Sermon details
- Scripture
- Jude 17-25
- Series
- Jude
- Speaker
- Keith Goad
- Date
- 11 June 2023
- Length
- 50 minutes
Read the sermon
Keep yourselves in the love of God
Good morning. We're continuing on in Jude. Well, I decided we're going to have one more sermon in Jude, so we're still going to consider that last declaration, the last two verses, 24 to 25, but I want to come back and actually really appreciate more the very rich doctrine of God there. If you're new with us, we've been walking through Jude. We pattern ourselves in walking through books of the Bible so that we're submitting to the word of God as presented. And this is our third sermon in Jude. If you look there, verses one to four was the first. And that's where he's setting up what he wanted to do, but what he decided he had to do. He wanted to encourage the church. in the common salvation. All believers have the same blessings of God. We believe in the same Savior. We receive the same salvation. But he said, there's a problem. I need you to contend for the faith, the once for all delivered to the saints faith. There's trouble within the church. So there's a call to arms. There's a call to make sure we're defending the faith. There's a call to make sure we're promoting the faith. Well, the problem is declared very clearly in verse four, certain people crept in. And if we look at what we really considered last week, verses five to 16, it's a long list of who these people are, and he keeps referring back to these people, these ungodly people, these kinds of people, these folks who are already been told about in past scriptures. They're ungodly people. They've already been designated for condemnation. And what makes them very unique is that end of verse four, they pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. They fall off on the licentious side. They've looked at God and his goodness, and they've said, we don't want to obey rules. We want to say grace actually allows us to not follow God, to not deny ourself. Instead of denying themselves, notice they deny Jesus the only true master. There's all kinds of ways we mess up the gospel. There's all kinds of ways we confuse the gospel. This particular way is by declaring my feelings, my desires, my affections. What I want, well, God needs to submit to my desires. Then he makes sure, as we looked at last week, how you can identify these people who are dangerous. We'll look at another description of them here soon, but one of the more significant ones, ungodly people who practice ungodly deeds with ungodly words. This morning we're looking at a new turn. Verse three to four, that's beloved, I wanted to write to you in the common salvation, but I'm writing for you to contend. Then it's reminding you of these people, these people, these people. Notice verse 17, but you, there's a significant change, there's a turn. And here we see instruction, what it really looks like for you to contend. The first thing is remember, but you remember. And then he has four different things there, but the key one is keep. And the last one is rescue. There's three things we are called to do. brush over 24 and 25, which is a grand declaration of praise. So if you're taking notes, there's four points. Remember, keep, rescue, praise. And I want us to keep in mind here that the main focus, keep yourselves in the love of God who keeps you. Keep yourselves in the love of God who keeps you. So for this church, he's writing with a particular problem in mind, he's writing for them to contend, and as he summed up a fairly significant these description, we look at verse 17. Remember, but you remember these creepers were predicted.
But you 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.
" Now, it is a term because he's now addressing the church, but you must remember, but there is a significant way in which this is carrying on what he's already said. He's still describing these people that you need to remember were predicted. He describes him again, because he likes sets of three. If you were not here last week, we see that he likes sets of three, and we'll see it here again in these last few verses. But he's calling the disciples, remember this. Remember that the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted that many will come and they'll infiltrate, they'll creep in, they'll seek to pervert the grace of God. Now, again, this is James, the half-brother of Jesus, who doesn't introduce himself that way. He actually introduced himself as a servant of Jesus. And interesting, to that point, he also doesn't say, remember, Jesus predicted this. No, he says the apostles predicted this. He's given significant authority to the apostles. He could have quoted numerous passages of Jesus, where he also predicted the same thing, but there's an authority there of the apostles of Jesus Christ. Now, the only way this is a direct quote is if he's quoting 2 Peter 3.3, which would be pretty fascinating because he's recognizing the apostle's writing already. The other option is that we don't know who borrowed from who, Jude or 2 Peter. They're very similar in some of their content, but this is more of a paraphrase of the teaching. That's likely. He's paraphrasing the prediction Know that Satan is going to seek to infiltrate. Know that many who do not know Jesus, who are actually denying him, they're gonna wanna come be part of the church life, and they're going to cause trouble by definition. Notice he gives three more ways to make sure we understand who they are. Again, these. They cause divisions. They're worldly people. They're devoid of the Spirit. If you go back up in Jude, they're wreaths at your love feasts. That's destructive and divisive. They're gossipers, they're slanders. They hinder the love of the church towards God and towards one another because they're self-satisfying, not self-denying. They like to stir up trouble. They want to make sure you feel like a victim so you act like a villain. They want to make sure you turn something small into something so significant that you make a big deal of it. They create doubt where God's word is clear. They want to make sure that anything that sounds like a command or an expectation is legalism. They want to remove any fear of God, and therefore they remove any notion of loving God. They do not produce what Jesus prayed for, unity. They do not produce what the Holy Spirit produces, unity. They are, by definition, divisive. Now, it's really easy to rally a group of people around something you all hate for a little while, but folks who are just committed to their own sensuality, their own self-governing authority, or their own selfish desires, there is no unity to be maintained long-term. That's impossible. These people are by definition divisive because they cannot maintain the unity of the spirit. So they're divisive, you can feel that, you experience that, but now there's ways in which we can see they live, they're worldly people. Now that doesn't mean people of the earth. World carries this idea of a rebellious movement among those created on this earth. It's ruled by Satan. It's marked by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The worldliness is a way in which another way of describing the ungodliness, a system that helps self-produce and self-create and promote the idea that we don't need God, we just need to satisfy our own desires. They're worldly. They've not yet been transformed. In that last description, So divisions, that's what you feel among the body. The worldliness, that's how they're living their own lives. But this last one, devoid of the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, God's own Spirit that He, Jesus promised He would send when He gets to the right hand of the Father, that He would send the Holy Spirit from the Father, and the Father would send the Spirit through Him to continue the work of Christ in our hearts. They don't have the Holy Spirit. They're devoid. Their spiritual state is why they're worldly. Their spiritual state is why they're divisive. This is really coming down to the true diagnosis. Now, there's ways in which Christians can get into bad habits, bad behavior, and that can cause divisions. There's ways in which believers, true believers, can get involved with the world and God calls them back. But here, they're devoid of the Spirit. That's a final declaration of who they really are. They're not regenerate. They don't have a new man to put on, they're just an old man. They have the old self, the old desires. They're full of lies. They're self-deceived. They're worldly in their conduct and their speech. The church is meant to grow up together, which we'll be looking at here in a moment. The church is meant to be the holy people of God with holy conduct and holy speech, and you can only become that if you have the Holy Spirit. It's not something we produce in ourselves. The Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit, and all of us together, well, if somebody comes in to try to be part of the church, the holy people, without the Holy Spirit, they can't actually promote and produce what's good. That's why they end up being divisive. Here there's a notion that there's not supposed to be a mixed body at the church. This is why we want to make sure that when somebody joins, they're sharing their testimony, so we hear this is how Christ saved them. What we do is try to make it as clear as possible. We want to be a church made up of believers, all in different walks of their own faith, all welcome to come and participate in the way we're growing up into Christ together under his word. We want to make it clear that it's believers who are seeking to submit to Christ because they've been renewed by Christ. The Holy Spirit is essential to be part of the body. Whatever your favorite picture of the church is, you know, one body under the head, we're different members. Well, if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you don't know how to be a member who functions under the head or the temple. The Holy Spirit is building us up together on the cornerstone so that we grow up together as that Holy temple by the Holy Spirit. or the family, the Holy Spirit that adopts us and cries out, we are children of God, we can't be the family of God in Christ by the Father without the Holy Spirit. Notice there Christ is the goal, the head of the body. He's the ground, the temple, the cornerstone. He's the measure of love as the true son of God who lets us share in his sonship. The Holy Spirit leads us up to Christ together. Believer, our call is to keep in step with the Spirit, so we might produce the fruit of the Spirit. Remember, there is going to be those who seek to attack the church from within, and this is what Judah's drawing our attention to as most concerning. Well, with that in mind, with that remembered, We can kind of just start going through the process and the motions and forget that there might be an attack or there will be an attack. It's predicted. We might not contend the way we should. The next one, we're going to spend a significant amount of time on here because this is now a proactive way in which you contend. Notice there, verse 20, but you, unlike those who cause divisions, those who are worldly, those who are devoid of the spirit, but you, Notice again, he's called you the beloved, those in the love of God,
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.
Here, remembering the creepers are predicted, now keep yourself in the love of God. Keep yourself in the love of God. Now, if you wanna look at Jude, and I encourage you, if you wanna be a Bible student, Jude is this fun book that has some, okay, some kinda interesting things with Michael and Enoch, but it's a wonderfully contained book, 25 verses. And if you wanna try to wrap your head around the book, there's two key words, and they're right here, love and keep. Those two words just keep trickling down through Jude and they're informing each other and informing us together what it means that God loves and keeps us and what it means for us to lovingly keep one another. These words aren't new. If you go back to verse two, notice the way he actually already addresses the church,
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the called, beloved in God and kept for Jesus Christ.
There's something we've got to just already recognize. We are the beloved. You are loved by God. You are kept for Jesus Christ. These are absolute statements. God has given us his love. God has promised us his love. God has promised he would keep us. God has proved his love so much to the point that he sent his only son to die for you, and in that love, you cannot lose it. This is the love of God. You cannot lose it. We're not able to do anything that would make God love us. and therefore you could not do anything that would cause God to stop loving you. If we think about these two words together, God keeps loving us, and he lovingly keeps us. That's what he's already declared in verse two, and that's what we'll also see a little bit more next week in verses 24 to 25, but it really leads to a hard question. If God loves us and keeps us, why do we keep ourselves in love with God? If God has already loved us and he already keeps us, why do we need to keep ourselves in the love of God? Some avoided to go, well, this is just telling us we need to love God with all our heart. This is just reiterating that first commandment, love God, and that's important to know because our loves are fickle. They're going all over the place. But I think he's saying something more than this. I don't think he's quite saying just that. Because Jude is a book that's declaring what God has already done and how important it is that you stay away from those who are creeping in and causing all kinds of ungodly trouble. A couple things we cannot conclude here. This cannot mean that you could lose the love of God. The command to keep yourself in the love of God cannot mean that you could actually lose the love of God. You cannot keep yourself in salvation. To make that very clear, if you're responsible for keeping yourself in salvation, you would lose it. So it cannot mean keep yourself in salvation, in love, in that covenant relationship, but I don't think it's saying quite enough to simply say love God. I believe Jesus' words are helpful here as we think about what it means. John 15, nine, Jesus gives the exhortation to abide in God's love by keeping his commandments. In John 14, 15, Jesus already said,
if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
I believe there's a notion that as the beloved, obey. You did not obey enough to receive love. No, God loved you while you were a sinner. That love is absolute. But as we receive that love, it's not meant to be a license to do whatever it is you wanna do. No, the recognition is God has loved you. He's given you his son, he's given you his word, he's given you his Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves near. not as perverting the grace as a means of disobeying God, but no, abide in God. Live in the love of God. Live in the love that God has given you by obeying Him, by keeping yourselves near Him. Be near in obedience. Again, God has loved you perfectly, beloved. Walk in that love. God loved you so that you could love him. We just read that. God loved us first. But love for God can't be something we think is casual, haphazard, or spontaneous. Love is certainly not something you fall into, and if you find yourself in a place where you've fallen in love, I urge you, as quickly as possible, get out. That sounds terrifying. You're emotionally captivated by someone? Oh, get out. No, love is setting your affections and your directions toward what is good. Oh, the person is just sort of love go anywhere it wants. Well, that's a life of chaos and disorder. Contrast might be helpful. as we seek to keep ourselves in God's love, the joy God would have for us. A contrast. If God has loved you, and you keep yourself away from him in disobedience, if you keep sinning, something good, I believe, regularly happens to you. You become miserable. And that's good. If you are loved by God, but yet you refuse to practice loving Him and refuse to obey Him, God blesses you with misery. And He does so to help you see what you're doing. Now, typically, we're in self-denial about that misery, and typically, we wanna blame everybody else for that misery. And therefore, we make them miserable. But if you're beloved, If you're sealed by the Holy Spirit, if you have been purchased by the blood of Christ, if God the Father has set his affections on you and yet you continue to run away and get as far away from him as possible and sin, he will bless you with misery for the purpose of drawing you near. He doesn't bless disobedience. That wouldn't be a good God. He blesses us in a way that will draw us back to him because the reason God gives us his love is that we might know him and enjoy him and thrive in his love. One of the reasons we need to see that we keep ourselves love of God is that the folks who creep in, they like to loosen the commands of God. They like to pervert the grace of God. They like to lead others astray. We like to find ways to give ourselves excuses to not be obedient. We must keep ourselves in the love of God. God calls us to know him by his grace and then calls us to walk in his grace. Keep. Keep here carries the notion of a promise. We make promises, we keep promises. God has made promises, he keeps them. If you have believed in Jesus, you have ultimately been making a promise to Jesus. You'll trust him. You'll obey him. You'll seek to know him and be his disciple and make disciples and make him known. God is a good God in that he blesses us to keep his promise. Something important about this text that isn't obvious to us, it's a plural command. So we could read it this way, y'all keep yourselves, or you guys, depending on where you're from, trying to be all things to all people. You all, we are by definition trained in our culture to think too individualistic and as consumers. You can't get this passage if you're just thinking like an individual or consumer, because you actually can't keep yourself well as an individual or consumer. This is a together pouring out kind of command. This is a command where you know who you are keeping and who is supposed to be keeping you. There's a understanding of who is actually responsible for you and who you're responsible for. We contend together for the faith, according to verse four. Three, sorry, we contend together for the faith. We keep each other in the love of God. Now that certainly means my own personal responsibility to keep myself, and it's your responsibility to keep yourself, but it's us keeping each other as well. We can't deny one part of that. This is really one another. It's not stated in that particular language, but it clearly is following along the same principle of the one another's. You love one another, so you keep yourselves together. You're keeping one another. What a weighty responsibility, church. But what an encouragement that you're not alone. It is a weighty responsibility to think, We as members of the body are seeking to care for and protect and warn and instruct and train up each other in a way that keeps each other in the love of God. But how comforting that others are actually supposed to be committed to doing the same for you. One of the questions is how easy do you make it for others to do that for you? And how committed are you to doing that for others? If I could just be as simple and straightforward as possible, if you do not need other people to walk and live as a Christian, you're not doing it right. You probably have an unnoticed limp. If other people do not need you to walk as a Christian, you're not doing it right. Make disciples. That's what it means to be a disciple. In short, we are a brother's keeper. We've all been adopted in the same family. We've all been given the same Holy Spirit. We've all been given the same salvation, the same savior, the same head, the same word. It's a matter if we'll come together and protect that body and promote the goodness of that body. It's just like what we do with our homes. I trust you protect your home. You guard what shows up on a screen in front of children, in front of yourself. You guard what you let come in because there's dangerous things that want to invite themselves into your own home through a screen. You guard who comes in for a meal, who gets to walk in that door anytime. There needs to be a welcome of certain people and of certain truths and of certain kinds of thoughts and activities, but there needs to be a guard in this. Church, there's a welcoming and a guarding. There's a keeping. Now, keep yourselves in the love of God. That's the one command that then building and praying qualify. And it's important to see there's a how to. Isn't that nice? How to keep each other in the love of God. There's three parts of it. There's three basic ways. We're gonna start with the building and praying. Building yourselves up in your most holy faith. I believe this is just like the faith we're contending for in verse three. It's the faith handed down, it's the most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Spirit. Now, let's again make this as simple as possible. There's two ingredients here that we can wrestle with as to what it means to keep yourself in the love of God. It's the word of God and prayer. Anybody ever heard that before? Knowing God's word, how to hear him. Knowing prayer, how to speak to him. It's a relationship. It's a communion with God. And how good it is that God gives us his word and then invites us to speak to him. We're supposed to be building each other up in that most holy faith. Building. That carries the idea of constructive, If you ever have tried to build something, you first have to have the idea, like, what is the project in mind? All right, I've got a plan, now I've got to think of, all right, what are the steps, what are the instructions, and then what are the materials, and what kind of help do I need? All right, you could build like I do, and that's trial and error, and I had to rebuild a wall like six times. I don't recommend that, and that's not how we're gonna build a church. But if you're gonna build something, you gotta know what you wanna build, you wanna know your direction, you wanna know the instructions, you wanna know the materials. Church, the goal of building each other up in the most holy faith is to become like Christ our head. We're to all be striving to be like Christ. We're to all be striving to be more godly in Christ Jesus. The instructions, those are the commands in teaching. Jesus says,
make disciples, teaching them how to observe all that I've commanded.
God's word is our instructions. We don't have to make it up as we go. We don't have to practice some silly trial and error. We don't have to be creative. We just need to be faithful. What are the tools to help us? We have the Holy Spirit. God himself in dwelling. You have the Holy Spirit, the same spirit who carried men along to give us these words and the Holy Spirit illuminates your mind so that you can know these words. There's a great confidence we should have in pursuing together what this word says and what the instructions are. You have one another, you have his word, those are the tools. The Holy Spirit, one another, his word. The materials. your head, your heart, your hands. You cannot believe something you don't know. You cannot do something you don't desire. Those three aspects grow at different times in different ways. The heart cannot believe and desire what the head does not know. We are to be transformed in the renewing of our minds. We're to be growing up into more knowledge of God and what he expects of us. We're to grow up in more heart and love for God. And we're to grow up into more faithful service. And it's not, let's go one, two, three. No, it's constantly a cycle. Our head, our heart, our hands growing. Build, build up one another. in the most holy faith. Strengthen, equip. The opposite of tearing down, which is what the creepers did. Those ungodly, divisive people, they tear down, but God is calling us to build up. And let's just be honest, anybody can deconstruct something. It does not take any talent whatsoever to destroy something. When we were young, one of our mowers broke. And it was done. My dad just said, we're going to throw it away to the dump. But my brother said, well, you know what? I want to see if I can fix it. He took the thing apart. Impressively, he kept all the bolts and the nuts in all the right places. And it was organized. And he fixed it properly. He put it back together. That's really something, to be able to take something apart that's broken, fix it, and then put it back together. I could have taken it apart. Easy. I'm really good at being destructive. But to have the ability to put something back together. Christian, anybody can come and be divisive in a church. Anybody can get up and stir people up, but to actually come and strengthen others. What a joy to be able to help others see Jesus more clearly. What a high calling to build up the saints, to have more confidence in Christ, to know how to serve Christ. We're supposed to be growing. We're supposed to be building each other up. And we build each other up as we're keeping. The word of God is clearly in view. We have to be people of the book. We are under this book. And I encourage you, and we practice here as much as we can what we think your regular life should be. We're singing songs with another. We're reading scripture together. You're hearing scripture read. Let me encourage you, this book was written to be heard. It wasn't until a couple hundred years ago that most homes would have a family Bible. What a blessed time we have that we can actually read God's word, our own copy or copies. But I encourage you, it's actually meant to be a communal book. It's designed to be read in churches as we do. And I encourage you, sometimes don't look at the pages, listen to it. It's written to be heard and listened to, to be received that way. It's important we think, I'm not just gonna do my devotions by myself, I'm gonna learn how to read scripture with others. That doesn't mean somebody's a teacher and somebody's a pupil, that means we're all coming together and we're gonna submit to God's word together. The second way in which you keep yourselves as we keep each other in the love of God, pray in the Holy Spirit. Now there's some discussion of what this means, is this praying and tongues, there's no explicit or implicit allusion to that. I kind of want to be clear, the only way you can praise a Christian is in the Spirit. The only way you get to call God Father is that the Holy Spirit actually lets you cry out Abba Father in the name of the Son. This, I believe, is simply Christian prayer. You're praying, depending upon God's Spirit, to pray to Him as Father. And if there's a contrast, I think it's praying in the flesh. And that's the Santa Claus-like prayer. God, here's my long list of things that you should be doing better. The long list of things I haven't gotten yet. If we're gonna think about praying in the Spirit, it's opposite of that. To pray in the Spirit is to pray according to what the Spirit's already given us in prayers. If you wanna know the most sure way to pray in the Spirit, it's looking at the 150 Psalms that are, how good is God? He gives us all the words to believe, to know, and to obey, and then He even helps us know how to talk to Him. He teaches us how to thank Him. He teaches us how to confess sin to Him. He teaches us how to rejoice in Him. He teaches us even how to complain to Him. Go through the Psalms. It's pretty amazing how He, the Holy God, invites us to speak to Him. If you want to pray in the Spirit, pray according to the words the Holy Spirit's given us. We have so many prayers. Go to the prayers of Paul in Ephesians 1 or Ephesians 3. These are ways to come together and pray for one another. That's what we try to do on our Wednesday night service in that we're constantly trying to put forth the ministries of the church. We're trying to put forth the maturity, the kind of prayers we should be praying together as we as a church should be built up together in the holy faith. We're called to pray. We receive God's word and we speak back to God. What an invitation. As a Christian, we could ask, how's your Bible study life? How are you doing when reading the word of God with others? And you can also ask, how's your prayer life? Do you regularly find yourself in communion with the holy God who's invited you into his personal presence to call him father? I think it's difficult to learn how to read the Bible on your own. I think it's even more difficult to learn how to pray on your own. This is why we keep one another. This is why we build each other up. We learn how to read God's word with each other. We learn how to pray from each other. This is why I encourage you, come to our Wednesday night prayer meeting. It's a way to come and not only have your own heart and mind aligned with God's word as a church united, But it's also a way to learn how to pray. It's difficult to learn how to pray, but this is how God teaches us. The third way in which we keep ourselves is waiting. So we're still keeping. You keep yourselves in the love of God. Y'all keep yourselves in the love of God by building yourselves up, by praying. And the third participle, the third way, the third how is interesting. waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. The word leads there is a little misleading. It's waiting for the mercy of our Lord in, that goes into eternal life. It's amazing, we've received mercy. God has given us mercy. He's been patient with us in our sin, that's merciful. God sent his own son to die on the cross, that's merciful. God declared us forgiven at the moment of our faith, that's merciful. We could count so much all the mercies he's given to us. We could pray for and rejoice that his mercies are new every morning. We could pray for that they multiply, but notice here, there is a mercy that is perfectly, completely future we're still waiting on. And that mercy is when we see Christ face to face and are finally fully transformed, sin is removed. We receive a new life, perfect, without sin. We're to be waiting. And we usually think of waiting as something that's horrible. There's an expectancy. a longing for, a desire for. I believe the more we seek to keep ourselves in the love of God, with our love so fickle going everywhere, as we seek to build each other up, seeing how much sin is in our own lives, in our church, and how difficult this can be, as we seek to pray and be watchful, oh, how much we should be waiting eagerly for Christ to complete the work he began in us. There are no certificates or trophies this side of glory. Sin free. This won't ever be a problem again. No, we're all contending, longing for that day we receive Christ as our true reward. The third command really flows right out of this one. The third section, rescue, rescue. Notice there's a turn still, there's a you remember, because these folks are coming in, predicted, you beloved, keep yourselves, building, praying, waiting, and now there's another set of three. And there's a different direction, there's a way in which he's saying keep yourselves, this is a kind of that center where the church is coming together and growing together, and then there's a different direction the church looks. Rescue. Verses 22 and 23.
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.
He's writing to the saints, he's writing to the church, he's writing to the called, he's writing to the beloved. And as that church is building itself up, they need to be able to look around and see there's some that are straying. Again, the whole church is meant to be aware that some have strayed, and the mercy we're waiting on, the mercy we receive, and the mercy we're waiting on, well, that's what gives us the ability to show mercy. Notice here, it's three different, it's a list of three again. The only real descriptor we have of any of them is they doubt. Now, I don't know if it's more intensity of doubt, because it seems like the three descriptions get more intense. If it's three different kinds of doubting, the key idea there is there's those who doubt. So there's those who are keeping themselves low of God, remaining faithful to the faith. They're worried about those who are doubting and are kind of moving away from the center. Let's talk all the way back to Those who are predicted, those divisive, worldly, devoid of the Spirit. I believe the action that's not stated, but that's assumed from their text is that they would be removed from the church, church discipline, or removal because they in no way are aligned with Christ whatsoever. They're removed because they're dangerous, because they're denying Jesus. And this is where we gotta be real careful. Doubting is different than denying. Denying Jesus is something you just flat out flagrantly, I'm not listening, I don't care. My life, it doesn't matter what Jesus did. I'm gonna do what I wanna do. There's a denial. That's very different than doubt. And sometimes trying to figure out which one it is is a little complicated. But those who doubt, those who have been persuaded by the deniers, Those who've been led astray by those who deny Jesus, there's a doubt that's come in, and show mercy. Mercy's kind. The mercy you've received is kind. The mercy you've received is patient. Now making the decision as to who's denying and who's doubting, that's hard, but once we recognize someone is doubting, we wanna hope they're only doubting. Show mercy. And I believe the whole principle here is he's taking that word straight down. As you're waiting for mercy, as the one who's received mercy, show mercy on the doubters. And it's not in any way trying to scrub the danger the doubters are in. They're getting close to fire, and fire is judgment. Snatch them out. There's a rescue mission. There's a mercy for the doubters. Now, mercy means we're seeking to confront them in whatever is leading them astray. Mercy means we're seeking to help them see the truths in a loving way of who Christ is and what he's done for them and what he expects of them. Mercy means we're seeking to be clear about what the most holy faith is and inviting them in. We're all waiting on mercy and for those who are veering away, we're seeking to show mercy. There's those who are seeking to just build themselves up, those who are growing and building up, those who are running away. Rescue with mercy. A big question this morning. Are you keeping, building, praying, waiting, or doubting? And I ask because that diagnosis is significant. Doubters are welcome. We would love to talk to you about whatever it is you're doubting. Whatever it is you think that's not good from God, and either what He's not done sufficiently in Christ, or what He's not given you sufficiently in His Word, or what He's not given you sufficiently in the Spirit. Doubters, please come, talk. Don't leave with a doubt. Deniers must go. They're dangerous. Doubters, oh. We love helping you see the clarity of God's love. He sent his own son to die for you. Those who doubt, he's given you his word, and he's given you his Holy Spirit. When showing mercy, we do not condone the sin. We hate the garment even stained by the flesh. We don't condone it, but we are open-handed, patient, inviting them back to Christ. The last section, which we'll come back to next week, praise. I want you to hear the emphasis on who God is. Now to Him, that's God,
who is able to keep you from stumbling.
He's powerful.
and is able to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.
He's able to currently keep you from stumbling, and he's able to complete the job of your final sanctification where you'll receive that mercy.
To him, the only God, the only God, our Savior, through Jesus our Lord,
his only begotten Son,
To Him be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time, now, and forevermore. Amen.
He is the one and only God, and He alone is able to save you, to keep you from stumbling, and to present you I wanted to end with this because you are to keep yourselves in the love of God to him who has already kept you and will keep you. We start at verse two. You've been loved by God and kept for Jesus Christ. We're ending with a God who's able to keep you. What confidence we should have as we seek to keep ourselves in the love of God? Because it's what God has already done and wants to do and is able to do. What confidence? Whatever fear you have of failure, all the confidence in the world is right here presented to you, the God who has kept you, who will keep you, who empowers you to keep yourself and each other in the love of God. That's the confidence we need, to move closer together in Christ so we grow up together. Will you pray with me? Father, again we come before you. We have not kept our promises. We thank you that you keep yours. We have not loved you. We thank you that you have loved us while we were still sinners. We have not loved one another. We thank you, Lord, that your grace abounds. Father, as we consider this calling, help us, Lord, to recognize and remember the danger that is lurking, and to not be fearful, but to be ready, to seek to train up each other, to seek to provide the healing needed for those who stray in doubt, the grace to receive back those who have walked away, the courage to commit our time, energy, and effort to this great task of building up your church for your glory, because this is what you have committed yourself to do. This is what you are able to do. You will finish the work. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Transcript from SermonAudio. The recording is the authoritative version.
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