Today, Monday November 1
“I Want to Remind You”
Jude 1:5-7 “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. And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
If we are not careful we can get so caught up in the affairs of this world and life around us that we begin to forget what we have previously experienced and know about God and how He has worked in our lives. When we forget the reality of God in every aspect of our lives we begin to live by feelings rather than by faith! This state of unbelief will also cause us to trust others and ourselves for the resources that we need every day. And it will not be long that we might even begin to ignore the will and Word of God. This will always cause us to lose our peace and sense of security!
That is exactly what Jude is talking about in verses five through seven. Israel was God’s chosen people who were called to represent Him to a pagan world! They were blessed with a great heritage and miraculously given the protection and resources they needed to be delivered from Egypt. They watched as God opened up the Red Sea and they marched through on dry land. Before their very eyes, they watched as God destroy the greatest army of their day as the waters came back together. If anyone should have never forgotten the great salvation and blessings that come from God alone, it should have been them.
But just a few weeks later when they came to border of the Promise Land at Kadesh Barnea, they already forgot! When the ten spies gave the report that there were giants in the land, Moses, Joshua, and Caleb tried to encourage the people to obey God by faith, but the people refused. In fact, the leaders of the tribes even wanted to organize and go back to Egypt, the place of bondage!
This was rebellion against the will and the Word of God, and God cannot tolerate rebellion. As a result, everybody in the camp of Israel twenty years and older was destined to die at some time in the next forty years in the wilderness. Because of the unbelief they never entered their rest and it led to their extermination.
Keep in mind that Jude was using a historical event as an illustration, and we must not press every detail. The entire nation was delivered from Egypt, but that does not mean that each individual was personally saved through faith in the Lord. The main point of the account is that privileges bring responsibilities, and God cannot lightly pass over the sins of His people. If any of Jude's readers dared to follow the false teachers, they too would face the discipline of God. "Wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor. 10:12).
Today, I want to remind you that it is a dangerous thing to forget God and His miraculous power and blessings that He has bestowed upon us! And the one thing that can lead us to forget is that the blessings of the provisions of God have become so numerous that we start looking at the blessings and not to the God who gave them to us! We get so busy enjoying them and striving to get more that we forget and need to be reminded!
I’m afraid that is what has happened to most of us believers in America today! Today we need to repent and return to our first love and dependence upon our great God and Savior Jesus Christ!
God bless!
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