Angels & Gentiles
Jude 1:4-7
Jude 1:4-7, For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. 5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
The truth war. V 3, “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
Jude, who was the half-brother of our Lord Jesus and the brother of James, wrote this epistle. Having changed his original intention, appealing to us to contend earnestly for the Christian faith, the truth. This is calling us to battle.
The truth is under attack by those who hate it and desire to undermine it or assault it. The most devastating attacks, however, that come on the truth come from those who claim to love and believe it. The devastating attacks come from those who say they believe it, are attached to it, and assault it.
Defending the truth against those who attack from the inside is very difficult. Defending the truth against those who claim to be the true teachers of God’s truth takes great discernment and endurance. Contemporary Christianity lacks this.
Three past judgments God has made on apostates.
1. Apostate of Jews
2. Apostate of Angels
3. Apostate of Gentiles
V 5, apostate Jews. V 6, apostate angels. V 7, apostate Gentiles. Three illustrations.
Number one
V 5, But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Because it was very basic in the Old Testament. The story of Israel in the wilderness was the most told story of all stories ever told by Jews.
Number two
V 6, And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; More startling illustration here and that has to do with the angels.
This is another group of apostates. This is another group of defectors.
Apostate angels. Again, in one sense you could wish that he said more about this. But he doesn’t say more about it because it’s all by way of reminder, knowing that they already knew about this. Jude is assuming that these people already knew about the angels that apostatized, the angels that rebelled, the angels that defected. They had heard it before. Whatever this special, extraordinary, and terrible event was, they knew about it.
What happened?
What angels?
When?
Where? There are basically three views of this. One, that it’s referring to some unique and special thing we don’t know anything about. That doesn’t fit the context because Jude was reminding them of what they already knew. So, it can’t be very obscure.
We must assume, then, that it’s very likely something that is in the Scripture and the Old Testament would be that Scripture.
Since this story of the defection of Israel in verse 5, and the story of the terrible defection of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them in verse 7 is in the Scripture, we can assume that this one in the middle is in the Scripture as well.
That is why it was common knowledge to them. So, whatever we are dealing with here, we are dealing with something that’s in the Old Testament. Second option is that we are dealing with the original fall of Satan. That is a possibility, but the problem with dealing with it that way is that it says that he has kept in eternal bonds these angels, in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
Certainly, Satan is not kept in chains.
Revelation 20:1-3, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 2 He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3 and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
There will come a day, during the millennial kingdom, when he will be chained for a thousand years. But currently he is free to roam around.
1 Peter 5:8, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
We know that demons move about through the earth, because Jesus kept confronting them everywhere He went. They were anything but bound. So, it can’t be that. Thirdly, then has to be a very special defection and rebellion among the angels that is recorded in the Old Testament.
Something beyond just the original fall. Something that was so severe and serious that God took the angels that did it and put them in chains, to keep them there lest they do some perverted things like this again and again.
The sin is described in four ways. V 6, And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
1. They did not keep their proper domain
Now that is to say their own rule or their own. We could say position of authority. They moved out of their realm. Instead of staying in that place of authority, that position of rule, that place of domain. Instead of keeping that principality which God had given to them, that dignity which God had given to them, they moved out of that.
2. Abandoned their proper abode. They didn’t stay where God had placed them, in the lofty and exalted position as holy angels around His throne. Like Satan himself, who’s called the anointed cherub, who was the worship leader of heaven, whose majesty and beauty is described in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.
They didn’t keep that. They abandoned their proper abode. They had their own place. They had their own dwelling, in the spirit world, around the throne of God, a place in harmony with their nature. But they made a definite move away from that.
They deliberately became apostate, an aorist verb.
They made a direct move out of their appropriate place.
3. Same as Sodom and Gomorrah
V 7, as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
“just as” – and here Sodom and Gomorrah appear almost as an illustration of what the angels did! So, these angels did not stay in their own realm, did not maintain their own lofty dignity. They did not stay in their own place that dwelling, which was in harmony with their nature, that spirit world. They came down and indulged in gross immorality.
It was something like what went on in Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around, because it says, “The angels, in the same way as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, indulged in gross immorality. We know what the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were engaged in Homosexuality, getting outside the course of nature, a kind of fornication, out of the normal course of nature.
So, their sin is compared to that kind of bizarre sin of Sodom and Gomorrah called homosexuality. Angels, then, who left their own lofty position, who left the domain, in some sense of their spirit world, the place where they were designed to be, came all the way down and indulged in sexual immorality in a perverse fashion.
4. Went after strange flesh
V 7, as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
These angels went a whoring. They went after creatures outside their realm. It’s an interesting twist. The men of Sodom lusted after the angels. The angels lusted after men. The men of Sodom wanted to commit sexual sin with angels that appeared in male form, and the angels committed horrendous acts of lust with human flesh.
So, the case seems clear.
Whatever these angels did, they fell from their lofty position, and that could certainly refer to the original fall. They moved out of their normal spiritual domain. They came all the way down to engage in sexual immorality with beings of a different nature.
What is this referring to? There is really only one Old Testament possibility. Genesis 6. When the angels did this, they brought themselves under judgment. V 6, And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; God has kept in eternal bonds, no escape, escape proof chains literally under blackness.
God has them locked up in the darkest place in His universe. God has them locked up in a black place, a horrific place.
2 Peter 2:4, For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment;
What is that?
The judgment of the day of the Lord. When the Lord comes back and establishes his kingdom, binds Satan for a thousand years, along with the rest of the demons, at the end of which they are forever cast into the lake of fire, “Which was prepared,” said our Lord, “for the Devil and his angels.” So, these are bound angelic beings.
Genesis 6:1-5, Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. 3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of
God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. 5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
You don’t see the word “angel.” The phrase “sons of God.” Sons of God is used to designate angels.
Job 1:6, Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Job 2:1, Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.
Job 38:7, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
The Septuagint translates these as angels. Nowhere in the Old Testament is this phrase “sons of God” used to refer to God’s people except once, in Hosea 1:10, in an obvious usage. Sons of God means that they basically were created by God.
They were brought into existence by the creative act of God. Men are not sons of God until they are redeemed by God. Josephus, the common Jewish view was that sons of God here refers to angels. The early Church seems to have held this view until about the fourth century, at least, when other views came along.
It can’t refer to men, because all the sons of God are male, and if he’s referring here to God’s spiritual children, that would mean that no women were converted. These are male. The daughters of men must include more than Cain’s daughters. So, sons of God must be different from the human race.
Fallen angels possessed the bodies of wicked men. The angels, in that time, came all the way down, of course, to do their terrible work after they had been thrown out of heaven and left their proper bode. They came down to earth in a perverse and wicked enterprise. They possessed the body of wicked men, who impregnated women whom the men married. Men and women communing with demons.
Do you know anything about the New Age movement? Do you know anything about the wretched evil of Satan worship and demon worship? Then you know that people invoke the spirits in their wedding ceremonies and open themselves to demons and endeavour and all kinds of religions in the world have done this to commune with the gods.
Men and women believed that by communing with spirit beings. This is part of sort of the heritage of ancient religion by
communing with the spirits, they could conquer death, and they could gain immortality. It was like Satan’s lie in the garden. Satan says to Eve, “You know, you are not going to die. In fact, if you eat what God told you not to eat, you will be like God, and He doesn’t like the competition. God just wants you not to be like Him. If you eat, you will not die.”
Satan has always promised immortality. There have always been these bizarre kind of fertility cults. All of this is sort of bound up in this. The demons come down. They decide to take over the lives of these men. They move in, into the wickedness.
The wicked lives that literally welcome them. They come in, in some perverse and bizarre way. They dominate a marriage. They dominate a family that is under the influence of the wretched, demonic evil. Probably all under the guise that they could achieve immortality, and they could somehow even achieve godhood like the Mormons say.
The corruption was so bad, at this point, that God drowned the whole human race. These demons did something that God didn’t want them to do again. So, God made sure they wouldn’t do it again. He chained them permanently until the day of judgment.
Why did God do that?
Why did He choose to do that? Certainly, these kinds of bizarre, demonic activities, demonic sex and marriage and cohabitation go on all the time in aboriginal kind of environments and primitive environments as well as sophisticated sort of mystical, satanic kind of cults.
But God did what He did because the level of evil at that point was so great that He literally destroyed the whole human race. The whole point here is not to get you lost in all of that for the study of Genesis 6. But to just say this, “Angels which were in heaven around the throne of God end up in the pits of darkness and suffer the judgment of that great day in eternal torment in the lake of fire because they defected from their opportunity.
I don’t know how that happened.
I can’t tell you the story of how holy angels can become so wretched, but that’s what the Bible says. It wasn’t a small group in the original fall. It was a third of the angels, according to Revelation 12, and this would have been some among those.
The demons that were not engaged in this have been running loose through the world, and occasionally, from time to time, our Lord will send more down to the pits of darkness.
Luke 8:30-31, Jesus asked him, saying, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him. 31 And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
The demons in the maniac of Gadara, they begged saying don’t send us to the pit. They want their freedom. If we think the fall of Israel was something, from the privilege that they experienced, to dying in the wilderness, think about this fall. It’s incredible.
Number three
Gentiles
V 7, as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to
sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. The Gentiles, and in particular the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them. Jude really ties the two together!
In describing what the angels did, he uses the Sodom and Gomorrah population as the analogy or the illustration and, in so doing, brings them up. Sodom and Gomorrah people did essentially the same thing the angels did. They left their normal place.
They indulged in gross immorality. They went after strange flesh. There the pattern is the same as it was with the angels, perversion of their intended design, going after strange flesh. The story is told in Genesis 18 and 19.
Just a terrible and horrific story.
The testimony of Abraham had been made known. The information about the true and living God was available. Certainly, Lot had given testimony to the true God. The people of Sodom wanted nothing to do with the true God, nothing whatsoever. The people of Sodom were so perverse.
Genesis 19:1-11, Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. 2 And he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the open square.” 3 But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. 4 Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.” 6 So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, 7 and said, “Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly! 8 See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.” 9 And they said, “Stand
back!” Then they said, “This one came in to [a]stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.” So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. 10 But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. 11 And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door.
Again, indicating that they had taken on a physical body. All the men of the whole place. And, of course, these are two beautiful creatures. They thought he was sitting in judgment on their homosexuality and their perversion.
The angels saved Lot from getting crushed. Their passions were so completely out of control that even though they had just been struck blind, they were still having a hard time finding the door they were trying to get through to attack these angels.
This incident in the history of the Old Testament that made a stronger impression on the Jewish people than that of Sodom and Gomorrah, because as you study the Old Testament, it is brought up again and again and again.
Sodom and Gomorrah mentioned in Old Testament. Deuteronomy, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Lamentations, Ezekiel.
In the New Testament
Matthew, Luke, Romans, Peter, Revelation, Jude, of course. Two angelic visitors come to visit Lot. The men surround the house. They want to rape these men.
What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? God incinerated them. The other cities in that same area, were also consumed.
Genesis 19:24-25, Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 So
He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. Some archaeologists have said there is evidence of a great rupture in the earth’s strata in that place. Terrific explosion in some subterranean pool of oil near the south shore of the Dead Sea, where these cities were located.
The gas becomes ignited, and the resulting blast lifted a whole section of the valley floor into the air and dropped it down, burying them all so that these cities were literally buried immediately in burning oil and sulphur.
In one hour, they were all gone. Jude, we know where they were going. They were undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. The punishment of eternal fire. This is hell. This is God’s final, everlasting judgment on sinners and, in particular, those who defect from the truth.
Revelation 19:20, Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.
A lake of fire which burns with brimstone, very much like that which fell on them that day.
Revelation 20:10, The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 21:8, But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” So, God has given us, in this little epistle of Jude, three dramatic, unforgettable, historical illustrations of apostasy and how it ends. It is a warning.
It is a warning to any who are on the edge of turning away from the gospel. But it is a reminder to us of how important it is to fight for the faith, to contend for the truth, because God will punish with everlasting fire those who defect from His truth and stay in His Church to corrupt it.
God destroyed the very people He took out of Egypt.
God destroyed the very angels who once were around His throne. God destroyed the people in Sodom and Gomorrah who were exposed to Him and perverted themselves. This is a very sobering and a very serious message, and one that we must understand.
It raises the stakes in this battle for the truth.
Hebrews 10:29-31, Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. If you are on the edge of rejecting the faith, it is a terrifying thing for you to fall into God’s hands. You are headed for an eternal lake of fire and brimstone.
God is no respecter of the people who reject. He didn’t respect the Israelites who rejected. He didn’t respect the angels who once sang His praises. He didn’t respect the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah who knew the truth and turned from it.
God will not respect, nor will He forgive anyone who rejects His gospel. There will be the punishment of eternal fire. There will be no one in hell who doesn’t deserve to be there.