This is the first lesson in a series of lessons on the book of Jude. In this lesson I talk about why Jude was written and why it is in the Bible.
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Transcript:
Thanks for visiting Bible Mountain. This is the first lesson in a series of lessons on the book of Jude. In this lesson I’m going to talk about why Jude was written and why it’s in the Bible.
Before I answer those specific questions, I’m going to talk about the Biblical context of Jude. I’ll explain where it is found in the Bible and how that affects how we understand the book of Jude.
As you know, the Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament tells us about people and events from creation up to about 400 BC. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Old Testament focuses primarily on Israel.
The New Testament tells us about people and events from the first century AD. It was written in Greek. The New Testament focuses primarily on Jesus and the church.
Now let’s take a closer look at the New Testament. There are 27 books in the New Testament. They can be roughly divided into five different groups.
The first group is the Gospels, the first four books in the New Testament. They tell us what Jesus did when he was here on earth, His actions, His miracles, and His teachings.
The second group is one book. It is the book of Acts. Acts tells us what the apostles of Jesus did after Jesus went back to heaven.
The third group is a group of letters known as the letters of Paul. These are letters that were written by the Apostle Paul. He wrote these as the apostles were traveling around telling the world about Jesus. He wrote these letters to various individuals and churches giving them doctrine and instruction about how to live in the Church Age.
The fourth group is also a group of letters. These were written by various men. These were also written to individuals and churches giving doctrine and instruction regarding how to live in the Church Age.
The fifth group is one book. It is the book of Revelation. Revelation tells us about future events.
The book of Jude is the next to last book of the Bible. It is part of the fourth group known as the general epistles. It was written by a man named Jude. It is one of the letters that give doctrine and instruction on how to conduct ourselves in the church age.
With that as some context, let’s take a closer look at the book of Jude and see why Jude was written.
Jude 1 Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those called, loved by God the Father, and having been kept for Jesus Christ. 2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Jude 3 Beloveds, making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you urging you to contend for the faith which has been delivered over once for all to the saints. 4 For certain people crept in secretly, those who were long ago designated into this judgment, ungodly people turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
In these verses Jude tells us why he wrote. He started out saying he intended to write about our common salvation, but then he felt the necessity to write urging people to contend for the faith. The reason he felt the necessity to urge people to contend for the faith is because certain people had crept in secretly. There were two problems with these people who had crept in. One, they were turning the grace of God into sensuality. Two, they were denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
Jude wrote his letter to deal with two problems. People who were distorting grace, and people who were denying Jesus. The reason Jude is in the New Testament, included in the scriptures, is because these are problems we deal with today.
Today, there are people who distort grace and who deny Jesus. There are people who put too much emphasis on grace and in the process of over-emphasizing grace, they deny the reality of God’s judgment and the fact that He hates sin. Sometimes people use grace to overlook sin or make excuses for sin. That is a distortion of grace.
We also have people in our society who deny Jesus. They might deny the fact that Jesus is God. They might deny that Jesus is our master. They might under-emphasize or overlook the fact that Jesus is our master. That is a distortion that needs to be dealt with. The contents of Jude are very timely for us because today we have people who distort grace and deny Jesus.
In the second lesson in this series I’m going to look at the historical and geographical context of Jude so we know the events that led up to the book of Jude. That’s important because in his letter, Jude made references to events that happened long before his lifetime. It’s helpful to understand the context of those events in order to understand the letter of Jude.
In the third lesson I’m going to do an overview of Jude. This will involve reading the whole letter to get the big picture of what he was trying to communicate.
In the fourth and following lessons I’ll do a verse-by-verse exposition of the letter of Jude.
Let me repeat why Jude wrote his letter. He wrote it because he felt the necessity to urge people to contend for the faith. The reason he felt that necessity is because certain people had crept in secretly. The problem with these people was they were turning the grace of God into sensuality, and they were denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
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