“Reach Out” (Jude 22-23)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/26/2025 10:39 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                   Focus:  PT-1 “Reach Out”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                           Reference: Jude 22-23

            Message of the verse:  “22 And have mercy on some, who are doubting; 23 save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.”

 

            Now this evening what I am going to do is just look at what could be called the introduction to this section, something that is usually done at the beginning of a chapter written by John MacArthur or by many other authors as they give and introduction to what they will be covering in the chapter, but this is in the middle of the chapter which makes it a bit different. 

 

            Let me just for a moment write about something that happened a long time ago when I was attending the first church that I went to four years after I became a believer.  Our Pastor, Pastor Burns was teaching through this book of Jude and when he got to the section in verse 23 which says snatching them out of the fire he told the story of an older man who he was witnessing to, who was an older man.  He heard the man use some fowl language and so he asked the man something that made him feel badly.  “What would your mother say to you if she heard you talk like that?”  Well the older man said that this surely would not make her happy with him.  Well as look back over 45 years ago at this story it seemed to me that this man was actually snatched out of the fire, as he became a born-again believer at an older age, which is something difficult to happen.

 

            Now I am going to quote from what I have called an introduction:  “Those who pose the greatest threat to the church also constitute part of its mission field.  Now only are believers responsible to identify and oppose the enemy and his error; they are also commanded to reach out and evangelize the enemy with the truth.  That is precisely what Jesus sought to do when He had meals with the Pharisees (Luke 7:40-50; cf. 14:3-6).  Nicodemus, for example, was a Pharisee who sincerely sought the truth (John 3:1-21).  His honest investigation into Jesus’ teachings was met with compassion and kindness from the Savior.

 

            “In these two verses Jude identifies three categories of unbelieving people who, from the church’s perspective, are both a menace and a mission field.  They are confused, the convinced, and the committed.”

 

            Now we have our introduction and so we will look at them one at a time and the first one will also be a short SD.

 

8/26/2025 10:54 PM