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. 6 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. 7 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. Jude 5–7.
We all forget. We forget birthdays. We forget where we parked. We forget what God did for us last week. That’s why Jude writes, “I want to remind you.” His message is simple: don’t forget to remember.
He gives us three stories. Israel in the wilderness. Angels who walked away. And the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. They all have one thing in common—people stopped trusting God.
Think about Israel. They saw miracles you and I would dream of seeing. God split the sea. He dropped food from the sky. He poured water out of a rock. Over and over again, He proved Himself faithful. And yet when it was time to trust Him with tomorrow, they froze. They forgot.
Sound familiar? God carries you through one crisis, but when the next one hits, you panic. You wonder if He’s still there. That’s what Israel did. And Jude says, Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t forget to remember.
Then Jude talks about angels who abandoned their calling. They had a role. They had a purpose. But they walked away from it. Here’s the lesson: compromise never ends where it begins. When you stop living out what God has entrusted to you, you don’t just drift; you eventually crash.
And then there’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Cities with everything going for them: prosperity, beauty, opportunity. But they gave themselves over to whatever they wanted, and it consumed them. Jude’s warning is clear: if we don’t anchor ourselves in God’s truth, culture will sweep us in the wrong direction every single time.
So what’s the takeaway? Remember. Remember God’s faithfulness. Remember His promises. Remember that rebellion doesn’t start with a big, dramatic sin. It starts with forgetting who God is and doubting His heart.
And here’s the hope: while Israel fell, while angels fell, while Sodom burned, judgment has already fallen at the cross. Jesus absorbed it. All of it. Which means if you’re in Him, you’re safe. Just like pioneers standing on burned ground as the prairie fire rushed past, you stand at the cross where the fire has already been.
Here’s the bottom line: The God who brought you this far will not leave you now. Don’t forget to remember that.