12 These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.” (Jude 12–13 (ESV)\
Jude used metaphors (direct comparisons) to illustrate the danger of apostates. The Holy Spirit organized Jude’s thoughts into two sets of triads (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21),
First, apostates are “hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear;” Much like hidden reefs near the shore that can endanger a ship, the apostates were hidden false teachers threatening to sink a church in its devotion to the Lord. Their danger was unseen but no less dangerous (vs.4).
The love feasts (ἀγάπαις; agapais) were the church’s fellowship meals, which may have included observing The Lord’ s Supper. The false teachers participated in these meals fearlessly and irreverently towards the LORD.
Second, Jude compared apostates to shepherds feeding themselves. Shepherds feeding (ποιμαίνοντες; poimainontes) refers to false teachers presently, actively and collectively protecting and nourishing themselves and not the church. They behave this way because they do not love God or care for the people. False teachers do not feed, lead, or protect believers in Christ. Rather, they are enemies of Christ and His church. False shepherds, or false teachers, are not new. They have always posed a problem for the people of God (Jer. 50:6-7; Ezek. 34:1-10).
Third, Jude called them waterless clouds, swept along by winds; Apostates are masses of vapor in the sky, promising, but not providing, much needed rain. Instead, they are swept along by winds. Apostates have no substance or stability. They promise truth but deliver nothing but lies. Once they do, they move on to the next church.
Fourth, Jude also called them “fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted.” In the midst of two sets of triads, Jude provides a secondary triad regarding fruitless trees (δένδρα ἄκαρπα; dendra akarpa), which are unproductive and barren.
Their fruitlessness occurs in late autumn (φθινοπωρινὰ; phthinoporina) or just before winter. They are twice dead (δὶς ἀποθανόντα; dis apthanonta) referring to physical and eternal, spiritual death. Finally, they are uprooted (ἐκριζωθέντα; ekrizothenta) meaning they have no roots or attachment to the soil. In effect, apostates are not rooted or connected to Jesus Christ (John 15:1-11; Eph. 3:14-19). They are unconverted.
“Apostates hold out the claim of providing a spiritual feast, but instead deliver famine (cf. Luke 13:6–9). Doubly dead trees will never yield fruit and, regardless of what they say, will always be barren because they are uprooted. Cf. Matt. 7:17–20,” explains Dr. John MacArthur.
“Jude 12–13 speaks of the way these teachers feasted on Jude’s audience — most likely a reference to the unbridled greed that would have motivated their teaching. His comparisons of the teachers to “waterless clouds” and “fruitless trees” demonstrate that despite their claims to the contrary, these men offered nothing of value to the church. Significantly, Jude calls these teachers “twice dead” (v. 12), referring to their eventual, physical death and eternal spiritual death. This death, experienced forever in the “gloom of utter darkness,” is reserved for all who pervert the grace of God (v. 13),” comments Dr. R.C. Sproul
Fifth, apostates are “wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame.” Wild waves (κύματα ἄγρια; kymata agria) are stormy, violent swells of water. They are savage, fierce and uncontrollable.
From September thru April, it’s storm season on the Northwest coast of the United States. Seas become a foamy churn as powerful waves crash against the shore. Driftwood and logs, carried in by high tides, pile up along the Northwest’s wild winter beaches. Winds roar like a freight train through the coastal rainforest, blast coastal shores and blow sheets of sand and rain horizontally along the beach.
The only trees along the shoreline tough enough to stand up to the powerful blasts of winter storms, the giant Sitka spruce, become artistically shaped by winds which commonly exceed 75 miles per hour. Torrents of rain can turn the day dark as streams and rivers swell and rush to the sea. Rainfall on the Northwest coast often exceeds ten inches per month during the winter, much of it during these drenching storms.
This picture of the sea depicts the wicked whose evil hearts impel them to engage in shameful acts that affect the people who surround them. The evil they commit is forceful, untamed, unpredictable, and involves many an unwary bystander. They bring an element of fear. As a person protects themselves from the spray of the waves, so the believer ought to shun the words and deeds of the wicked.
The Prophet Isaiah wrote, “20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. 21 There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” (Isaiah 57:20–21 (ESV)
Casting up the foam (ἐπαφρίζοντα; epaphrizonta) is a present, active plural participle. This means the present, active and collective teachings and behavior of apostates eventually rise to the surface to be seen. The phrase of their own shame (αἰσχύνας; aischynas) refers to the leftover residue of the apostate’s shameful behavior.
In some languages the type of foam which would be referred to in Jude 13 is called ‘the saliva of the waves’ or ‘the whiteness of the waves.’ Since foaming at the mouth is also regarded as a sign of anger, it is possible to speak in some languages of the foam of the waves as being ‘the anger of the waves.’ In other languages one may speak simply of ‘the whiteness of the waves,” states Greek scholars Louw and Nida.
Finally, false teachers are “wandering stars.” Wandering stars (ἀστέρες πλανῆται; asteres planetai) refers to those who lead astray and possess aimless conduct; like a man staggering because he had too much to drink. Apostates lead others into aimless idolatry.
The first seafarers kept in sight of land. To do so was the first trick of navigation; follow the coast. To find an old fishing ground or the way through a shoal, one could line up landmarks, such as a near rock against a distant point on land. Doing that in two directions at once gave a more or less precise geometric location on the surface of the sea. The Greeks even learned to navigate from one island to the next in their archipelago, a Greek word meaning “preëminent sea.” They may have followed clouds (which form over land) or odors (which can carry far out to sea).
But what if land were nowhere nearby? The Phoenicians looked to the heavens. The sun moving across the commonly cloudless Mediterranean sky gave them their direction and quarter. The quarters we know today as east and west the Phoenicians knew as Asu (sunrise) and Ereb (sunset), labels that live today in the names Asia and Europe. At night, they steered by the stars. At any one time in the year at any one point on the globe, the sun and stars are found above the horizon at certain fixed “heights” — a distance that mariners can measure with as simple an instrument as one’s fingers, laid horizontally atop one another and held at arm’s length. The philosopher Thales of Miletus, as the Alexandrian poet Kalli machos recorded, taught Ionian sailors to navigate by the Little Bear constellation fully 600 years before the birth of Christ.
In each of Jude’s illustrations, apostates are untrustworthy. What is trustworthy is their ultimate destination and damnation. We will consider this when next we meet.
Soli deo Gloria!
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