Daily Meditations on the Bible / We stand with Israel
…they follow their own evil desires…
Jude is almost done with his description of those who pollute and dilute the Body of Christ. It is as if Jude is looking into the face of Jesus himself, and in that face he sees the purity that Jesus wants for his church.
Let’s join Jude and imagine what the Body of Christ could be like.
Continue reading “Jude 1: 16b — The Face of Jesus”
These people are grumblers and faultfinders…
With deft strokes, Jude is painting a picture of what the ungodly look like. I find it interesting that he does not call out specific people he might be thinking of. Yet, I can also see a reason for this. From God’s perspective, Jude is not being asked to write to a specific church or even a specific age of the church. Instead, the Holy Spirit has commissioned him to write a description for all time.
Jude’s letter is a fitting penultimate chapter for God’s love letter to his people. From beginning to end, the entire Bible is about two things; Jesus Christ and the difference between what is godly and what is ungodly. Jude’s letter paints a picture of what to look for.
Continue reading “Jude 1: 16a — On Guard”
See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
I am a little out of my depth when we get the End Times Prophecy department. Pr. Rich is the expert in that area as far as I am concerned. So outside of taking a contextual look at Enoch’s prophecy, let’s take a specific look at this passage and see what we can learn.
First, Jude is using a source of information on this topic that is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. This is new information about Enoch.
Continue reading “Jude 1: 14b — Enoch’s Prophecy”
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. — Exodus 20: 12
As I gaze over the landscape of Scripture in my mind’s eye, mothers are everywhere. From Eve, the mother of us all, to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Everywhere in Scripture are stories about mothers and the influence they have on history. One of my favorite mothers is told about in the book of Ruth.
Naomi is enduring. She travels with her husband and two sons to a foreign land because of a famine. While there both of her sons take wives from the Moabites who live there. Then tragedy strikes. Naomi’s husband dies. He is followed in death by their two sons. Naomi is left alone.
Continue reading “Happy Mother’s Day!”
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them…
One of the most amazing aspects of the Bible is the amount of detail it contains about the past. Of course, whether or not you believe this information depends on your view of the Bible.
As I have mentioned before, my personal view is that God exists. God created everything there is, and if God wanted to get a book published He could. If he did, it would be exactly the way He wanted to it be.
Continue reading “Jude 1: 14a — A Faithful Walk”
They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
I like Jude. He doesn’t mince words! The joke line that goes with a passage like today’s is, “So, Jude, tell us how you really feel.”
Ha!
The thing is that Jude isn’t just some guy at work or someone you ran into at a coffee shop (pre-COVID coffee, of course). Jude is someone who, we presume, knows the risen Lord. He may have even been his half-brother.
In today’s passage, Jude describes the ungodly people as “twice dead.” Why? Why twice dead?
Continue reading “Jude 1: 12b-13 — Twice Dead”
…shepherds who feed only themselves.
Many years ago a young man from a small town went to study at the university. Unsure of what to do with his life, he studied a wide variety of topics. In his sophomore year, a campus ministry group that focused on college-age men discovered him. This group took him under their wing and counted him as one of their own until one day when they found out he was interested in religion.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise to them. He had all the signs; a passion for God’s Word, a love of Truth, and a hunger to know more. Thinking of the university as a place to learn he had taken a world religion class and found it very interesting.
Continue reading “Jude 1: 12b — Tossed Sheep”
These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—
What is a “love feast?” Who eats there? Why should anyone have qualms about it?
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, is a great resource on this question. He describes in detail what the love feast is, who and how to eat it, and why it should be taken very seriously.
What is it?
Continue reading “Jude 1: 12A — Food”
Woe to them! …they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.
In this unique passage, Jude does two things at once. He tells us one more thing about the ungodly people who pervert the grace of God. Then, in the same stroke of the pen, he tells us about their fate.
To put this story into context we need to look at a bit of Israel’s history.
Continue reading “Jude 1: 11c — Toast”
Woe to them! …they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error;
The story of Balaam has always been a bit of an enigma for me. The parts of the story recorded in the Bible are both amazing and sketchy. Some people might say this is a shortcoming on the part of the Scriptures, but I don’t think so for two reasons. The first, as I have explained before, is that I believe the Bible is exactly the way God wants it to be. The second is that the apparent gaps in the story are consistent with God’s storytelling in other parts of the Bible. All of the Bible, whether Old or New Testaments, is written in a way that requires us to think.
So what do we know about Balaam? What was this “error” that Jude refers to?
Continue reading “Jude 1:11b — Balaam’s Error”