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Welcome to Covenant of Hope Ministries and our sermon or midweek study. You will normally see us posted on Sunday. I am Rev. Laura A. Neff. Our ministry was built on the truth of God’s love. This ministry shares the Word of God, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. It is God’s will that has brought this to be. We wish only that God’s truth will be shared within His words as brought to us by the Spirit as it fills my heart, mind, and soul to be shared with my hands, but with His words alone.
You will find us in the following location: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Rev. Laura’s other sites: Facebook & Blogspot & Twitter
Prayer List: We have many on our prayer list. Some wish to remain anonymous, and others only wish to have their first names mentioned. Our prayer list grows or changes every week. This is our current list.
- Please pray for Rev. Lisa Tyler’s sister, Mary, who has had lung issues and is in the hospital in an induced coma. It isn’t COVID-19 related. Please pray that the LORD heals her and brings her smile to her face once more.
- Please continue to pray for Elder Cal Jennings and his health issues, which are numerous. He has been having issues with his pain, vision, and memory. Add to the prayers with a need for new housing as the family is in dire straits there at this point in time.
- Please pray for calm and peace for Sister Theresa Bogard who is going through a lot right now. She reports that the prayers for her sisters are working. One sister has had new medical work managed and they are set to fix a series of health issues as a result of stepping into an unseen hole that messed her foot and leg up badly. Please continue to pray for them both, for healing, pain relief, and financial security.
- We are ever watchful in regard to the weather, especially after the number of tornadoes and thunderstorms recently, the unrest, and the virus and response to that virus. Let us continue to pray for calm skies and seas, calm voices and spirits, and also healthy outcomes for those who are affected.
- Continue to pray for my family as some of us go through some relatively serious health concerns.
- Be thankful for each day we live as we do not know what tomorrow brings.
- Pray for all of our outreach ministries with Pastor Stephen Okoth, Pastor Robert Nganwa, Pastor Simon Peter Javaji, Rev. Lisa Tyler, and all the others who have joined us.
- Pray for our nations that the voice of God be heard through the Spirit.
- Pray for our friends and families that their tomorrows bring blessings and pray our own be the same.
- Pray for those suffering as a result of the terrors that have occurred just this past week around this world.
- Pray for our sick and wounded that they may heal.
- Pray that truth is revealed where falsehoods have been shared around this world.
Prayer: Father in heaven, this is our prayer for today. We bring our sick and wounded up in prayer, including Elder Cal Jennings and several family members and friends. We pray for those lost in a submarine off the coast of Nigeria. We pray for those who were caught in the major storm system yesterday through several states in the U.S. We pray for answers to the many mysteries in our collective health issues and money issues. We pray for our poor and desolate, our brothers and sisters who have been brought devastation due to the terrors around this world and all of the natural disasters, storms, and so forth this past week. We pray for those in our outreach ministries that their reach gains momentum and their needs are met. For each of these we pray in Your Holy Name, through our Savior Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Amen and so it shall be.
Opening Song: Seal ~ People Get Ready https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLQ2joJ_BrI
Sermon: We are continuing our exploration into the Scroll of Jude. There is a lot packed into the twenty-five verses of this epistle. Today we will explore the next three of those verses and the links across Scripture with those. Let’s begin here:
Jude 4 KJV – For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
This verse should remind you of our voyage into discernment between good and evil and the many disguises evil and wickedness could utilize at every turn. What does it mean to be ordained to condemnation? It means that God can see through any disguise evil might manage. God can, because He is Omniscient, sees, hears, and knows all. Jesus, being God’s offer of Salvation, could also see truth where others were blind. He proved that to everyone that ever joined Him in the earthly life He pursued. He warned many times to be aware and wary. This fact is shared by the Apostle Peter.
2 Peter 2:1 KJV – But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
Yet another method to prove how important it would be to practice discernment. Evil can hide anywhere, in anything or anyone. Evil can disguise itself so well too many people fall into the abyss of lies, torment, and falsehood. That’s why we have prayers of forgiveness, petitions for help in our understanding and our need to learn discernment and the ability to share the one thing that is always ever present, Unconditional Love. Paul shares a question that I’m sure many of us have asked over the years.
Romans 9:22 KJV – What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
What did Paul ask? God, why are You so patient with this world filled with evil and wickedness? Simple answer. We all are given the one thing nobody realizes, “free will”. The reason we were given this gift has to do with God’s need to show us how to recognize when our free will has taken us down the wrong path and give us the ability to get away from that proverbial wrong turn in the middle of nowhere. This is what Scripture says if we stay lost in that wilderness.
Revelation 20:13 KJV – And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
Doesn’t matter how rich, or how poor, strong, or weak, we might be, every human will be judged on the day of Final Resurrection. Now, Jude has a lot to say, but one of those whom he knew as well as Jesus also had grown up with our Savior and the Apostles. His name was Titus, son to Paul. This is what Titus has to share.
Titus 1:15-16 KJV – Unto the pure all things are pure: but
unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind
and conscience is defiled.
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable,
and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.
There’s something of importance to recognize in the words Titus shares. People may say that they know God, but the things they do would bely the opposite. This happens every day, no matter how pure the innocence may be portrayed by mankind, anywhere on this earth. If we were all perfectly innocent in all ways, there would be no reason for God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Trinity, we are driven to understand our weaknesses and find ways to strengthen them. This is what Judah shares in this next verse.
Jude 5 KJV – 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.
Humanity as a whole is a very forgetful entity. Many times that is a bad thing. This is why there is so much repetition in Scripture and life. We all have had that proverbial fork in the road where we couldn’t decide what we needed to do. When we forget our mission in this world and what we need to do to achieve that mission, we are much like these next verses portray.
Psalm 73:9 KJV – They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth.
1 Corinthians 10:5 KJV – But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Numbers 14:29 KJV – Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward which have murmured against me.
Numbers 14:37 KJV – Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by the plague before the Lord.
Hebrews 3:16-17 KJV – For
some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt
by Moses.
But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned,
whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
We must make the effort to become godlier. We must be patient in order to achieve that state of being. It’s no simple path to take, but then it would be boring if it were that kind of simple. We have to explore life and the many paths that can be created each day we live. When the end times come, we have to be ready, whether that happens tonight, tomorrow, a year from now, or a millennia might pass, all of us should be prepared, heart, mind, spirit, and soul. Not just humans, but everyone. This is as shared by Judah here.
Jude 6 KJV – 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.
Every person, all the angels, all of us will be, one day, on the same playing field. This is why we have to work so hard in understanding discernment, and unconditional love. We have to practice what we preach. We have to practice at being truly Christian, in our minds, our hearts, our bodies, spirits, and souls. Until we can do that, we’ll have this memory of our Savior Jesus Christ echoing in our ears.
John 8:44 KJV – Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Even the angels face judgement. If you have forgotten, this is the reason Satan is in the bowels of the earth, hell is what he calls home, this after being condemned by our Heavenly Father as Peter shares here.
2 Peter 2:4 KJV – For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
Our last verse is one from John the Beloved’s Revelation. This verse describes what Armageddon will be like to experience ourselves one day. Watching this angel perform its duty to our Heavenly Father must have been shocking. Put yourself in John’s place. How would you feel if you were to see evil released to that magnitude?
Revelation 20:1 KJV – And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
The very thought of watching the worst of the worst released upon this earth would, and should, make us want to find the true path toward God’s Unconditional Love and Eternal Life. Now that’s something to think about as we pray in the prayer that Jesus taught us saying:
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
(Matthew 6:9-13)
Closing Song: Lauren Daigle ~ Rescue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYR0xP1j4PY
~ Shalom ~
Rev. Laura A. Neff
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Elder Calvin Jennings
Covenant of Hope Ministries Main Site: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Scripture Excerpts: The New Open Bible Study Edition: Copyright © 1990: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright © 1982: E. E. Gaddy and Associates, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright ©circa 1890-1910: International Bible Press, The John C. Winston Co.; Philadelphia, PA, USA
Sermon or Study Copyright © 2021 http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Our mission for Covenant of Hope Ministries is not to exploit fear, but to conquer it, and overcome all that is created through fear together as the bringers of the light of Jesus found in the midst of darkness.
