Wandering Stars: A Meditation on Jude, for the Last Sunday of the Church Year

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto

you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write

unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend

for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were

before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men,

turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and

denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ…

Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran

greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished

in the gainsaying of Core. 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 forever.

In the ancient world, navigation was a bit more fundamental than our GPS and voice navigation systems of today.  Assuming the weather would cooperate, the sun provided a pretty good navigational reference during the day, and the stars provided an even more precise navigational reference in the evening.  If at sea in the darkness, the stars can be charted for your location on the globe, and you can use them to make your journey safely to your destination.  Of course, not everything that shines in the evening sky is reliable—while stars are relatively fixed points of reference, the planets and various other things up there will wander on you, making them poor choices for navigation.  If your captain or navigator attempted to traverse a long journey across the sea and used the wrong navigational points in the sky, you’d likely end up lost, shipwrecked, or drowned.

This image is taken up, in part, by St. Jude in his short epistle.  He calls the false teachers in the Church “wandering stars,” which signifies how dangerous it is to use them as a reference point for traversing this life.  Like all people, we find our way into this world not by our own choice or design, but by the creative act of God working through our parents.  Once here, we begin a long journey fraught with peril, navigating the world into which we are born, trying to avoid disaster and reach eternal life.  God, knowing our situation as fallen creatures, gives to us His Word to call, gather, keep, guide, and protect us through the journey back to Himself.  Those who preach to us God’s Word faithfully in its fullness—the full implications and aspirations of the Holy Law, together with the full sweetness and life of the Holy Gospel—give to us God’s navigational reference points for how to pass through this temporal world without losing the things eternal.  Without those witnesses to God’s Word, we would be lost and listing on the high seas of this life, drifting unguided to our eventual destruction.  If we are sitting here today by grace through faith in Christ alone for our salvation, then we have God to thank for those He sent to us to bear His Word, and keep us tethered to Him.

Unfortunately, there are also those who creep in unawares, and teach people things other than the Word of God.  They give to people false hopes and false promises, turning the grace of God into immorality and pride.  They teach people to put their trust in the words and schemes and works of men, knowing that all the words of men are doomed by sin and corruption.  They create strange stories and self justifying mantras, pleasantly confirming people in their native unbelief and wicked lifestyles.  These false teachers are dangerous, not only because the eternal darkness of hell is their coming abode, but because they are leading their hearers to the same deadly destination.  They themselves are headed for shipwreck, even as they lead others to their own watery graves.

But false teachers would have no pulpit to preach in, if not for our native desire to hear them.  Our fallen nature loves to hear excuses for why we should believe in ourselves rather than God, and which confirm us in the sins we enjoy.  That twisted human nature we inherited from our first parents is always oriented to pride, with a concupiscence that yearns for false teaching… and for lives lived in accordance with it.  False teachers would be much fewer in number and far shorter of influence, if we did not tolerate them to teach in the Church of God.  But from the parishioner to the pastor who yield to their darker nature and grant such wandering stars a platform to spread their deadly errors, arises the blight of deadly heresies running rampant throughout the Church and the world—bringing people of every stripe and kind to perdition.

If our hope alone rested in these human teachers, our hope would be futile.  There is no preacher who has not himself erred, and no people whose itching ears have not gotten the better of them at some time or another.  Our confidence is not in the teacher, but in the Word he brings and teaches.  That Word of Christ which we hold in the Holy Scriptures, raises up teachers to bear witness, and through those broken and fallen witnesses Christ calls broken and fallen people to faith and repentance.  There in the Word we hear our Savior preaching to us the full calamity of our sins, and the full satisfaction for that calamity He has suffered for us on His Cross.  There in the living Word, the Spirit works to bring all to repent of wickedness, and cling to the promise of Jesus’ forgiveness unto everlasting life.

To the false teacher, who has embraced Higher Criticism or any other model of theological interpretation that allows you the license to lay aside the Scriptures and lead a life of unrepentance and unbelief, the Word of God speaks your doom—repent!

To the false student, who prefers the teachings of Enthusiasts and Pietists that allow them to pretend direct revelations from God apart from the Holy Scriptures, to set aside the Law of God so that you may replace it with one of your own creation, the Word of God speaks your destruction—repent!

And to all those who will hear Him, to every sinner of every kind under heaven both teacher and student, who falls down in contrition before the holiness of His Law and is drawn up by the grace of His Gospel as they are given to us in Holy Scripture, the Word of God speaks to you of comfort, peace, joy, and salvation.  For it is His Word which grants repentance and faith unto forgiveness and life, and is for His people the Bright and Morning Star which never leads astray.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from

falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of

his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God

our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power,

both now and ever. Amen.