Study in the Epistle of Jude # 15: Verse 4

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study time. We are continuing in our study of the book of Jude, and we have progressed in this little Epistle to verse 4. In verse 4, we read:

For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have seen that, historically, as the early church was forming, false brethren unawares did privily creep into the churches and congregations. That is, they gave the outward appearance of being true brethren. In appearance, these men were just like anyone else. You could not tell one of these false brethren apart from the true brethren. There was no way of distinguishing who was a true believer and who was not a true believer.

We have also seen that these men were Pharisees and beginning to teach that in order to become saved, there needed to be circumcision and observance of the Law of Moses. Finally, this came to be such a problem that the early church held a council in Jerusalem in order to discuss this question. That council would determine that there was no need to trouble the Gentiles, who were coming into the churches, with circumcision. They would determine that there was no need to trouble them with placing the yoke of bondage upon them that neither the Jews themselves nor their fathers were able to bear, as Acts 15 says. For if someone is going to try to keep just a part of the law, then they are bound to keep the whole law (Galatians 5:3), and nobody is capable of that. Nobody is able to keep the law of God.

That is the point of the law, actually. The law is to bring us to a knowledge of our sinfulness. It is to bring us to the realization that we cannot keep the law, and it is to show us our sin (Galatians 3:24, Romans 3:20). As we fail to keep the law, we are going to see time and time again that we have sinned against God and that we are guilty before Him. Therefore, we are put to silence; we cannot claim any kind of righteousness of our own. There is no way that we could keep the law to obtain salvation, and so we realize that salvation is entirely by God’s grace.

But certain men “crept in,” as we find here in Jude, and they were turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. Before we take a look at this and what is in view with the language of turning God’s grace into lasciviousness, we want to look at one more passage that has to do with the idea of creeping in unawares. That passage is Matthew 13:24-30, the parable of the wheat and the tares. Those verses read:

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

In this parable, Christ is speaking of the condition of the churches and congregations during the New Testament period. “The Kingdom of Heaven is likened unto a man who sowed good seed in his field.” In Christ’s explanation of the parable in verse 38, we read that the field is the world. Therefore, the seed of the Gospel is sown in the world.

As churches were formed and planted in many different nations all across the world, the ministers of the Gospel would be sowing the seed to their congregations. Every Sunday, they would be sowing the seed of the Gospel. These churches and congregations were located in the field, in the world. 1 John 2:16 says that “all that is in the world…is of the world.” Since the church (the corporate church, not the eternal church) is located “in the world,” it is “of the world.” Christ then can say that the field, the world, is where the seed of the Gospel is being sown in this parable, even though the focus is on the church itself.

Verse 25 says, “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” If men were sleeping when the enemy came, then these tares were sown while the men were unaware. This is exactly what we find in Jude – “that certain men crept in unawares.” Nobody realized what was happening, they were all asleep. Nobody could determine that there were tares sown among the wheat. No one had this type of discernment or understanding or wisdom, because, as God says, this was taking place while men slept.

We saw in Galatians 2 and Acts 15 that this began immediately as the New Testament church was forming. Right away, certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed came into the congregations and began teaching error. They began perverting the Gospel of grace because they were unsaved men, tares that had been sown among the wheat. That was the condition of the church. All along, Satan was very actively assaulting it. He was coming against the church in many different forms and leading his own people into it. Anyone who is not saved is a servant of sin and of Satan. They are taken into bondage, or as we read in 2 Timothy 2:26, “taken captive by him at his will.” Now, there they are in the church. They are not saved, they have never been born again, and by them, Satan is trying to corrupt the crop. He is attempting to foil the harvest, so he sows tares amongst the wheat.

What does it mean when we read that this took place “while men slept”? If we could find out this answer, it would help us to understand Jude verse 4, which says that “certain men crept in unawares.” How could the church be unaware? How could it be that the true pastors, the faithful men, the Apostles, and all the church authorities were not aware? And why does it say in this parable that men were sleeping?

If we turn back to Isaiah 29:10, we get our answer. This verse says:

For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered.

Right away, we see that God is the One who is bringing this deep sleep upon these individuals, and that He is the One who is closing their eyes. Part of what we are to understand is that deep sleep means someone does not have eyes to see certain things. “The prophets and your rulers, the seers hath He covered.” We know that this deep sleep is dealing with those who have association with the Word of God and those who are digging into God’s Word. It is dealing with those who declare the Word of God and who are responsible for feeding the flocks in the congregations, but whose eyes are closed, and who are in a deep sleep. Verse 11 goes on to say:

And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed…

Now that is interesting. What is the vision? Many times, God speaks of the vision in relationship to His Word. In Isaiah 1:1, we read about the vision of Isaiah. In the book of Obadiah, Obadiah received a vision, and in several of the writings of the prophets, they also received visions. The vision has to do with the Word of God itself. “And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed”—this is speaking of the Bible itself. The Bible is the vision, the Word of God. That is what the Bible is—the words of the book. But this vision is sealed. We have heard about this before. We are familiar with this kind of language, because in Daniel 12:4 God says to Daniel:

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

Again, it says in verse 9:

And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

That is what we are reading in Isaiah 29:11:

And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed…

God is speaking of this in the context of sending a deep sleep upon the prophets, the rulers, and the seers. In other words, they are asleep when it comes to understanding the words of the book, the vision of God. They will lack understanding to a very large degree when it comes to the Bible. Then it goes on to say in verse 11:

which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed:

Who would a learned man be? Normally, we think of a learned man as someone who is wise, someone who is intelligent, and someone who has understanding. Someone who is wise and possesses wisdom—he is a learned man. It is interesting that God is saying that the learned man cannot read the book because it is sealed. Then it goes on to say in verse 12:

And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.

That is, he is unable. He has no ability to read the book. He does not understand. We could look at this man as being a fool. A fool can read the words of the Bible, but he lacks understanding. Here then we have a learned man who cannot read the words of the book, and an unlearned man—neither can read the words of the book. This is all related to the deep sleep that has come upon them. God is tying together the words of the book being sealed with the deep sleep.

Now let us turn to Matthew 25 and look at the parable of the ten virgins. After we go through this a little bit, we will see why we are here and how this relates to Isaiah 29. In verse 1, it says:

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins…

The number ten in the Bible (if it has spiritual meaning, and it does) points to the completeness of whatever is in view. Here, it is ten virgins. These virgins are used to typify those who are in the church. They are the completeness of those who are in the churches and congregations of the world.

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

The bridegroom is the Lord Jesus Christ—there is no doubt about that. John the Baptist made the statement that Christ is the Bridegroom (John 3:29). Then it says in verse 2:

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

We could say that five that are learned in the ways of God and learned in their ability to understand the Bible, while five are unlearned in the ways of God and they lack a true ability to understand the Word of God. Then in verses 3-5:

They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

We have these ten virgins, and all of them are sleeping. We could have a problem understanding this, because sleeping in the Bible is normally associated with death. When Lazarus died, and it was told to Christ, He spoke of Lazarus and said, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth” (John 11:11). Those who heard Him thought that He spoke of Lazarus taking rest and sleep, but no, He was referring to the fact that Lazarus had died.

Normally sleeping, if there is a spiritual meaning to it, points to being dead in sin or to being dead physically. Therefore, God issues the command, “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead” (Ephesians 5:14). Because there is such a close connection between sleep and death in the Bible, each night that we lie down upon our beds and rest our heads upon our pillows and close our eyes, it is really a picture of the day that our body will finally stop functioning, our soul will leave our body, and we will die. Sleep is a constant reminder to us that man will die and that we will one day leave this earth. However, in Matthew 25, sleep is not pointing to that. It is not being used in the sense that these ten virgins are spiritually dead, because five of them are wise.

To be wise in the Bible means that someone has become a child of God. Christ is wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30), and when someone becomes saved, they receive the Spirit of Christ. They now possess wisdom because Christ’s Spirit is indwelling them. He is the personification of wisdom, so anyone who is saved is wise, while anyone who is not saved in this world is looked upon by God and spoken of in His Word as being a fool (Proverbs 3:35).

But all ten of these virgins are sleeping. Therefore, we cannot understand this sleep to be pointing to spiritual death, because the five wise are indeed wise, and that means that they have already risen from spiritual death. But God says that all ten were sleeping. How can we understand this?

We see how God is speaking of sleep in Isaiah 29. He says that a deep sleep will fall upon the prophets and upon the rulers and so forth, and then He ties that in with the fact that the words of the book, the vision of God, will be sealed. The learned and the unlearned will not be able to understand or read the book with any real understanding or any kind of knowledge. Then, once we connect this with Daniel 12, we see that it is primarily (even though there are some other truths here) dealing with end-time events and information. That is primarily what has been sealed up by God, even though some purifying of the Gospel and its doctrines is also connected with the information that has been sealed up. It is not until the last days that a purer and finer understanding of God’s grace in His salvation plan will be rightly understood by the people of God.

Throughout the Church Age, there could be many who mixed a little bit of works with grace, yet God would have blessed it because they were sinning in ignorance. The words of the book were sealed. They would not have access to all of this information until they would reach the time of the end, and then the words would be opened up.

But all throughout the New Testament period, men were sleeping. These ten virgins were sleeping. They were cohabiting in the same house of God and dwelling together just like the wheat and the tares. You could not distinguish between the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins, because they were all asleep. You could not tell who was learned or who was unlearned, because neither could understand the book that was sealed. Neither could really give a right answer on many questions, because the words dealing with those doctrines were sealed up. There was a period of time when the wheat would grow together with the tares. This is the period of time when the enemy was sowing tares increasingly, and he was doing so while men slept unawares. The “certain men” of Jude 4 are creeping in unawares because men are sleeping. There was no proper understanding of many of the Bible’s teachings, especially those related to what was going to take place with the church when we reached the period of the Great Tribulation. Then we read in Matthew 25:6:

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

What is going on here is taking place at midnight. Midnight is used in the Bible to speak of judgment. It was at midnight when God sent the final plague of the death of the firstborn upon Egypt (Exodus 11:5). That was a horrible judgment of God upon the Egyptians. Now it is midnight in this parable. It is in the middle of the night—the night has already begun and progressed to its mid point. Then a cry is made, a declaration. God is the One behind this cry. He is opening up His Word so that the cry will be made “The bridegroom cometh.”

What will happen when this cry is made at midnight? Those who are sleeping will awake. The wise virgins will awake from their sleep. They will now come to a proper understanding of what the Bible is saying since the book has been sealed until the time of the end. This cry being made at midnight in Matthew 25 is a cry being made near the end of time. It is coming forth from the Word of God as the Holy Spirit is opening up the understanding of His people. They will hear this cry that the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, cometh, and that the end of the world is soon to come.

Christ is now coming in judgment upon His church. Judgment has begun upon the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). The command of Almighty God, the command of the Holy Spirit as He reveals these truths to all who are sleeping as He is waking them, is “Go ye out to meet Him.” This command is saying that it is time for believers to leave the church. It is time for them to come out of the churches and congregations of the world. To go without the camp (Hebrews 13:13), to flee to the mountains (Mark 13:14), to come out of Babylon (Revelation 18:2-4), to depart out of the midst of Jerusalem (Luke 21:21)—there are many different ways that God has expressed this same truth. All are saying the same thing—that the church is under judgment, and the true child of God must now leave.

In our next study, Lord willing, we will finish looking at Matthew 25 and relate it back once again to Jude verse 4. May the Lord richly bless you.