Daily devotion – creeps..
1 Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,
To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ:
2 Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Contend for the Faith
3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I sympathize with Jude in his short letter to the Churches. He would have rather write to encourage the Church than declare war on the false teachers. But when the false teachers are in the field, the watchmen dare not rest or sleep from warning the saints. Let us remember the Christian life is not a playground but it is instead a battle ground.
So Jude wasted no time in his letter in identifying the enemy.
In verse 4, Jude tells us that the false teachers are ungodly – they claimed to belong to God as does every cult and false teacher that knocks on our door or seeks to invade the Church. They have a ‘form of godliness’ but they lack the power or the force of godliness in their lives that is resident in ever true follower of Christ – 2 Tim 3:5
The false teachers were also deceitful! They ‘crept in unawares.’ The Greek language here describes ‘slipping in secretly, to steal in undercover.’
Sometimes Satan agents are brought in secretly by those already on the inside – Gal 2:4
And this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in (who came in by stealth to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage),
But these men Jude is talking about came into the Church on their own. Peter warns us that these men were coming – 2Pe 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.
How could false brethren come into the Church of Jesus Christ? The soldiers had gone to sleep at the watch. The spiritual leaders in the Churches had become complacent and careless.
Jesus and His Apostles all warned that false teachers would arise, yet all the Churches did not heed the warnings. Tragically, some Churches are not heeding the warning today!
But why did these false teachers enter the Churches in the first place? To attempt to change the doctrine and ‘turn the grace of God into lasciviousness’.
Lewdness or lasciviousness means ‘wantonness, absence of moral standard, indecency.’
Such a person thinks only about themselves and their needs, their lusts. It’s a man centered religion.
Let each of us be watchmen in the truest sense today and not sleep. Let us be discerning in what we see and hear, even if it has the appearance of a form of godliness!
Bless you and don’t forget to be writing down things you are thankful to the Lord for our special Thanksgiving Sunday service – November 19.