Lessons from the Past

I invite you to turn with me to Numbers and to chapter 16. As we return to our studies in Jude, we read this as part of a cross-reference that I hope will help us. Numbers chapter 16—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers—and then the first five verses, and then from verse 25 to 35:

“Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, [chose] from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, ‘You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?’ When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he said to Korah and all his company, ‘In the morning the Lord will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him.’”

I’m going to leave you to read the intervening verses as the day unfolds.

Verse 25:

“Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. And he spoke to the congregation, saying, ‘Depart, please, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away with all their sins.’ So they got away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, together with their wives, their sons, and their little ones. And Moses said, ‘Hereby you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. If these men die as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.’

“And as soon as he had finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split apart. And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. And all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, ‘Lest the earth swallow us up!’ And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men offering the incense.”

This is the Word of the Lord, and we thank God for it.

I invite you to turn to Jude—second-last book of the Bible, probably the most neglected of the New Testament letters. And let me read verses 11–13:

“Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. 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; 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.”

Father, please, as we have sung, help us to get to the Lord Jesus Christ in the study of this particular passage. For we ask it in his name. Amen.

Well, if you’re visiting, we began studying Jude a few weeks ago. We had a brief time when we were not there, and now we are back at it in verse 11. I take it that the book of Jude follows chronologically 2 Peter. And so, when Peter writes—and you can do this as you follow it up on your own—at the beginning of chapter 2 in his letter, he’s telling his readers what to expect. And he says, “There will be false teachers among you, who will subtly introduce destructive heresies.”[1] And then you turn to Jude, and you discover that what Peter said would happen Jude says has happened. And in verse 4, “certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation.” They are “ungodly people.”

And it is as a result of this reality that Jude, if you like, as a faithful pastor, writes to the churches under his care—writes to, if you like, Christians everywhere, inasmuch as we are on the receiving end of the letter ourselves. His tone is not one of condemnation. It is rather a response of consternation—that he is deeply concerned about this, and he recognizes the challenge that is to be faced by those who are following Jesus.

And the entire letter, really, goes like this: in verses 1–4, he is encouraging them to be contending for the faith; in verses 5–16, he is encouraging them to be learning from history; and then, in verses 17–25, he is urging them to keep on even as they’re being kept.

Now, Calvin in his day—that is, the sixteenth century—commenting on Jude when he taught it to his congregation, said if we consider what schemes the Evil One employs to divert from the faith, “what was a useful warning in the time of Jude, is more … necessary in our age.”[2] So if it was true in the sixteenth century, a real need, then surely every generation needs to remain vigilant, needs to be prepared “to contend for the faith that [has been] once … delivered to the saints”[3] and to realize that this truth is unchanged and it is unchanging.

History records the necessity of this. I mentioned Spurgeon and the “boiler room” for prayer. He got involved with the challenge in his day and in something called the Downgrade Controversy, 1887. You can Google it—not now! You can Google it, and you can find out all about it. And he’s dealing with the fact that this is actually happening in his day. And he writes in his own characteristic style, “These destroyers of our church[es] appear to be as content with their work as monkeys with their mischief. That which their fathers would have lamented they rejoice in.” “Avowed atheists are not a tenth as dangerous as [these] preachers who scatter doubt and stab at faith.”[4]

Jude’s tone is not one of condemnation. It is rather a response of consternation. He is deeply concerned, and he recognizes the challenge that is to be faced by those who are following Jesus.

Now, that kind of candor of expression is deemed inappropriate in many circles today. But the very pungency with which he writes is akin to what we discover here in the verses that we’re now looking at. You will notice that he begins verse 11 with a solemn judgment on these people. “Woe!” he says. “Woe!” Jesus has that great section of woes in Matthew, in chapter 23, where he pronounces these woes on the Pharisees. On one occasion, Paul calls a woe on himself, if you like, when he says, “Woe [is] me if I do not [actually] preach the gospel!”[5]

What is the reason for this great concern and for this pronouncement? Because these individuals are tampering with the gospel. They’re tampering with the good news that has been delivered once for all to the saints. Previously, we noted the three examples from the Old Testament that he had provided from verses 5 to 7, dealing with the people and with the angels and with the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now he comes with three more Old Testament examples.

And I need to say this this morning to you, in just all honesty: the challenge in coming to this—or one of the challenges in coming to this, in terms of seeking to teach the Bible—is the pace with which one moves through it. And Jude would have been able to count in large measure on his initial readers being able to close the gap between his mention of Cain, of Balaam, and of Korah in a way that I don’t think I am necessarily able to assume of you. There is no judgment in that, because I had to make sure that I went back and understood exactly the reference itself.

But I suppose, in the words of my old art teacher at Ilkley Grammar School, Tommy Walker, who used to assign our art homework… Have you heard of art homework? Seems crazy. But we had a book that was about this size. He put it together. And he would say, “Go home and draw a glass of water,” or “Go home and draw a chair, and bring it back.” And you brought it back, and you showed it to him, and he gave marks out of five. Okay? So if you got a five, you were a genius. I regularly—and I’m not making this up—I used to get the thing back, given back to me, and on it, it said, “An eighth.” An eighth. And so I used to beg with him. I’d say, “Mr. Walker, can you not help me with this stuff?” And he used to say in his Yorkshire accent, “Lad, I’ll get you started, but I’m not doing it for you.” I’m going to get you started, but I’m not doing it for you, okay? This demands homework, to follow these three examples from the Old Testament.

Three Old Testament Examples

First of all, he points out, the problem is that “they walked in the way of Cain.” Homework in Genesis chapter 4 and cross-referenced in 1 John 3:12, where John says, “We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” You go back into that story there in Genesis chapter 4, and you realize that all that flows in that has to do with the fact that he was “of the evil one.” “Of the evil one.” His sacrifice was rejected by God. His heart was not in tune. As strange, as difficult as it is for us to handle, nevertheless, the Scriptures record it accurately. The Jewish people, in reckoning on the opening chapters of the Old Testament, commented on Genesis 4:8 in this way: they put on the lips of Cain… These people “walked in the way of Cain.” They put this on the lips of Cain: “There is no judgment, no judge, no world to come. No reward will be given to the righteous, and there will be no destruction for the wicked.” They said, “If we’re going to understand what was going on with Cain, we need to realize that he had rejected the very idea of his accountability before the holy God”—about which we have just been singing.

That’s not a very ancient idea. That perspective on life is alive and well:

Imagine there’s no heaven;
It’s easy if you try;
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.[6]

That is the way of the wicked. We make our own path through life. We’re unaccountable, certainly not to God, and in many cases not to anyone—offering freedom, which is actually bondage, to pursue unnatural desire and to indulge in sensual immorality. That’s what we’re referencing in verse 7, isn’t it? That’s what we saw. Sodom and Gomorrah indulged in this, pursued unnatural desire. The way of Cain.

Secondly, the error of Balaam. The error of Balaam. Now, those of you who, like me, have been trying to get to the end of Numbers in the M’Cheyne Bible readings got to chapter 30 this morning, which I thought was a great achievement. And I’ve been rebuked this week in my study, because I’ve sort of been bemoaning having to read through Numbers. It’s not nice to acknowledge that, but I’m telling you the truth. There’s a lot of lists, there’s a lot of names, and there’s a lot of times where you want to go, “I know that,” when in point of fact, we don’t.

But you have to go to Numbers chapter 22 to get to the error of Balaam. So I should have been ready for it. Actually, it’s only tomorrow that, in chapter 31, we’re going to get the key that opens the door. Because tomorrow, in chapter 31—I know because I read ahead—because tomorrow we discover that Balaam was the one who was behind the idolatry and behind the immorality with the Moabite women. Now, if you haven’t been reading it, you don’t know anything about the Moabite women, but that’s homework again. Numbers chapter 22. You read that, and you say, “There must have been somebody behind this.” You get to chapter 31, and it says it was Balaam that was behind this.

In the book of Revelation, he shows up. Revelation chapter 2: to the church at Pergamum Jesus writes, “I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold [to] the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.”[7] So when Jude says, “The problem that you have in these characters is a really significant problem”… Balaam was prevented from cursing the people, which he wanted to do, but he managed somehow or another to make it work so that he could get Moab’s king to seduce them into both sexual and spiritual adultery.

And don’t for a moment imagine that the word “error” there might be regarded as a little slip—you know, Balaam just made a little bit of a mistake. No, it’s not a casual mistake he made. It was deliberate, it was deceitful, and its objective was to bring about the downfall of the people of God. That’s what he wanted to do. And Jude is saying, “When these characters emerge, you should know that that’s their objective.”

“Walked in the way of Cain,” were involved in this reality in terms of Balaam, and then, of course, in the rebellion of Korah.

You notice, I think, there is a progression here in the verbs, isn’t there? I don’t know; maybe. “For they walked in the way of Cain”—they began to think in that way. They “abandoned themselves” to the error that Balaam promulgated. And they “perished in Korah’s rebellion.” Actually, in Korah’s rebellion, the people who perished are the people that we just read about in the Old Testament. But he describes the end of these characters in the past tense. It’s as if they also have gone down in the rebellion with Korah.

In other words, it’s a downward spiral. And I think what Jude is doing is he’s alerting the congregation to the fact that here is a situation that he actually observes taking place amongst them. Remember how he began: “I had intended to write to you concerning the wonder of salvation, but I felt compelled to write to you because certain people have crept in long ago. And this is who they are, and this is what they’re like: ungodly individuals causing havoc among God’s people.”[8] They walk, they rush, and they finally perish. No wonder he began, “Woe!” “Woe!” It’s a mixture of condemnation, consternation, regret, sadness.

Now, taken together, these three examples highlight greed, rebellion, immorality, jealousy, selfish ambition. Dick Lucas in his commentary writes,

As we reach this ghastly climax, it is worth remembering again that the people Jude describes here are not at all easy to spot—if they were, he would not have had to write [this] letter! This poisonous infiltration, or deadly hijack, is going on under our noses; and if Jude had not warned us that the “nice people” who want [us] to do this are dangerous rebels, we simply would[n’t] know.[9]

Do you know how many times people say, “Oh, but he’s a very nice person”? I mean, do you ever see the pilot when you get on? I always look to see who she is or who he is. I’m not really concerned how nice they are. I’m really concerned about getting there safely. “Oh, he’s such a nice man.” He’s a dangerous man.

Six Pictures

“These [people] are…” “These [people] are…” Verse 12: “These [people] are” what? Now he provides six pictures to leave us in no doubt as to how to recognize those who pervert God’s grace—those who take the amazing news of God’s grace about which we have sung, and they turn it into a license for sensuality. They use the wonderful gospel of the grace of God as an excuse for ungodly living. And in my notes, I just simply wrote, “Matthew 7:15,” before I came to these descriptions: “By their fruits you shall know them.”[10] That’s what Jesus said: you’ll know them by their fruits. You won’t necessarily know them by the things they say. They may be able to spin a good story. They may be able to intrigue you and excite you and do all kinds of things for you. But it’s their fruits.

Now, again, we have to keep the pace, don’t we? And I’ll say something about each, and then, hopefully, you can go back and enjoy following up.

“These are,” number one, “hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear.” In other words, they’re masters of disguise. They’re masters of hypocrisy. Superficially, it would appear that they are entirely engaged. After all, they’re coming to the family meals. They’re enjoying the opportunity to drink the wine and to eat the food in the recollection of who Jesus is and what he has done. And yet, underneath the surface of it all, they are deadly reefs. They’re deadly reefs. And you see the signs every so often when you perhaps are sailing somewhere, and it says, “Stay away from the rocks.” “Stay away from this area.” Contemporary vessels, of course, have all kinds of radar and sonic capacity to identify where you don’t want to go. And he says, “These people are there.” They cause division and disruption.

Now, the word is an interesting word, which may be translated in your version, “These … are blemishes.”[11] “Blemishes.” Because that is exactly the terminology that Peter uses to describe the same situation. Again, back in 2 Peter 2:13: “They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!” Wow! I think we got it. Choose the word you wish: “reefs” under the surface, creating danger; “blemishes” on the surface, making a mockery of what they profess.

They are at the same time, you will notice, greedy shepherds. Greedy shepherds. And the wonderful thing about the Bible, of course, is that it is such a cohesive book—sixty-six books written over a period of a very long time by different authors from different backgrounds under the superintendency of the Holy Spirit, and yet, when we come on things like this, in our minds we’re saying to ourselves, “But I’ve read about this before, this idea of greedy shepherds.” “The word of the Lord came to me,” writes Ezekiel—34—“‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?’”[12] Now, we need say no more than that. What they were doing was seeing it as an opportunity—driven by a greedy heart, an insatiable lust for things—to make it an occasion of their own benefit instead of providing for those under their care.

Thirdly, they are “waterless clouds.” “Waterless clouds.” The arrival of clouds, with which we’re relatively familiar here, may cause us to anticipate the prospect of rain. We may look up, and usually, depending on where we’re coming from, we find ourselves saying, “Oh, I hope that it doesn’t rain.” But if you’re a farmer, in many occasions I’m sure you’re saying, “Oh, I look forward to it raining.” And then, as the morning unfolds and the winds move the clouds, it suddenly becomes apparent that there isn’t going to be a drop of rain coming out of these clouds at all. They are “waterless clouds.”

You get the picture? These individuals promise what they don’t deliver. They promise refreshment. They promise enlightenment. In many cases, they promise that their view of things is the real view of things: “If you would only listen to us and not listen to some of those strident tones that call for obedience and so on! Come with us! Enjoy with us the freedom!” And the unsteady souls, the susceptible people are prepared to say, “Well, that seems like a far more attractive place.”

I mean, we might actually say—if someone said, “Well, you don’t want to go to Parkside. They’re studying the book of Jude there, for goodness’ sake! You should come somewhere else. It’s much easier. It’s much nicer. People are far more pleasant. They don’t believe that stuff.” Solomon says, “Like clouds and wind without rain is one who boasts of gifts never given.”[13]

They are “fruitless trees”—“fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted.” I’ve been watching what would happen to this huge, big pine tree along here on Pettibone Road each day as I’ve been driving back and forth. And it was lying there, such a sad picture, off on its side, all of its roots uprooted. And I wondered how long it would be before somebody did something with it. Well, they did something with it. They took the large majority of it down, and it’s just a stump that’s just sitting there. We shouldn’t expect anything from it at all. You can put a plant pot on it, I suppose, but in terms of producing leaves or fruit or anything at all, there’s no chance.

That’s the picture. These individuals produce no harvest. They’re useless individuals. They are uprooted, like trees that have been uprooted, providing no fruit, so that they will not be tolerated for another generation by the farmer. He says, “Take them up, and take them out, and let’s put trees in place that will give to us fruit.” The picture is clear: these ungodly people bear no spiritual fruit in their lives.

And the picture of being “twice dead” is a graphic picture. It’s what the Bible talks about in Revelation: that on judgment day, those who have been fruitless, those who have been deceptive, those who have undermined all that God desired, who have died physically, will experience the second death in a final, irrevocable separation from the God who made us to know him, to love him, and to follow him. There is no possibility of heaven without the reality of hell. It is to this that he directs his readers’ attention.

“Wild waves.” “Wild waves.” Again, the prophet spoke of this, didn’t he? Isaiah 57:

The wicked are like the tossing sea,
 which cannot rest,
 whose waves cast up mire and [muck].[14]

It’s a very interesting use of terminology, isn’t it? “Wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame.” So he’s combining in the metaphor both the physical and the moral. So the picture is understandable if we’ve ever stood on the shore or we’ve seen the waves come crashing in, perhaps up there on the East Coast. You’ve maybe stood there at Cape Cod or wherever it might be, somewhere in Massachusetts, and someone has said to you, “Don’t get too close, ’cause that stuff could spray all over you, and there’s no saying what it might bring.” A lot of crashing, entirely unpredictable, and leaving behind a dreadful mess: that’s the picture.

Go back into Spurgeon’s day, and see what it was that he was concerned about. And fast-forward a hundred plus years later, and stand, and beat your breast, and say, “Look at what the tide brought in.” You see, that is what Jude is doing. He’s saying, “Peter said it was going to happen. I’m telling you: it’s happened, and I want you to be alert.”

And finally, they are—“These are…” (Go back to verse 12 so we don’t lose our place.) These people are, “certain people” are (here they are), they are “wandering stars”—once again, now, notice this—“for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.” For those of you who are interested, “error” in verse 11, that word derives from the verb to wander here in verse 13. So they are wanderers. “Each of us has turned to his own way,”[15] if you like.

Clearly, in Jude’s day, there was no radar. There wasn’t a sextant until a bright soul developed it in the tenth century. So in Jude’s day, navigation depended entirely on setting a course against the polestar. From that fixed point, people would then make deductions. However, when they looked up into the night sky, they realized that there were things—actually, planets—that apparently were simply wandering through the Milky Way. They just appeared to be wandering. And so, if they were determined to try and navigate their future on the strength of these “wandering stars,” there was no guarantee that they could get anywhere that they hoped to arrive.

“These false teachers can only ultimately lead you astray.” That’s what he’s saying: “They will lead you astray.” The longer a traveler through life seeks to chart their course by the deviations from “the faith … once … delivered to the saints”—that is prepared to wander along that pathway—the further and further away men and women will become from the truth. And the closer they do, the greater the danger that they will share the destiny of these individuals.

A Positive Response

Okay. We’ve got a moment or two to transition to a more positive response—moving, if you like, from the negative to the positive.

There is no question here, loved ones, that this woe and this warning is tough. And it’s important, I keep reminding myself, that Jude, the servant of the Lord Jesus, is addressing the matter in the awareness that God wants his people—God wants his people—to be the reverse of these things. He wants the shepherds of the church to be totally unlike these six pictures.

In other words, it is the negative that provides us with the positive. God’s plan for his people is that we might be healthy, joyful, fruitful, and enduring. “God will not allow,” writes Thomas Manton a long time ago—“God will not allow his people to be snatched from him by a rival claimant, for ‘souls are a precious commodity. Christ thought them worthy of his own blood, but seducers count them cheap ware; for their own gain and worldly interests they care not how they betray souls.’”[16]

One of the things that I dabbled with at about the age of twelve was photography. I’m not sure I had much of an idea what was really going on, especially when it came to the technical parts of it. I remember the darkroom, and I remember all that fluid, and dipping it in, and being amazed at what came out. And I remember those who were teaching me trying to explain that inverting a traditional black-and-white film negative turns the dark areas light, transforms the negative into a positive, and creates a recognizable image.

Now, as I’ve studied it this week, I’ve said, “There’s got to be something in that idea in helping me to close.” So, for example, the negative—the “hidden reefs”—turns us to Jesus, who always tells the truth. The greedy shepherd; the bread of life. Clouds without rain; living water. Fruitless trees; fruit that remains. Wandering stars; fixed point. Fixed point: “Don’t go down that pathway. Stay with Jesus. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.[17] Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.[18] Navigate by he who is the Light of the World.”[19]

We have nothing to offer save the Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you thought about Paint the Wagon while I was speaking? Anybody? Paint Your Wagon. You did? Yeah, see, every so often, there’s a bright one in the class. It won’t always be immediately obvious, but there you have it. Yeah, as soon as I got to “wandering stars,” I was right with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon. Paint Your Wagon was a stage play in 1951. The lyrics of it were so good, the music so strong that in ’69, it became a movie, which most of you have got no idea about at all. But how was it possible for Lee Marvin to have a huge hit doing what he was doing, that can scarcely be called singing, if you remember? Right? Remember?

But I went back to it, and I said, “You know, fascinatingly, in the midst of this song, all of a sudden it goes, ‘Do I know where hell is? Hell is in “Hello.” Heaven is “Goodbye forever, it’s time for me to go.”’”[20] “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try.” “Do I know where hell is? Hell is in hello.” Hell. “Hello.”

When I Googled this, I discovered—and I’m not on Facebook or Instagram or any of the things that you get the good stuff from, at least people tell me—but there were a number of questions raised, someone asked, about this song. And one of the questions was “Is this a Christmas song?” I thought, “Isn’t that intriguing? Why would it be a Christmas song?” Because of the star! Wise men following the star. Not a wandering star. The star. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced, because it brought them to the one before whom they would bow down their lives and offer their gifts—the only one who is a Savior, the only one who is a Shepherd, the only one to whom we may go and entrust our lives and rest in him.

As for God, his way is perfect:
 The Lord’s word is flawless;
 he shields all who take refuge in him.[21]

Some of you are here this morning, and frankly, if you were dead honest, you’re following wandering stars. You may have just wandered in here as well. That’s another possibility. We have nothing to offer save the Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the way, … the truth, and the life.”[22] Turn to him.

[1] 2 Peter 2:1 (AMP).

[2] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1855), 427.

[3] Jude 3 (ESV).

[4] Quoted in Russell H. Conwell, Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The World’s Great Preacher (Philadelphia: A. T. Hubbard, 1892), 474, 473.

[5] 1 Corinthians 9:16 (ESV).

[6] John Lennon, “Imagine” (1971).

[7] Revelation 2:14 (ESV).

[8] Jude 3–4 (paraphrased).

[9] Dick Lucas and Christopher Green, The Message of 2 Peter and Jude: The Promise of His Coming, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove IL: IVP Academic, 1995), 195.

[10] Matthew 7:16 (paraphrased).

[11] Jude 12 (NIV).

[12] Ezekiel 34:1–2 (ESV).

[13] Proverbs 25:14 (NIV).

[14] Isaiah 57:20 (NIV).

[15] Isaiah 53:6 (NASB).

[16] Lucas and Green, 2 Peter and Jude, 195. Only the internal quotation is of Thomas Manton.

[17] See Hebrews 13:8.

[18] See John 14:6.

[19] See John 8:12; 9:5.

[20] Alan J. Lerner, “Wand’rin’ Star” (1951).

[21] Psalm 18:30 (NIV).

[22] John 14:6 (ESV).