“See It, Say It, Sorted”

If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to the most neglected letter in the Bible, the second-last book of the Bible, and that is the letter of Jude. With all that said, let me read the letter:

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,

“To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

“May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

“Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’ But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. These are [blemishes on] your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, [looking after] themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late [summer], twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

“It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord [came] with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’ These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.

“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, [build] yourselves up in your most holy faith … [pray] 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.”

Well, a brief prayer, an old Anglican prayer:

Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.

If you’ve been recently in the United Kingdom and traveling on public transport, you will have noticed what I have noticed: that every so often as you’re, for example, riding on the Tube in the center of London, an announcement comes out of nowhere, and it says this: “See it. Say it. Sorted.” “See it. Say it. Sorted.” And if you’re not familiar with the use of the verb to sort in British terminology, where people will say to you, instead of saying, “Did you make your reservations for your flight?” they will say, “Is your flight sorted?” And if you’re not aware of that use, then you won’t even understand what’s being said. What actually it is, is from the British Transport Police, encouraging passengers to keep themselves and those around them safe. And so they say, “If you see something that is untoward, if you see it, say something about it, and we, the transport police, will endeavor to get it sorted.”

Well, of course, we understand that. It’s not unique to London. The phraseology may be, but everywhere you go in the world at the moment, security and safety are uppermost in people’s thinking. Any grandparent knows that being entrusted with the grandchildren for a few days is to be under the scrutiny of the children that lent you their children, because they want to make sure that when they come back, they will still be there—that the security is there. And indeed, the terminology of watching out for the invasion of that which would be untoward, would be unsettling, would be of any kind of impact that would threaten and jeopardize life, it goes without saying.

The reason I begin in that way is because you will notice that in verse 4, this is at the very heart of this little letter from Jude: “Certain people have crept in unnoticed.” They’re in. It’s not that they might be in. It is that they are in. He’s writing to them, and he’s saying, “You need to realize that while some of you have fallen asleep on the ball, this is what has been going on.”

He tells them that he had been intending to write in a far more general way concerning “salvation”—the wonder of God’s grace and goodness, the things about which we sang earlier in the afternoon and again this evening. “But,” he says, “I’ve changed my tack. And I’ve changed my tack out of a sense of compulsion.” It’s not as if we imagine that Jude had had, you know, a bad evening, and he had a sort of cantankerous spirit, and so he determined that he would write in this way. No, he doesn’t feel in that way at all. It is a matter of urgency, he says. “On account of the urgency, I’m writing to you in this way.”

Now, let me take just a moment and set this in a wider context than the immediacy even of Jude and the immediacy, necessarily, of the time in which we’re living. Let’s lay it down as axiomatic that despite the preoccupation of contemporary Christianity in the West with the inroads of a secular culture—an understandable concern—when we read our Bibles, we discover that the great warning is not about how to deal with those who oppose us from without, but it’s the warning of collapse from within. 

Paul does it as he bids farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20. He says, “I want you to take care of yourselves and the church that is under your care, because after my departure, fierce wolves will come in. They will arise from among yourself, and they will be bright, and they will be bold, and they will draw teachers away after them.”[1] It was true in Ephesus. It was true in the context to which Jude writes. And in actual fact, it is vitally important that in every generation of the church we recognize the threat, we heed the warning, and we keep the faith.

I was intrigued in doing a little bit of research about when people were born, because I was thinking about particular individuals. I was thinking about when Dwight L. Moody was born, when C. H. Spurgeon was born, and when General Booth of the Salvation Army was born. And I thought this was probably the case, but when I checked it out, I realized it was: that they were all born within about seven or eight years of each other.

And so, at the end of the nineteenth century, they are born. And some of them make it through into the twentieth century, but not all. And General Booth was asked as he was moving towards the end of his life, “What,” they asked him, “is your great concern for the church going into the next century?”—that is, the past century now, the twentieth century. Booth replied, “In answering your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”  He didn’t realize how prescient he was.

His contemporary, Spurgeon, who actually preached for Booth—and Booth preached for Spurgeon (not everybody knows that)—but Spurgeon, of course, was dealing with a very similar circumstance, wasn’t he? He was dealing with the fact that the church was threatened not by the external realities and vicissitudes of life but was threatened by the fact that the matters of biblical and vital importance were being eroded. And in fact, it’s actually worth considering the parallels between the Downgrade Controversy, through which Spurgeon lived, and the state of contemporary evangelicalism. I’ll leave you to do that for homework on your own.

But for Spurgeon, it was a period when the authority and the sufficiency of Scripture was vigorously attacked; that the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, about which we’ve just been singing, was ridiculed. And what challenged him and disturbed him greatly was the fact that instead of the church holding the line, there was capitulation and radical unbelief which began to lay hold in the church. God was being robbed of his glory, and men and women were being deprived of their hope. Spurgeon always was fairly straightforward, wasn’t he? He referred to this as “these destroyers of our church[es] appear to be as content with their work as monkeys with their mischief. That which their fathers would have lamented they rejoice in.” “Avowed atheists are not a tenth as dangerous as those preachers who scatter doubt and stab at faith.”[2]

You think about this—the great hue and cry about the contemporary atheists. Hitchens is dead and gone, but he ran for a while. And there are so many of them. And the church is writing books to try and answer these people. That’s not the problem. The problem is that within the framework of the church of Jesus Christ there is an incipient loss of confidence in the authority, power, truthfulness, relevance, and application of the Scriptures themselves.

And I bring this to you tonight as somebody who feels the weight of this and the burden of this as a pastor. It’s not that I live somewhere other than this. This is where I live my life. This is where we live our lives. And every one of us has only our foot in the doorway for a short period of time—for a generation, maybe two generations. And we keep our foot in the doorway in the hope that the door will be left open for others who will come behind and who will subscribe to the faith that was “once … delivered to the saints.”

Now, you may be saying, “Oh, here we go. This is going to be one big, long diatribe.” No, no. No, in fact, if you find yourself immediately getting your juices going about this—just the word “contend” is enough to get some people going (“Oh, I love to be… I love to contend!”)—well, “contend” is okay. Contention is not okay. The spirit and the tone of Jude here is not a spirit of condemnation; it is a spirit of consternation. (Don’t you like the English language?) But Jude, historically, has been a happy hunting ground for contentious individuals who are always spoiling for a fight. They are antagonistic, they are belligerent, they’re combative, and they’re generally disagreeable. We do not want to find ourself included in that company.

I tried to rewrite the letter of Jude. I couldn’t do it, but I wanted to see if I could capture the tone of it. And I gave up after a while, but this is what I came up with. This is Jude now. Well, this is me pretending to be Jude: “I’m writing like this not because I want to but because I must. And because I love you, I long to see you kept and keeping on. Let me remind you of these sad and powerful examples from the history of the people of God. They make my point. Remember, we were told to expect this kind of thing. So keep your chin up. Stay steady. Be gracious. Rest in God. He has you under his care.”

Now, with all of that by way of introduction, let’s come to the text. Otherwise, Jonathan will stand up and say, “Why did I bring you here? It’s supposed to be about the text. The text this. The text that. The text…” So let’s deal with the first two verses. We probably won’t get much further than that; I don’t know.

The Writer

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James.” So we are introduced to the writer.

It’s fascinating to me that he introduces himself in this way. There is actually only one Jude in the New Testament who has a brother called James, and we can read of that in the Gospels, and you can do that on your own. I take it that his name has been shortened in this in order to distinguish him from the disciple who denied Jesus. He identifies himself by his family relationship with James. His family relationship with James, the James who led the church in Jerusalem; the James, I take it, who penned the book of James. “James is my brother, and I am a servant of Jesus Christ.”

No one is too privileged to be exempt from the need to be converted.

Now, think about it: If he was the brother of James, that means that he was the half-brother of Jesus. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I had been writing this, that was what I would have put right up front: “Hey, this is me. I’m the half-brother of Jesus.” But no. Because why? Well, he wants to make sure that we understand this: that he is the servant of Jesus.

Now, John tells us that the brothers of Jesus didn’t actually believe in Jesus. They didn’t believe in him at all—John chapter 7. It was only after the resurrection that they actually came to declare Jesus as Lord and Master. Jesus is in Galilee. He’s not able to go into Judea. The Jews are threatening to kill him. He retreats, as it were, to his own family dwelling, and even, John says, his brothers did not believe in him.[3] No one is too privileged to be exempt from the need to be converted . Yeah, he was Jesus’ half-brother, but Jesus was his Savior. “I am Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James.”

Called, Beloved, and Kept

Now, “I’m writing to those who are called, beloved in God and kept for Jesus Christ.” One of the things that Jude does is he would really be a pretty good preacher, because he has lots of three points. And here’s his first little trinity or little triad: “called,” “beloved,” and “kept.” Now, I don’t have a very good memory, so I have to come up with things to help me to remember. So this is what I have for these three—that is, this is the Central Bank of Kenya. All right? Central Bank of Kenya. You say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Well, just listen. I’m trying to help you remember “called,” “beloved,” and “kept.”

You say, “Well, you’re not helping me, because now I’ll only remember the Central Bank of Kenya, and that would not be a helpful thing when we’re trying to learn the Bible.” Do what you want with it, but look here: “To those who are called.” “Called.” He’s not addressing them by who they are or by where they are but by what they are. That’s why when Kenneth Taylor paraphrases this, he says that this is “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and [the] brother of James. To: Christians everywhere.”[4] It’s a General Epistle. It’s one of a number of General Epistles. It doesn’t have an immediate geographical identity, nor does it have an immediate representation in the one who is its recipient. No. It is just this.

The specifics of the letter, of course, as we have read it just now point to the fact that he is addressing a particular church or a particular group of churches, and the recipients to whom he writes are as identified.

First of all, they are “called.” The Bible refers  with frequency to the fact that the Christian, the child of God, is one whom God has called. This means more than simply invited. You remember: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews … folly to [the] Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”[5]

Now, this is like bringing coals to Newcastle, I understand. But let’s not be in any doubt. You see what he’s doing here? He’s about to delve into material that is pretty hard both for him to write and pretty difficult for people to receive. And so he sets it immediately within the context of his love for them and his concern for them so that they might understand how much they mean to him, so that they know they can trust the heart of someone who cares this much, because they know that he is too kind ever to be cruel, and he’s too wise, under God, ever to make a mistake in what he’s doing. “Called.”

When a person comes to faith in Jesus, whether a Jew or a gentile, they discover themselves to be standing in a long line of succession that goes all the way back to Abraham. The story of the Bible is really the story of God’s free decision to call out a people for himself from every nation, tribe, language, and tongue , as we read when we get to Revelation.[6] And it is the unmistakable privilege of those who are in Christ tonight to understand this is why.

I’ve found a friend, O such a friend!
He loved me before he knew me.
He drew me with the cords of love,
And thus he bound me to him
And round my heart so closely twined
These ties that none can sever,
For I am his, and he is mine,
Forever and forever.[7]

Keep in mind that this is a letter. It shouldn’t be spoken about in such short order, despite the fact that I’m doing it in that way. You need to remember how he both begins and ends: “Keep yourselves in the love of God. You are loved by God.” That’s exactly how he starts. “What grace is mine, that he who dwells in endless light called through the night to [save] my [guilty] soul!”[8]

The story of the Bible is really the story of God’s free decision to call out a people for himself from every nation, tribe, language and tongue.

Do you ever wonder why it is that you believe? Do you ever wonder how it is that you still believe?

When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I’m lost
In wonder, love, and praise. …

Unnumbered comforts to my soul
Thy tender care bestowed
Before my infant heart conceived
From whom those comforts flowed.[9]

This is the identity of the child of God, and this is where he starts. The sense of urgency that he feels is, if you like, delayed in its expression until he establishes them in an understanding of the security that is theirs in Christ and in the gospel. We could all work our way through material like that. The hymn that I’m quoting from has a verse that is never sung. I’ve never heard it sung, but I know the verse is in there. And it goes somewhere along the lines like this:

When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
[Your hand] unseen conveyed me safe,
And [brought] me up to man.[10]

You know, God has some of his children on a long leash. But all who are his he has called.

Secondly: “beloved in God.” “Beloved in God.” “This is love”—this is love—“not that we … loved God but that he loved us.”[11] “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. The Father will love him. We will come to him. We will make our home with him.”[12] A love that stretches all the way across the Testaments. A love that is unimpaired by time, that is unaffected by geography. A love that won’t let us go. A wonderful love! Oh, we could just sing all night and just reinforce it—you know,

Come, let us sing of a wonderful love,
Tender and true,
Out of the heart of the Father above,
[Reaching] to me and to you:
Wonderful love,
[Out of] the heart of the Father above.[13]

Do you understand? I hope you understand the extent to which God has gone in order to redeem us—that he views us as his beloved. Every time I meet a boy called Benjamin, I always say, “You are a man with a great name.” It’s not because I want to be called Benjamin. I’m stuck with what I’ve got. But it would be a nice name. Ben doesn’t quite do it—you know, Ben. Why does everyone shorten their name? Benjamin is a nice name. And the reason I mention that is because when you read the blessings of Moses upon the tribes, he says something about this one and that one and Judah and so on, and this is what he says about Benjamin:

“The beloved of the Lord [dwells in safety],
 for he shields him all day long,
 and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.”[14]

You ever see the shepherd with a sheep just across there, and the legs are sticking out both sides? What kind of love is this? Or, if you want to take it down a couple of notches, you can just go country-western on it:

Honey, I’m gonna love you
Forever and ever, amen.
As long as old men sit and talk about old women,
As long as old women sit and talk about old men.
If you wonder how long I’ll be faithful,
I’ll tell you again and again,
’Cause I’m gonna love you forever.
Forever and ever, amen.[15]

That’s sentiment. But God says the very same thing: “I called you. I love you. I will love you forever.”

That is why we are kept—“those who are called, beloved in God and kept for Jesus Christ.” There’s a footnote there, if you’re in the ESV. It could be “kept by Jesus Christ.” Well, it’s both, isn’t it? That we’re kept by the Lord Jesus, and we’re kept for the Lord Jesus. One day the Lord Jesus will have the nations as his inheritance. One day he will stand before the Father and say, “Behold, I and the children you have given me.”[16] And he is the one who keeps us.

Now, what Jude is here is just a wonderfully faithful pastor, I suggest to you—that before he enters into the woes—and these are big woes that are on their way—before he delves into the woes, he establishes, if you like, the trues, the Central Bank of Kenya: “called” in the past, “beloved” in the present, and “kept” for the future.

I don’t know where your hearts are tonight. I don’t know what you’re dealing with. How could I possibly know? But God knows. And it is a precious thing when something that we are familiar with is brought home to our hearts just in such a timely fashion that we say, “Thank you. I know that stuff. I know what he’s saying. But thank you that you did call me, thank you that you love me, and thank you that you keep me.

Mercy, Peace, and Love

In all of it, what he’s really saying is that “I am a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I share with you in this one salvation. I am one with you, and I am also praying for you.” What good is a pastor that doesn’t pray for his flock, especially when he has to deal with material such as is about to follow? This is not just a sort of sensible way to begin the letter. No, he says, “Listen: This is how I pray for you. I am praying…” Notice, again, another three. I can tell you didn’t like the Central Bank of Kenya. Let me try you another one: Milwaukee Public Library. How ’bout that? If you get Central Bank of Kenya and Milwaukee Public Library, you got the whole talk, and you can just go home and rejoice. Okay? M for “mercy,” P for “peace,” and L for “love.” “May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you”—whereby God in his goodness doesn’t give to us what we deserve, and all this on account of what God has done for us in Jesus on our behalf.

We’ll get to that verse 21 eventually, maybe, next year: “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” That was the transformation in Paul. He’s not writing it. But that was the big shift in Paul, wasn’t it? Because he was an arrogant Jew. He was very sure of his religious perspective. He was so clear about it that he denied the claims of Jesus and hated those who were his followers. But, you remember, by the time he’s giving his testimony to us in 1 Timothy, remember what he says? “I was shown mercy.”[17] “I was shown mercy. I had built my entire existence on my achievements, whether spiritual, racial, intellectual—whatever they might be. And I was full of myself. But I was shown mercy, because I realized that I had a covetous heart.” It’s interesting that he says that—that covetousness was the thing that uncovered him.[18] What do you think he coveted? I don’t know. But I think there’s a possibility that he coveted what he saw on the day when he said to the people, “Leave your coats here while you stone him.” And there he looked, and he sees Stephen, his face as an angel, looking up into the heavens.[19] And I don’t know—we’ll have to check—but I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t on that day say, “Now there’s something I don’t have. I would like that.”

And God, of course, in his mercy showed him mercy, and he’s shown us mercy too—and the mercy that is so important that he says in these first verses, “You have to realize…” And this is why you’ve got to keep the letter before you all the time. He is reminding them that the mercy that they know is the mercy that they need to bestow upon those who doubt: “Have mercy on those who doubt.” In other words, the Christian congregation that is aware of being called and beloved and kept and is aware of mercy should not be a kind of congregation in which people who are doubting and are unsure and are fearful find that they cannot give vent to what is going on inside of them because this is the customary approach of the way in which we do our church life. No. It is mercy that makes us merciful. 

I want to reinforce this because of what comes after this: Surely the battle lines are drawn, when we talk about immorality here, in the sensuality that is represented in the sort of runaway torrent of the twenty-first century. “Mercy.” “Mercy there was great, and grace was free,” and “pardon was multiplied to me,”[20] so we look on these people out there: mercy.

It is mercy that makes us merciful.

“Peace.” “Peace”—in the face of disruption, in the context of opposition, in the environment where there is a kind of wholesale collapse internally; that what Peter had been suggesting was going to come, or was predicting it would arrive, has now arrived. Two Peter. I take it that Jude was written after 2 Peter. Others can comment on that. But he writes, doesn’t he, “False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”[21] “Oh, I pray that God will grant to you peace.” “You [will] keep him”—Isaiah—“in perfect peace whose mind is stayed [up]on you, because he trusts in you.”[22]

“May God’s mercy, God’s peace, and the love of God…” The love of God. What a privilege it is to be loved of God and to know his love! It’s tough being a grandfather, ’cause you start to sound like one. But the youngest members of my grandchildren were at our home last evening, on Mother’s Day, and the two little twin girls are just turned four, and I said to them, “What songs do you know?” And together, of course, they sang the children’s anthem: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” How do you know Jesus loves you? ’Cause of a feeling in your tummy? No, because the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to him belong.
They are weak, but [he’s] strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me![23]

The love of God, bringing us into his glorious presence, enabling us in turn to speak the truth in love.[24] And you’ll notice he’s not simply saying, “I hope you’ll know a measure of peace and mercy and love,” but he says, “May it be multiplied to you.” “Multiplied to you.” Only God can supply the needs in that kind of context. But he doesn’t just add them. He multiplies them.

Now, I could go on, but I don’t want to. I want to allow this to settle, if it may, and we can pick it up from here. But I feel very much a bit like Jude as I stand before you now. I would rather actually do something from 2 Timothy. I’d rather do a comfortable psalm than put myself in a position where, now, there’s no way out of what comes next. I mean, I’m stuck. And in a sense, you’re stuck too. “My plan was to write to you about our common salvation,” he says, “but I need to address these matters. But as I come to addressing these matters, remember this: that you are called, beloved, and kept. And understand that I am praying for you, that mercy, peace, and love will be multiplied to you, so that we might have together a shared understanding of who we are under God.”

In the ’60s, a couple from the States, Jimmy and Carol Owens, wrote two musicals that perhaps you will recall. One was called Come Together, and the other one was called If My People…. The sort of framework out of which they came, I think, was largely Pentecostal or charismatic, but many of the songs became embedded in the contemporary time, and I have often remembered them. I saw them at the Royal Opera House in London. I attended the thing there, and I saw it elsewhere.

But let me just end with this as a reminder: Jude is writing to these people. He’s about to say these difficult things. He doesn’t launch immediately into it. He’s not in a bad mood. He’s not contentious. He’s not cantankerous. He’s just deeply concerned. And I want to suggest to you that if you’re not deeply concerned about the state of the church in Canada, I don’t think you’re alive. If you don’t understand what’s happening in contemporary Scotland in relationship to the church, then buy a newspaper. And so, instead of us bemoaning these things, or becoming unkind, or whatever it might be, we need to remind ourselves of who we are under God in Christ. And the song went like this:

You are the children of the kingdom of God;
You’re the chosen ones for whom the Savior came;
You’re his noble new creation by the Spirit and the blood;
You’re the church that he has built to bear his name.

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against you,
And the hordes of darkness cannot quench your light,
And the hosts of God shall stand and fight beside you
Till your King shall reign triumphant in his might![25]

Father, I thank you that we have Bibles to which we can turn—that we’re able to go home and read and think. And I pray that at least our hearts will be stirred by the extent of your amazing goodness and kindness towards us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We take these verses in isolation, but we do so purposefully, so that we don’t delve into the urgency of the concern until we have been assured of the security that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ: that you are the God who has called, who loves us, and who keeps us. May mercy and peace and love become increasingly the drumbeat of our lives, the tone of our families, and the flavor of our congregations so that those who struggle might find in Jesus the answer to all their longings and that those who doubt may, on the occasion of discovering your mercy, be drawn into the embrace, like Benjamin, resting in the arms of Christ.

Thank you, Lord, for this day and for this night. Bless us as we sing. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

[1] Acts 20:28–30 (paraphrased).

[2] Quoted in Russell H. Conwell, Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The World’s Great Preacher (Philadelphia: A. T. Hubbard, 1892), 474, 473.

[3] See John 7:5.

[4] Jude 1 (TLB).

[5] 1 Corinthians 1:23–24 (ESV).

[6] See Revelation 7:9.

[7] James Grindlay Small, “I’ve Found a Friend” (1863). Lyrics lightly altered.

[8] Keith Getty and Kristyn Getty, “What Grace Is Mine” (2009).

[9] Joseph Addison, “When All Thy Mercies, O My God” (1712).

[10] Addison.

[11] 1 John 4:10 (ESV).

[12] John 14:23 (paraphrased).

[13] Robert Walmsley, “Come, Let Us Sing of a Wonderful Love” (1900).

[14] Deuteronomy 33:12 (NIV).

[15] Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz, “Forever and Ever, Amen” (1987). Lyrics lightly altered.

[16] Isaiah 8:18; Hebrews 2:13 (paraphrased).

[17] 1 Timothy 1:16 (NIV).

[18] See Romans 7:7–8.

[19] See Acts 7:54–58.

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

[21] 2 Peter 2:1 (ESV).

[22] Isaiah 26:3 (ESV).

[23] Anna Bartlett Warner, “Jesus Loves Me” (1859).

[24] See Ephesians 4:15.

[25] Carol Owens and Jimmy Owens, “Children of the Kingdom” (1974).