Today’s passage: Jude 3-4
Helpful thoughts:
- Jude desired to write about the Gospel itself, but realized another need of the church. This letter is written to encourage the church to contend for the faith against false teaching.
- This faith was “once for all” delivered to the saints, meaning it will never change.
- There always have been and there always will be false teachers.
- They are “designated” for condemnation.
- They are inside the visible church.
- “Visible” meaning, they go to church, people count them as part of their church (Having “crept in unnoticed”), but God knows they are not His children.
- The method of these false teachers and false believers is to “pervert” the grace of God.
- They teach what sounds like truth, but twist it. These false teachers sound right about so many things, but somewhere along the way, they twist and pervert the message to lead people astray.
- We often think of “sensuality” along with lust and sexuality, but the word can include other sins as well. It is a lack of constraint.
Questions to consider:
- If the faith has been once and for all delivered, should any new documents or teachings or visions or any other new source of information be able to change the Gospel message? Could the way of salvation ever change (John 14:6)?
- What does false teaching result in (Verse 4)? What does it turn into?
- Is it possible to watch preachers on tv, on the internet, or to hear them on the radio, and be listening to false teachers? Is it possible that there could be people in our church (Or any church) who are there to deceive and oppose God and would never admit it? What would be the right way to know? How would we rightly discover that?