Study in the Epistle of Jude # 43: Verse 9

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are going through the book of Jude, and we have come to verse 9 of this short Epistle. In this verse, we are seeing a spiritual battle take place right before our eyes. Michael the archangel is dealing with Satan who has dared to come into the presence of God, of Christ Himself, and dispute about the body of Moses. The devil, who is very familiar with the Word of God and very much acquainted with the Gospel of the Bible, is coming before Christ and saying that Moses ought not to have a resurrected body.

Moses died physically and was buried—we can read about that back in Deuteronomy 34. God Himself buried Moses. Therefore, if he died physically, then he should not receive a resurrected body until the Last Day. That is when the resurrection is scheduled to take place in God’s salvation plan, not before, and that is what Satan is saying.

We see Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration, as well as Elijah, and they are both shining along with the Lord Jesus Christ who is transfigured before them. We do not read that Satan is disputing about Elijah’s body at all because Elijah was taken up into Heaven by a whirlwind. He never died physically, so there is no way that he could be resurrected. His body was never in the ground waiting for the resurrection. That is a completely different matter. Satan is not arguing with God about that.

Moses on the other hand did die, yet there he is along with Elijah. “This should not be,” Satan is accusing Christ. He is accusing God that some wrongdoing has taken place. “You have gone out of order,” he accuses, “and there must be this order to follow.”

Is Satan correct? Is he right in his accusation? The answer is of course not. God is able to resurrect Moses’ body, and there is no wrongdoing in that. Let us consider this though. What is the resurrection of the physical body? It is part of salvation. Salvation is a two-part process, and God has worked things out so that at the moment of salvation, someone’s soul will be resurrected and they will receive a new, born-again Spirit. However, their body is not resurrected at that time. It remains dead in its sinfulness until it will actually and physically die and see corruption.

The evidence of this is that even after a child of God does become saved, he still continues to age and his body is subject to disease. Finally, it fails and he dies physically. Therefore, the body was not saved at the point of his salvation when he heard the Gospel. Yet there is the promise of that future event when the body will be resurrected, which will complete the individual’s salvation.

We also know that in the Old Testament, men were saved exactly as men are saved in the New Testament period. We read that Noah found grace in the eyes of God (Genesis 6:8). How could Noah find grace in God’s eyes? This could only happen when God applied His Word to Noah’s heart and forgave him of his sins and washed him with the blood of Christ. How could Noah find grace and be cleansed by Christ’s blood when Christ had not yet shed His blood? The answer is found in a verse such as Revelation 13:8, which says:

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world (John 1:29). In principle, He was slain from the foundation of the world. Before God created the world, He had worked out His whole salvation plan. He had named each one of His elect, those individuals throughout history to whose hearts He would bless His Word. He would save them and their sins would be taken by Christ and paid for.

All this was worked out in principle. It was a guarantee and a certain thing that Christ would accomplish these things because He is eternal God. He would be victorious at the Cross. Because of all this, God could apply that saving work of Christ to the heart of Noah or to the heart of David or to the heart of Jeremiah or Ezekiel or any of the Old Testament saints of God, so that they were saved by grace.

There is an idea that some theologians present, which says, “The Jews were saved in a different manner. God had a special dispensation for their salvation because it was before the Cross. They could not be saved by Christ’s redeeming work at the Cross, so instead, they were saved by their faith. They were saved by their faithfulness in performing the sacrifices or by some faithfulness to God’s commandments.”

What a lie that is! What a terrible error it is! The Bible does not allow for that. In no dispensation or era or epoch of time has God ever said anything remotely like that. He has never said that a man could become saved by doing a work of his own. The Bible never allows for that kind of salvation plan. In no way could an Old Testament Jew become right with God by faithfully observing the Sabbath day or by faithfully offering up sacrifice or by anything of the like. Those were all signs and ceremonial laws that God had given, pointing to what Jesus would do on the Cross. Therefore, a child of God’s faith was not in the sacrifice but in what that sacrifice pointed to—it was in Christ Himself. The true believer’s faith was in the Messiah and never in the observance of the sacrifice. That kind of teaching is not something that the Bible will allow at all. Those saints were saved by God’s application to their hearts of what Jesus would do, which was a guaranteed and certain thing. As God would bless His Word, they would become saved.

We see then that God is just and right and proper in applying salvation before Jesus had worked out that salvation in actual history, before the Cross. It is the same idea with the resurrection. God did not choose to resurrect great numbers of people. He is going to do this on the Last Day in which the vast majority of His saints will receive their resurrected bodies. However, in the case of Moses, God according to His own good pleasure decided that He would resurrect him. That is because God is painting a spiritual picture.

Moses rose up from the grave physically. God could apply Christ’s work at the Cross, once again, because when Jesus went to the Cross, He paid for all of the sins of an individual. He paid for the sins that would be committed by the spiritual side of an individual and also by the fleshly side or the body of the individual. He paid for all the sins the individual would find themselves committing against the law of God. All of a believer’s sins are forgiven, the sins of the body and the sins of the spirit, because we are one personality. We commit sin and we are guilty of sin, yet they are all forgiven. There is no sin that could prevent our physical body from being resurrected at any point.

The Lord could apply what Christ had done at the Cross and raise up the physical body of Moses, giving him a new spiritual body, a new resurrected body. Christ had paid the penalty for Moses’ sins, or in other words, He would at a future time. This would take place; therefore, God raised Moses up.

This was perfectly legal and perfectly just. There is no argument that Satan has. However, this is how Satan operates. This is his way of trying to cast doubt upon the Word of God and trying to show that God is guilty of some type of wrongdoing or that the people of God are guilty of some kind of wrongdoing. This is why he is called an adversary and an accuser of the brethren (1 Peter 5:8 and Revelation 12:10).

Satan is disputing about the body of Moses, yet what is Christ’s answer to him? “The Lord rebuke thee.” That is His response. Christ does not get into details or bring against Satan a railing accusation. That word “railing” is translated as “speaking evil” in another place. Christ does not speak evil of Satan. That is an important thing in this context because God is trying to teach us that we are not to speak evil of others, not even if they are false prophets. We are not to speak evil even of Satan himself, and Christ is our example in that. We are not to involve ourselves in that kind of activity, pointing our finger at others; rather, we only want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ’s example.

Yet what does Jesus mean when He says, “The Lord rebuke thee”? What is meant by this rebuke from the Lord towards Satan?

This language is identical to what we find in the book of Zechariah, a book that comes toward the end of the Old Testament. We read in Zechariah 3:1:

And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

The Old Testament name “Joshua” is the same name as “Jesus” in the New Testament. It is interesting that this Joshua is a high priest, because the Lord Jesus Christ is the Great High Priest, spiritually speaking, of His people. He is that Great High Priest who came to offer up Himself for the sins of His elect (Hebrews 4:14, 10:12). Therefore, Joshua, in Zechariah 3, is a clear picture of Christ Himself. He is standing before the angel of the Lord, standing before God, and Satan is there to resist, as always. Satan is trying to interfere with and confound God’s salvation plan. Then we read in verse 2:

And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan…

That is the language of Jude verse 9, where the Lord Jesus Christ, who is called Michael, is speaking to Satan and says, “The Lord rebuke thee.” What is it that rebukes Satan? We go onto read:

…even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

The Lord’s choice of Jerusalem has rebuked Satan. In this verse, we are reading about Jerusalem—it is not the city Jerusalem or the corporate body or the church. Rather, Jerusalem here is a reference to the heavenly Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that is above and is composed of the body of believers, the whole company of the saints. It is the Lord’s selection of this spiritual Jerusalem, of His elect, that is a cause of rebuke to Satan. In other words, God’s salvation plan is a rebuke to the devil.

God is plundering Satan’s house. The Lord Jesus Christ was victorious over sin and Satan at the Cross to such a degree that Satan was bound to where he could not interfere. That is what he is trying to do with all his assaults and attempts at arguing with God. That is ultimately what he is aiming at. His goal is to resist God’s Gospel and to fight against God’s power of saving sinners. Therefore, he comes against the Lord Jesus and tempts Him in the wilderness with Scripture, trying to get Christ to fall and to transgress the law of God (Matthew 4:1). That would have prevented the saving of the spiritual Jerusalem and that would have stopped his house from being plundered.

Yet, “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan.” Christ did not fall into sin but remained perfectly obedient to the Law of God; He did go on to pay for the sins of His people. This is a rebuke to Satan, the Lord God’s rebuke to Satan. Nothing else need be said and no railing accusation need be brought against him.

Each time one of God’s elect is saved, each time the Word of God is sent forth into the world and it accomplishes a diligent search and seeks out the one’s heart that it came to be applied to, each time a sinner is translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13), Satan is rebuked and the brand is plucked out of the fire. This is the cause of consternation to Satan. This is what he is constantly trying to avoid, yet he cannot because he has been defeated. Satan is a defeated foe. The Lord Jesus has rebuked Satan by accomplishing the redemption of His people.

Let us look at Matthew 17, where we find a historical parable in which the Lord Jesus rebuked the devil. In Matthew 17:14-18, we read:

And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.

This casting out of the demon that had vexed this poor child is a picture of salvation. It is a picture of the power of the Word of God as it can cast out the evil heart of unbelief, a picture of the power of God to break the stony heart of a dead sinner and change it and give it life (Ezekiel 36:26). This is a rebuke to the devil. Jesus is rebuking the devil through His salvation plan. That is all that needs to be said; there is nothing further. God is simply saying to the devil, “Go on—you can make your accusations and offer up your charges against My people and against My plan of salvation, but this plan of salvation will continue on. It will go on until the very last of the elect has become saved. Then you will be rebuked by the Lord.”

The final culmination of this rebuke will be Satan’s casting off into Hell forevermore. After the last one of God’s elect becomes saved, there will be no need for the world to continue on and Judgment Day will come to pass. This is why Satan is fighting so frantically to stop this process. This is why he is so terribly concerned that some in his kingdom are being taken out and saved and delivered from their sins.

There will come a point on the Last Day when the last one of God’s elect will hear the Gospel and become saved. Then, the end comes. The only reason that the world has continued is so that God might save His people. When that last one is saved, the world will be destroyed and Satan will be judged for all of his great transgressions and thrown into Hell. This is finally what is meant by “the Lord rebuke thee.” The Lord will rebuke Satan eternally as he is under the wrath of God in Hell forevermore.

There is another verse that we can look at where we find similar language. In Mark 8:31, we read:

And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

There is the Gospel. There is the central point of the whole Gospel message. Jesus would take the sins of His people and pay for those sins. He would drink of the cup of God’s wrath as He would endure the equivalent of an eternity in Hell. This is what is meant by the “three days” after which He would be victorious and rise from the dead. He would come up from the grave having fully paid the price of those sins. This is the meat of the Gospel; this is the focus of the whole Word of God. Yet, now look at verse 32, which says:

And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.

Peter is coming and saying, “Not so, Lord. You will not die,” or whatever Peter might be speaking contrary to what Christ had said. “No, You are the glorious King of Israel,” or whatever Peter happened to be saying to Him—we do not know for sure. We only know that Peter began to rebuke Christ. That is exactly what Satan does. Satan is contrary to the truth and he is contrary to the Gospel message. Jesus had just laid out the most important aspect of God’s Gospel—that Jesus the Christ must die for His people—and Peter is saying, “Not so, Lord” and rebuking Christ. It is no wonder that we go on to read in verse 33:

But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

Peter in his remarks is typifying Satan, even though Peter was a saved man. What he was saying was against the Gospel that God had designed, against God’s plan of salvation, even though he ignorantly said these things. This is exactly Satan’s attitude; this is exactly how Satan comes as an adversary. This is where he disputes with Christ the Lord regarding matters of the Word of God. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ rebukes Peter, though in actuality He is rebuking Satan as He says, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” The rebuke is that Christ will go on to suffer and die and after three days rise again. His salvation plan will rebuke the devil.