The Devotional – Fight the good fight of Faith (Part 4)

The Devotional – Fight the good fight of Faith (Part 4)

Comment: When the Holy Bible is opened and read for the purposes of knowing life according to the purpose and will of God, several things are evident. While we cannot survey all of the purposes and will of God this morning but we can know this. “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways, like our ways.” Yet in order to KNOW God personally we must be willing to trust and be obedient to Him. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts because “He is Holy”, we are “unholy”, God’s ways are not our ways because God is “Righteous”, we are “unrighteous”. Even in this separation – it is God who has more thoughts and promises about us than we of Him; see Isaiah 55:6-9 and Jeremiah 29:10-14.

Devotional: Jude 1:12-15 – There is a difference when it comes to personal sin and people who are apostate; yet SIN remains sin as it is required of the children of God to live justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before God (Micah 6:7). Apostates, ignore this requirement in that they do not live in this prescribed manner. In every occasion, like our agape feasts, baptisms, anniversary celebrations, conferences and weekly Bible studies, apostates are seeking to serve their own sinful appetite of lust, prosperity and liberal ways.

During the early years of life on earth, apostasy was in full bloom, seven generations, roughly 1700 years (mankind lived longer in those days before the flood) after God Created man on earth, Enoch the man who walked with God, God’s prophet of that day was overheard saying, “Behold the LORD comes with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all of their ungodly deeds, which they have committed in an ungodly way, and all of the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

This small epistle is packed with many deeds that are an outright abomination to God. People with no fear of God, who stain church events by serving themselves and ignoring the needs of others, they are like stumbling blocks who cause others to sin. They are like a cloud, not a fair weather cloud, but a storm cloud without rain; that is, they do not bare the fruit of the Spirit; thus they are twice dead – unbelieving! Just as the angels whom God has placed in chains for judgment, God has also reserved the blackness of darkness forever for all apostates.

Now, I do not think we are called of God to search out these apostates and rid the church of them. Jesus in His parable of the wheat and the tares explains that it is hard to know the difference between “what is wheat and what is tare. But let both grow together until the harvest. At the judgment the tares will be gathered first, they will be judged and burned, the wheat (God’s children) will be gathered into the barn; Matthew 13:24-30.