0100. Apostates From the Faith–Warned
Apostates From the Faith–Warned
"Ordained to this condemnation.
"Woe unto them!
"To whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever" (Jdg_1:4, Jdg_1:11, Jdg_1:13).
God’s judgments are against the men who deny His Sovereignty and our only Lord Jesus Christ, and who bring in damnable heresies.
The Book of Jude gives three great warnings to these men; warnings based upon God’s dealings with other sinners in the days past.
1. In Joh_14:5 the destruction of the disbelieving Israelites is set forth as an example. These men of Israel were a like class with the liberalists of our day.
(1) They refused to follow the Lord fully.
(2) They sought affinity with Egypt and desired her flesh pots.
(3) They murmured and complained at God’s dealings as they passed through the wilderness.
(4) They refused God’s leadership and turned back.
(5) They did not believe God was able to lead them through.
(6) Their bodies were overthrown in the wilderness; they entered not in.
2. In Joh_14:6 the fallen angels, who kept not their first estate, are set forth as an example of judgment to these certain apostates.
(1) The angels kept not their proper habitation, which was that of worshiping God and serving saints. The critics have left their twofold work as priests of God. They neither, with the Blood as their plea, approach God in behalf of the people; nor do they, through the shedding of the Blood of Christ, approach the people in behalf of God. They have turned aside to another, and an unacceptable service, toward God and toward man.
(2) These angels who left their proper habitation mixed with men in a God-forbidden way.
Balaam taught Balak how to seduce God’s servants. He taught a system of world mixing that caused Israel to break her separation unto God.
These certain men are forever putting forth schemes by which they lead God’s children into forbidden paths, and into a fellowship with the world that is strictly forbidden by the Lord God.
(3) Even as these angels are kept in everlasting chains under darkness, so unto these apostates is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
3. In Joh_14:7 the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah is given as a warning to these certain men. It may seem strange that the Holy Spirit uses so vile a condition as existed in Sodom as a figure of the vileness of these men who have denied the faith, and have turned from the Lord God.
However, this very thing is done again in Rev_11:8 when the Holy Spirit speaks of apostate Jerusalem as "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt".
Would that these men might have their eyes opened to these words. Jesus Christ gave Judas ample warning, and yet Judas shut his ears and eyes and went out and delivered up his Lord. God has given the critic ample warning also. Will he, too, stop up his ears and madly pursue his course, then "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire", reserved for him, as exampled in Sodom and Gomorrah’s fate?
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR