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| JUDE |
| Watch out! |
| Sounding an alarm. |
| I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith. 3 |
| If you sign up for a driver's training course, you'll begin with several hours of classroom lectures on "Rules of the Road." The instructor will drill you on the shapes and colors of warning signs - signs that announce danger on the highways. Driving seems all very academic, until you slide behind the wheel. There, a missed stop sign won't just lower a test score; it could cost you your life. Your instructor, rather than calmly correcting you, will shout, "Look out!" Jude writes in the style of a teacher who is watching a freight train bear down on his student driver. Bells ring out, crossing gates go down, red lights flash. He admits this kind of letter isn't his preference; he intended a more highminded treatise on salvation (verse 3). But the church was facing mortal danger, and so Jude dashed off a vehement warning. Who Were the Troublemakers? Jude doesn't elaborate on what the troublemakers (verse 4) were teaching - perhaps he didn't want to honor their ideas by discussing them. Their behavior, however, is fair game: he fires away at their hypocrisy, divisiveness, and loose morals. He calls them spies and urges believers to fight for the true faith. At his poetic best, he borrows vivid images from nature to describe these people (12-13). Short and vigorous, the book of Jude brings to mind a message from a fiery Old Testament prophet. Yet Jude holds out hope for his readers. Sincere believers can keep themselves in God's love, and some wavering souls can still be "snatched from the fire" (21-23). (Even when battling heretics, Jude does not hint at persecuting the offenders - no burnings at the stake here.) Jude closes with a familiar and joy-filled doxology, the one |