Warnings From Ancient Rebellions

BibleProject

BibleProject Podcast

Jesus, Theology, Old Testament, Demons, Satan, New Testament, Angels, Tim Mackie, Christianity, God, Spiritual Beings, Spirit, Religion & Spirituality, Bible, Jon Collins, Torah, Bible Study

4.8 • 20.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

The Letter of Jude E3 — After the letter’s opening appeal, Jude (or Judah) begins warning corrupt members of a Jewish messianic church community who cast off restraint and live openly immoral lives. He does so with an ancient rhetorical technique found in both the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jude shares three stories of rebellion in the Hebrew Bible: the spies fearful of the promised land in Numbers 13-14, the “sons of God” in Genesis 6, and the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. Then he draws comparisons to the corrupt church members, promising they’ll receive the same judgment. Why does Jude write this way about the moral crisis in a church? What is he trying to communicate? In this episode, Jon and Tim explore verses 5-8, unpacking the dense biblical references and what they would have meant to Jude and his audience.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Bible Project podcast.
0:07.1	We're in a series on the New Testament letter of Jude, or as we've been calling it, the letter of Judah.
0:12.9	So far, we've only read the first four verses.
0:15.3	Judah said, hey, I love you guys, and I wanted to write a biblical theology of salvation,
0:21.6	but somehow I got wind of certain people who have started to hang out in your communities,
0:29.1	and they're not a good influence.
0:31.5	Next, Jude hyperlinks these men in their community to three different types of characters in the Hebrew Bible.
0:38.5	These people are like the spies who rebelled in the wilderness generation.
0:42.2	They're like the sons of God in Genesis chapter 6, and they're like the people of Sodom Gimorah.
0:47.6	First, they're like the spies in the wilderness who refuse to go into the promised land.
0:52.3	Now, this isn't a random story, Judah selects.
0:54.7	It's a key rebellion narrative at the center of the Torah.
0:58.3	When they refuse to trust, that becomes this pivotal moment in the wilderness.
1:03.3	And it's what ends up condemning the whole of the people to wander in the desert for 40 years.
1:09.1	They faced God's judgment.
1:11.3	Second, Judah compares them to the sons of God from Genesis 6. That is, the rebellious
1:17.5	spiritual beings who look on the daughters of humanity and wrongly take them as wives.
1:23.2	What? These angels, because of their physical desire, didn't honor the limits God put on them.
1:30.4	They broke the bounds of order in the cosmos, and they will face the same kind of justice before God.
1:37.9	Third, Jude references the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which comes from Genesis 19.
1:43.6	It's where men attempt to sexually assault
1:45.7	angels. Okay? These are some hard passages in the Bible to understand. So why does Jude choose
	...

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