The entire book of Jude focuses upon the end-time conditions at the coming of the Lord. Therefore it is an important book for those who are contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints (verse 3). It points out the moral conditions of the end-time—the rebellion, the apostasy, the drawing back from the Lord—and the judgments that will be visited as a result. The exhortation in verse 3 is beamed toward that time. It is expressed somewhat negatively, saying in effect, “Contend for the faith, even though these conditions will exist,” implying that it is possible for us to attain to the faith in spite of the fact that the spiritual conditions around us are very evil.
In verse 7, Jude described conditions in Sodom and Gomorrah, which can be related to what is taking place morally in our country today. He gave a warning which is important today for anyone who has children or expects to have them, for those children will be raised in a society in which moral principles are shifting and changing rapidly. It is good to have a realistic picture.
Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these (the people in the end-time) indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. It is rather doubtful whether the Christians in this day will be able to maintain a pure attitude, living as they do in the midst of the corrupt conditions around them. When Christ described these days, He said that because iniquity would abound, the love of many would wax cold (Matthew 24:12). Sin, when it comes like a great tide, has a defiling effect. It has a way of infecting everyone around it.
Peter described how Lot lived in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin. His righteous soul was vexed from day to day by their ungodly deeds, and yet those conditions still invaded his own thinking (2 Peter 2:7–8). He could not approve of the terrible things the people were doing, and his soul was vexed by them; but strangely enough, they were not of enough consequence to make him move out of Sodom and go somewhere else. He did not even seem too disturbed by the fact that his two oldest daughters had become corrupted by marrying men of Sodom. When he tried to talk to them, they thought he was a lunatic. His two younger daughters, who were unmarried, succeeded in getting out of Sodom; but the defiling effect of that sinful condition was such that Sodom could not be taken out of them. After the fire fell, they took refuge in a cave. On two successive nights they gave their father wine to drink, and when he was drunk, they had intercourse with him. From these incestuous relationships came forth the tribes of Ammon and Moab. There was something missing in those girls. They had been corrupted by the evil of Sodom. The angel had to forcefully lead them out of the city. Lot’s wife also could not turn her heart away from the city. She looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, according to the judgment pronounced.
This indicates that sin has a very corrupting effect upon people. When sin is prevalent, even the Christian finds that he becomes more tolerant and he loses his horror of it. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people have difficulty with habits or sins or various sexual problems because they do not really have the desire to break away from them. The desire has never been taken away. The ax has not been laid to the root of the tree, and the tree continues to grow. The first step toward deliverance is hating the bondage. Many a person has tried repeatedly to quit smoking cigarettes, yet he cannot. The day that he really wants to quit, he will quit. It is the desire that maintains the habit. We all have problems along that line. Some have a problem with overeating; consequently they are overweight. They like to eat more than they hate being fat; and so they overeat. It is caused by a desire that has never been changed.
When speaking of the end-time, Jesus warned, “Remember Lot’s wife. As it was in the days of Lot, so it will be when the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:28–32). Those moral and spiritual conditions are being repeated in our day. The only solution is to obey Peter’s cry on the day of Pentecost: “Save yourselves from this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40). You have to be delivered from it. You must have your mind renewed so that it is no longer conformed to the way the people in the world are thinking. They are thinking exactly as the people did in the days of Sodom.
The world wants to forget the moral principles and the taboos of the Bible. In this day of so-called scientific, sociological pressures, the swinger scene and the mateswapping scene have become prominent, and God condemns it. Millions of couples are swapping mates. As in the days of Sodom, they are bored with their own mates, and so they spice up their lives by going after strange flesh. The “underground” papers are filled with advertisements for partners for every kind of perverted sexual activity. Intercourse is conducted in every freakish way imaginable. That is what God said would happen in these days.
We are not saying that we advocate returning to the era of “squares” or of prudish Victorianism; that was not wholesome either. What is the answer? Pray for the Lord to deliver you from all the corrupting influences you have been under (as a result of heredity or any other factor), and believe for Him to bring you into something that is wholesome and right in the sight of God. Sooner or later, we are going to find ourselves moving into the purity that will be found in the Kingdom. It will be wholesome, lovely, and beautiful. It will not be corrupted by the hangovers of Victorianism, nor will it be open to the corruptions of the days of Noah and of Sodom and Gomorrah. God will deliver us from that and bring forth some of the most wonderful homes and relationships that have ever existed.
You have to hate the present scene before you can move into God’s picture. We are not recommending a return to the days of the double standard in marriage, when everything was hush-hush and prudish, and yet the most atrocious things were done. Whether or not you bring out in the open and discuss what you are doing is not the issue. The issue is that God has something better for you. He is bringing forth sanctified, beautiful relationships that are wholesome and winsome. Wait until the world sees it! They will say, “This is what I want in my marriage. This is what I want in my relationship.” They do not have it now. They will find it only in the great redemptive work that Christ is doing in the Kingdom. This is more important than anyone realizes.
When you read the accounts of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 13:13; 18:20–32; 19:1–13), you see how wickedness can saturate a society and get through to the people. We probably do not realize the influence that even a minority group has upon the rest of society. The hippie movement, for example, affected many phases of life. It influenced our attitude toward dress and hair styles. When young people started wearing their hair long and straight, barber shops and beauty salons lost a great deal of business. Although most people condemned the hippie revolution, many of the things that it introduced were absorbed into our society. This shows the permeating influence that even a small movement, though criticized and rejected, has upon other people.
God’s end-time move is a minority, and perhaps we, too, can affect people as we see the Kingdom come forth. Like leaven hidden in three measures of meal until the whole is leavened (Matthew 13:33), perhaps God will let us be an influence that will reach in and permeate other people’s ideas and attitudes. This has already started taking place. Many groups are trying to emulate the teaching and ministry which they see has been successful among us. They condemn it, yet they imitate it. Sometimes it is true that imitation is one of the sincerest forms of flattery. They may criticize, but when they imitate us, it is because they see that God is in it and that the divine pattern of Scripture is working.
In verse 8 Jude tells of the permeating influence of lawlessness which we must counteract. Yet in the same manner these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. Those three actions truly represent what is taking place today. Through the revenue brought in by certain sex-oriented magazines, foundations are created which afford legal services to combat the moral structure of the law as it exists in the United States. The publishers of these magazines are openly defiant against both Jewish and Christian teaching, where morals are concerned. With their anti-Christian, anti-God, and anti-moral ideas, they are doing everything they can to break down the moral structure of our society. Perhaps they are exerting more influence of an adverse nature than anything else. They promote the attitude that a woman is only a sex object. Magazines which try to degrade women also have another attitude: revile and ridicule all authority. Their articles have a certain type of liberal and radical presentation which tears down everything worthwhile that our society really stands for.
What is the answer for this? We will learn to think the way the King thinks. We will learn to want what the King wants. We will learn to be submissive. Under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we will submit to what He wants.
Our concept of marriage is completely different from that of the world. We see it as a relationship in which two people are in the harness together, doing a work for the Lord. Our young people submit their relationship and their love for each other to the elders and the ministries, who check them out to see if there is anything within that would prevent them from being married in the will of God. They are put through a period of discipline and seeking God. Some require a long time before reaching a place where they are able to enter into a divinely inaugurated marriage. After they are married they still face many testings, because God is building a Kingdom marriage—not just a compatible relationship on a human level. No couple who gets married in the will of God can say that their marriage is perfect, an eternal honeymoon, with sexual compatibility and no financial problems. I do not think that God intends for marriages to come forth that way. Instead, He is trying to produce the spiritual relationship and oneness first. Then He will reach back and bring forth the relationship on the human level, and it will be sanctified and elevated and beautiful.
Because of the spirit of the age, many people are suddenly being caught in unbelievable problems. They may appear to be having a wonderful time, because they are sexually free and without moral restraint. Actually, they are not liberated. Instead, they are often extremely frustrated and subject to a kind of bondage that is a driving force. Many times it is not even lust that drives them, but a multitude of other factors, such as feelings of inadequacy, pressure, evasion, and an attempt to run away, even from themselves. People seem to be trying to destroy themselves deliberately, almost like a suicide attempt.
Young couples need to be shown that many of their problems are largely in their imagination; those problems belong to life on a lower level. Life on a higher plane will see another set of instincts and desires and relationships come forth. Even people who are completely incompatible on the human level can reach a spiritual level where every area in their life together is harmonious. Older couples who come into a walk with God with basic incompatibilities often find that as they walk on with the Lord the incompatibilities fade away, and they become closer than they have ever been.
If you have problems, rise to a higher plane. An eagle never worries about climbing over a mountain or crossing a bridge or swimming across a lake. He simply flies to a higher level and soars over every obstacle. Problems continue to arise on the human level because we are still being subjected to the pressures of the permeating, defiling situation in the world. The love grows cold because iniquity is abounding all around us. If you just keep seeking God, battling through and rising to a higher plane as the eagle does, you will soon soar over those problems.
Do you understand how much happens because of the way you think? To him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Romans 14:14b. To the pure all things are pure: but to them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure. Titus 1:15a. It is said that many problems are in the mind, and that is true, for there lie the roots of the old carnal nature. The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:7. Paul tells us, … be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Romans 12:2.
Jude 8 says that by dreaming, people defile the flesh. If men can defile the flesh just by their negative dreams and thoughts, then there must be a way to reverse the process by thinking positive thoughts. Paul wrote in Philippians 4:8: … whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
The way you channel your thinking has a marked effect. Would you like a few little hints, or practical suggestions, to show you how to be pure in mind, how to think correctly? Listen to tapes of the living Word instead of watching a lot of television. When you watch television, you are subjected to sex and violence—more violence than sex because the American people do not have a conscience about the immorality of violence. Our history has been violent; consequently, many movies are filled with bloodshed. Children are often permitted to watch movies with violence and bloodshed, but we caution them about anything that is too sexual. In that area, too, films are becoming bolder. The large number of films showing violence has resulted in an increase in the crime rate. We are entering a time of all kinds of violence and defilement. You may think that television is providing relaxation, when in reality it is causing you to absorb the corrupting, defiling spirit of the age around you.
The same thing can happen with books. You absorb what you read. As you relate to the characters, you may become identified with them. Instead, become identified with Christ. When you look upon yourself as a divine creation, as being the righteousness of God to come forth in this generation, you cannot hold the viewpoints of the world or be corrupted by them. When the sense of your destiny takes hold of you, you will be completely disinterested in the attractions of the world. The gears will shift, disengaging you from the workings of the world around you. The young people who are walking with God must take one more step until they completely lose their openness to the age around them and become walled off from it. If they do not, they will miss everything that God has for them.
If you have a lighthearted, tolerant attitude concerning our sex-oriented society, it will, lead you to revile and despise authority. You cannot come into submission to the Lord Jesus Christ and still have the spirit of rebellion. Jude said, “By their dreaming they defile the flesh, reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.” This is true of sex-oriented magazines. They not only foster moral corruption; they go further. They despise and make fun of all authority, trying to put it down and destroy it. If you are going to be under the authority of the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and in submission to Him, then you cannot allow the corruption of the world to get into your mind. It leads to a rejection of authority. Rebellion in your heart opens the door. If the rebellion of the age enters your heart, it leads you into the immorality and the corrupt thinking of this age.
One of the factors that often motivates an individual toward immorality is loneliness or emotions that are related to loneliness—feeling that his life has no meaning, that he is not important to anyone, that he is all alone, and that no one really loves him or cares for him. Being immoral and going the way of this age is not an answer to loneliness. A high rate of suicide occurs among the liberated women who are attending college. They have accepted the attitude that they are supposed to give whatever is demanded of them; yet they are unable to relate to sex without love, without it being meaningful and important. Instead of it satisfying their loneliness, it drives them deeper into loneliness, and this often triggers self-destruction. The answer is not found in being immoral. It is not found in getting drunk or high on drugs, or any of those things.
The answer to the loneliness of anyone who opens his heart to God is in the bond and the fellowship that is in the Body of Christ. The Body must adjust itself to meet one another’s needs in a pure plane of spirit and become conditioned to the constant flow that brings fellowship. The early Church was born in that. They continued in the breaking of bread and fellowship and the apostles’ doctrine, going from house to house (Acts 2:42, 46). There was a communion.
You give to another person and you draw from him more than you realize. You can come to the house of the Lord and receive a blessing. Nine times out of ten, your problems are born of loneliness or a sense of being alone. That will be cured instantly as soon as you are with someone who loves you and can bless you.
We are still too much withdrawn. Sometimes so many demands are made upon us that we want to be alone and isolated, but we must get over that. The members of the Body will have to mingle more than they do. In all purity, in all holiness, there is a way that the Body can commune back and forth. Loneliness has only one answer: the fellowship of God’s people and the satisfaction of joining hands with a brother or a sister in accomplishing something for the Lord.