Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] This is Jude. This is God's word. And it is eternally true, Jude. A bond, servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to those who are the called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.
[00:00:16] May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you, beloved. While I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you, appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
[00:00:34] For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. Ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:00:50] Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things, once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe and angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode. He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah in the cities around them, since they, in the same way as these, indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
[00:01:29] Yet in the same way, these men also, by dreaming, defile the flesh and reject authority and revile angelic majesties.
[00:01:39] But Michael the Archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, the Lord, rebuke you.
[00:01:51] But these men revile the things which they do not understand and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals. By these things they are destroyed.
[00:02:01] Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
[00:02:12] These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love. Feasts, when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.
[00:02:38] It was about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way. And of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.
[00:03:02] These are grumblers finding fault, following after their own lusts. They speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.
[00:03:11] But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ that they were saying to you in the last time. There will be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts.
[00:03:27] These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly minded, devoid of the Spirit.
[00:03:33] But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
[00:03:49] And have mercy on some who are doubting, save others, snatching them out of the fire.
[00:03:55] And on some, have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
[00:04:02] Now, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless, with great joy to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.
[00:04:21] Amen.
[00:04:22] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:04:24] Would you please be seated?
[00:04:29] So Jude says in verse one. We're going to look closely at verses 17 through 25, the end of this letter. But it's helpful to point out a couple of things earlier in the letter as we get there.
[00:04:43] Jude in verse one says that he is writing to the called the elect, God's chosen people.
[00:04:51] This is a general epistle in the New Testament, meaning it's not explicitly written to a person or a church, but is written generally to God's people.
[00:05:06] Now all of Scripture is given to God's people for our good. Even 2000 years after this book was written and the New Testament was written, it's written to us. We know that. But some we have to do a little more work to understand who the people were that it was being written to and make sure we, you know, figure that out before we jump to it. Applying to us, this, I think, is one of those easier things, easier parts of Scripture where it's written generally to God's people and we don't have to do a lot of work to hear it as written to us as well as with most of the New Testament epistles.
[00:05:45] Jude doesn't keep it a secret why he's writing. So it's general in the sense of who he's writing to. He's writing to the church, broadly speaking, but it's not general and vague in why he's writing.
[00:06:00] Jude is not passive aggressive in the way he writes to These brothers. He doesn't say, you know, hey, I just kind of wanted to encourage you guys and maybe see how I could pray for you. You care about you and stuff. Well, he's got in the back of his mind, gee, these Christians are really struggling and they need to be admonished.
[00:06:20] No, he comes right out and says that he felt the necessity to write to these believers, appealing that they contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints.
[00:06:34] He says that they should contend with earnestly for the faith.
[00:06:40] First of all, I want to ask you, do you think of the Christian faith as something that needs to be contended earnestly for?
[00:06:52] The book of Jude is not unique in exhorting Christians to contend earnestly or to fight for the truth.
[00:07:01] It would be nice if we could look at Jude and say, man, that was tough for those Christians back then who had to fight for their faith.
[00:07:08] Glad everything is easier now.
[00:07:11] But Jude is not unique in the New Testament. The entire New Testament speaks of fighting, contending and striving for our faith. It speaks of being at enmity with our sinful flesh, with the world, and with the devil himself.
[00:07:26] The Christian life is a fight of faith.
[00:07:31] And this is why Jude says and feels compelled to write to the church to say, contend earnestly for the faith.
[00:07:41] And looking at why the New Testament Christians had to contend earnestly will help us understand why we might have to contend earnestly as well.
[00:07:51] Why did these Christians whom Jude was writing to need to contend earnestly?
[00:07:57] Well, in verse four, he says that certain persons have crept in unnoticed.
[00:08:05] And who are these persons who have crept in unnoticed?
[00:08:10] He identifies them as those who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:08:23] I want you to notice a couple of things here.
[00:08:26] For one, notice that ungodly men and women creep in amongst the people of God.
[00:08:34] This is a common state of affairs in the church.
[00:08:38] We should not be surprised when this is the case.
[00:08:42] It's helpful for us to be reminded of this that the ungodly creep in for a couple of reasons. One, it should teach us to always examine ourselves.
[00:08:54] Second Corinthians 13, verse 5 says, Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith.
[00:09:00] Examine yourselves.
[00:09:03] But also it should teach us that we should always be examining one another.
[00:09:09] Hebrews 3:12 says, Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
[00:09:23] Now we might ask, how do people who deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ creep in unnoticed.
[00:09:33] Those things seem pretty, pretty opposed to each other, right? That someone could deny the Lord and Master and be unnoticed in the Church and among the people of God.
[00:09:45] Well, their denial of Christ is not open.
[00:09:49] These are people who turn the grace of God into licentiousness.
[00:09:57] Anybody know what licentiousness means?
[00:10:02] Licentiousness. There's a word in there.
[00:10:06] You know the word license.
[00:10:08] What does having a driver's license mean you can do?
[00:10:15] I know that's a really hard question.
[00:10:18] Drive. And a license is freedom, right? A license means freedom.
[00:10:23] You can do what you want, whatever you want when you have a car, right? Well, that's a temptation to think when you first get your license is, I'm free, I can do anything I want.
[00:10:34] And we can approach the freedom we have in Christ the same way. Now, you should know that's not true about driving. Having a license doesn't mean you just get to do whatever you want. It means you get to follow some very helpful rules that give you a lot of freedom in life.
[00:10:51] And this is the same with following Christ and obeying him is we have real freedom from the condemnation of sin and the condemnation of the law in Christ. And it's a real temptation to take that and turn it into license. Not just to live a life of liberty and joy in Christ, but license to do whatever we want.
[00:11:12] That is licentiousness. When we say, oh, God is gracious and forgiving, that means it does not matter what I can do. I can do whatever feels good.
[00:11:22] That is licentiousness.
[00:11:26] These people that Jude is writing about lay claim to the grace of God, speak much of the grace of God, but they twist its purpose.
[00:11:34] They proudly say that they are recipients of God's grace in Jesus Christ and pay lip service to the Lord, but they fail to unite that grace, God's favor with true faith in their hearts and with obedience to Christ's commandments.
[00:11:50] In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul says it's even possible to proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives. That's Philippians 1:17.
[00:12:03] In other words, it's possible to even preach true doctrine from impure motives.
[00:12:12] This means we cannot simply judge the preachers we listen to on the basis of the purity of their doctrine.
[00:12:20] Jesus teaches us that we shall know them by their fruits.
[00:12:25] He's talking about false teachers and prophets. And this should be a warning to us as well, that we'd not be content us personally, not be content with simply holding to the purity of biblical reformed doctrine.
[00:12:38] Good doctrine is essential to our life as Christians, but so are sincere faith and godly living.
[00:12:48] These ones that Jude writes about creeping in unnoticed are those who speak much of the grace of God but twist its purpose.
[00:12:56] Also notice exactly who it is they're denying.
[00:13:00] They deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:13:05] What is wrapped up in those terms? Master and Lord? The authority and power of Jesus Christ.
[00:13:13] The essence of these impostors denial is that they refuse to submit to the authority and dominion of Jesus Christ.
[00:13:21] Again, this emphasizes the unwillingness of these individuals to live according to Christ's commandments.
[00:13:30] So certain persons have crept in unnoticed. And the New Testament makes it clear that this was the case when Scripture was written, and it will always be the case until the revealing of Christ Jesus.
[00:13:44] But why does God allow this mixture in the people of God?
[00:13:51] Why would he allow there to be impostors among his people?
[00:13:59] Well, I think there are two reasons, at least we can think of, scripturally speaking, why God would allow a mixture of the true and the false among his people. Reason number one. This might sound weird. I'll explain what I mean. But reason number one is for your protection.
[00:14:14] Reason number two is for your growth in holiness.
[00:14:20] So reason number one, God allows a mixture among his people for your protection.
[00:14:25] Many in the Church, many of those whom God has called out of the world are tottering on the edge of doubt and even destruction.
[00:14:37] Now, that may sound unreformed, but it's not. It's how Scripture talks about the state of some, even in the Church.
[00:14:45] We shouldn't look around at each other and think, well, he could never make shipwreck of his faith.
[00:14:52] We must keep each other diligently in the love of God.
[00:14:56] Brothers around you and sisters around you right now are doubting.
[00:15:04] Brothers and sisters around you in this room are falling into sin and temptation.
[00:15:15] Many in our midst are weak.
[00:15:19] And it is not God's desire that any of his precious lambs would perish.
[00:15:26] In order for these doubting and endangered ones to be saved, it's important that some unfaithful be tolerated in our midst for a time.
[00:15:36] In the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who planted good seed in his field.
[00:15:44] But an enemy comes and sows tares.
[00:15:47] T A R E S It was a false wheat, a weed that looked a lot like wheat.
[00:15:56] An enemy comes and sows tares, false wheat among the good true wheat.
[00:16:02] And when the slaves of the landowner ask if they should go and do Some weeding and tear out all the tares.
[00:16:08] The landowner says not to, lest the good wheat should be torn out along with the false wheat.
[00:16:17] I love roses, and I planted a couple of rose bushes by our mailbox, and once spring hit, the roses started coming out. But there's also all these little weedy grasses, you know, in, up, underneath, and I haven't torn most of them out because I'm afraid if I start just digging around under my roses that I'll damage my rose bush.
[00:16:42] God is willing to tolerate false children among his people as long as the work of saving his true children is going on.
[00:16:54] Now, there are ways that God exposes His false children in the church as we go along. Don't hear me saying that God just doesn't care about false sons among his people.
[00:17:09] But we have to make sure that we are patient in the ways that God has called us, to be patient and understand, okay? If God has seen fit to allow this mixture for now, it must be for our good. And it's clear in Scripture that God is waiting to do all of the winnowing and the dividing for a time, and we can trust him in that.
[00:17:30] And it actually is for our good and our protection that not everybody's just being torn up out from among the people of God. Lest those who are truly his sons and are weak be torn out along with the false ones.
[00:17:44] In Second Peter, the Apostle Peter is writing to Christians to encourage them as they wait for God to bring about judgment. They're suffering and they think God is taking too long.
[00:17:56] So Peter writes in second Peter 3. 9. He says, the Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, meaning how we count slowness. We wish it would all just be solved right now.
[00:18:10] But the Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
[00:18:22] It's for your good and for the good of God's lost sheep that he allows this mixture of his people to continue.
[00:18:35] But there's more to suffering, this state of affairs, than just that. God is making sure all his chosen ones get saved. That's part of it. But God also grants you this affliction of suffering, this mixture of the people of God, and even having false sons around us of the kingdom.
[00:18:54] He grants you this affliction for your own growth in holiness.
[00:19:00] The suffering of one of God's children is never in vain.
[00:19:05] God accomplishes work through your suffering.
[00:19:09] That includes even the suffering of the pain of the loss of those within the Church, the pain of those falling away, the pain of fighting your own doubts and fears and temptations that come along with those afflictions of false sons being made evident in the Church.
[00:19:27] God works through all of these things to grow you in holiness.
[00:19:33] Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to grow in holiness? It means to be conformed or molded into the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:19:42] The life of one of God's children is a life of being shaped into a vessel for God's glory, completely devoted to making his name great and just. As a son grows into maturity and brings glory to his Father, so God's children grow into maturity in order to bring glory to him.
[00:20:03] God's desire is to make you like His Son, Jesus Christ.
[00:20:08] And the process of that necessarily involves suffering like Jesus.
[00:20:14] There's no being like Christ without suffering with him.
[00:20:19] Romans 8 says, the Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs, also heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
[00:20:37] In Philippians 1, the apostle Paul says, for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.
[00:20:50] It's a gift to you to suffer for Christ's sake.
[00:20:55] It has been granted to you to suffer for Him.
[00:21:00] Now we're all okay with being granted the inheritance of Christ and being granted his standing as children of God, and being granted the many blessings of fellowship with Christ.
[00:21:13] But it's easy to forget that Scripture speaks of the suffering of a Christian as a gift from God.
[00:21:20] And it's a gift for one big reason.
[00:21:24] God grants us suffering that we ourselves might actually grow in our union with Christ.
[00:21:30] To be united with Christ is to be one with him, not just in all the pleasant things, but in his suffering as well.
[00:21:39] In fact, great assurance and joy comes from suffering with and for Jesus Christ.
[00:21:45] Suffering for him serves to prove that we belong to Him.
[00:21:51] When you are hated for Christ's sake, I hope many of you have experienced this. When you get to experience some specific, like someone actually hating you because you are a Christian or because you've sought to obey Christ, you can breathe a great sigh of relief because the Beatitudes actually apply to you. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. This is Jesus speaking.
[00:22:19] Rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great.
[00:22:24] For in the Same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
[00:22:28] When we get to suffer shame for the name of Jesus Christ, we get to go, yes, I actually do have treasure in heaven, it's true, because I'm suffering for him.
[00:22:41] This is a great assurance to us in our life.
[00:22:46] It's God's desire to conform you to the image of his true Son. And part of that is being conformed to his suffering.
[00:22:54] And this applies to the particular suffering we've been talking about in Jude.
[00:23:01] Those creeping in among the faithful and seeking after their own ungodly lusts.
[00:23:07] This isn't mainly a physical suffering like sickness or death.
[00:23:14] And it's not exactly persecution either, at least not at first. It's a uniquely miserable suffering to find out that someone has been using the name of Christ for selfish gain.
[00:23:29] It makes you feel sick when a man uses his position in the Church for the sake of satisfying his own lusts.
[00:23:38] And it's a great stumbling block and a shame before the world.
[00:23:43] It may even make you wonder if it wouldn't be better to avoid associating with the Church at all when things happen like another leader falling from the heights of his high position, someone who taught faithfully but it turns out, was living according to his lusts.
[00:24:01] Well, this exact kind of shame is an affliction that Jesus himself experienced.
[00:24:10] Jesus knows intimately the betrayal of one of his closest disciples, one who was overcome by greed and selfish ambition, one who had crept into in unnoticed.
[00:24:23] And Jesus understands, actually better than we ever will what it means to have friends or family be ashamed of you.
[00:24:31] After all, he was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. His own countrymen, who were supposed to love and receive him as their king, decided to put him to death instead.
[00:24:44] As you undergo suffering in the name of Christ, as you bear reproach and shame for his name's sake, even the world pointing at those who fall into their lusts and saying, look, it's all false.
[00:24:57] How could it be true if there are people like that in the Church, Even as you suffer that and bear the pain and shame of false disciples within the people of God, there's work being done in you by God to make you more like Christ, to experience more of what he experienced in his suffering, God through that is molding you into Christ's image. And for a very good reason.
[00:25:23] And it's a reason that comes at the end of Jude, as we read, so that you might stand in God's presence, in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy.
[00:25:36] We'll get to that in a minute.
[00:25:41] What are we to do here and now in light of these things, in light of the fact that there are false teachers, false sons within the church?
[00:25:52] Well, let's look at verse 20.
[00:26:00] So we're reminded up in verse 18.
[00:26:03] The apostles kept saying, kept speaking to the people in the last time. There will be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts.
[00:26:12] These are the ones who cause divisions. Worldly minded, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith.
[00:26:26] Now on this, I just want to point out the plural nature of this command.
[00:26:31] Building yourselves up on your most holy faith is a command given to the church.
[00:26:38] Now it is given to us as individuals. But this isn't mainly about you just doing this all by yourself. This is a command to the church that we together are to build ourselves up in our most holy faith.
[00:26:51] We are responsible for building one another up.
[00:26:56] We must be testifying to one another continually about God's faithfulness and reminding one another daily of what Scripture teaches and of what we believe.
[00:27:08] This is a letter of reminder. At the beginning, Jude said, you know, you know all these things once and for all, but I need to remind you again. And this is how we are. We're slow, we're forgetful, and we all need to remind each other of what is true. Over and over and over again, we must be calling one another, continually telling each other where to put our faith in God, in His word, in Christ's righteousness, in Christ's death on our behalf. And not in money, not in worldly influence, not in pleasure, not in our own strength.
[00:27:47] You need to be reminded of these things. So does your brother.
[00:27:51] We need to be speaking truth to one another in building each other up and our most holy faith in God.
[00:28:02] Central to this work is what Jude says next, praying in the Holy Spirit.
[00:28:09] Standing firm in the faith is impossible apart from diligently giving ourselves to prayer in the Holy Spirit.
[00:28:18] If you do not pray, you will fall away.
[00:28:25] If God is the one who is able to make you stand, then to God you must go.
[00:28:32] You must abide in him through prayer.
[00:28:38] You have brothers and sisters here in this room who are doubting and faced with real temptation to give themselves over to sin.
[00:28:46] You may not know exactly who they are, but you can still pray for them.
[00:28:51] Or you may know who they are. Pray for them by name and pray with them.
[00:28:57] If you are doubting or tempted, ask for prayer from your brothers and your sisters.
[00:29:03] We need the Holy Spirit, and we have access to him, most especially in Prayer.
[00:29:15] Keep yourselves in the love of God.
[00:29:22] How do we do that?
[00:29:24] Well, for one, we must pray. Notice that comes right on the heels of praying. It is through prayer that we abide in the love of God.
[00:29:34] But it also happens in how we speak and what we tell ourselves. We must remind ourselves of God's love for us in Christ.
[00:29:42] If we lose sight of this, we lose sight of all strength and motivation for honoring God and for turning away from sin.
[00:29:50] The knowledge of the love of God is a strong antidote to a desire to be loved by the world.
[00:29:57] We must remind ourselves and we must remind one another of God's love for us in Christ.
[00:30:02] God's love is the root and grounding of our most holy faith.
[00:30:07] That God has shown his favor to us, which gives us great confidence.
[00:30:12] We must keep ourselves in the love of God.
[00:30:18] Finally, Jude says, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
[00:30:26] Wait anxiously for the mercy of the Lord.
[00:30:29] That's an interesting statement.
[00:30:31] Haven't we already received the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ?
[00:30:37] Isn't that the point of being a Christian is that we have already received the mercy of God? What does it mean to wait for the Lord's mercy?
[00:30:48] Well, the Christian life is marked by waiting, by looking ahead to something with expectation and hope.
[00:30:55] We're living in a tense time between the accomplishing of our salvation by Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of that salvation at the revelation of Jesus Christ when he returns again.
[00:31:09] The Christian is someone who is constantly looking back to Christ and looking forward to Christ's return.
[00:31:18] And when he comes again, unlike the first time he came, he is coming to judge.
[00:31:25] And the coming judgment is one of the main themes of this whole book. Of this letter, I should say of Jude and the fact that a Christian is supposed to look forward to Judgment Day is one of the central themes of the entire New Testament.
[00:31:41] We often talk about what Christ has done for us. We talk much about how our faith is in the finished work of Jesus Christ. We talk about living a cross centered life and about how we need to preach the gospel to ourselves, by which we mean reminding ourselves of how Christ has saved us.
[00:31:57] And those are all essential things. But being a Christian is about more than just looking backward. Being a Christian is also about looking forward with hope and expectation to what God is going to do in the future.
[00:32:12] And what exactly is it that we're looking forward to?
[00:32:16] Judgment Day.
[00:32:18] Now we usually think of Judgment Day as a fearful thing to look forward to, and it certainly is.
[00:32:27] But a Christian has hope that Judgment Day will also be Mercy Day.
[00:32:37] God is a merciful judge, and he will judge rightly on Judgment Day between those whose condemnation is just and those who have his mercy.
[00:32:52] One of the reasons the Christian looks forward to Judgment Day, which pertains to what Jude has said, is that Judgment Day is the day on which, as Jesus says in Matthew 13, the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous.
[00:33:10] This is a constant encouragement held out to us by Jesus and his apostles in Scripture, that on Judgment Day, all things will finally be made clear.
[00:33:21] The whole world will see perfectly.
[00:33:25] These are the ones who truly belong to Christ, those who will be shown mercy. And these are the ones who honor him with their lips, but whose hearts are far from him, those whose condemnation is just, who are those who will be condemned, according to Jude? It's those who are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts. They speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.
[00:33:57] This isn't just talking about people out there in the world, but about those within the number of the church.
[00:34:05] This is not unusual, these things in the church, grumbling, finding fault, following after their own lusts. There is no perfect church that is free from these things and from those who give themselves to these things.
[00:34:23] When you find this in your church, don't be surprised or overwhelmed by discouragement.
[00:34:31] It is proper to be discouraged when these things rear their ugly head in the church.
[00:34:37] Lusts grumbling, fault finding.
[00:34:41] We should be discouraged, but we should not be surprised or overwhelmed by discouragement.
[00:34:47] We should fight the desire to want to quit when sin rears its ugly head in the church.
[00:34:53] The apostles spoke of this frequently in their writings to true churches of God.
[00:34:59] It always helps me to think of the New Testament letters and think, okay, these were churches the apostles planted.
[00:35:07] The apostles are saying to them, you are the church of God. And then you see the sins of the people in Corinth, Galatia, and it's a mess.
[00:35:19] It's not unusual.
[00:35:22] It's the normal state of affairs. When there is sin in and among us, we should not be surprised or caught off guard.
[00:35:33] But just because it's common and to be expected does not mean it is something that is easy to bear.
[00:35:38] It's something that causes us to groan, rightly so, and to anxiously wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.
[00:35:49] Use the appearance of sin in your own heart and in the church to look ahead again to Christ and His coming, when all things will be made clear.
[00:36:00] There is a mixture amongst the people of God, of the false and the true. That leads to Jude's other exhortations which relate to helping one another to stand firm.
[00:36:11] In verse 22, Jude says, have mercy on some who are doubting.
[00:36:17] It's a real temptation when you suffer the loss of brothers and sisters who fall away from the household of faith to become as elders, or as a congregation, or as a friend, hardened and unmerciful toward those who doubt.
[00:36:34] You may be tempted to be like the slaves who say to their master, look, there are tares in the field and we want to go. Tear them up and throw them away.
[00:36:43] And the landowner responds, wait, be careful.
[00:36:47] Have mercy on some who are doubting.
[00:36:50] Far be it from me to sweep away any of the righteous along with the wicked.
[00:36:56] Resist the temptation to become callous, jaded and unmerciful towards those who are weak in faith.
[00:37:06] There are some who are doubting in our midst.
[00:37:10] Have mercy and be tender.
[00:37:17] There are true children of God who are doubting in our midst.
[00:37:25] Save others. Snatching them out of the fire is what Jude goes on to say.
[00:37:31] What I just said about having mercy on the doubting is not a call to be complacent towards each other's sin.
[00:37:38] If one temptation is to treat the doubting harshly and unmercifully, another temptation is to check out and remain complacent about the state of our brothers and sisters souls. You may be tempted to use so called mercy as an excuse for not snatching your stumbling brother out of the flames.
[00:37:58] You know I wouldn't want to hurt my brother. Snatching sounds a little violent, doesn't it?
[00:38:04] I'll just watch as he careens towards destruction and kind of hope and maybe pray that he doesn't get burned.
[00:38:14] Or we may be afraid to help our brother out of fear that we ourselves may get burned if we get too close to him as he is stumbling towards destruction. And go, well, true compassionate mercy for our brother will mean snatching some from out of the flames.
[00:38:31] Proverbs 24 says this. It says, deliver those who are being taken away to death and those who are staggering to slaughter. Oh, hold them back if you say, see, we did not know this.
[00:38:44] Does he consider it who weighs the hearts and does he not know it? Who keeps your soul and will he not render to man according to his work?
[00:38:53] We are our brother's keeper and we're responsible for holding each other back from sin.
[00:39:02] Give your brother a call, plead with your sister, find your brother, track him down. Don't let him drift away into isolation.
[00:39:13] Lastly, Jude says on some, have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
[00:39:21] This is somewhat of a repetition of his first exhortation, right to have mercy on some. But the focus is shifted away from those who are being helped and onto those who are doing the helping.
[00:39:34] As you help your brother caught in sin, you must diligently seek to maintain hatred of his sin.
[00:39:42] It is easy when loving your brother, who is caught in some temptation, to fall in love with his sin yourself.
[00:39:53] It's hard to help your brother with lust without being tempted yourself.
[00:40:01] It's easy when calling your sister out of bitterness, to be infected with that same bitterness.
[00:40:09] It's tempting when taking a close look at your brother's love of money, to start justifying greed in your own heart.
[00:40:19] Galatians 6:1 the apostle Paul writes, brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted.
[00:40:36] Keep watch over yourselves when seeking to save and restore others, have mercy on some with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. Which is to say, have nothing to do with the sin that has entangled your brother, lest you too be entangled, or lest you compromise your own testimony of faith in the Lord, avoid even the appearance of evil.
[00:41:03] Now Jude ends with some very strong encouragement for this work of calling one another to faithfulness and helping each other fight against sin. The final verses of Jude are full of comfort for the work God is calling us to, knowing for certain that judgment is coming, but knowing that we have to wait for it.
[00:41:27] Having just exhorted the people of God to remain faithful, Jude reminds them what the source of their strength is.
[00:41:34] Listen to this from the very end now, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.
[00:41:58] This work is dependent on God.
[00:42:03] He is able.
[00:42:06] He is the one who is able to make you stand.
[00:42:15] You know, I hope, that you are not able to stand in your own strength.
[00:42:23] Well, God knows this too.
[00:42:26] He knows that you don't have it in you to remain faithful, which is why he reminds us that he is able.
[00:42:35] He's able to keep us from stumbling in the midst of trials here and now, and not just here and now. God's end goal is that you would be able to stand in his very presence, not with terror, but with great joy.
[00:42:56] God is getting you ready. Even right now. God is getting you ready to stand in his presence.
[00:43:05] The trials of today are not in vain.
[00:43:08] God isn't in the business of just making you miserable.
[00:43:13] There is an end to your trials. It's that you might be like His Son. And why is it important to be like Jesus?
[00:43:21] Because Jesus is the only one who can stand in the presence of God.
[00:43:27] Only the man who has clean hands and a pure heart may ascend the hill of the Lord.
[00:43:33] And God sent His righteous Son into the world to cleanse your hands and purify your heart so that you too might ascend into heaven and stand in the presence of God's glory with great joy.
[00:43:48] Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ.
