Thought for Today

A Forgetful People: It is all too easy to forget God’s warnings, to discount them, and to even outright ignore them. One of the biggest reasons the Church is in the state that it is in is due to our ignoring God’s warnings. We’d rather “just get along” or tolerate those who teach biblical error.

Jude 1:17–19: “But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.’ These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit” (NAU).

We ought to remember their words. That’s convicting isn’t it? It is on us that we’ve forgotten what we were told. It is something we should have recalled, but we let it slip away. What was important for us to remember that we’d let slip away?

We forgot the warning we’d been given. That warning wasn’t given by just anyone, but by the apostles of our Lord. For example, it is one thing to forget a casual remark made by a friend, it is another thing to forget key instructions given by a boss at work. And this is far more important. What was that warning?

“In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own uhgodly lusts.”

In short, a certain type of people will show up in church: mockers. What will those mockers do? They’ll follow after their own lusts. That is what the false teachers are: mockers.

What is a mocker? A mocker is someone who laughs at something or someone in a scornful manner; someone who is contemptuous. In context, the false teachers were mocking God’s truth. Proverbs 30:17 illustrates that sort of person: “The eye that mocks a father And scorns a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it” (NAU).

How do the mockers impact the church? They cause divisions. They institute strife, disrupting the unity that had previously existed within the church. How do they cause that disruption? By being worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

We’ve looked at Romans 8 and walking in our own desires (the flesh) compared to living by the power of the Holy Spirit. If a person doesn’t have the Holy Spirit residing in them, that person is not a Christian. Given the passage in Jude, clearly, the individuals in question are not Christians; they serve a different master.

Second Corinthians 11:13–15 is instructive: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds” (NAU).

The false teachers God speaks of through the book of Jude, are destined for eternal destruction. They disguise themselves in order to appear as genuine teachers, but the reality is that they are workers of iniquity, doing what is wicked, twisted, sinful, twisted, and wrong.

Those words don’t describe genuine believers. We’ll see more in the next post.