Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, June 2nd.

If you were to list your favorite books of the Bible, it'd probably be a long time until you got to the book of Jude.

Today's podcast begins a series on this little book that reveals a very relevant message to the 21st century church.

You can't place the value on the book in the Bible by its size

or by how many verses it has because the little book of Jude only has 25 verses.

And when you compare that to the 26th chapter of Matthew,

just one chapter in Matthew has three times as many verses. There's 75 verses in

Matthew 26 and 25 verses in the whole book of Jude. So when somebody speaks of Jude, it's not

first, second, third chapter, it's just verses, because there is only one chapter in the book of Jude. But you can't minimize that book.

How many of you ever heard a series on Jude? Somebody said, a series? Yes. So that's what we're

going to do. It won't take us long. But this book is very applicable to what is happening all about us today.

And I think we'll see that when we begin to understand what's happening.

I want us to read the first four verses to begin this evening.

Judah bond servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to those who are the call beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. 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. For certain persons have crept in

unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness

and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let me give you a little background about

this book. Won't take but a few moments. First of all, more than likely, this Jude is like James, that is, the half-brother

of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's interesting that neither James nor Jude introduced themselves

as the half-brother of Jesus Christ, but both of them say a bond servant of Jesus Christ, and of course

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