SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 06-01-04
My Worship Time Focus: God’s Victory
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Jude 5-7
Message of the verse: “5
Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord
delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not
believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their
positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in
darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7 In a
similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to
sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer
the punishment of eternal fire.” (NIV)
In these three verses Jude gives
examples of God’s victory over sin. The
first example is that of the nation of Israel, and their sin was rebellious
unbelief, for they would not believe the Lord could use them to defeat their
enemies who lived in the promise land.
Their reason was they thought the people were too large and thus they
were afraid. Their sin is written about
in many places of the Scriptures. One of
these places is in the book of Hebrews, where the writer quotes from the Psalms
saying that these people would not enter into God’s rest. Jude writes at the end of this verse that
these people had already seen the miracles of the Lord as He led them out of
Egypt with many mighty miracles and also promised them He would led them into
the promise land. He concludes the verse
by saying that God destroyed those who did not believe.
The sin of the angels was rebellion
against the throne of God, and Jude describes this in verse six. There has been some discussion that this
refers to what happened in Genesis 6:1-4, which tells the story of “the sons of
God” coming to the daughters of men and after that God destroyed the earth with
the flood. The thought is that these
“sons of God” were these angels that Jude is writing about in verse six. In Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary he gives a number
of reasons why he does not think this is what Jude is writing about and it
seems to me that they are good reasons that Jude was not referring to that
incident here. At any rate there sin was
rebellion against the Lord and there sin was so great that they are now kept in
chains because of their sin.
Jude describes the sin of Sodom and
Gomorrah in verse seven, and that is going after “strange flesh.” He goes on to write that these people serve
as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire, in other
words this seems to be a picture of hell.
The “strange flesh” was surely homosexual activity, but it also could
have been having sexual relations with animals.
Both of these are described as sin in Lev. 18:22-25.
Jude was citing these examples to
show that God does indeed judge sin, and He will thus judge the sin of these
apostates that he is writing about in his letter. These sins are sins that the apostates were
prone to commit and thus they will be judged as surely as those being cited in
Jude’s examples.
Spiritual meaning for my life
today: I am thankful to the Lord
that Jesus Christ was judged for all of my sins when He hung upon the
cross. Because of this I need to
continually be reminded of this cost when I rebel against the Lord by sinning.
The Word
of God was convicting to my heart as I read it this morning.
My Steps of Faith Today:
Continue to trust the Lord in the trials He is taking me through. To meditate more on God’s Word.
Memory verses for the week:
1Cor. 13:1-3
If I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if
I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I
have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am
nothing. And if I give all my
possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do
not have love, it profits me nothing.
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