EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/17/2025 10:00 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-5“The Enemy”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Jude 3-4
Message of the verses: “3 Beloved, while I
was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the
necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith
which was once for all handed down to the saints. 4 For certain persons have
crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this
condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness
and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
I begin this SD by picking up where I left off in
the last SD, looking at verses 3-4 of Jude.
Warren Wiersbe entitles this section in his commentary on Jude “The
Enemy,” and this evening I will begin by looking at the last sub-section
entitled “They Were Ordained to Judgment” (v. 4a).
“They Were
Ordained to Judgment” (Jude 4a): Dr. Wiersbe
begins this long sub-section by writing “Jude did not write that these men were
ordained to become apostates, as though God were responsible for their sin. They became apostates because they willfully
turned away from the truth. But God did
ordain that such people would be judged and condemned. The Old Testament prophets denounced the
false prophets of their day, and both Jesus Christ and His Apostles pronounced
judgment on them.” Now notice the
highlighted part of Dr. Wiersbe comments as I want to make a brief comment on
that. There are things in the Word of
God that I probably will never understand, nor is God obligated that I do
understand. Look at Deuteronomy 29:29, a
verse I have sighted often in my Spiritual Diaries: “"The secret things belong to the LORD
our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we
may observe all the words of this law.” To me God is saying that I have not
told you everything, and I don’t have to for there are some things that I will
not reveal to you, however the things I have revealed to you, you must
follow. In my humble opinion
understanding the sovereignty of God falls into that category of things God has
not totally explained to us.
Dr. Wiersbe goes on to write “Why
should these men be judged by God? To
begin with, they had denied His Son! That is reason enough for their
condemnation! But they had also defiled
God’s people by teaching them that God’s grace permitted them to practice
sin. Furthermore, the derided the
doctrine of Christ’s coming (2 Peter 3).
‘Where is the promise of His coming?’
They mocked the very promise of Christ’s coming and the judgment He
would bring against the ungodly.
“Of course, they did all these
things under the guise of religion, and this made their sin even greater. The deceived innocent people so that they
might take their money and enjoy it in godless living. Jesus compared them to wolves in sheep’s
clothing (Matt. 7:15).” “"Beware of
the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are
ravenous wolves.’” Those kinds of people
were not just around when Jude wrote his letter, for they are still around
today, and I suppose that that means that they are in our churches around the
world, along with filling the different cults around the world too.
Dr. Wiersbe goes on: “How, then, should the church respond to the
presence of this insidious enemy? By earnestly contending for the faith.
“The
faith’ refers to that body of doctrine that was given by God through the
Apostles to the church. The word doctrine is found at least sixteen times
in the Pastoral Epistles alone. Paul
admonished both Timothy and Titus to make sure the believers were being taught ‘sound
doctrine’ which means ‘healthy doctrine,’ doctrine that promotes the spiritual
health of the local church. While
individual teachers and preachers may disagree on the fine points of theology,
there is a basic body of truth to which all true Christians are committed.” I realize that as I have gotten older that I
probably do more quoting of people who I read from, people like Dr. Warren
Wiersbe, David Jeremiah, and of course John MacArthur. The reason I do this is because I trust them
to preach and write things from the Word of God that are true, and worth
practicing as I go through life, and that is a reason I write these Spiritual
Diaries to help people around the world first of all understand that when a
person is born into this world they are born a sinner because of what is called
the “sin nature.” If you have children
my question to you is did you ever have to teach your children not to obey you,
or do they do it on their own. This
shows that all people are born with a sin nature, as they do wrong things right
from the time they are old enough to talk.
I will try and finish this rather long section in my next
SD. It seems to me that I may have made
a mistake in numbering the different sub-sections in this main section from Dr.
Wiersbe’s commentary. Today I actually
began the fifth sub-section.
6/17/2025 10:29 PM
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