Jude 13
There are many important things to be considered in the Word of God, but none are so important as eternity. I hope you have trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour because the Lord Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but my me” (John 14:6). He is the only way to Heaven. Since the time you entered into God’s family, have you learned that you can always trust the Lord. He remains the same. He said, “I change not.”
The book of Jude deals with a religious crowd, apostates. These are not strange- looking creatures with horns, perhaps green in colour, having serpent like faces. These are normal-looking people who have all the religious trappings that identify them with believers. The problem is that they have looked at revealed truth and turned from it. They look like Christians in many ways. They talk like Christians in many ways, but they have denied the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible says in verses 12 and 13 of Jude, “These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
God says that their end is the “blackness of darkness for ever.”
When God beautifully describes heaven to us in the Bible, He quickly moves to the Person of Jesus Christ. Revelation 22:4 says, “And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.” There would be no heaven without Christ.
If you believe in a real heaven, the you should believe in a real hell. If heaven is a place where there is no need of the sun or the moon because the Son of God is the light, then remember that hell is a place with “the blackness of darkness for ever.”
No one lives without dying. The Bible says in Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” For Christians, eternal life begins the moment the Lord Jesus Christ comes to live in them. Because all people will be in eternity in either heaven or hell, our hearts should be stirred because of those who are going into that “blackness of darkness for ever.”
Notice first of all, the darkness of this world. To help us understand that darkness exists, God tells us that we get a taste of it in this world. There is a kingdom of light in the world, and there is a kingdom of darkness. Our Lord Jesus is the King of glory and the King of the kingdom of light. The devil is the prince of darkness and the leader of the kingdom of darkness.
The Bible says in Ephesians 6:10-12, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Every word in the Bible is significant. There is “the blackness of darkness forever” in the world to come for those who live and die without Christ.
There is darkness in this present world. This world was introduced to darkness in Genesis chapter 3. There was nothing but light until then because God had moved upon the face of the deep. God has spoken the world into existence. God said, “Let there be light.” There was nothing but that bright light, a kingdom of light, until there was rebellion in heaven and the prince of darkness came to this earth.
Satan channelled his message through a serpent to Adam and Eve. As the devil spoke to them, he made a revealing statement. The Bible says in Genesis 3:1-5,
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Is it not amazing that darkness came into this world with a promise of light? Satan is the master deceiver! Sin entered into the bloodstream of all humanity through our first parents, Adam and Eve. The world was plunged into darkness. There has never been born since that time any man who was not a sinner, except the God-Man, the Lord Jesus Christ who was born of a virgin.
We live in a world of darkness. We were plunged into this world of darkness with a promise of light. The devil still makes the same promise. He makes the same promise that his way is a better way. Darkness is never more dangerous than when it comes packaged as light.
The worst thing in our city is not some bar. The worst thing is not some house of ill repute where people sell themselves for money. The worst thing is an apostate church where people appear to tell the truth but tell a lie. People believe the lies they hear and die and go to hell—“the blackness of darkness for ever.”
Can you think of anything more pitiful than someone looking for hope and help, coming to a church building and hearing a man deny the truth of the Word of God? Can you think of anything worse than someone taking their children into a church building that should be lifting up Jesus Christ and finding that they are denying the truth? The worst thing in the world is a place that claims to be beacon of light but is a house of darkness.
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.” — Romans 13:12