Remembering and Keeping

Well, I invite you to turn again to—wherever we were. Jude.

Let’s remind ourselves of a little of this letter, beginning in verse 17:

“But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory 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. Amen.”

Father, with our Bibles open before us, we pray for the help of the Holy Spirit to be able to speak, to think, to reason, to understand, to believe, to obey, to apply the truth of your Word. Conduct that divine dialogue, Lord—the mysterious dialogue whereby the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives beyond the voice of a mere man and in a way that is ultimately unmistakable, to the end that Jesus Christ may be increasingly formed in us and that we might live to the praise of his glory. For we ask it in his name. Amen.

We remind ourselves of the fact that Jude was dealing with the presence and the influence of certain people whose activities were such that he felt compelled to issue an appeal to those who were his readers. And however peaceable his readership may be by their nature, however tempted they may be to shrink from the battle, Jude is calling them to enter into the fray and to fight with every fiber of their being, “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”[1] And we noted in verse 8 that these people had mixed an ugly and a dreadfully harmful potion of moral and doctrinal error. That’s a dreadful mixture, and Jude is concerned that those to whom he writes will not be deceived into drinking the lemonade, as it were, so that they do not become imbibers of this dreadful concoction which has begun to flow among them.

And when you read Jude, you find yourself saying, “There’s certain elements of this that just sound so very much like 2 Peter.” And I leave you to research that on your own, but you will remember, I think, that Peter is constantly reminding his readers. He wants to make sure that they never forget these things, and so he tells them that part of the reason for his writing is to stir them up by way of reminder.[2]

And Jude is very much doing the same thing, and he’s using very vivid language in order to address the problem. I pay a fair amount of attention to contemporary trends in art, not least of all in architecture and in design, not because I have any peculiar ability in it, but it just interests me. And so I’m always interested when a certain palette of colors becomes the palette of the period. And in certain environments, we have found ourselves of late in the gray period or in the beige period, where there is nothing particularly vibrant. There is nothing particularly striking. It’s not a time for primary colors. It’s just all a kind of blah. It doesn’t really do anything to you. It neither affects you one way or another, except perhaps depresses you if you’re arriving in one of these long hallways in a hotel late at night just to be met by a great enveloping grayness.

Well, there are no muted colors in Jude. And some of us have become good at preaching, incidentally, in grays and preaching in beiges, and we wonder why it is that we’re preaching our people to sleep. It’s partly because we’re not allowing the genre of the text to determine the way in which we’re unfolding the text. We daren’t turn the vibrancy of Jude’s language into a muted language in order to satisfy the concerns of those who desire for us to be, for example, politically correct. No, the way in which he delivers it to us is the way in which we must deliver it to them.

And so Jude gives us these unmistakable and graphic images. The reason is he wants the people to be able to recognize “these people”[3] when they appear. You know, it’s not enough just to affirm things always. You don’t always have to say what is; you have to also say what isn’t. Because if you only say what is, people will nod their heads all the time as if to agree with you until you tell them, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. That’s not what I’m saying.”

For example, at a simplistic level, if you have children or grandchildren, you take them out in the car and you show them, you say, “Look, do you see the cows over there? And what noise do the cows make?”

“Oh, they go, ‘Moo!’”

“Oh,” you say, “that’s good.” So now, for the rest of the journey, it’s a little moo here and a little moo there, everywhere a moo, moo. Okay? And then you’re driving along, and you turn a corner, and they start mooing. And you say, “Oh, no, no. That doesn’t moo. That’s not a cow. That’s a horse.”

Well, you’ve got to forgive your grandchildren, because you never told them that a cow wasn’t a horse. So now you’ve got these strange little creatures that are going to be riding on the backs of cows and milking horses—unless you make clear to them that you don’t do that: “This one moos, but this one doesn’t moo, ’cause this isn’t one of those.”

And so Jude is pointing out that there is a graphic difference between genuine, believing faith and the people with fat heads, big mouths, who are like “waterless clouds,” “fruitless trees,” reckless reefs.[4] You understand? “I love you folks,” he says, “and I want you to understand this, and you need to have it portrayed for you as graphically as possible. Otherwise, you may fall foul of these characters, and you may be led astray as well.”

If you think about it, since these people had “crept in”[5] undetected, as they had—they had “crept in” undetected—either their disguise was superb, or the members of the church were clueless, or a wee bit of both. For clueless Christians will always be easy prey for clever charlatans. That’s why it is so vital, isn’t it, that we teach our people the Bible? So that they in turn will be able to detect error when it arises.

And for those of you who are youth pastors, can I just say a word to you to get at the business of this? Your job is not to entertain the average fourteen-year-old boy or girl to think up some stupid thing to do on a Wednesday night, as if they are incapable of really getting into the Bible and understanding the truth. The average kid coming out of the average evangelical church would never be able to explain why they’re not Mormon or why Mormons are not Christian. Because you never taught them the doctrine of the Trinity! You never taught them what we learned today from Philippians chapter 2! You simply wanted Mrs. Jenkins to feel good about the fact that you were being so nice to Sally Jenkins, her little daughter, whom she dotes on—and understandably so. And she’s a wonderful athlete, and she’s always at the swim meet, and she’s doing so very well, and she’s liked by her friends, and you ought to read her Facebook page. But she doesn’t know a thing about the Bible! And she’s about to go to a secular university, and they’re going to eat her for lunch—because you didn’t teach her! And when she sat and nodded her head like a thing on the back of your car when you’re driving on the freeway—when she’s nodding like this, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And frankly, I’m not sure you do either.

So, just an encouraging word to the youth pastors while I’m here. It just can’t stop coming out of me, that kind of encouragement. That’s just…

Now, in the same way—and we’ve all been at the seminars this afternoon. I poked my head through the window of one. I stepped into another one, but it got very hot because it was so packed, and I left again. I was too convicted. I said, “Oh dear, oh dear! And now I have to go and preach after that.” And now you’re all geniuses, because you’ve all been at the seminars, right? Transformational preaching—how to get it right and not get it wrong. Would you like to be up here right now, after you’re full of all that information? Let me tell you something: No one knows how to preach. It is right that the task should humble us. It is wrong that it should paralyze us. We don’t know! We don’t know! When you’ve read all the books, Sunday hits you again. Monday dawns, and another turn of the page, and another blank sheet before you, and another need to bend your knees, and another need to say, “Help me!” And here, as we do that, I’m trying to teach you how to avoid the difficult parts—by avoiding all the section that begins with verse 9 all the way through to verse 16.

I told you already that this is called planned neglect, and it is a wonderful concept. I learned it early on. And I assign homework. And that’s how I get around it. That’s why I say, “I’d like you to do this for your homework. Come back and tell me what it’s about, because, frankly, I haven’t a clue myself.”

And I’m only being slightly facetious. Because clearly, it’s not possible in the course of two talks to wade your way all the way through this central section. So I had to make a decision: Shall I plow around in the vegetation and drag everybody along with me till, you know, 4:30, or shall I leave it alone and move to the final section? Well, if I was going to work this through week by week with a congregation, then I wouldn’t skip any parts. But because I’m not, I’m happy to. And that’s why we’re now at verse 17.

“You Must Remember”

1–4: “Contend for the faith.” Verses 5–16: “Learn from the past.” And in order, then, to make sense of the present, we need to be reminded of these things. And so, in verse 17, that’s what he does. He says, “But you must remember.” “You must remember.”

Who must remember? The “beloved” ones, the agapētoi, the loved ones. Now, remember that that is exactly what he had done as he began the letter: “To those of you who are called, you’re loved by God.[6] And I write to you as my loved ones as well.”

“You must remember, beloved.” That sense of kindness and tone is very important, although I may be making fun of it in some measure. Says Jenkyn, “The work and labour of a minister should proceed from love to his people. … Love should be the fountain of ministerial performances.”[7] Love is “the fountain” out of which our “ministerial performances” emerge. I think it’s in the little booklet by Iain Murray, The Cross: The Pulpit of God’s Love (I think that’s it from memory): Remember, he says in there that the men who have impacted the church throughout the years have honeyed the church—have honeyed the church—with the love of God, who have been consumed themselves by the extent of the love of God, the wonder and mystery of his love; and then, out of that fullness and fountain of love, they’ve sought to encourage others.[8]

And so he says, “You [need to] remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles.” The apostles had been sent out as sheep among wolves.[9] They had been promised that the Holy Spirit, when poured out, would lead them into all truth.[10] They in turn have spoken that truth and then inscripturated that truth, which has now become the Word of God to us as we have in the Scriptures. And so he is concerned that they might remember that these same apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ pointed out what was going to be our experience.

And we needn’t belabor it, but if you remember, Paul was very clear on this: “The Spirit expressly says that in [the] later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits.” That’s 1 Timothy 4:1. In 2 Timothy: “Understand this, there will be those who creep into households, taking captive weak-willed women.”[11] That’s not a generic description of all women; it’s a description of a certain kind of woman—the kind of woman who is “always learning and never able to [come to] a knowledge of the truth.”[12] And, of course, when he took his leave of the Ephesian elders, he reminded them of the same thing: “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you.” And then notice the phrase: “And from among your own selves will arise men speaking [these dreadful] things.”[13]

Well, we ought not to be naive in relationship to this. And that is why, as I say to you, Jude is very, very careful to make sure that these dangerous characters—who are responsible for causing divisions, you will notice (“scoffers, following their own ungodly passions”)—they “cause divisions.” It’s the role of the pastor and the teacher, as we understand, to edify the saints so that they might do the works of ministry as a result of the work and instruction in the Scriptures and the building up of the Holy Spirit, that we all might be brought to unity in the faith.[14] Right? So as we are working to see these people brought to unity in the faith, Jude says, “There are those who creep in among you, and their objective is the exact opposite of that. They are responsible for divisive forces. They’re dangerous characters.”

That’s why back in verse 12, he describes them as “hidden reefs.” “Hidden reefs.” Some years ago now, in Cleveland, I remember one of our either baseball players or football players or basketball players (Why don’t I just say one of the sportsmen in Cleveland?) was actually killed out on Lake Erie of an evening when a speed boat going at dramatic speed encountered a hidden obstacle in the water. There was no flag there saying, “I am a hidden obstacle.” There was nothing there to say a word of warning. No, if your objective is to puncture and to destroy and to disrupt, then you do not put a flag up. You are a hidden reef, undetected below the surface.

That’s why he’s describing them as waterless clouds—if you think about a desert region, if you think about the prospect that is there when a cloud breaks across that transparently blue sky and people say, “It looks like there’s a chance that we’re going to get some refreshment and some rain,” and then it proceeds across the sky and disappears. It’s a waterless cloud. It held the prospect of refreshment, but there was no refreshment from it. He said, “That’s what these people are like. And they’re fruitless trees with all the branches but nothing to show for it.”

And then he’s very graphic, isn’t he? He tells us exactly what they are: They are “devoid of the Spirit.” That’s verse 19. The sensuality that we addressed last night does not share the same bed as sanctity. And so, when you find that, it’s no surprise when you trace it to its root and you discover these people are actually empty.

So, that’s the first thing: “You must remember.” “You must remember.”

“Keep Yourselves”

Then, secondly, in verse 20 and 21, “[You must] keep yourselves”: “But you,” again, “beloved”—notice the beloved—“building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.” Again, you’ll find this emphasis in 2 Peter when you check it.[15]

As we end in a moment or two, we’re going to be reminded of the fact that Jude is not in any doubt about the keeping power of God. But the keeping power of God does not operate in a vacuum. He keeps those who keep themselves: “Now [unto] him who is able to keep you…” “Keep [yourself].”

“I thought he said you’re supposed to keep yourself.”

“Yes, he did.”

“But I thought it said that he would keep us.”

“Yes, he will.”

“So you mean it’s both/and?”

“Yes, it is.”

He keeps those who keep themselves. In other words, there is positive activity that is required of the believer if they’re going to make it to the end. Do you get that? “We are not … those who shrink back and are destroyed,”[16] says the writer to the Hebrews. “We[’re] not … those who shrink back and are destroyed.” Well, who are we? We are those who continue to the end and are saved.[17] The ground of our salvation is in the work of Christ. The evidence of our salvation is in our continuance. And that’s what he’s affirming here. By means of the history lesson, he has provided the dreadful examples of what has happened and what will happen to those who do not keep themselves in the love of God.

That’s why our brother’s opening session for us yesterday, whenever it was… Time runs away, doesn’t it? H. B. The challenge of it is so necessary, isn’t it? About the nature of our own love life, about the nature of our own desire for Christ and for the Scriptures and for our devotion—so that it doesn’t become a devotion to the exercise of our duty, that it doesn’t become a devotion even to the privileges of our responsibility, but that we’re actually keeping ourselves in the love of God.

The ground of our salvation is in the work of Christ. The evidence of our salvation is in our continuance.

What does that mean? Well, again, I was helped by Jenkyn. Incidentally, when you find somebody who helps you, just use it, right? I mean, don’t disguise it. You know, don’t change three words to try and make it sound like, you know, it’s yours. ’Cause everyone can look it up anyway on the internet and go, “Oh! Look at that.” Frankly, nowadays, they’re actually doing it while you’re speaking, right? So they’re looking it up, going, “Oh, Jenkyn!”

So let me tell you—not everything Jenkyn said, because we’d be here till about seven o’clock tonight. But his practical pointers on keeping yourself in God’s love go like this.

Number one: Keep yourself “in a constant hatred of all sin.” Keep yourself “in a constant hatred of all sin.” For “as love to sin grows, love to God [diminishes].”[18] So I cannot keep myself in the love of God if I’m playing fast and loose with willful sin, if I’m allowing myself luxuries, privileges that are not those that are to be enjoyed by the child of God. It’s straightforward. It makes sense.

What is your favorite meal? Do you remember as a boy coming home, looking forward, Sunday afternoon after church. You’re going home. You’re going to get what your mother makes for you. You can’t wait—except you managed to stop a couple of times on the way there. You got a Snickers bar. You got a large Diet Coke. You decide you’d like a bag of chips as well. And by the time you’ve finished all of that and you present yourself for lunch and your favorite meal is set in front of you—and your mom says, “What’s up with you? What happened to your appetite? I thought you loved this.”

“I do love it.”

“Yeah, well, what’s happened to you?”

“I guess I filled myself up with things that I shouldn’t have.”

That’s exactly it.

Secondly, keeping ourselves in the love of God means “keeping ourselves in the delight of [the friends of God].”[19] “In the delight of [the friends of God].” Now, we understand that we do not isolate ourselves from the world, you know? The Bible makes that clear. The boat has to be in the water, but the water hasn’t got to be in the boat. But, you know, there are only a few friends you can have in the world in any case, and we want to make friends of the friends of God to help us. I need people who are godly. Because M’Cheyne, remember, he said that our people’s need from us is not our giftedness; it is our godliness. The great need in our lives that our congregation needs from us is our own practical godliness or holiness. It’s not our giftedness at the end of the day, because you can be gifted and ungodly. That’s obvious, isn’t it?

And also, thirdly, he says that you need to keep yourself, then—if you’re going to keep yourself in the love of God—to keep yourself “in [the] delight of the ordinances.”[20] “In [the] delight of the ordinances”—baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the importance of these signs and seals of our relationship with God. Do you know how many people just toy with these things, for whom it is a matter of happenstance whether they are either baptized in obedience to Christ or whether they do what Jesus said in remembrance of him? You can’t keep yourself in the love of God while you avoid the means of grace, for the means of grace are given to enable us to keep ourselves in the love of God. And it is when we love the people of God that we keep ourselves in the context of it.

The old coal fires gave the perfect illustration, didn’t they? And we’ve used it all the way along with our children. We’re telling them, “You know, if you take a lump of coal, and you put it in the fire amongst all the other lumps of coal, it ignites as a result of what’s going on around it. But if you take tongs and you take a lump of coal out of the blazing fire and you lay it off on the side of the hearth, you can just sit there and watch as it eventually goes out, grows cold, and offers no light and offers no heat and offers nothing at all, because it has now become isolated from the context in which they could “keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”[21]

Well, I find this very challenging. I think you may do too. How do we keep ourselves as the beloved in the love of God? Well, look at the verbs.

“Building.” “Building yourselves up.” “Building yourselves up in your most holy faith.” It’s a present participle, if you’re interested—and even if you’re not, it still is. Present participle. In other words, it’s a constant activity. It’s a lifelong activity.

Look at me! Look at me! How do you think I got like this, huh? Yeah, exactly: If you don’t exercise, it atrophies. Faith is like a muscle: You exercise it, you build it up; you leave it alone, it atrophies. Some of us are absolutely maniacal about physical exercise. If we were to apply 20 percent of our devotion to our concern to build ourselves up in the most holy faith, we may discover that we’d be a little more effective.

It’s a constant activity to build yourself up. It’s a corporate activity. It doesn’t happen on your own. We need one another. That’s why it’s always good to decide you’re going to exercise with somebody, isn’t it? I always need somebody to help me so they can lift up the weights for me. I mean, I can’t just go picking up twenty-pound weights by myself. I’m going to have to have someone help me—especially when you’re lying down. It’s a dreadful prospect.

Well, you get the point, don’t you? Isn’t it great to have someone around to help bear the burden? “Bear ye one another’s burdens [as you] fulfil the law of Christ.”[22] You start to think about gathering in a thing like this and thinking about “Is there a brother here, is there a sister here I could build up? Is there a word that I could bring to them? Is there an encouragement that I could share? Is there something that I could do that I would help to build them up—to build them up in their most holy faith?” And you know what I’ve discovered? When you make it your objective—when one makes it one’s objective—to build another brother up, you find that you’re building yourself up at the same time. And it’s a crucial activity.

But not only “building yourselves up in your most holy faith” but also “praying in the Holy Spirit.” “Praying in the Holy Spirit.” Boy, there’s a phrase for the home Bible studies, isn’t it? So Mrs. Jenkins immediately puts her hands up and says, “‘Praying in the Holy Spirit’! I’d like to tell you what that means to me.” You tell her, “We don’t want to know what it means to you, Mrs. Jenkins. Just go and make a coffee. Thank you very much. We’d like to know what it means. If you come back with coffee, we might ask you what it means to you, but not until we know what it means.” What does it mean? Well, we could have a long discussion on it, couldn’t we? But we’re not going to.

When you don’t know what to do, you quote Calvin. So let me quote Calvin: “Such is … the coldness of our make-up, that none can succeed in praying as he ought without the prompting [and the power] of the [Holy] Spirit.”[23] You immediately go wrong on a phrase like this if you start to translate it into some strange, esoteric, private prayer language with God. I don’t believe for a nanosecond that that’s what Jude has in his mind. And I’m not concerned about your private prayer language for the moment. But in terms of being true to the text, I think that Calvin is a lot more helpful than that.

But how can we pray? It is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, isn’t it? It is by the Holy Spirit! Again, in Romans 8—and our brother read from it so helpfully—it is by the Holy Spirit that we’re enabled to cry, “Abba! Father!”[24] Otherwise, what would we do? And when do you cry, “Abba! Father!”? When does your child cry, “Daddy!”? Most of the stuff that I’ve ever heard on that is all about, it’s some great experience of God whereby, “And now we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” Even the songs were written largely that way. But I’m not so sure that’s what Paul has in mind. I think he may have in mind that when all hell lets loose against us, when the Evil One insinuates, when we know ourselves to be wretched and poor and blind,[25] still, when we get to our bedrooms and we fall upon our knees, we may not be able to say much, but we still say, “Abba!” Sometimes that’s all we can get out, isn’t it? “Father… Father…”

And the Holy Spirit interprets the groanings of our hearts—peculiar mystery, vital in keeping ourselves in the love of God, building, praying, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, Romans 8 reminds us that we groan, don’t we? We groan as we wait for the redemption of our bodies. The whole creation groans, and we groan.[26] We don’t moan. Well, we do, actually. We’re not supposed to be moaning, but we’re allowed to be groaning, for we’re waiting. We’re watching. We’re waiting. We’re hoping. We’re praying—“waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”

“What does that mean? I thought we were brought to eternal life. I thought eternal life was a present experience.” Of course it is! But we’re looking for that great finale in the mercy and goodness of God.

“To Others Show Mercy”

So, “You must remember,” and then “You must make sure that you are keeping yourselves,” and then “To others show mercy.” So, “Keep yourselves, and have mercy on others.” That’s the phrase there in verse 23: “To others show mercy.” So the winsomeness and the tenderness of Jude, which we have tried to point out, extends beyond the ranks of those who are doing well. All right? That his tenderness and his winsomeness extends beyond the students who are just doing well in the class. And he wants to make sure that those who are under his tutelage will adopt the same perspective in the encouragement of those who are around them.

It’s akin to the emphasis of Paul, isn’t it, where he says in Galatians 6 that the person who has fallen into disrepute and disrepair should be restored? “Restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”[27] He says the same thing in 2 Timothy, where he’s urging Timothy to make sure that he cares for his flock, and he says that the Lord’s servant should be gentle; he should correct his opponents with gentleness.[28] Now, what are we to assume here? That Jude, having spoken so forcibly, using these graphic metaphors, is he now, as he’s moving towards the end of his letter, having described these people as “ungodly,”[29] “hidden reefs,” “waterless [springs],” rootless trees, “fruitless trees,” and so on—is he now having a spirit of remorse and changing his tune? Is he now deciding that he’s going to wink at the very sins and errors that he has just described and condemned? No! Clearly, no. He is rather urging those who are convinced to be used in the lives of those who are not convinced—specifically those who doubt, specifically those who are playing with fire—and to make sure that in seeking to pull the people out of the pit, that they themselves are not pulled into the pit.

The winsomeness and the tenderness of Jude extends beyond the ranks of those who are doing well.

Let me give you just a cross-reference. If you’ve never preached on this passage, I think you will enjoy it. And if you have, then maybe you should preach on it again. But for homework, you do Jeremiah chapter 38. Jeremiah chapter 38. You needn’t to turn to it now. Jeremiah is thrown in the pit, remember, by his enemies, and a really nice guy called Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian eunuch, decided he was going to go and get him out. And he asked the king if he could do that, and they said yes, and so he decided he was going to go there. And the record tells us that poor old Jeremiah had sunk down into the pit. There was no water in it; he was being sucked up by the mud.[30] And he’d been left there to die from hunger. And Ebed-melech took a number of men with him, and he made a little detour to a wardrobe in the storehouse.

“Yeah, well, wait a minute! The guy’s in a pit. Why are we going to the storehouse? Why are we going to the wardrobe?” Ebed-melech says, “Trust me. I know what I’m doing. We’re going to get some stuff in here.” And what did they get in there? They got old rags and worn-out clothes. So the people must have said, “This is fantastic! Jeremiah is in the pit, Ebed-melech is going to get him out the pit, and apparently, it’s important for him to carry all this stuff with him.”

And then it all dawned on them. “Then Ebed-melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah…”[31] “Jeremiah, we’re throwing you down a rope. Okay? And be careful, ’cause we’re just going to throw a bunch of old rags and clothes down as well. Okay?” And Jeremiah, presumably looking up, says, “Okay. I’ve got the rope, and I’ve got the stuff. What do you want me to do?” Ebed-melech says, “What I want you to do is to take the rags and the clothes and put them underneath your armpits. And once you’ve got them underneath your armpits, then put the rope under your armpits. But make sure that the ropes and the rags are there to protect your armpits from the ropes, because when we pull you out, we don’t want to hurt you. When we pull you out, we don’t want to burn you. When we pull you out, we don’t want to scar you. We want to bring you out firmly. We want to bring you out safely.”[32]

It’s a wonderful metaphor. I think it fits here; I don’t know if you agree. Make sure when you go to those who doubt that you go with gentleness. Make sure that you go to those who are playing with fire, and make sure that when you go to haul them out, you don’t rip their arms off in doing it! And some of us are perfect. That’s just our MO, isn’t it? “Hey, put the ropes down! So what if your arms come off? Get up and get out of there!” Then there’s others always like “Oh, no. We’re not going to pull you. No, we’re just going to throw some rags down for you, and you can maybe rub yourself a little bit, and have a great evening, Jeremiah! We don’t want to interfere with you, and we know you’re muddy down there, and just give yourself a… Have a… Bye-bye!”

That’s why we need one another! So the guy with the rope’s going, “Don’t talk a load of rubbish.” And the person with the rags is going, “Don’t you rip the guy’s arms off with that rope!”

Well, what are we going to do? We’re going to do exactly what Jude says has to happen: “Keep yourselves in the love of God, [wait] for the mercy of [the] Lord.” “Mercy there was great, and grace was free.”[33] The mercy that has been extended to you by the Lord Jesus is the mercy that you’re to extend to others. So “have mercy on those who doubt”!

You see, some of us, when we get verse 3 going, the contending verb—you know, “We’re contending!”—we can get so good at that that we create an environment in which it is virtually impossible for people to give voice to even a question. We create an environment where nobody can ask anything, ’cause we’re so busy saying, “Wait a minute! You sound like a hidden reef to me. What did you say? It looks like a fruitless tree. I…” No, we’ve got to be prepared to recognize: If we’re going to do pastoral ministry, there are people who doubt. They have misunderstandings. They have questions. They are toying with sin. They need to be snatched: “[Snatch] them out of the fire.” Again: “To others show mercy.” Some, the intervention is going to have to be just like that: It’s going to have to be like the commandos going in, getting the people, hauling them out; we’ll deal with all the other stuff later. But that’s not the key for everything. So you’ve got this wonderful combination.

Says Thomas Manton, “When a fire is kindled in a city, we do not say …, Yonder is a great fire. I pray God it do no harm. In times of public defection we are not to read tame lectures of contemplative divinity.”[34] In a time of public defection, we do not read them lectures.

“Help me! I’m drowning!”

“Well, let me just read to you a book that I read recently about how to do the butterfly stroke.”

“No, you didn’t understand. I said…”

Mercy combined with hatred. It’s interesting, isn’t it? “Show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” The juxtaposition of language is a picture of cleansing and forgiveness and transformation. Remember in Revelation 7, when you have this amazing picture of the folks that are gathered there: “I looked, and there was this great company of people from every nation and tribe and language. And one of the elders addressed me and said, ‘Who are these clothed in white robes, and where have they come from?’ And I said, ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They’ve washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.’”[35] In an old hymn from Scotland that begins

With harps and with viols
There stand[s] a great throng
In the presence of Jesus
[To] sing this new song:

“Unto him who has loved us
And washed us from sin,
Unto him be the glory forever, amen.”

And the second verse goes,

All these once were sinners,
Defiled in his sight;
Now arrayed in pure garments,
In praise they unite.[36]

I spoke with somebody in the afternoon hours by telephone, coming back from the hospital where he’s had surgery—a man who has been on our prayer list in our elders’ meetings for at least seven years. And he called to say that the prayers of the people of God—on the one hand mercy, on the other hand forcefulness; the pulling of the rope, the kindness of the rags—have brought him to repentance.

That is what Jude is talking about—not that he feels a little better about the fact that he’s a sinner but that he’s had a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of direction. Loved ones, we cannot show an approach to these things that lowers the standards of God in relationship to this.

There’s a great notion abroad that, you know, if you just lower the standards of God, then people will repent more. No, that’s to love the clothing and to hate the sinner. We’re supposed to love the sinner and hate the clothing.

To God Be the Glory

“You must remember,” “Keep yourselves,” “To others show mercy,” and finally, as it finishes in the great affirmation of 24 and 25, “To God be the glory.”

Jude ends where he began, reminding his readers that they can have absolute confidence in the keeping power of God. After all, it’s God who called them, it’s God who loves them, it’s God who keeps them, and therefore, he is able to keep them from falling.

“Able to keep you from falling.”[37] “Able to keep you from falling.” I testify to that today. Don’t you? I do. When I think of my teenage life, being in the homes of some of my kid friends when their parents had gone off to Spain or wherever it was—when I think of all that was part and parcel of those days, that God, in his mercy, has kept me and still keeps me…

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
 … Where does my help come [from]?
My help comes from the Lord,
 who made heaven and earth.[38]

Not only is he able to keep us from falling but to present us “blameless.” Blameless. I didn’t get many A’s—a couple of B pluses, the odd A. But this is fantastic. “The righteousness of God”[39]—straight A’s for Jesus’ sake.

You ever been to Augusta? You’re not allowed to eat in the dining room if you don’t wear the jacket. That’s tough, ’cause I don’t have one of those jackets. Somebody’s going to have to let me wear theirs. Then I can go in.

That’s the story, isn’t it? A righteousness which God requires if we’re ever to stand before him, a righteousness which God achieves in the atoning death of his Son, a righteousness which God declares in the story of the gospel, and a righteousness which God bestows on all who trust in him.[40] You say, “That is very good. Where did you get that?” John Stott: a righteousness that God requires, a righteousness that God achieves, a righteousness that God declares, and a righteousness that God bestows. That’s how any of us will be able to stand before him. “Bold [I will] stand in [that] great day, for who aught to my charge shall lay?”[41]

“Glory, majesty, dominion, … authority, before all time and now and forever.” That’s a pretty solid close.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I don’t know about you, but I relish the privilege of being alive at this moment in history. The challenges that appear daunting are opportunities for us to show again the power of God. They’re a reminder to us of our great need of God. If we’re going to be kept, if we’re going to be continuing, if we’re going to make sure that, like Jude says, we get all the way to the end, we find ourselves saying, “You know, I need God every hour of every day.”

The challenges that appear daunting are opportunities for us to show again the power of God. They’re a reminder to us of our great need of God.

I think it was 1893, or around that time, when the World’s Fair was in Chicago. Moody did a big evangelistic outreach at the World’s Fair. And at the end of the day, when they had engaged in their endeavors, they would come together and sort of debrief from the day. They ended every day with prayer and with a song. And on this particular evening, the song that they sang was “I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord,” and so on.[42] An English evangelist called Henry Varley was visiting and had been present at the events. And as they concluded the song, he said, “Dwight, I’m not so sure about that song.”

“Why is that?” said Moody.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think it is comprehensive enough,” he said. “Because I don’t just need him every hour. I need him every moment.”

In the room was a man called Daniel Webster Whittle, known affectionately as D. W. Whittle. And unlike H. B. Charles, who has no name, because H. B. doesn’t stand for anything—although my name for Dr. Charles is now Henry Billingsgate Charles, and henceforth I will address him as such. But D. W. Whittle actually had a name, and his name was Daniel Webster Whittle. And those of you who are Civil War buffs will be interested in that. If you’re not Civil War buffs, you don’t know what I’m talking about, so you needn’t worry about it. But D. W. Whittle, on the strength of that conversation, went up to his bedroom, and he thought about it. He thought about the fact that the song says, “I need thee every hour,” and Varley says, “I need him every moment.”[43] And he took out a piece of paper, and he wrote down,

Moment by moment I’m kept in his love,
Moment by moment [with power] from above
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am thine.

And then:

Never a trial that he is not there,
[And] never a burden that he [cannot] bear,
[And] never a sorrow that he [doesn’t] share,
[Because] moment by moment, I’m under his care.[44]

And the care of God for the pastors and shepherds of the flock is a care that is to extend to those who are our sheep and our lambs so that we might convey to them the mercy and the love and the goodness and the intervention of God, that together we might follow hard after him.

Well, gracious God, help us to this end, we pray. On our best day, we’re unprofitable servants,[45] when we’ve done all, and we realize again and again how dependent we are upon you. And yet we thank you that you choose to use the likes of us. It’s quite remarkable. We never cease to marvel at it. And I pray that you will help us, then, as we ponder these truths, as they are coalescing with the other studies and our considerations of these days, so that we might keep ourselves in the love of God and that we might rejoice in the fact that all authority and dominion and power and grace are poured out upon us in and through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And for his sake we pray. Amen.

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[1] Jude 3 (ESV).

[2] See 2 Peter 1:12–15; 3:1.

[3] Jude 8, 10 (ESV).

[4] Jude 12 (ESV).

[5] Jude 4 (ESV).

[6] Jude 1 (paraphrased).

[7] William Jenkyn, An Exposition upon the Epistle of Jude (London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1839), 53.

[8] Iain H. Murray, The Cross: The Pulpit of God’s Love (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2008).

[9] See Matthew 10:16.

[10] See John 16:13.

[11] 2 Timothy 3:1, 6 (paraphrased).

[12] 2 Timothy 3:7 (ESV).

[13] Acts 20:29–30 (ESV).

[14] See Ephesians 4:11–13.

[15] See, for example, 2 Peter 1:5–7, 10; 3:14, 17–18.

[16] Hebrews 10:39 (ESV).

[17] See Matthew 24:13.

[18] Jenkyn, Epistle of Jude, 345.

[19] Jenkyn, 345.

[20] Jenkyn, 345.

[21] Romans 12:11 (NIV).

[22] Galatians 6:2 (KJV).

[23] John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke Volume III and the Epistles of James and Jude, trans. A. W. Morrison, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 334.

[24] See Romans 8:15.

[25] See Revelation 3:17.

[26] See Romans 8:22–23.

[27] Galatians 6:1 (ESV).

[28] See 2 Timothy 2:24–25.

[29] Jude 4 (ESV).

[30] See Jeremiah 38:6.

[31] Jeremiah 38:12 (ESV).

[32] Jeremiah 38:12 (paraphrased).

[33] William Reed Newell, “At Calvary” (1895).

[34] A Practical Commentary; or, An Exposition, with Notes, upon the Epistle of Jude, in The Complete Works of Thomas Manton (London: James Nisbet, 1871), 5:306.

[35] Revelation 7:9, 13–14 (paraphrased).

[36] Arthur Tappan Pierson, “The New Song” (1874).

[37] Jude 24 (KJV).

[38] Psalm 121:1–2 (ESV).

[39] Romans 3:21–22 (ESV).

[40] John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 62.

[41] Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, trans. John Wesley, “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness” (1739, 1740).

[42] Annie Sherwood Hawks and Robert Lowry, “I Need Thee Every Hour” (1871).

[43] Ira D. Sankey, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns and of Sacred Songs and Solos (Philadelphia: P. W. Zeigler, 1906), 212–15.

[44] Daniel Webster Whittle, “Moment by Moment” (1893).

[45] See Luke 17:10.