“I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” verses 5-7.
Please note the opening phrase of these verses.
I. PREACHING IS ESSENTIALLY A REMINDING PEOPLE OF WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID MANY TIMES BEFORE.
1. Since the earliest days of mankind, the Lord has been setting forth His truth. Nothing that I or any other preacher can say is new. It has been said before. Indeed, if it hasn’t been said before, it is a falsehood and is not of God!
2. We must be reminded because we forget the truth of God. “Though ye once knew this”. God’s people have to fight ‘forgetfulness’! “Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ son; . . . Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee,” Deuteronomy 4:9, 23.
3. It has ever been the aim of the devil and his agents to promote forgetfulness. “How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart; which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal,” Jeremiah 23:26-27. The devil is busily involved today in just such an evil work.
II. WE SHOULD NOTE WHAT IT WAS JUDE WANTED TO REMIND THEM OF.
“How that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.”
1. Here is the price of not believing the truth of God. Israel, the fallen angels, Sodom and Gomorrha — these serve to illustrate the cost of not believing God.
2. The cost was very high. ‘Destroyed’ - that means: ‘give over to eternal misery in hell’. ‘Reserved in everlasting chains.’ ‘Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.’
Boys and girls, there is an awful harvest reaped by those who forget God. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God,” Psalm 9:17.
3. It is obvious that we are slow to learn from the tragedies of others. These events mentioned by Jude were very well known and yet it did not deter those that came after from sinning in the same manner! Consequently, there were those seeking to have the people to whom Jude was writing forget God and His truth - “Denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ,” verse 4.
III. LIKE JUDE, GOD’S SERVANTS HAVE TO WARN EVERY GENERATION AGAINST FORGETTING GOD.
1. Jude’s generation was living in a time of great blessing, yet they were in danger of forgetting God. You live amidst special circumstances - a Christian school. The Bible is taught repeatedly and YET you can forget God!
2. The cost of casting away the knowledge of God is highest for those greatly privileged. “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required,” Luke 12:48. There is a magnifying of our guilt if we sin, despite being taught the right way!
3. There will be an eternal remembering of that which was deliberately forgotten! That which was cast out of the memory will be present with the Christ-rejector throughout a lost eternity!
What a dreadful thing that will be! To have forever before you in a lost sinner’s hell, the glorious gospel means of getting to heaven, offered repeatedly by the mercy of God, but rejected.
That means an eternity of intense regret at the dreadful folly of heeding the devil’s lies.