Jude’s been warning about false teachers and describing how to recognize them. Here is his summary – and the turn toward a hope-filled ending to a letter that has been pretty sobering so far.
14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 16 These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others with empty words[1] for their own advantage.[2]
We are getting to a summary: notice Jude’s reference again to both words and acts that characterize false teachers.
17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
So, we have been in the “last times” for 2,000 years, and all this time we have had to resist being divided in the church by those in the church whose words and action do not reflect the indwelling and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in the object of your most holy faith[3] and praying in the Holy Spirit,21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
Here’s the turn: after a letter filled with dire warning about the disease in their midst, Jude offers the cure.
· We use different, holy words - truth that build on the foundation of Jesus.
· We follow different, holy paths - righteousness that unite us.
· We have a different, holy hope – the mercy of Christ stretching into eternity
How to keep yourself in God’s love.
In this passage, Jude is not telling the believers that they have to keep themselves saved. He begins and ends this letter with a reminder that God is our keeper:
“Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus the Christ, and brother of James, To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus the Christ.” (Jude 1:1)[4]
“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…” (Jude 1:24)
A translator named Wuest translates verse 21 a follows: "With watchful care keep yourselves within the sphere of God's love." In other words, Jude seems to be saying, "keep yourself in the place where you experience in this life the blessing that God's love brings." I’ve talked before about we invest sweat equity so that we experience the fullness of life in the Kingdom. I think this is the idea here. William MacDonald writes,
"The love of God can be compared to sunshine. The sun is always shining. But when something comes between us and the sun, we are no longer in the sunshine." [5]
It’s as if we have our own cloud generating machine. Calvin is famous for saying that the human heart is a “perpetual idol factory.” Maybe we leave perpetual chem trails too. The sun won’t stop shining, but we can put something between us and it’s warmth and light. If you have ever flown when it’s cloudy, it’s the difference between life under the cloud cover vs. breaking into the sunlight that was always there.
So, how do we experience the fullness of blessings in the sphere of the warmth of the love of God? How do we stay in the sunlight of the Son? We walk in obedience to His revealed will. The writers of Scripture tell us this over and over again.
“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” 1 John 5:3
"If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” (John 14:15)
"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me… and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." (John 14:21)
"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15:10)
When we remain obedient, we not only demonstrate our love for God, we abide in the love of God. We live in the love of God, and God discloses or reveals himself to us. I don’t think this means the kind of revelation Paul had on the road to Damascus, because Paul was not living in obedience to God. I think it means we begin to understand the heart of God when we order our lives in alignment with the heart of God.
My wife and I didn’t understand the joy of tithing until we started to tithe. It was counterintuitive to think that giving away money that was already tight was going to feel like abundant life, and yet it does. Now we understand more why God loves generosity, and why he wants His children to be generous.
“Do not forsake gathering together.” The more I have watched and experienced that in this church both in person and virtually, the more I understand why it’s so important to God for His children to do life together even when it’s really hard. When honesty, transparency, truth, boldness, love, grace, repentance, forgiveness, humility, and service all “click”, it brings tears to my eyes. I remember how Ted would tear up when talk about how much he loved the church. I thought at the time, “I mean, I love the church and all, but you are really emotional.” Now I get it. God is disclosing his heart to me through obedience.
Jesus said the following in Matthew 5: 44-48 - “Love your enemies. Pray for those who torment you and persecute you— in so doing, you become children of your Father in heaven. He, after all, loves each of us—good and evil, kind and cruel. He causes the sun to rise and shine on evil and good alike. He causes the rain to water the fields of the righteous and the fields of the sinner. It is easy to love those who love you—even a tax collector can love those who love him. And it is easy to greet your friends—even outsiders do that! But you are called to something higher…” What happens if I do that???? God discloses Himself to me. I begin to understand his heart for the fallen, broken people for whom He gave his life.
Obedience clears the cloud cover so we live in the full warmth and light of the “sunshine” of His love.
1. Build your foundation in/on the object of your faith. I’m not going to go into detail on this point this morning. We spent 8 weeks last fall going through our statement of faith, which began by focusing on the object of our faith: the triune God –Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I encourage you to revisit that.
I will note this: Jude is pointing us toward the object of our faith, not our feelings of faith. We often hear conversation about how strong our faith is, or how to build our faith, and it’s often us-centered. By that, I mean it focuses on how we can alter ourselves to have more faith. Jude is pointing us toward the object of our faith. If I am understanding his point correctly, strong faith follows from appreciating the strength of the One in whom we have put our faith.
I was working on a house this week with someone else’s ladder. I’ll be honest - I wasn’t sure about this ladder. It was really light-weight, and well traveled. Plus, when I leaned it against the house, I was on a hill, so one side of the top didn’t even touch the house when I started up. My faith was not strong. The good news – it was fine. However, trying to “drum up” faith in that ladder would have been a little foolish. It just wasn’t the kind of ladder that deserved too much faith. However, I’ve used ladders I could barely move because they were built so solidly. I put them on level ground. My faith was strong. My anxiety was low. It’s a whole different experience.
This is why, when we struggle of feel spiritually faint, we always look to Jesus. The more we see Him for who He is, the more our faith grows.
2. Pray with the help of the Holy Spirit. The false teachers “follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit,” which suggests to me a contrast in the next paragraph: Don’t be like that. Pray with and for holy instincts guided by the Holy Spirit. (By the way, this language in Jude is different from other places where the Bible mentions praying in a prayer language. Think of Jude’s discussion here as being about prayer as a fruit of the Spirit rather than a gift of the Spirit. Two different discussions).
“Only inasmuch as you know that God is your Father can you pray with intimacy rather than with religious ritual. Part of what it means to pray in the Spirit, therefore, is to pray with the help of the Holy Spirit who is constantly reminding you of your position as heir of God. You’re God’s child and, as such, you’re a co-heir with Christ. You can pray with the power of a child of God to a perfect Father.” – Alan Wright
“To pray in the Spirit, walk in the Spirit, and worship in the Spirit (‘in Spirit and in truth,’ John 4:24) is to come before the Lord according to His appointed means—that is through the One whom the Spirit magnifies, the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 8:26-27), depending on His revealed Word and pleading as a lesser creature to our glorious Creator.” (Michael Milton, “What Is Praying In The Spirit?” christianity.com)
“By a principle of grace derived from him, and by his enlightening, quickening, sanctifying, and comforting influences, showing you what blessings you may and ought to pray for, inspiring you with sincere and fervent desires after those blessings, and enabling you to offer these desires to God in faith, with gratitude for the blessings which you have already received.” – Benson Commentary
“‘Praying in the Holy Ghost’-that is to say, prayer which is not mere utterance of my own petulant desires which a great deal of our ‘ prayer’ is, but which is breathed into us by that Divine Spirit that will brood over our chaos, and bring order out of confusion, and light and beauty out of darkness, and weltering sea.” – MacLaren’s Expositions
It’s prayer…
· confident in my identity as a child approaching a perfect Father
· focused on Jesus
· inspired to pray for what God desires rather than what I want
· remembering that the one whose Spirit moved over the chaos of Genesis 1 will move over the chaos of this world and bring light, beauty and life.
3. Wait/look for the fulfillment of the mercy of Jesus Christ. This is a future of eternal life, not eternal death.
· "And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son."– 1 John 5:11
· " He who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."– John 5:24
· “We rest in this hope we’ve been given—the hope that we will live forever with our God—the hope that He proclaimed ages and ages ago (even before time began).” Titus 1:1-2
Keep yourself in God’s love – clear the cloud cover so that you can live in the unwavering light and warmth of God’s love, mercy and salvation.
Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Pray in tune with the heart of God, and walk in the path of righteousness revealed in
Scripture with the help of the inspiration and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.
Never forget the New Heaven and Earth that awaits those who are covered in His mercy.
THREE QUESTIONS
So, God keeps us in His love even as we keep ourselves in God’s love. Hmmm. It seems like we could become overly passive or overly driven if we embrace one side without the other. Talk about living in this tension.
The idea that obedience keeps us in the love of God can sound like legalism. How do we offer obedience as an act of loving worship without being caught up in thinking we are earning God’s love or salvation? .
In a practical sense, how might “praying in the Spirit” as described here change how you approach prayer? If you are already taking this approach, how have you noticed it reorienting your life or your walk with God?
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[1] This parallels a passage in 2 Peter: “For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness…” (2:18).”
[2] Like the false teachers in the Corinthian church who called themselves “super-apostles” and were just ridiculously full of themselves (2 Corinthians 11:5; 12:11; 3:1; 10:13-18; 11:12,18; 4:5; 5:12; 11:20).
[3] “Both the adjective and the verb show that πίστις is here meant not in a subjective (the demeanour of faith…) but in an objective sense (… “appropriated by them indeed as their personal possession, yet according to its contents…” - Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
[4] " Holy Father, keep them in Your name...” (John 17:11)
[5] Thanks to David Curtis, at bereanbiblechurch.org, for a helpful article.