Not everyone is what they seem. The superintendents from more than a dozen Ottawa County schools have started a campaign called STOP, THINK, VERIFY. The purpose? To help educate and safeguard teens and kids who are targets for online deception. One video resource from the FBI warns about sextortion where “an adult coerces or entices a child to produce a sexually explicit picture of themselves and send it to them over the internet.” Once that picture is in hand the adult uses it to get more pictures by threatening to send the picture to their parents, their friends, and social media. Teenagers and kids caught in this trap often feel helpless, desperate, and terrified. You may recall recently the tragedy of one Michigan teen who committed suicide after getting caught in one of these scams.
According to an FBI video these scams start in various ways. It could be an adult using a fake profile pretending to be a teenage boy or girl, who reaches out to a teenager or child online, gains a level of trust and then tricks them into sending explicit pictures of themselves. It could be through online gaming where they offer game secrets, cheat codes and coupons – and all the kid has to do is send a sexually explicit picture of themselves.
No one would fall for this, right? An article in April said, “Reports from law enforcement officials highlight that students in West Michigan have already fallen victim to these deceptive practices.” The article goes on to say, “These manipulations make it increasingly difficult to distinguish real content from fabrications, leading to potential harm for students such as cyberbullying, character assassination and blackmail.”
As a result, Ottawa Area School Superintendents have started a collective called #StopThinkVerify. The campaign is meant to educate kids and parents on safe behavior and decisions online
You could say that Jude had started his own campaign to STOP, THINK, and VERIFY. The people he warned about were not what they seemed to be. They are deceptively trying to enter into the Church to corrupt and lead it astray. Jude wants those whom he says “are called, loved and kept for Jesus Christ” to be Bereans, who “examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was saying was true.” (17:11).
Last week in Part 1 how these people were fake. Jude says they are Hidden Reefs, Self-Serving Shepherds, and Clouds without rain. In other words, they were like hidden reefs in that they were hidden dangers that could shipwreck the faith of believers; they were self-serving shepherds in that they served themselves rather than the flock of Jesus Christ, at the expense of the flock – the opposite of what Jesus said, “I have not come to be served but to serve;” and they were clouds without rain meaning they never gave the Church the needed water to grow and bear fruit and they drifted around by the winds of whatever ideas were popular in the day.
Today we look at the last three traits of these false teachers. They are Autumn Trees, Waves, and Wandering Stars
AUTUMN TREES (12)
Autumn trees were They should be producing fruit. The season for producing fruit is right now. But they don’t. Second Timothy 4:2 commands, “Preach the word in season and out of season.” In other words, preach the word when it people want to hear it and when they don’t want to hear it. Sometimes preaching the word brings salvation and general friendliness from culture. Other times it doesn’t – as we are quickly seeing today it brings hostility and hatred. Sometimes its in season and sometimes its out of season for unbelievers. But for us preaching is always IN season. The season to preach the word never ends. No matter how they respond we do not stop preaching the Gospel.
They are twice dead. They are dead in two ways. First they are dead because they are fruitless. They can’t produce fruit. Remember Jesus in Matthew 7:15-19….
Then in Romans 4 Paul said about the aged Sarah’s womb that it was “dead” (19), meaning that her womb was not able to bring forth the fruit of life. Jude says these men are autumn trees that are dead because they have not brought forth any fruit either. There is no fruit in their lives or ministries.
There is no fruit of godliness, no fruit of righteousness, no fruit of the Spirit, no fruit of Christ-likeness. Look all you want but because their root is not Christ their fruit is not Christ.
But they are fruitless in their ministries as well. Meaning they bring no fruit in the lives of the people that follow them. There is nothing spiritually good for the saints from them. With these people, nothing that is life-producing comes from them. They have no life, they give no life, no blessing, no goodness, no benefit. They give nothing and they take everything. They are worthless to the people of God.
APPLICATION: Christ came so that we could have life and have it abundantly. His shepherds will produce that in the church as well. His shepherds will be life-giving, life-producing in the Church. The beleivers will be experiencing life and more abundantly, more fruitfully when true shepherds from Christ lead them.
APPLICATION: Bear fruit! If Christ is in you and you are alive in Christ then the fruit of Christ’s life will come forth.
Second, they are dead also because they are “uprooted.” They may be having quite a run in their careers for a little while, but their destruction is hanging over them. Judgment has already been passed on them. Their condemnation does not sleep. They are uprooted in the sense that they and their work will not endure. It’s as if they are already ripped up from the ground and laying toppled over dead. They will disappear from the earth, then at judgment they will disappear to destruction.
APPLICATION: Be rooted! Being rooted is an important part of the faith. Turn to Psalm 1 with me….
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Where are you planted? Are you planting yourself by the streams of living water, so that you can be well-watered, and bulging with godly fruit? Or are you planted in the world – and dead, wilting, fruitless? Seek God’s Word, delight in God’s word, meditate and think about God’s word. Make God’s word your obsession, not the world or the things of the world. Colossians 2:6-7 was one of our founding members’ favorite verses. Bill Vanderwall loved the words, “So then just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.“
The men in Jude are the seed that quickly sprang up but whose roots were shallow. The size of their “ministry” may be increasing and their influence may be growing but the content of their teaching is godless. They have departed from the faith. “They went out from among us…” 1 John 2 says. “They loved the world so the love of the Father was not in them” 1 John 2 says again. They tasted of the heavenly gifts but turned away from them Hebrews 6 says. They did not see fit to hold on to the teachings of righteousness, but have let go of God’s words. They are autumn trees that are dead in two ways: they don’t have any fruit and they themselves are uprooted.
WAVES ON THE SEA (v13)
Fifth, we see these men are like waves on the sea, v13, “…”
The prophet Isaiah said in 57:20, “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest….” The image Jude is putting in our minds is that of rough waters, unstable and volatile conditions. It reminds me of the Gospels when the disciples were in the boat with Jesus during the storm. They were sure they were done for.
These men are like that – unstable. That’s how these people are and that’s what they cause around them. They cause instability – “These are the people who divide you” Jude says in verse 19. “Many will follow their depraved conduct and bring the way of truth into disrepute” 2 Peter 2:2 says. They destabilize Christians and cause confusion, discord, sin and doubt.
APPLICATION: False shepherds bring turmoil and confusion while real shepherds bring peace and order. That’s because real shepherds are really from God, 1 Corinthians 14:33 says “God is not a God of disorder, but of peace.” And God’s peace is what real shepherds grow in churches.
The shame of these men continues to “foam up” as Jude says. I love what Mike Brooks said in his lesson last month: “The opposite of glory is shame.” These men only produce what God considers shame in their lives and ministry. Glory – glory to God is not the result of their work. Philippians 3:19 tells us “Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is their shame.” Paul says in 2 Cor 4:2, “We have renounced secret and shameful ways, we do not use deception nor do we distort the word of God.” Paul is contrasting himself with the kinds of teachers Jude was warning about. Those men Jude warned about were in fact, “carrying on in secret and shameful ways, using deception and distorting the word of God.” Second Peter 2 says, “These false teachers among you will secretly introduce destructive heresies….bringing the way of truth into disrepute….and in their greed they will exploit you with fabricated stories…”
APPLICATION: Live gloriously. Live gloriously by making your life glorify God.
WANDERING STARS
Finally, Jude says these men are wandering stars, verse 13b says, “….”
In Philippians 2 we are told to “shine like stars in the sky as we hold firmly to the word of faith.” However, Jude uses “stars” to describe something very negative about these people. They do not shine the light of truth like stars in an otherwise morally and spiritually dark world. Instead, these people are “wandering” stars. They wander, they rove. They are not anchored firmly in one place. Not meaning moving from church to church, but they are not anchored in Christ, or His word, or His will. They are wandering in the sense that they follow their corrupt fleshly desires all over the place; they follow their imaginations and lies, and they follow the trends of the culture and they follow their schemes to make money in their so-called “ministry.”
Peter said, “there will be false teachers among you just like there were false prophets among the people of old” (2 Peter 2:1). That’s why you see God rebuking Israel in all throughout the OT. Take Jeremiah for example:
- “The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD?’ Those who deal with the law did not know me; the leaders rebelled against me.” (2:8)
- “The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?” (5:31)
- “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (6:13-14)
- “How can you say, ‘We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,’ when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what kind of wisdom do they have?” (8:8-9)
- “The shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the LORD; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.” (10:21)
All throughout history the people of God have been plagued by false shepherds, false teachers, false prophets who corrupt them, give them false assurance, and lead them away from God. They always have been and always are wandering stars.
We can also draw out the point that the abode of these stars is a dark universe. These people you could say “live in” moral and spiritual darkness. Jesus said, “Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.” But these people deny Christ, rebel against Him, and belong to the prince of darkness. Therefore they walk about in darkness, and are blind.
And their judgment will be darkness. Their eternal abode will be in the darkest of darknesses. The basic idea here is their end. Their judgment. What did God say in Jeremiah? “But what will your end be?” Their end is “blackest darkness forever.” God has reserved and made ready for these people the blackest, darkest, darkness and they will dwell there forever. Eternity is forever. Forever is forever.
APPLICATION: Be anchored in Christ. Don’t wander.
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Don’t follow those who wander. Or you will follow them to the same end prepared for them: blackest darkness.
CONCLUSION:
We began with the quote: “Not everything is as it seems and not everything that seems is.” As Christians, let each of us be what we seem.