A Five Minute Devotional
GET IT AND DON’T FORGET IT
The video shown below is the devotional from June 26th, 2020. The full text of the devotional follows the video.
WELCOME
Good Morning! My name is Gary Wiram. I want to welcome you to Today’s Good News! Thank you for joining me this morning.
INTRODUCTION
This week, Today’s Good News began teaching the little book of Jude, verse by verse, day by day. Today, I get to teach on Jude 1:5. When I received this assignment, I thought, “I wonder how many at Calvary Chapel Rosarito have Jude 1:5 as their favorite Bible verse.” My immediate answer to myself was, “Probably none”. Then I thought, “After my teaching, I wonder if it will become a more popular verse. When baseball comes back, will we be seeing the guy behind home plate holding up a sign that says ‘Jude 1:5’ instead of ‘John 3:16’?” I’m pretty certain that’s not gonna happen but I pray that, in addition to learning the message of Jude 1:5, this will help us all to remember the importance of every Word in the Bible being breathed by God.
Here are those Words from Jude 1:5:
“But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
DON’T FORGET IT
As we read this verse, it’s important to remember that the Author, Jude, was a half-Brother of Jesus. It’s, also, important to remember that he really didn’t accept Jesus as Messiah until after the Resurrection. His purpose in writing this epistle was to exhort the early church to “contend earnestly for the faith” against apostates whose teachings were leading the people astray. To do this, in Jude 1:5, he begins to use examples from the past, when God dealt harshly with apostates. This was in order to remind the people of lessons they might be forgetting. The examples he is pointing to include how God dealt with Israel’s refusal to enter the promised land after Moses had sent 12 men to “spy out” the land. Here’s what we’re told about that in Numbers 14:29:
“The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above.”
In case you don’t remember how that turned out, only Josua and Caleb, the two spies out of the twelve who told Israel that they should enter the promised land, were the only two of that generation who didn’t fall in the wilderness. That may seem like a pretty harsh reminder but remember that Jude didn’t “get it”, that Jesus was Messiah, until after he had spent every year of Jesus’ life with him, as his half-Brother. Once he did “get it”, I’m certain he was determined that others “get it” and as we see here, he seemed just as determined that they not “forget it”.
DON’T BE MISLED
So, how does this apply to us today? Well, dealing with false teachers wasn’t exclusive to the early church. It’s been a reality throughout the church-age and it just seems to be getting more and more prevalent today. The false teachings we’re inundated with today include:
- Popular leaders who teach what makes people feel good and they include just enough Biblical truth that their heresy seems believable.
- Charlatans who use Christianity for their personal enrichment.
- False prophets who claim to have a new revelation from God that doesn’t line up with Scripture.
- Those within the church who use their leadership position to take abusive advantage of others.
- And there are those who bring false doctrine into the church to divide and to destroy.
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE
And in today’s “all news all the time” world, there’s an overwhelming amount of stuff coming at us that, even aside from dealing with apostates, it’s extremely challenging to “keep your eyes on the prize”. In the midst of all this, Jude’s harsh reminder may be just what we need to remember that we once did “get it” about “the prize” and to remain determined to not “forget it” that what we have been told about “the prize” is summed up in that other Scripture that tells us:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
And, THAT is Today’s Good News!
