Job 8-11 05/24/2026

Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord, join us here today
Fill us with joy
for all the good
you bring
into our lives.
Help us be
Noticers
Of you and
Of what you do

And help us collaborate with you
Taking your lead
Waiting our turn
To join
In the good
You are making

Knowing
Your life
In us
Is our hope
And our joy
Thank you
Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

Intro: I have been reading a book by Bill Elliot, who is a therapist

But it’s not about psychology – it has the unlikely title, Falling Into the Face of God
– it’s an autobiography of sorts
• Bill felt called by God’s Spirit to go to the Judean desert
• and , to spend forty days there like Jesus, only without fasting
– on day 17, he was meditating on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness
• then his thoughts went to Jesus and disciples in Philippi, and the moment when he called Peter “Satan”
William J. Elliot, “Why did Jesus do that? Especially since Peter was just trying to be helpful? It was because Peter was opposing Jesus’ deeper sense of destiny and Jesus’ deeper sense of God’s will. Satan comes from the Hebrew word for ‘opposer’ or ‘adversary.’ And that’s the point: we each have friends, and even parts of ourselves, that are often opposed to our deeper truth and connection with God. Even though they are trying to be helpful, they are still adversaries. So how do we find the skill and the courage to rebuff those well-meaning adversaries—especially when they love us and have often loved us in the past.”

Sometimes “well-meaning” friends give us bad or useless advice
(Sadly, I must admit, that I have done this to others; that is, provided them with worthless counsel or advice. I say this to my deep regret.)
– if we immediately know it’s bad, we don’t necessarily call them Satan,
• we just smile, nod, and ignore what they’ve said
• but we also have very real adversaries who are not friends
◦ and when they communicate with us, their intention is to wound, belittle, or insult
– if we do not filter what they say,
• if we let their words enter into our thoughts,
◦ the effect can alter our “deeper sense” of identity and destiny
• the most painful shock of this experience,
◦ is when the adversary is someone in the larger Christian community
◦ someone we assumed we could trust to be decent

Jude outlines a profile of dangerous people
“Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said ‘The Lord rebuke you.’ But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain like Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion Jude 8-10

Remember Jude refers to his readers as Beloved and to the adversaries as these people
– we saw last time, in verse 8, a list of three evils they had dreamed up:
• defile the flesh – contaminate or pollute their physical selves
• reject authority – perhaps refusing lordship
• blaspheme the glorious ones
– then in the next two verses, Jude elaborates on “blasphemy”

There are oddities in Jude’s letter that differ from most of the New Testament
– one exception is the second letter of Peter
• a passage so close to Jude, one of them likely borrowed from the other
Peter has:
◦ [go after the flesh] with “defiling passions”
◦ “despise authority” (Jude has “reject authority“)
◦ “blaspheme the glorious ones” (both Peter and Jude)
• then similar to what Jude says, Peter adds,
“. . . whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming of matters of which they are ignorant . . . .” (2 Pet. 2:11-12)
– I hope it’s okay for me to say this;
• I find both 2 Peter and Jude to be a little weird
◦ the problem stems from the strange beliefs that emerged during the era in which they were written
◦ a combination of Greek philosophy and eastern mysticism combined in one system, and rewriting the New Testament Scriptures
• I have never looked deeply into pagan or cultic beliefs
◦ a few years ago I thought it important for me to read the seminal work by Irenaeus
(a theologian who lived from mid-first century into 2nd century)
◦ Against Heresies is a long explanation and diatribe against Gnostic teaching
• it seemed a bizarre cult to me, but was a genuine threat to the purity of Christian teaching
◦ in every cult there are basic errors that twist the truth
◦ so even knowing the weirder ones help us to discern those that are more subtle

Jude reports a story from a manuscript we don’t know much about

At one time there was a book entitled “The Assumption of Moses”
– for centuries, we have had only a few fragments of a Latin translation of the Greek text
• it was written in the first century AD and contained a fable about the body of Moses
• our information is sketchy – someone’s commentary on it
– we are familiar with the characters in the story:
Michael the archangel who appears in Daniel, Jude, and Revelation
the devil made famous especially in the temptations of Jesus
◦ he always appears as a trouble maker, and the word devil means slanderer
◦ Jesus said of him,
“When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44)
◦ Moses, of course, whose death is shrouded in mystery
“So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab . . . ; but no one knows the place of his burial to this day” (Deut. 34:5-6)

The story to which Jude alludes goes something like this:
Michael was assigned to bury the body of Moses
– but the devil argued his rights to Moses’ body for two reasons:
• the devil owned the earth, so Moses’ earthly, material body belonged to him
• also, Moses had murdered an Egyptian, and for that sin forfeited his body (corpse)
– Michael did not argue with the devil, did not revile nor insult him
• he said only, “The Lord rebuke you”

The lesson of the story: there are battles we do not have to fight,
– arguments in which we do not have to engage
• years ago I met Helen Salibian, a saintly woman living in Argentina
◦ she stood before our church one Sunday morning and gave a short report of her close friendship with Jesus
◦ afterward several people told me, “I hope I know Jesus that well when I’m her age”
• when someone asked her about “spiritual warfare” her simple reply was,
“I never engage with Satan. I always put Jesus between the devil and myself.”
◦ that is what Michael did (as the story goes) when he told Satan, “The Lord rebuke you”

Jude, however, wasn’t concerned with the story’s lesson

His point is that it was not Michael’s place to insult or revile the devil
“But these people,” he says, “blaspheme all they do not understand”
– this is a classic depiction of what goes on in our culture
• and, unfortunately, it now bleeds into our churches
• well-meaning Christians will give the most lame interpretation of current events
◦ it’s embarrassing to think some people assume that those people represent all Christians
– there have been too many times when I’ve felt I had to run to God’s defense
• not only does God not need me to defend him,
◦ but I don’t always know enough to give the best riposte
• I’m learning that when I am in over my head,
◦ the smartest way I can maneuver my way through someone’s nonsense,
◦ is either to silently listen and learn something about the person or to walk away

Jude realized that the posers were not “enlightened” people
– they derived their insights from what they saw in nature
• their reasoning was animalistic and devoid of revealed truth

Jude uses the biblical “woe formula” to predict their ruin

Here he employs another set of three – and each example is radically abbreviated
– “the way of Cain” was disregarding God and as a result of falling prey to sin, because God had warned him, “if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door” (Gen. 4:6-7)
• Cain’s trail went from murder, to banishment, to vagabond (Gen. 4:10-14)
– “Balaam’s error” was greed
• he could not go against God, but found a way around God’s orders to him
◦ at least, he thought he did — but he paid the ultimate price in the end
– “Korah’s rebellion” although he belonged to the privileged tribe of priests, he rebelled against Moses, and what resulted was the most unusual and graphic punishment in all of scripture

John, in his first letter, tells us not to love “all that is in the world,” which he enumerates as:
“the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16)
– this is similar to Jude’s list and adhering to both lists could spare us much heartache
• the faith of so many Christians has been compromised by a lack of enlightenment and scripture twisting
• may God protect us from slipping from the grip of Jesus

Conclusion: Jude discerned patterns in Christian and pseudo-Christian belief and behavior

We’re doing well if we avoid the patterns of spiritual failure
But it’s even more important to know the patterns of healthy spirituality
For example, one reliable pattern is this:
“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Pr. 13:20)
If you know wise people
people who have risen from the ashes
and who continually live in the light of Jesus
walk with them!