EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/15/2025 7:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
“The Presence of the Apostates”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Jude 4a
Message of the verse: “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed,”
This is a very sad day for me as I have learned that John
MacArthur has passed away into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. I realize that it is not a sad day for him,
but for his family along with those at the church where he pastured for over 55
years. Not only that but I got word of a
friend of mine who also passed away.
This ladies name was Tracy and I had prayed for her for a fairly long
time as she was the daughter of my friend who also passed away a couple of
months ago. Tracy had her share of
problems and so that is why my friend asked me to pray for her, and I did and
then she came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior and Lord. My friend asked me to lead a Bible study at
his house where his daughter, and sister and a couple of friends of his
met. One of his friends came to know the
Lord while at this small Bible study.
Later on his sister died while visiting her daughter in Florida. So all in all this has been a very sad day
for me, but I will now begin this section from John MacArthur’s commentary and
see how far that I can get.
This part of verse four tells us something that happened
in the church where Jude was writing to and this has happened to many other
churches down through the church age. I
can say that Satan and his demon friends never rest and are always looking to
get some of the unsaved who think they are saved into churches so that they can
cause trouble and so true believers have to always be on guard so that they can
spot these kinds of people. Now in the
case of what Jude was writing about, these apostates had already infiltrated to
where Jude was writing to.
John MacArthur writes “The word translated crept in unnoticed (pareisduo) appears only here in the New Testament. It has the connotation of slipping in secretly with an evil intention. In extrabiblical Greek it described the cunning craftiness of a lawyer who, through clever argumentation, infiltrated the minds of courtroom officials and corrupted their thinking. Having already permeated the church, the apostates were in position to ‘secretly introduce destructive heresies’ (2 Peter 2:1).”
It is for sure that there are many false teachers
outside the church who propagate lies and also deceptions and openly proclaim
their opposition to Christianity, as Jesus warned this would happen to His
apostles: “But be on your guard; for they will deliver you to the
courts, and you will be flogged in the synagogues, and you will stand before
governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them.” Now here is
a list of verses that MacArthur adds to back up this truth: (Mark 13:9; cf. Acts 4:1-3, 13-18; 5:17-18,
26-40; 6:12-14; 7:54, 57-59; 8:1-3; 12:1-4; 14:19; 16:19-24; 17:5-9; 21:26-36;
23:12-34:9). Now you can plainly see
that all of these verses with the exception of the verse in Mark are from the
book of Acts, which is where the church age began and where, after a while
began to have trouble. MacArthur writes “However,
the counterfeit pastors, elders, deacons, and teachers within the church are usually
far more dangerous. Attacks from outside the church often unite God’s people,
but attacks from inside—coming from false teachers—usually divide and confuse
the flock.”
He goes on to write:
“Such false teachers creep in unnoticed, infiltrating the fabric of the church, and orchestrating as much harm
as possible. As a result, genuine
fellowship, worship, ministry, and evangelism fade away as the church succumbs
to devastating error in both doctrine and practice, The New Testament repeatedly warns of the
danger posed by apostasy within the church (cf. Acts. 20:28-31; 2 Cor.
11:12-15; Gal. 1:6-9; 3:1-3; Col. 2:8, 18-19; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 2:9-11,
18-22; 4:1-6; 2 John 7-11). In today’s
church such apostasy takes many forms.
False teachers write books and edit publications, speak on radio and
television, teach in colleges and seminaries, preach from pulpits, and have Web
sites on the Internet. Satan always sows
his tares among the wheat (Matt. 13:24-30), rising up false brethren whom he
disguises as messengers of truth (cf. 2 Cor. 11:14).” Now I think that it is important for me to
add Matthew 13:24-30, and then 2 Cor. 11:14 at this time”
24 Jesus presented another parable to them,
saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good
seed in his field. 25 “But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and
sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 “But when the wheat sprouted and
bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 "The slaves of the
landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?
How then does it have tares?’ 28 “And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’
The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ 29 "But
he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the
wheat with them. 30 ‘Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the
time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares
and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my
barn."’"
14 No wonder, for even Satan disguises
himself as an angel of light.
Now
as we look at Jude’s description of the apostates as certain persons is vague, their specific historical identity is not essential to his
man point, which namely is that any and all spiritual pretenders pose a clear
and present danger to the church, whatever their error would be, and also
whether inside or on the outside of the church.
As stated on the outside of the church it is easier to see. Jude did not consider it necessary to detail
the nuances of those who were around at this time of their particular false
theology. It might have been an
incipient form of Gnosticism writes MacArthur “or an early version of
Nicolaitanism (a heresy that perverted grace and promoted wicked and immoral
behavior; see Rev. 2:6, 15). Whatever
the cause, Jude’s readers knew who the apostates were and what they
taught. Thus, he warned them to be on
their guard. In the same way,
contemporary Christians must also be aware that similar heretics still threaten
the church today (Matt. 7:15; 24:11; Acts 20:29).”
7/15/2025
8:09 PM
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