Address—D. Rule
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#208.
In hope, we left our wishful longing eyes waiting to see the Morning Star arise.
How bright, how gladsome will his advent be before the sun shines forth in majesty #208?
Can hopefully.
Let our way.
In eyes.
Waking.
All morning.
*.
Wars.
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Would you turn with me this afternoon to the Epistle?
Of Jude.
Verse one.
Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called.
Mercy unto you, and peace and love.
Be multiplied.
Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you.
And exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith.
Which was once delivered unto the Saints.
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.
Just before this meeting I was speaking to an older brother and he made the remark to me that.
He felt that the way.
Is only going to get steeper and more difficult as we approach the moment. And wonderful moment might be today, but the moment of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ for us.
And I heartily agree with that comment.
And this afternoon, for the next little while, it's on my soul that we look afresh at this little epistle of Jude. Because in all the Word of God, at least in all the New Testament part of the Word of God, I know of no darker picture that's painted than this one.
This little book was taken up recently.
In two days of meetings in Naperville in Illinois. And one of the things that struck my soul in the taking up of it is how bright and encouragement we can find from such a book.
And it's on my heart that our souls might be encouraged as we see such a terribly dark picture painted for us and yet at the same time see tremendous provision and brightness for our souls. Can we say at such a time as this, I believe this is the day in which we are living. I've been struck in dealing with books for most of my adult life and the teaching of brethren of a past century particularly.
To find that of all those writings, the one book that to my soul is taken up most generically is this one. And I believe in part it is because they did not see, practically speaking, the state of the church, the state of the Christian profession on earth in their day, as it can be viewed in this day.
And yet, brethren, it's a tremendous thing to know that God is never taken by surprise, and God has given us something that we can have for ourselves and for the moments that may remain to us until the Lord comes.
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Just like to notice a couple of things in the very beginning that set the stage, if you will, because a very bright picture is presented to us before the darkness is given. And that's in verse one it says.
Sanctified by God the Father and another translation it says Beloved by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ. What a way to start, isn't it?
To think that whatever we might have before us, we can start right out. And God says, I want you to know that you have been set apart by me, and you are beloved by me.
If we don't have that in our souls, can I say we don't have anything that we need? We need to have that sense and God would give it to us that he loves us. Some here know that some of us frequently visit several times a week a detention center and.
One of the things that you learn after a little while that you have to be very careful how you use the word love.
Because some of the people you're talking to don't have much sense of it. You can't say like your mom and dad love you because you have no idea in many cases whether they know who their father or their mother even is, and they may have a sense of having been abandoned.
One young man said recently, my father and my mother, the state of Illinois, that's all he knew as far as those that had authority over the control of his life. You can't speak to a person like that and as it were, use analogies about love.
But here we can, we know we have been brought into the enjoyment of something that we can say beloved by God the Father, to not only have a God that has great power, but he's the Father. He's the one that has a personal relationship with you as his child, at least if you fall into the class of those addressed here in Jude. And it is addressing believers.
And preserved in Jesus Christ. Oh, what a wonderful thing to know that the preservation of my soul for eternity rests with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Does that give comfort and encouragement? It should.
The preservation of your soul.
Rests.
With the Lord Jesus Christ. What a bright beginning that is.
Verse two though, says mercy to you and peace.
And love be vault applied.
Little orders of words can have great significance in the word of God, and I'm struck by the fact that.
Verse two begins with the word mercy.
Not a single other New Testament letter begins its introduction when it talks about grace and mercy and peace with the word mercy, and I believe it's the only New Testament letter that even mentions mercy in this introductory remarks when addressed to more than one person.
When it's addressed to Timothy, for example, it believe it's grace, mercy and peace.
That is, mercy is mentioned in the address, but if you were looking at when the Saints in, say, Corinth were addressed, mercy isn't even mentioned. But brethren, if we have a sense in our souls of what God is saying to us in the book of James, we're going to have a realization that.
That that's the word. We need mercy to begin. We also need peace and love.
Multiplied to our souls. But you and I need to recognize in the condition of things in which the profession exists, we identified with that profession as part of it really have to have a sense in our souls of being in need of mercy.
I want to emphasize that because sometimes God, somebody was asking me the other day, was it ever wrong not to show compassion?
I don't know what answer you would give to that. The answer that I gave was yes. There are times when it's not appropriate to display compassion.
There were seventy years in which Israel was put away, in which.
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They did not have collectively the compassion of God. It's 2000 years nearly since the Jewish people have had low MI written upon them.
And they're not the subject of the compassion of God collectively, although individually. And God in his mercy is always sovereign and able.
The man that said that didn't want to work in Thessalonians. They was told neither shall he eat.
You know, there might be a place when someone says, oh, give me some money, I need this or that, and it might be wisdom to say no.
Sometimes the difficulty in our souls is that we don't realize.
Where we are so we don't recognize our need of the compassion of God, and he may withhold it in some sense that he might waken us up.
So I say right in the beginning of these remarks just in the desire that we might apply them to our own lives and our own souls, collectively and individually.
Lest we miss the benefit that God would have for us because we don't realize, properly speaking, that we need mercy as well as peace and love.
Here he says in verse three, I wanted to write about the common salvation, but.
It's necessary for me to exhort you to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the Saints.
And I believe that if Jude were here this afternoon, that's his message on behalf of God to you, and I would echo it for him, as it were. Brethren, let's earnestly contend for the faith.
Which was once delivered to the Saints.
The difficulty is that certain men have come in unawares into the faith.
And.
The God is announced beforehand the condemnation of such, and in verses which follow He gives us examples of how in the past He's acted.
In situations similar to these.
Because.
These, the condemnation of such, is that they are ungodly persons who have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness and denied our only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Before we look at that a little more, I'd like to just go through a few verses in the New Testament that bring before us what we're talking about when we say the faith. Turn with me back to Acts chapter 6.
This may be the first reference to what we're talking about in the New Testament, at least the 1St that I'm aware of.
In Acts chapter 6, we have that expression, the faith.
Let's see.
Verse seven And the word of God increased in the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly.
And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
The Christian faith we could call it, although in some ways it's broader than that.
But for our purposes this afternoon, we'll look at it particularly as the Christian faith. It's not just the idea that a person has a trust in God that's being looked at here, but it is the collection of beliefs that are commonly held among them. And so he refers to it as the faith. And here were some priests who, as it were, previously had embraced the Jew, the faith connected with Judaism.
And now they identified themselves with that faith that was connected with the Lord Jesus Christ.
As Lord and Savior, and so they were obedient to the faith. We find the expression appears multiple times in the Acts, but we don't have time to look at them. I'm just suggesting to you that sometime you might want to trace it out, but turn with me to just a few places in the epistles where we have the expression, the faith, that we might have a sense of what it is that we are to earnestly contend for.
Because if we don't know what the faith is, then we don't know what we're supposed to hold on to.
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And to contend for, to uphold, turn to Galatians, Chapter 2.
Galatians, chapter 2.
And verse 20.
I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Verse chapter 3.
And.
Verse.
22 is the law of chapter 3, verse 22.
Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.
But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise.
By faith or it can also be translated the faith of Jesus Christ.
Might be given unto them that believe.
I believe we can say that the faith is the faith which has Jesus Christ as its object.
That's the faith, brethren, that we need to contend for, the faith that has the Lord Jesus Christ as the object of it. That's what Paul was saying about his life.
He says I live by the faith, and I'll put it this way, I live by the faith which has the Son of God as its object.
And when you read the last, apparently last epistle that he wrote concerning his own life, he said in the end, in Second Timothy, chapter four, he said, I have kept the faith.
What a testimony.
Would that be a satisfactory testimony for each life in this room?
That we might, as it were, be stand with the apostle Paul and say, I live.
Each day.
In that faith which has the Son of God.
As the object of that day's life.
And all that's connected with it to those we'll see and then have at least can I put it this way, the desire.
That at the end of life, it could be said of us.
Even if we wouldn't be able to say like the apostle Paul could say of himself, but that it could be said.
He has kept, she has kept the faith.
Now turn over to Ephesians chapter 4.
Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 4.
Endeavoring or verse 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling. 1 Lord, 1 Faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all, and in you all.
There's only one faith.
And that's the faith that is to be kept.
There's one body and one spirit.
Which formed by God through the Spirit.
But at the same time, there's only one profession, there's only one Lord.
That is recognized in the word of God, to be followed, to be identified with Christianity. 1 Lord.
One faith, one baptism.
It's not to be as it were made into multiple face of a common God or anything like that, but God himself says there's one Lord and there's one faith and the proper way in which we identify ourselves with it is through the one baptism. Then he says down a little farther on.
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Verse 11 And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.
Till we all come in the unity of the faith.
And of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man.
Unto the measure of the stature of the fullness.
Of Christ.
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, but speaking the truth. And love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head.
Even Christ.
From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
I don't know what the Lord Jesus felt as we read those verses.
But when I read them.
And I see that this is the way.
That he intended the body on Earth to operate.
And when I see how the body on earth operates in truth.
It just makes me want to eat.
Sometimes I say in talking to the Lord, my personal life, and I read something like this, I say I'm sorry, Lord, I'm sorry.
This isn't a description of what you find in Jude.
This is not a description of what you find in practice.
In the profession of Christianity on the earth today, yes. You may find examples of it here and there.
But the Lord Jesus looks at the whole He doesn't isolate a little piece here or a little piece there from his attention.
He sees the hole.
And he cares for it all. And he said, when I ascended up into heaven.
I gave gifts of men for my body, the church.
That it might be built up, that it might be edified, that it might be impractical as well as it is in perfect holy unity, according to my eye, that my children not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men.
But that all might come unto the unity of the faith.
Is that the description that?
Can I say an unbiased reporter would be able to give if he were to report what the church is the profession of Christianity is as he would view it today?
Turn over to Colossians.
Colossians chapter 2 and verse 6.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith.
As ye have been taught, abounding therein with Thanksgiving, beware.
He talks about them being rooted and built up in the Lord.
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And established in that faith.
That they had been taught.
Abounding in it with Thanksgiving. But then he adds a word of caution.
A word of warning, he said. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy.
And vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world.
And not after Christ.
For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
And ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power.
Was given at the beginning, before the day of, described by Jude.
That they would be established in the faith and abound in it with Thanksgiving. But they were also warned there were things that could come in among them that would, practically speaking, work to destroy the faith.
I want to stop right here and make a remark. It's important so that not be misunderstood about something.
Jude views it from your responsibility and mine. He was speaking to his brethren to exhort them in a certain way to activity and action in their hearts and lives, to earnestly contend for the faith.
Because it was being destroyed.
We might say, but can it really be? Can it really be? If you look at it from God's side, this cannot be destroyed.
As it says in Second Timothy.
The foundation of God stands sure.
And I believe it's God's side of it because it shows us that.
God has done a work through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that cannot be moved, cannot be shaken, cannot be destroyed.
It stands sure the foundation is there, the work of the cross is finished, and it is.
There to rest for all eternity.
And in that we rejoice and thank God in that foundation. But what we have to consider this afternoon is not God's side of the foundation that cannot be moved or shaken or destroyed, but it is that which is put into the hands of man in responsibility, and what we see is the result of man.
Who carries out or fails to carry out that which he is responsible for? And so here in Colossians.
They were in danger of losing, and they were told to beware lest they lose in their souls, or be spoiled by man's thoughts intruding into the things of God that would give them to lose the truth of God in their own souls.
Now let's turn back over and look a little more, particularly now at Jude.
I.
You don't need to turn over to it, but if you will, you can you keep your finger here because we're going to come right back. But I want to refer to a verse in Acts chapter.
Umm 5 Acts chapter 5 Keep your finger here in Jude if you will. If you want to look at it with me, in Acts chapter 5 we have Ananias and Sapphira.
And.
It's the sin of these two believers in the beginning of the history of the church, and they die and verse.
11 It says in Acts 511. And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. Verse 13, and the rest of the rest durst no man join himself to them, but the people magnified them.
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That's the beginning of the history of the church. That is, the church was viewed by the world.
As a holy.
Collection of people seen by God as one body.
And by the teaching, they recognize that they were part of that one body.
But God Southern acted in their midst in such a way that if you weren't real, you didn't dare identify yourself with those people.
When you saw what happened to two of their number who were taken away by the hand of God.
You didn't dare identify with such a company of believers or such a company of people if you weren't serious and real about it yourself.
We find in the beginning in the description of it given to us, where the Church was held to be responsible in Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2, that they couldn't stand. They did not tolerate false teaching in their midst.
They detected it and it was rejected.
That was the beginning.
That was the way it started.
When John was talking at one point later on in his epistle, he said of some, They went out from us, for they were not of us. That is, they left the profession. They were warned about it in Hebrews. Don't turn back, because if you do, there's nothing for you if you turn away an apostasy from the truth of God.
But then Timothy.
Was told by Paul, he said. You know, in the end, difficult days are going to come.
Because.
Some are going to turn aside from the truth. Some are going to apostasize from the truth.
And Jude describes it in its most serious condition.
The apostasy comes right in and finds a home.
In God's house, Oregon, at least, the House of profession.
Not turned out, not made unwelcome.
That's what Jude was saying to the brethren, he said. The foundation you need to contend for the foundations of the faith.
Because they're going to be some that are going to get in unnoticed and unaware.
And I would say just by the way things come unaware, brethren.
One of the unawarenesses or ways that they do is that the practice of truth is given up sometimes a generation or more before the doctrine, and so it comes in unaware in that way because the practice is given up.
Mindsets are changed, attitudes are changed that affect practice long before there's any awareness or anyone would dare to say anything about the doctrine itself.
And so some came in on wares, and this is the condemnation, that is, this is the statement of God concerning such.
Ungodly men.
Across the street from where I live is the Nagle family.
Father, a mother, a daughter and three sons.
And I may be wrong in my assessment, but I think it may illustrate a point.
As far as I can see, it's an ordered family.
The father and mother provide well for their children.
The father and mother spend time with their kids. They seem to know what they're doing. They have them in activities that would not, can I say would keep them out of trouble.
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They're kind.
Considerate people in dealing with them.
In that sense, they're good neighbors.
But they are ungodly.
What's that mean?
It means they live their lives.
Without reference to God.
Kind. Nice, good, easy to talk to, yes.
But ungodly.
They live their lives without reference to God.
They're not described here in Jude.
Because I believe if you would ask them.
Are you part of the Christian faith? They might be honest and say no.
As far as I know they never go to church, even at Christmas and Easter.
But what's described here in Jude?
Is that ungodly persons?
Have been able to find themselves at rest in a comfort zone in the profession of the faith.
That's one of the most used words in this little short chapter.
And what makes a person ungodly, I believe is described here.
In verse 19 it says.
These be they who separate themselves.
Sensual.
Not having the Spirit.
It says in the Mr. Darby's translation Natural men not having the spirit.
That's the kind of person that now has a home in the faith among men.
Natural men not having the spirit.
The Spirit of God indwelling the soul is what separates a man for God in the faith.
And if a man does not have the spirit, if he only can live by his nature?
He is going to be in his practice ungodly. He is going to live without a proper.
Sense of relationship and authority to God in his actions.
We have 3 examples that are given in this little book.
I'd like to notice in verse 11, Woe unto them is speaking about.
These ungodly persons that have come in in the profession.
They have gone in the way of Cain and run greedily after the heir of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Cora.
Different ways this could be applied and has correctly I'm sure. I would like to apply it this afternoon and this way. Cain was the first ungodly man that ever lived on the earth.
He was a man in his particular case, who when convicted of his sin.
Murdering his brother, it says of him, after the Lord showed mercy to him and put a mark on him that his life would be spared.
It says he went out from the presence of the Lord.
And can I say we see in Cain and in his offspring people who lived without reference to God? They made the earth their own.
And lived here as if it was theirs, without respect to God or God's authority.
Ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward.
When Paul was talking to Timothy and giving him instructions for those who were to have the responsibilities of deacons and the Church of God, he spoke about the faith, and he said about such persons. He says, now be careful, Timothy, Timothy, that they not have that, as it were, desire for money.
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Because they may turn aside from the faith and spoil it.
If you put a natural man in a spiritual realm.
He cannot be rightly motivated because he has not the spirit, and so the consequence is that he is motivated by something else. And Balaam, such a man was motivated by money.
And he was, when such take over in the House of God.
Or the great house, I should call it.
In the faith.
It destroys the foundation practically.
Perished in the gainsaying of Korah.
Cora was the first cousin of Moses and Aaron.
And Cora said we're as good as you, Moses.
We're just as holy as you are.
And who are you to say that you've got first place?
We don't like it.
And he murmured.
And it's a solemn, practical characteristic of apostasy within the profession.
Murmuring.
It's a heart of unbelief.
To murmur, and if you find yourself murmuring against your brethren or the Lord.
Judge it.
Earnestly contend for the faith.
Beginning with yourself.
And I with myself.
While there's no fruit for God from these things.
And God warns.
Of it we have Adam or Enoch brought before us and I think that while not specifically inspired of God allowed of God the order of the New Testament books. It's wonderful to have as it were this book here of Jew just before the revelation because you see the darkest of pictures of unbelief having come in within the very profession of Christianity and and you reach that point whereas it comes right to the end of the age.
It's like looking at it and having to ask God will he find faith in the earth?
Will there be anything left?
There was hardly anything when the Lord came accepting that God.
Determined by his will that there would be some looking for his coming.
And he found a handful in Jerusalem there, by the grace of God and by the purposes of God, that there'd be somebody to welcome his Son. But if he had delayed another few years and those who were 100 plus were gone, what would he have found? Perhaps.
Well, it wasn't to be, but we find here at the end of Jude that.
It goes clear back to Enoch, who prophesied of the judgment that was to come. And to me it's a wonderful thing that.
The very things that Jude takes up are going to be turned around.
When he comes.
And we might notice some of them.
I'll just notice two that have really struck me in this chapter because our time is moving along.
Notice back where he speaks in the very beginning in verse 4 where he describes these people.
It says.
Turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God in our Savior Jesus Christ.
There's two things I want to mention out of those in the moral picture that's given here.
Man uses God's grace in the church.
Or the profession to justify immoral behavior.
Horrible that it may be.
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Homosexuality is evil.
And yet it's being embraced within the church or the profession.
And I want to be careful here because I saw just this past Monday night a young fellow named Lawrence, when homosexual behavior was spoken of as sin, and he made a remark which is important to remember. He was a little confused by that remark. And it was necessary to try to help Lawrence to recognize that God loves the person. He hates the sin.
And when we speak of certain sins, like murder, God loves the murderer, but he hates murder. God loves the man that others might call the homosexual, but he hates the sin, and it cost his son his life that there might be forgiveness from it.
But the grace of God is now used in the profession to justify.
Immoral behavior. Behavior that suits man in his rebellion and in his fallen, corrupted nature before God.
The second thing, denying the only Lord God in our Lord Jesus Christ.
God's authority.
Has been set aside.
Denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a systematic work in the world today in which we live to set aside authority, the authority of government, the authority in the home, the authority in the Assembly.
And not to recognize individually. And it starts individually, it's set aside collectively, but the root of the problem begins with the individual denying the absolute lordship of Christ in their life.
We need, brethren, each one of us, to examine our own heart before the Lord.
We might say I own Jesus as Lord.
I'm convicted when I see that.
Because.
I'm convicted by the thought. Can I say I acknowledge the Lordship of Christ in every detail of my life?
Or are there things in my life?
Where I do not in practice, while I might in principle, while I might abstractly, but do I in practice acknowledge His Lordship as absolute in my life?
One of the tests I've had for that in my own soul is that I've sometimes said we have no decisions to make in life. None.
You have no decisions to make in your life. You have only to know the will of your Master and Lord.
You only have to discern his mind.
For you.
In every circumstance of life.
But in this picture, which is painted before us here, his Lordship has been given up.
Turn with me now just to.
Briefly to a bright side to me, this is a bright part of the book, verse 20. But ye beloved, and I like the fact and note there are four things here to note quickly and it's it's wonderful. One of them is with respect to God. One is respect to the Holy Spirit. One is respect to the Lord Jesus and one is with respect to you, as it were. God embraces you and these four things together with himself. And so he says.
Beloved, building yourselves up in your we're on your most holy.
Faith, rather in the faith, is holy.
It's holy, and you and I are to, in a practical sense, embrace a holy faith.
And be built up in it and by it. Embrace it for your life.
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Anything which draws you away from the holiness of the faith is of the flesh. It's not of God.
Then he says praying in the Holy Spirit. I'm struck by that because we think of the Holy Spirit as it is, is the instrument of God. It's the person of God acting in power in the Christian life. And to me it's the condition of things has gotten all the way to the end where it says it takes the power of the Holy Spirit in life just to be dependent in prayer.
Think of that.
How does it apply?
I faced it this morning.
I woke up at, I don't know, 630.
Before 6:45.
I could hear my grandchildren.
And it was very tempting to put aside the time of prayer to enjoy the precious small moments that you get sometimes as a grandparent with your grandchildren.
Praying always in the Holy Spirit.
Did the circumstance of coming to the conference and not being in your regular routine and perhaps being in someone's home as a guest or a visitor, did it have an effect on the time spent in prayer this morning?
Praying always in the Holy Ghost.
Keep yourselves in the love of God.
God's love never changes.
He loves you every moment from a past eternity, and He's going to love you for any future eternity, unchanging and unchangeable as one of His children. But oh how important. When the faith is being destroyed practically on every hand, what is it that keeps the soul in the path with God? It is that individual, personal enjoyment of His love.
For you.
Nothing can substitute for it. He begins, He says, beloved of God, sanctified. And now he comes and he says to his brother, and he says, that's the position of God. But for you, brethren, go on.
In that conscious sense of God's love for you.
And then verse.
The end of that verse looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. I don't have time to really elaborate on this much, but it's connected with the first mercy in the book Mercy to Us.
It has been said that this really refers to the coming of the Lord, and in this sense, in Jude it's looked at as a mercy.
It's a mercy because, brethren, Paul said to Timothy when things started to get tough and he was giving some final exhortations to him, he said lay hold on eternal life.
Well, eternal life's laid hold of us because it comes from God and we're born from above. But there is that sense in which we, in a practical way, need to.
Walk in it.
Experience it in our daily lives that we need to lay hold on eternal life and you know the actual practical living of it out is becoming more rare.
As the day grows darker and so he says, look for the mercy, as it were, the Candlestick got dimmer and dimmer until there was fear that it might go out. And it won't. I'm convinced, absolutely convinced of God, that it won't. There will be.
Some appointed by God and by His grace and mercy, that are looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the exhortation is looking for that coming.
Or it's going to be a mercy.
Well, we need to help each other. Verse 22 speaks about having compassion. There are some that we need to contend with.
Because they've fallen into the error of the apostasy that's come into the profession and we need to contend with them. Others we need to seek to save with fear, as it were, trying to ****** them out of the fire. That is the place, the direction in which.
It all ends if it continued on its present course.
But we want to end with this wonderful prayer. Before we praise, we close.
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He ends James ends in a wonderful heart. Joe Jude ends on a wonderful high note, he says.
Now him that is able to keep you, he looks above everything.
Awful as it may be, and he looks above it all, and he looks up to God, and he says to his brother, and he says to him, to God that is able to keep you from falling or stumbling and to present you faultless. Oh, what an end to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy to the only wise God, our Savior. We need God as a Savior now.
In this time in which we live, to the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty and dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.
Amen. Let's pray.