So, let’s keep the faith!

 

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.  Jude 3

(Devotion by Rick Godwin)

Before leaving the leaders of the church in Ephesus for the last time, Paul said,

“After my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.

So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Ac 20:29-32 NKJV).

 Was Paul being an alarmist?

No. Years later, speaking to the same church in Ephesus, God says: “You have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place…He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:1-7 NKJV).

Note the words “do the first works.”

What are these foundational truths on which the church is built?

• The infallibility of Scripture,
• The virgin birth,
• The atoning death,
• The bodily resurrection
• Baptism with water,
• Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and
• Carry the Gospel to the whole world.

These are the bedrock nonnegotiables “which [were] once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3 NKJV).

 

 

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