Introduction to the Book of Jude

“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. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 3-4, NLT)

Jude

The Book of Jude has always fascinated me as it draws much of its content from the Old Testament and as a result I often referred to it when I taught. However, it wasn’t until I studied it verse by verse, did I notice something, at least in my mind, that was absolutely incredible.

First of all God has given us His Word, beginning with the Old Testament that establishes the beginning of all things (including the problem of sin) and it also provides the prophetic models and the much-needed foundation for the New Testament. The New Testament then gives us the gospel message (the solution of the problem of sin), the history of the first 30 plus years of the church, various letters (also known as epistles) to equip believers so that they can help people find Christ and then there is Jude and Revelation.

While Revelation is often considered confusing or in some people’s eyes unimportant, it is an essential book to understand God’s plan for humanity. The possible reason for all the confusion is that it has more references to the Old Testament than any other New Testament book and if you are only a casual reader of the Old Testament, the Book of Revelation will undoubtedly remain a mystery.

So what is so incredible about the book of Jude? Lets consider for the moment the books from Matthew through 3 John as basic training materials. As a diligent student of God’s Word you have been throughly trained in them and as an enlisted soldier for Jesus you are now ready to accept your first assignment. The Book of Jude calls to all Christians to rise up and take notice of what is going on in the world. Jude will point out that our enemy, Satan and his many minions (not the yellow variety), is very active in the world. Our enemy has indeed infiltrated the church, do you see him? He’s there! Jude says he works through people who have “crept in unnoticed,” which begs the question, how do you fight a stealth enemy? Are you ready to receive your orders and find out? Perhaps if we view Jude in this manner, we can understand why this single chapter epistle is the second to the last book of the Bible.

My hope and prayer is that you love the Book of Jude as much as I have, and accept Jude’s challenge to charge forward, or how would Joshua Chamberlain say it, “Fix bayonets! Charge!”

God bless you and always stick close to Him,

Dave Heywood