SCOFFERS

 

February 13, 2025

Jude 1:14-19

14 Enoch, who lived in the seventh generation after Adam, prophesied about these people. He said, “Listen! The Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones 15 to execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of all the ungodly things they have done and for all the insults that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

16 These people are grumblers and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They brag loudly about themselves, and they flatter others to get what they want.

17 But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. 18 They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. 19 These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.



The low battery chirp on smoke alarms, while annoying at times, (mine usually start their chirp in the middle of the night), is an important feature and a constant reminder that we are placing ourselves and our families in danger if we don’t take action. Ever think that would be great if we had a similar built in alert that would go off when we meet people who will cause us harm?

Our reading today says that Christian leaders who came before Jude warned that dishonest people would cause destruction among the community of Jesus. Jude reiterates their warnings, saying, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires. These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit” (Jude 1:18-19).

Jude warns us about these people so we won’t be fooled by smooth-talking and settle for anything less than the message of the Gospel. The Gospel, is perhaps best described for us in the famous John 3:16, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." God through Jesus wants a relationship with each of us, and no matter who you are or what you’ve done, Jesus came to the world for you and me. Jesus didn’t come to start another religion, or to point out our faults, or to belittle us. Jesus came to rescue us, and that’s good news!

So how will we know a “scoffer” when we meet one? Jude gives us a few signs:

1. They do not have the Holy Spirit in them.
2. They teach based on natural instincts, not the Bible.
3. Their goal is to divide people, not unite people.


Jude is saying that “scoffers” follow selfish un-Christlike desires. Peter, John, and Paul all alerted in their writings that corrupt teachers would arise and distort the good news, denying Jesus by their actions (1 John 4:1-3; 2 Tim. 3:1-9; 2 Pet. 2:1-3). The Apostle Paul, described these ungodly ones as those who are “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:2-4). What these Christian leaders were saying was just echoing  Jesus’ earlier warning of the same thing (see: Matt. 7:15-19).

Remember, this isn’t what Jude had wanted to write to this community of believers, recall that he opens the letter with these words, “Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people."

You see, anytime a warning appears over and over in the Bible, we should understand such repetition as God trying to get our attention. These warnings can be compared to the chirping of a smoke alarm, serving as reminders and guidance to alert us from potential risks and to take action. With all these examples, Jude is hopeful that this church wouldn’t need any more convincing that these teachers have to be resisted and dealt with.