1. 1. They are spots in your love feasts, verse 12. The church had expanded the invitation of Jesus to remember Him regularly in the bread and the wine. They had added on a common meal, probably in keeping with the traditions of fellowship in the Jewish community up until that point. But in Christ, there was potential for a truly spiritual component to the simple task of eating. These Christians loved one another, and wanted to be together as often as possible, sharing as many of life’s activities as possible. Over a good meal they could discuss even more the faith that had been delivered to them. Their practice should not be used by the modern church as an excuse to pander to the fleshly among us. This was eating, not gorging. Foods harmful to the body were never intended for God’s people, whether in church or out of church.

So here was a beautiful event happening weekly, and the false teachers saw it as a perfect time to show up and mix in. But their un-saved nature showed up with them. Coarse language, decidedly un-Christian conversation, gluttony, serving themselves before others, countered the ways of believers. Stains. Defects, the word can mean. As a tablecloth where the juice has spilled.

Yet the believers extended fellowship to them, perhaps in the name of tolerance, “Christian love,” etc. It was a “love-feast” after all. How could they deny a place at the table to anyone, since Christ had accepted them? It is a philosophy we use today, one mixed with poison of error. Christ’s church, as Christ Himself, never tolerates evil in His presence. Jesus rebuked Pharisees in their own home, taught truth so strongly that people who were not of the truth would walk away. In many church houses, and evidently in the ones Jude is now addressing, it was “I’m OK, you’re OK. I don’t judge you, you don’t judge me.” We need to read again God’s call to holiness for His people, lest we arrive at the sad state of Jude’s addressees.

1. 2. They are clouds without water, verse 12. You see a cloud, or a group of clouds forming in the sky, and you think “rain.” But it is not always so. Sometimes those clouds just move on to the next town, depositing nothing but darkness. So with these men. They were eloquent. They promised liberty with their new ideas. They seemed happy and successful, with promise that their hearers and friends could be the same. But they only brought darkness, a covering of the light of God already given by the apostles. No rain, no refreshing from God. Soon they would move on to the next church and pull their shenanigans there.
2. 3. They are late autumn trees, verse 12. They have had the spring and all the summer and now most of autumn to bear fruit. They’ve been around. They’ve heard the message. They know about this Jesus and the men who followed Him. But no fruit. No effect has the Gospel had in their lives. Dead as ever. Fully governed by flesh when the Spirit has been available to them as to all.

Twice dead? Jude seems to be speaking of eternal judgment here, as in the second death. They are dead while they live, for they are barren of any fruit. But they are also consigned to eternal separation from God, and will be exposed before all as truly dead, truly judged, one day in our future.

To be without fruit is bad enough. To be without God forever, is so much worse. Remember that Jude is basing his appraisal of these men on the foreknowledge and foreordination of God (v.4) and can speak with total authority on the destiny of evil men such as these.

1. 4. They are raging waves of the sea, verse 13. What a picture! How deeply does the brother feel about these men’s influence! These are powerful men, leaving an indelible mark on the churches. So it has been in every generation including our own. Strong men arise, though they “creep in” at first. They make friends, they influence people, they subvert whole congregations, become a movement, sweep across a nation as a mighty wave, broadcasting to the true saints just how shameful they are as the fruit of their work becomes obvious. It would be easy enough to come up with a very lengthy list of men who have ridden roughshod over the church and shaken it to its core. Divisions, upheavals, evil publicity and shame that has been attributed to Christ Himself and turned millions away from the true faith.
2. 5. They are wandering stars, verse 13. Macarthur suggests that perhaps Jude is referencing meteors that appear brightly in the night sky then as quickly as they appear, they are gone. The false teachers make a big splash, and false people in droves follow them. But the church moves on, the true church is tested and found out by the light of these “stars” that appear among us from time to time.

Vs 13, the “blackness of darkness.”

I will not attach this phrase to “wandering stars”, for in the parallel passage in 2 Peter 2:17, the blackness of darkness is attached to the “clouds” description. No, this final phrase in the current descriptor listing is meant to apply to everything he has been saying so far. These men I have described so graphically, Jude says, will be forever in darkness, as their time of stardom and light will end in disaster for them.

What a phrase. Blackness of darkness. Forever. Utter darkness. Gloom. Horrid picture. But you say, how can this be, when we see such persons thrown into a lake of fire? One key might be in John’s final look at things in Revelation 20. A lake of fire yes, on planet Earth. But then, in verse 11, that Earth “flees away” and in 21:1, the Earth has “passed away”. There is a new Heaven, a new Earth. First one is gone. But the first one contained the lake of fire. Where has everything gone? Into the darkness of space? Wandering, wandering, forever in darkness? Could it be? What an unspeakable fate. Separated from God and everything good while being tormented in an eternal fire? Who can comprehend such a thing?

Jude could. And he made it clear that these evil men who disgraced Him and His people have a reservation, a place reserved in this darkness, forever and ever.