In Jude 16, we again get a description of the fruit of the false teachers. Jude, inspired by God, lists 5 things that should stand out about these apostates.
- Jude 16 (NIV) These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.
- Jude 16 (NKJ) These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage.
1. They are grumblers. In other words they are insinuators. The whisper, the shrug of the shoulder, the half sentence containing a surmise of the other half, and the warning of some awful revelation to come respecting the servant of God and his character, mark these men in every age. Their goal is to create distrust within the body and sow seeds of doubt and disunity.
2. They are fault-finders/complainers. Nothing is done that can please them. They are on the alert to find out mistakes. They turn even the love feasts (Jude 12) into a scene of embitterment.
3. They follow their own evil desires, walking according to their own lusts. They act without moral restraint. The false teachers in Jude defied the teachings of Scripture and the apostles and they lived and encouraged others to live without any moral restraint. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality (Jude 4). The root of their character is a love of sin–some form of gross immorality. They hate the truth because it exposes their villainy and shame.
4. They boast about themselves, mouthing great swelling words. They are pretenders; they are full of ostentation, fond of tall talk. To the ignorant and unstable their loud swelling words sound wise (2 Peter 3:16), but to those with discernment, those with a firm foundation (Matthew 7:24-25), they recognize the false teaching for what it is.
5. They flatter others for their own advantage. They put on a smiling face, and speak smooth words to people in positions of influence in order to gain their support. Proverbs 26:28 tells us that a lying tongue hates those that it hurts and a flattering mouth works ruin. The false teachers in Jude, just like false teachers today, seemed sincere, seemed to act in a loving way, but they were liars. In reality they hated the real Christians, hated the truth. Any kind thing they said was merely to help them push their own immoral agenda.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun. There will always be those who claim to have our best interests at heart but in reality they are ferocious wolves out to push their own agendas. When these people, these “false teachers”, these “wolves in sheep’s clothing” gain prominence, and at times they do, they can cause storms in the lives of faithful Christians. Jesus promised that “storms” would come. Storms in life take on many forms and sometimes the storms in life come from false teachers pushing agendas that sound good on the surface but in reality are not. Jesus tells us how to handle storms in Matthew 7:24-27.
In order to protect ourselves from the storm of false teaching we must have a strong foundation, a foundation rooted in the flawless, absolute truth of God’s Word.