I Maccabees to say that it is how the Romans gained control of the world, and by that he means the Roman persistence which would never make peace with an enemy even in defeat, a kind of conquering patience. Generally speaking, the word is used of patience not in relation to things or events but in relation to people. John Chrysostom said that is the grace of those who could revenge themselves and don’t, people who are slow to anger. The most illuminating thing about it is that it is commonly used in the NT of the attitude of God towards us. If God had ben like us, He would have wiped out this world long ago; but He has that patience which puts up with all our sinning and will not reject us. In our dealings with one another, we must reproduce this loving, forbearing, forgiving, patient attitude of God toward ourselves
    • Kindness and Goodness
      • Kindness and Goodness are very closely related words. In fact, the Greek word that is translated as kindness, is often also translated as goodness. So we’re going to take them together. Kindness speaks of a person’s loving disposition toward others. People can show this temperament because God’s actions toward humanity provide the ultimate example. Goodness is an attribute that marks the collective people of God. The concept might imply a willingness to do good for others by acts of radical generosity. Such fruit addressed the difficult work of building right relationships among believers and establishing appropriate witness to unbelievers.
    • Faithfulness
      • This word is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. It is the characteristic of people who are reliable
    • Gentleness
      • This is that most untranslatable of words. In the NT, it has three main meanings. It means being submissive to the will of God. It means being teachable, being not too proud to learn. Most often of all, it means being considerate. Aristotle defined it as the mid-point between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness, the quality of the person who is always angry at the right time and never at the wrong time. What throws most light on its meaning is that the adjective is used of an animal that has been tamed and brought under control; and so the word speaks of that self-control which Christ alone can give
    • Self-control
      • Plato uses this of self mastery. It is the spirit which has overcome and controlled its desires and its love of pleasure. It is used of the athletes discipline of the body and of the Christian’s control of sex. Secular Greek uses it of the virtue of an emperor who never lets his private interests influence the government of his people. It is the virtue which enable people to have such control of themselves that they are fit to be the servants of others
  • It was Paul’s belief and experience that Christians died with Christ and rose again to a life, new and clean, in which the evil things of the old self were gone and the lovely things of the Spirit had come to fruition