EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/02/2025 8:41 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Jude’s Background”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Jude 1a
Message of the verse: “Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,”
In this SD it is my objective to find out who Jude
is as I look at his background. Jude (Heb.
‘Judah’) or “Judas” was a very common name during this time of the New
Testament. An example of this would be
that two of the disciples were named Judas—Judas Iscariot and Judas, son of
James as referenced in (Luke 6:16; John 6:71; 14:22; and Acts 1:13). In looking back at the conversion of Paul
Acts 9:11 he shortly met Ananias at the house of a Judas of Damascus. And Judas Barsabbas, a leader in the early
church, joined Paul, Barnabas, and Silas in carrying a letter from the
Jerusalem Council to the believers who were at Antioch as seen in Acts
15:22-33. Then there was even a Judas of
Galilee, who founded the Zealots and led an uprising in early first-century
Palestine seen in Acts 5:37, so you can see this name was very popular during
this time period.
As
we look at our verse we can see that the Jude who penned this letter was not
any of those men mentioned above.
Instead, he was the brother of James.
James was the half brother of Jesus as seen in Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3;
and cf. Gal. 1:19 and James was the leader of the Jerusalem Council as seen in
Acts 15:13. Let us now look at the
salutation of James in James 1:1 to show some similarities to Jude 1a. “James, a
bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes who are
dispersed abroad: Greetings.” Jude,
unlike James (cf. Gal. 1:19), did not consider himself an apostle (cf. v.
17). “17 But you, beloved, ought to
remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord
Jesus Christ.” However, his close
relation to both Jesus (as a half brother) and James certainly gave Jude a
position of prominence and authority in the early church—a platform from which
he could address the dangers of false teaching in which he spends much time in
this letter writing about. Now it is
ironic that in God’s providence the Holy Spirit chose a man with the same first
name as Judas Iscariot, the most infamous apostate of all time as seen in Acts
1:16-20, and 25, to write the New Testament epistle on apostasy. Now I have looked at a discussion of the
authorship when 1 quoted from John MacArthur’s introduction earlier in another
SD.
Now
at this time I want to discuss something that not all “churches” will go along
with and that is the fact that Mary, the mother of Jesus was also the mother of
Jude and James and other children that she had.
It is known from the introduction of the different gospels that it was
the Holy Spirit of God who impregnated Mary to have Jesus, her first born, and that
makes all the other children May and Joseph had as half-brothers and sisters of
Jesus. I have recently heard that the
new Pope has once again stated that Mary was indeed God, and believe me that is
not true at all, for they say Mary remained a virgin, but the Bible says her
and Joseph had other children. When the Catholic
Church states things like Mary is God, then one has to see that not all of
their doctrine comes from the Word of God, and that leads many people astray.
Let me quote from the end of the book of Revelation in order to make a
point: “18 I testify to everyone who
hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will
add to him the plagues which are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes
away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part
from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book”
(Rev. 22:18-19).
One
of the things that I am looking forward to do is to quote from the second
sermon that John MacArthur preached on the letter of Jude which I believe will
be very interesting and informative to all who reads it. I plan on doing that once I get through the
first three verses found in this chapter from MacArthur’s commentary.
7/2/2025 9:14 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment