Study in the Epistle of Jude # 72: Verse 13

by Chris McCann

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

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. Currently, we are going through the book of Jude, and if you have been with us, then you know that we are in verse 13. That verse says, regarding these false teachers, false prophets, false believers:

Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

This has been a fairly lengthy dialogue by God as He is moving Jude to write these words in admonishment and condemnation of those who have crept into the churches unawares of the true believers. During the Church Age, they have entered in and they have given the appearance of being believers themselves. That is why God speaks of them as He has in the last few verses. He speaks of them as clouds, as believers are represented by clouds, yet without water. God speaks of them as trees, yet they are without fruit. Now in verse 13, God is describing these men as wandering stars.

We have learned for quite some time that God does not just throw words around. We have learned that He is not just using language to fill space where He has made His point. We have learned that He is not just trying to put in a little filler. No, with God every word is significant and important, and He chooses His words precisely.

Now God refers to these men typified by Cain and Balaam and Korah as “wandering stars.” Why does He use the word “stars”? The Bible typifies true believers as stars. We are not surprised to learn this. If you get out a concordance and look up stars, you will be amazed at how often God uses this picture to represent the body of believers.

In Genesis 22, He was giving this kind of a picture to Abraham. We read in verses 15-17:

And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore…

That is a promise that God gave to Abraham. That seed was not fulfilled by national Israel, the physical descendents of Abraham, as God gave the promise to Abraham that he would be a father of nations. That seed was not fulfilled by the blood descendents of Abraham at all. Rather, God had in mind the spiritual Jews, the spiritual descendents of Abraham. We can see this in the book of Romans in the New Testament, where it says in chapter 9:6-8:

Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

That is what God has in mind in Genesis 22. Now the Jews, the physical descendents of Abraham, the nation of Israel, took to themselves this promise. They applied these words to themselves and they thought that they were the holy people of God. They thought that they were the blessed ones, yet they had never become born again; they were not the ones in view. That is why Romans 9:6 says, “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” The children of the flesh are not the children of God. They could be circumcised and they could observe the sacrifices of the Old Testament. Outwardly, they could do these works, but unless God had predetermined them to be one of His own, unless they had been chosen before the foundation of the world and God had blessed His Word to their hearts at some point in their life so that they became born again, they were not the true children of God.

By the way, that is how people in the Old Testament became saved—exactly as New Testament believers do. That is why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, just as you or I find grace in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8). This is why king David cries out in Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” just as you or I, if we are truly children of God, must receive a new resurrected heart and a new spirit. It is in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel 36:26, that God speaks of taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh. The Gospel was the same, and God saved the same way then as now.

Yet in Israel, there were many circumcised Jews. There were many who tried to keep the Sabbath day holy. We can read about that very plainly in the Gospels, as so many of the Pharisees were zealous for the observance of the Sabbath day. Of course, it was on their own terms and not on God’s, but they tried to keep these laws. They thought that they were the chosen ones, the seed of which God spoke to Abraham, yet it was not the children of the flesh but the children of the promise of which God spoke. It is the true believers who are that seed; we are spiritual Jews. This is why God says this in Romans 2:28-29:

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

That is a Jew. If you or I are born again, then we are spiritual Jews, and if you are not born again, then you are not a Jew. You are, spiritually speaking, not one of those whom God promised Abraham, and you are not a star. You are not one of the spiritual stars that God had in mind when He caused Abraham to look up into the sky and to witness the multitude, the great number of stars in the heavens and indicated, “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the Heaven.” The stars are pictures of those whom God intends to save.

We will go to one other verse that shows this, even though there are numerous verses that teach so. In Daniel 12:3, it says:

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

The wise are like stars, and they that turn many to righteousness are as the stars. Believers are represented and typified by the stars in the sky.

Now we read in Jude regarding these false believers that they are wandering stars. Once again, like the clouds and like the trees, they want to be like believers; they want to be associated with the children of God. They want to give the appearance outwardly that they are God’s elect, yet God lets us know that they are not when He says, “They are wandering stars.” They are wandering stars—they are not the true believers, but they are false brethren who have crept in unawares.

The word “wandering” makes us realize this because it is derived from a word that means “deceiver” or “seducer.” It is very closely related to what we find in 1 Timothy 4:1, which says:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;

That word “seducing” is closely related to the word “wandering” in Jude 13. They are deceivers. There again, the emphasis is upon their trickery; it is upon their deceitfulness and their falsehood, as they give the appearance of being something that they are not. Therefore, God calls them wandering stars.

God goes on to say in Jude 13:

…to whom…

“To whom”—that is, to these men whom He has been talking about. Let us not limit this to Cain and Balaam and Korah; let us not think God has only these men in view. God has in view anyone who is not truly a child of God, especially those who get involved in teaching or bringing the Gospel in some manner, yet are not truly born again. Therefore, God says, “To whom”—this is for them that He is going to speak. The verse continues:

…to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

We know that this is a reference to Hell; it is a reference to eternal damnation. God does not hesitate to warn us that this day is coming, and it is fast approaching. He warns again and again throughout His Word about the final Day of Judgment and about that pit of Hell, and God uses much language to describe it. He uses different pictures; He paints different pictures of what Hell will be like. In some cases, He speaks of Hell as the place where the fire will never be quenched and the place where the worm dieth not (Mark 9:46), where one is tormented forever and ever and in an awful agony. Here, the picture is one of darkness—the blackness of darkness forever.

God has doubled up. He could have said, “The blackness forever,” or He could have said, “The darkness forever,” but He stresses this and emphasizes it all the more when He says, “To whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.” This is indicating unquestionably that Hell is going to be like pitch darkness, as black and as dark as anyone has ever seen. It is going to be a place where there is no light, a place totally void of lights of any kind. There will be no flicker of light.

Now someone might be saying to himself, “How can that be? God speaks about Hell as a fire, and we know that fire is light.” Yet we have to keep in mind that God is giving us different pictures; He is giving us different aspects of Hell. He wants us to learn from the fire that is never quenched that it is a place of intense suffering as one is consumed by the fire again and again, and the fire never goes out. God is that consuming fire, Hebrews 12:29 says, so it is an eternal flame that will never be put out. Man will never escape the fires of Hell. On the other hand, God is teaching us another aspect of Hell when He is speaking of the blackness of darkness forever.

It might help us if we look a little bit at what the Bible has to say regarding darkness or blackness. In Matthew 4:16 it says:

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

This is a Messianic reference. It is a quote from Esaias or Isaiah chapter 9, which is a chapter looking ahead to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah.

The idea here is that the world is sitting in darkness. They have lights in their dwellings; they have physical lights—the sun to light the day, the moon set in the sky to light the night, and the stars, which also give their light. Man has his oil-lit lamps and he has his fires burning. There are those kinds of light, but God is not saying that man is physically or literally sitting in darkness. Rather, this is a reference to a spiritual facet of man, to man’s spiritual nature, his spiritual condition. It is a reference to the fact that man has committed sin against God. He has rebelled against God, He has died spiritually, and he has, thereby, entered into a place of darkness.

In the dark, you cannot see things; you do not have vision at all. This is what God is telling us—that man cannot see spiritual things. He cannot understand spiritual truths, as they relate to God and His Word, apart from God opening up man’s understanding. Therefore, mankind is in darkness spiritually, and in this darkness, they can develop all manner of false religions and false gods and false ideas about the true God. They can come up with philosophies and theories and all kinds of speculation about the origin of man and the destiny of man and what man is upon earth for—what the purpose is that he is to serve here on earth. Man can do all this, yet in their theories and religions and philosophies what is revealed is the truth that man sits in darkness. He is far away from the truth of the Word of God, and he just cannot see at all.

God is saying in Matthew 4:16, “The people which sat in darkness saw great light,” and that is what the Gospel of John confirms to us. When Jesus came into the world, it says in John 1:4-5:

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Then a little further down, in verses 7-9, we read of John the Baptist:

The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light…

The passage continues, speaking of Jesus:

…That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

Then over in John 3:19-21, it says:

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Man is in darkness, and he loves his darkness. He loves the darkness of his sinfulness, and he loves the darkness of his own mind and his own spirit in which he cannot see the truth of God’s Word. He is quite happy and content, for the most part, living in this world in ignorance, without knowledge of God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). It was when the Lord Jesus Christ came that men ran from the light. They hated the light; they did not want the Light of God, who was personified by Jesus who was and is the truth of God (John 14:6). He came unto His own and His own received Him not (John 1:11). He came to the world and the world had Him crucified and placed on a Cross, because they did not love the truth of God’s Word that brings light to them. They prefer their darkness and their evil deeds.

When God’s Word shines the light upon them, they see themselves for what they are. If they stay in that light for any length of time, they recognize that they are a sinner, that they do not do things properly and in accord with God’s commandments, and that they are not as good as they like to think of themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bible says that they are desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Man is nothing but a wretch, nothing but an evil doer, ungodly, unjust, and unmerciful. There is none that doeth good, no not one (Romans 3:12).

Who can stand of their own? What man can stand to have such things said about him, or to have such a light shined upon him? Man hates that. He likes to think good of himself and to think well of himself and to think that he is not a bad person after all, not like others. That is the natural thinking of man; that is the darkness of man’s spiritual condition that he prefers above all else. Leave it to man and he will stay in that darkness until the day of his death.

Man loves the darkness; he loves his sin and he loves the darkness that his sin brings. Yet when it comes to the world, when it comes to this universe, man will permit God to create a beautiful creation. He will permit God to establish physical lights in the sky—the celestial lights of the moon and the stars, which light the night, and the celestial light of the glorious sun, which lights the day. Man is willing to allow God to do such works in the physical realm. Man will not run from those lights; he does not want God to bring darkness literally or physically upon this world, yet this is the judgment of God for man who has lived his life in darkness, for man who has loved the darkness and hated the light. The Lord God has judged and will make it so.

God has determined to create a place a place called Hell that will match the spiritual characteristic of man when he is sent into Hell and cast off into the pit of eternal damnation. God is then going to establish that place in some way, I do not know how, to match man’s spiritual condition of darkness. Hell itself will be like the blackness of darkness forever; that is, the creation that Hell will be will be of such a situation that it will outwardly resemble the inward condition of man’s spiritual darkness.

God says this is Matthew 22:11-14, which says:

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless…

This is referring to the Day of Judgment. This has to do with someone who is, once again, giving the appearance of salvation, yet has never truly become saved. God will certainly reveal this on Judgment Day, and man will have nothing to say to God; he will be speechless. The passage continues:

…Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

He is to be cast into outer darkness as opposed to inner darkness, which is man’s spiritual condition. Man’s heart, his mind, his soul, is inward, and it lies in darkness; but now God is saying that outwardly, He has created a place of darkness, and off you go, O man who has loved the dark, into the pit of Hell, into the blackness of darkness for ever. Oh, how terrible it will be, and how awful! What a testimony it will be to man himself as he can see the awfulness of his own condition by the outward settings of Hell.

This has been a very sad verse to look at, but we are going to move on. In our next study, Lord willing, we are going to move on to verse 14 of Jude, which speaks of Enoch. He was the seventh from Adam, and he prophesied of the coming of the Lord with ten thousands of his saints.