I've been a lukewarm Christian. I made plans and pushed on with my life without consulting God. It was when my two year old sent me to my knees that I finally surrendered my life to Jesus. Today Pastor Steve Walker of Canyon Hills Community church in Bothell, WA started a study on the book of Jude. We are warned about a lukewarm Christian life. First, we learn how much God loves us, and then we are tasked with preserving purity both in ourselves and in the church.
Many churches have studied Romans this year. I noticed echos of Romans in Jude. In Romans 1 we are told to avoid every kind of sexual sin:
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Then next, because of the sexual sin, God gave them over to even more sin:
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
In like manner Jude calls Christians to persevere in these last days. The last verse of Jude is sung in the You Tube below:
I love singing the last verse of Jude as a doxology. It gives glory to God for keeping us from falling.
No comments:
Post a Comment