https://www.gty.org/library/resources/any/scripture/1?book=1&chapter=All&cat=all

Sermons 8-Jude.1.10" class="scriptRef">Jude 8–10 65-8 Apr 18, 2004
A + A - RESET
We return tonight to our study of the epistle of Jude. We are unable to move through this book as rapidly as we did 2 John and 3 John, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s about twice as long as both of those. But more than that, this is one of those books that is condensed. And when you begin to look into it, it expands by its own nature. And so, we are digging in deeply and finding ourselves broadened in our understanding of the truths which are here mentioned rather briefly but open to us all kinds of vistas of understanding.

Jude wrote this little epistle on the subject of apostasy. Apostasy is to defect from the faith: to know the faith that is the gospel of Jesus Christ, to affirm it to one degree or another, to understand it, and to abandon it, to reject it.

More than that, Jude is not dealing necessarily with apostasy in general but with one particular form of apostasy, and that is that kind of apostasy that rejects the faith and then stays inside the church and deceives and propagates lies. There are those who, having heard the faith and understood the faith and even made profession of the faith, abandon the faith and disappear, never to darken the door of the church again, making no pretense of religion, no pretense of Christianity. They, of course, have brought upon themselves eternal condemnation, but they are not a threat to the life of the church.

There are, however, other apostates who, having rejected the faith, become the agents of Satan inside the church who profess some adherence to Christianity, to Christian truth, and even some adherence to Scripture. But they are perverse and perverted, and they exist inside the church in order to do the deadly work of undermining the truth from the inside.