Jude 6
Empty Promises
You will remember that Jude is describing apostates, or false teachers, who have gone far away from the truth and who have secretly slipped into the church. Such people are still around today.
This time we are looking at verses twelve and thirteen which read like this:
"These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm - shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars for whom blackest darkness has been reserved for ever". Jude is describing these false teachers in terms of empty promises. He describes them in general and then in particular. In general he tells us there are five characteristics of their apostasy. They are shepherds who feed only themselves. They are like waterless clouds with their false promises. They are like fruitless trees with their barren profession. They are like raging waves, full of wasted effort. They are like wandering stars in their aimless course. In these five statements he suggests the selfishness, the helplessness, the fruitlessness, the shamefulness and the hopelessness of these apostate, false teachers.
What a contrast they make with the True Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also described as " The rock of our salvation". These apostates are hidden rocks threatening shipwreck to the faithful. The Lord comes with clouds to refresh his people forever, but these are clouds that have no rain. The Lord Jesus Christ is a tree of life for believers, but these apostates are trees of spiritual death. Our Shepherd Lord leads us besides the still waters, but these false ones are themselves like the restless, troubled sea disturbing all around them. Our Lord Jesus is "The Bright and Morning Star" heralding the coming Day, but these people are wandering stars leading others to a night of eternal darkness.
At the beginning of verse twelve Jude describes these men who have crept into the fellowship as "Blemishes or spots at your love feasts". This phrase is more correctly translated as "hidden rocks at your love feasts". These are rocks on which unsuspecting ships are wrecked. "Hidden rocks" in the love feasts of believers! What can this mean? It means that these apostates were dangerous people bringing shipwreck to the love feasts of the early church. This love feast preceded the Lord’s Supper in the early church. The wealthier believers often supplied the needs of the poorer Christians. Then some began to come who only thought about themselves, they ate greedily while others went hungry and they became drunk. The apostle Paul had to write to rebuke people like this He says in 1 Corinthians chapter six verse ten: "… nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."
This behaviour was evidence that they were apostates, serving only themselves.
Jude also describes them as "clouds without rain". This is the opposite of what we read in Luke chapter twelve verse fifty-four where Jesus said, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, "It’s going to rain", and it does".
These clouds, says James, only bring disappointment. Solomon wrote of them long ago in Proverbs chapter twenty-five verse fourteen, "Like clouds and winds without rain is a man who boasts of gifts he does not give". The Christian profession of these false teachers is itself false. Clouds without rain deceive and discourage those who are thirsty, and they darken the skies and shut out the sun. So these men deceive those who are thirsting for the water of life, and they dim their vision of the Lord Jesus, the "Sun of righteousness". They are clouds carried about by the wind. Matthew Henry in his commentary says, "They are light and empty, easily driven about this way and that as the wind happens to blow". These teachers promise much, but because they are empty themselves, they have no spiritual life in them, all they say are empty words. So many of them talk confidently about things of which they know little or nothing. Their words are false and they are deceiving. We must be on our guard against them, searching the Scriptures to see if what they are saying is in accordance with God’s Word.
These apostates are like "trees without fruit". Like late Autumn trees they are fruitless and only fit to be pulled up. They are thus twice dead. What a contrast with the true believer described in Psalm one and verse three, "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." These men are twice dead because they are both "fruitless" and "rootless." There is no fruit of the Spirit, no godliness, no Christ-likeness. Their uprooting will be the second death when the Lord Jesus Christ comes again in judgement against all the ungodly. Jesus said, in Matthew chapter fifteen verse thirteen, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots." Judgement awaits these false professors with their false teaching and their deceiving of God’s people.
And finally these men are compared to the raging waves of the sea. The sea is used several times in the Bible to symbolise those who do not know God. Here is uncontrolled wickedness. False teachers are often those with strong personalities; they are noisy and full of excitable talk and pride. They have little biblical understanding or wisdom. Like the raging sea they often engulf their hearers with their rhetoric and fine sounding teaching, but in the end they leave them empty and disappointed, and often with a shattered faith. "They foam up their shame", says Jude. The Living Bible version puts it like this: "All they leave behind them is shame and disgrace like the dirty foam left along the beach by the wild waves". How often we have seen this in our own day as false teachers have come and gone leaving behind them misery and confusion and personal disgrace.
So Jude has graphically described these apostate teachers, who had infiltrated the church, as men promising much but delivering nothing of spiritual value. Men who had deserted the true faith for their own ends, whose actions and words betrayed their emptiness and their wickedness. How important it is then that we "contend for the faith once delivered to the saints" and be sure that we ourselves are "in the faith".
As we draw this study to a close, I want to ask you to search your heart to be sure that you are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ the only Saviour of sinners.