The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance The Fifth Midweek Service in Lent
Keep Yourselves in the Love of God Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Tonight, Jude would have us do a more than “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude wants us to be certain that we protect ourselves: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.” Dear Christian friends, Repentance is a strange and wonderful thing in God’s Scriptures. In many Bible passages, repentance sounds like a command or requirement God places upon us. Jesus Himself has said, “Unless you repent, you will perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). The strange and truly wonderful thing about repentance in God’s Scriptures is that, even though repentance sounds like a command, repentance is actually a gift that God creates for you and gives to you through His Word. This is why the earliest Christians rejoiced, “God exalted [Jesus]… to GIVE repentance to Israel” (Acts 5:31), and “to the Gentiles also God has GRANTED repentance” (Acts 11:18). Strange thing! Wonderful thing! God Himself gives to us the same thing He requires and demands from us! When God commands you and me to repent, it is somewhat like Jesus’ own command to the dead man Lazarus, “Come out [of your tomb]” (John 11:43). Jesus ordered the dead man to do something, but then the miraculous and divine power of Jesus’ Words accomplished the very thing He commanded: “The dead man who had died came out” (John 11:44). The same thing happens when God commands us to repent. God commands and requires our repentance, but then He also creates our repentance for us by the very Words He speaks to us in the command. Jude knows the power and miracle of God’s Word. That is why Jude speaks about your repentance as though it were something you must accomplish for yourself: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.” • “Build,” “keep,” “pray”: these are all spoken as commands to you. But God’s Words accomplish FOR you the things they require FROM you! • “Build,” “keep,” “pray”: we should think of these things as what GOD does FOR US through His powerful and miraculous Word—even when that Word is spoken to us as if it were a command. 1. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith.” How shall we “build ourselves up”? We do NOT build our faith by committing ourselves to do better! Faith is NOT something we conjure up within ourselves. Faith is NOT our personal commitment to trust and follow Jesus. Faith is NOT a muscle that we tease into greater strength or endurance! Faith is what God does. Faith is the miracle that results from hearing God’s Word (Romans 10:17). Faith is the apple that gets produced by the green and living tree of God’s Word. Faith is the infant child that suckles at the breast of God’s Word. Faith grows and “builds up” only by the power of the divine Word. When Jude calls for our repentance by saying, “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith,” Jude is telling us to renew our attention to God’s Word! God’s Word both gives and increases our faith. God’s Word guards us against our “own sinful desires,” among countless other things. God’s Word guarantees to keep us safe and secure against anyone who “creeps in unnoticed… who perverts the grace of our God into sensuality and denies our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.” 2. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit.” How shall we “pray in the holy Spirit”? We do NOT pray in the Spirit by closing our eyes to the Word or by babbling in some incoherent substitute for speech, as the Pentecostals spew and rave. We pray in the Spirit by focusing our attention upon the Words of the Spirit, which are contained exclusively in the pages of the Holy Scriptures. We pray in the Holy Spirit by patterning our words after the Spirit’s Words and by imitating in our prayers—to the weak degree we are able—those prayers the Spirit Himself has written in His Scriptures. Again, when Jude calls for our repentance by saying, “pray in the Holy Spirit,” Jude is simply calling for us to renew our attention to God’s Word! In particular, Jude calls us to regard God’s Word as the source of our prayers. “Certain people creeping in” will pray any-which-way they want! God’s Word and God’s Word alone makes it possible for cold and unnoticing hearts such as yours and mine to “pray in the Holy Spirit.” 3. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.” How shall we keep ourselves in the love of God? We keep ourselves in the love of God by 1) “building ourselves up in the most holy faith” and 2) “by praying in the Holy Spirit”! Stated another way, we keep ourselves in the love of God by—you guessed it—remaining and abiding as close as possible to the living Words of God in His Scriptures. Jude wants you to know that the powerful and living Scriptures of God—which you hear and imitate in your prayers—the Scriptures of God will never fail keep you “in the love of God.” (“Build” and “pray” are participles, directing you to the main verb, “keep.”) Yet again, when Jude calls for our repentance by saying, “keep yourselves in the love of God,” Jude is simply calling for us to renew our attention to God’s Word! Lent or Easter, Advent or Christmas, Epiphany or Pentecost: everything in every season always boils down to God’s Word in our lives. God’s Word is the easiest and the hardest thing in our lives. • God’s Word is the easiest thing because through it, God does all things for us. Forgiveness is now yours. Forgiveness comes to you when God speaks it. Life envelopes you when God intones and exhales life to you. Resurrection will kick into action by the power of the Word that shall one day be spoken to you, “Come out [of your tomb]” (John 11:43). “You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!” (Isaiah 26:19) • God’s Word is not merely the easiest thing in our lives. The Word is also the hardest thing about our lives. God’s Word is hard because the Word requires that we must silence ourselves—or rather, God must silence us—so that He may speak. God’s Word is hard because everybody always feels like there should be more to say than what God has fully and completely said in His Son (Hebrews 1:1). That was the problem in Jude’s letter. That is why Jude “found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Certain people had crept in. These people felt that they had something to say, above and beyond and apart from God’s Word. Not so with you, beloved. By God’s gift and miracle of His Word—through Baptism and otherwise—you are “those who have been called.” You are “beloved in God the Father.” You are “kept for Jesus Christ.” In these last days, days of scoffing and rejection of God’s Word, “beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.” 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 _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
