Here Comes the Son

Howdy. My name is Carson Keith. My wife and I have called the summit home for about four years now. Today's sermon comes from Jude 1, 20 through 25. 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, 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. This is the word of God for the people of God. You may be seated. All right, Jude, if you have not found that in your Bible, it is the last, second to last book of the Bible. So find your way there. Jude, we're going to be in the last part of the chapter there. One of my kids' favorite stories that they love for me to tell from my college days involves a good friend of mine. His name was Keith, who had perfected the ability to trip and fall in public places in really dramatic ways. So we go to the movies, and he would spend $22 at the concession stand buying the extra large Coke and the bottomless popcorn, and then he would stage his come into the theater a few minutes after the previews had started, and he would stand down front in front of the screen, and he would yell out, guys, where are you? Where are you? He'd act like he saw us, and he would walk across the front of the theater, and right when he got to the middle of the screen, he'd let out this guttural groan, and then he'd

trip, and he'd throw his popcorn and Coke high into the air and land on his face. Now sadly, we did not have cell phones with little cameras on them back then to capture any of this, or maybe that's actually fortunate for our sake, but either way, I got no video evidence of this, but the best one he ever did was during our junior year of college. Our student body was holding a convocation in the largest theater on campus, so he told me to sit on the aisle, and he said, when I pass by your seat, put out your foot, and I'm going to act like I trip over it, so sure enough, y'all, he comes in late. The college president was already up front addressing everybody, and I look back, and I notice that he's got this huge stack of books and papers in his hands, and he starts coming down the aisle. It's about seven minutes after the thing has started, and immediately, I started to second guess this plan, but y'all, I'm a man of my word, so when he gets to me, I put out my foot, and when he trips over it, he throws that books and papers just like 20 feet into the air, and he lands on his face, and it makes this huge commotion, and the president actually stopped and said, hey, can we get this guy some help down here, and then my friend did something I was not suspecting. He turned the joke around entirely on me, because he gets up, he gathers up all of his stuff, and the whole place is looking at it. He gathers all his stuff up, and then he turns around, and he just glares at me like I'm the one who had actually tripped him. The girl sitting next to me, who I did not know at the time, said to me, that was wrong, man. That was really wrong, and that girl's name was Veronica. No, I'm just kidding about that last detail. That last detail I made up, okay, that's not true, but listen, there are a lot of reasons that my friends and I don't do that kind of stuff anymore, but one of them is that as you get older, falling becomes a much more serious thing, amen? Am I right, everybody over the age of 35? According to the World Health Organization, falling is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, claims almost 864,000 lives every year.

I share that because Jude wrote his letter because he is concerned about the church that he loves stumbling and falling. Jude's final words to this church are about how they can keep themselves from doing so. See, if you were here the last couple of weeks, you know that Jude explains that in literally every generation of human history, there have been false teachers that have tried to infiltrate God's people and corrupt them from within. And by the way, let me just use this opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to our teaching team for carrying the heavy load last weekend. Several weeks ago, in preparation for this series, I read all the weird stuff about Michael the archangel wrestling with Satan and demons cohabitating with human women and resulting in a race of superhumans. and all the stuff about Sodom and Gomorrah, and I thought, you know, I just feel like God is calling me to take a week off that week. And so, thank you teaching team for carrying that load for me. But Jude concludes this letter by explaining to this church how they can avoid stumbling and falling like previous generations have. You see, when you read all these stories from the middle of Jude, you're inevitably left with the question, what hope is there for us? I mean, none of those people intended to fall, right? Unlike my friend, Keith, nobody plans to stumble and fall. And so you ask, if they couldn't keep themselves from falling, how can we? The central command that Jude gives in these verses is just one. He says, here it is, keep yourselves in the love of God. This is how you keep yourself from stumbling and falling.

Keep yourself in the love of God. And I say this is the central command, listen, for a grammatical reason. You see that word keep right there in Greek, that is the only verb in this whole sentence. The other three words there that look to us like verbs, building and praying and waiting, those are actually participles. Meaning in Greek, there are ways that you apply the one central verb. Building up, praying in, waiting for are three practical ways that you keep yourselves in the love of God. But the central command that guides this whole passage, the secret to not falling away is to keep yourself in the love of God. Jude's gonna do three things in this conclusion. First, he's gonna show us how we can keep ourselves in the love of God. We're gonna spend the bulk of our time right here. Then number two, he shows us how we can help keep others in the love of God. And then lastly, he is going to conclude the whole book, showing us how ultimately we should depend on Jesus to keep us from falling away. Y'all, this book ends in such a beautiful way. One of the most beautiful endings of any New Testament book. He commands us to keep ourselves in the love of God. But in the end, he says,

ultimately you trust Jesus to do it. And so I've entitled this final message, Here Comes the Son. And yes, that means that we have managed to name every sermon in this series after a Beatles song. We had Hey Jude, and then Yesterday, and now Here Comes the Son. And just for fun, y'all, just for fun, I might sprinkle in a few other Beatles titles into this message. So if you hear one, just raise your hand, and I will give you 100 points for each one that you catch, okay? Points are absolutely worthless at the Summit Church, and you cannot buy anything with them, but they're fun to collect, okay? So here we go. First, how do we keep ourselves in the love of God? Well, first I want you to notice the specific wording of this command, because it's very important. Keep yourselves in the love of God. That implies that you're already in it. I want you to notice, Jude doesn't say strive after the love of God, or work to earn the love of God, as if the love of God were something you could earn or obtain. You see, the essence of the gospel, listen,

is that you cannot earn the love of God. God's love is only ever given as a gift, as a wise man once said, can't buy me love. 100 points for everybody who caught that one, okay? I am almost positive the Beatles were not thinking of the gospel when they wrote that song, but it is true that God's love is only ever bestowed as a gift. We often say around here, listen, this is the gospel. There's nothing that you can do that would make God love you any more than he does right at this moment. In fact, there's nothing you have done in your past that would make him love you any less. God gives his love fully and completely to you as a gift of grace. Wes Smith, who is our college pastor, explained this to a bunch of college students the other day in a way that I really loved. He pointed out that when we're in heaven, when we're absolutely perfect, when we are sin-free, God will not love us one bit more than he does right now at this moment. His love is given to us entirely as a gift. So the love of God is not something you have to earn, but it is something, catch this, that you have to keep yourselves within. Think of it like you and I were standing outside when it suddenly began to pour down rain.

And so I offer you protection under my umbrella. I'm the one providing the umbrella. It's mine, I'm holding it. It's free for you, but you have to stay underneath it to reap its benefits. If I'm holding it here and you move over there, it's not doing you any good. I've still got the umbrella for you. You're just not taking advantage of it. Well, the same thing is true of the love of Jesus. It's always there. freely provided, but you have to choose to stay underneath it. Listen, we got a really good illustration of this at the Last Supper, John 13. Two of the disciples, John and Judas. By the way, scripture makes clear they were sitting on either side of Jesus. Judas, the one who would ultimately betray Jesus, and John, the disciple that is especially close to Jesus. The gospels make clear, hear me, that Jesus loved them both. In fact, one of the last things Jesus did at the Last Supper was he extended an offer of love directly to Judas. Judas rejects it and goes out to betray Jesus. John stays right next to Jesus, literally leaning his head back on Jesus' chest. The point is the love of Jesus was there for both of them. That umbrella was there, but John leaned into it and Judas put himself outside of it.

Listen to me, friend. I can say this to every single one of you in this room. The love of God is for you this weekend. The cross has not moved. God has not changed his heart towards you. His offer still stands. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's got no expiration date on it. The umbrella is here. Jesus has done everything necessary to save you. He has died to pay for every one of your sins, the ones you have committed, the ones you committed yesterday, and the ones you'll commit tomorrow. He has never stopped loving you or longing for you to come home. If you are far from God today, you don't have a thousand miles of travel to reach back to him. You don't have a bunch of work to do to make amends with him. It only takes one step of faith and surrender to bring you home because the umbrella is there. What Jude does next, some of you are super nervous that I opened because you're superstitious, an umbrella in here, okay? Next, I'm gonna bring a black cat up here, okay? And then I'm gonna smash a mirror and that's gonna be a hard day's night for everybody, okay? All right, and that's another 100 points for somebody.

What Jude does next is he gives us three practical ways that we can keep ourselves under this umbrella, three ways that we can keep our hearts from wandering away down the long and winding road away from his love, okay? There you go, another 100 points. Again, keep is the verb, keep is the verb. The three participles are how we apply the verb. Now, one warning. When I give you these three things, you gotta be very careful. You don't earn God's love by doing these things. That's always how we're attempting to apply them. You do these things, God will love you more. No, these three things simply help you stay tethered to the reality that God has given you his love freely as a gift. Here's the first one. He says, building yourselves up in the most holy faith. First way you keep yourselves in the love of God is by building ourselves up in the faith. As we saw the first week, the most holy faith refers to that deposit of faith that was given to us once for all through the apostles recorded in the Bible. Question is, what does it mean to build yourselves up in the faith? It means to fortify your mind in the truth of the gospel, to teach yourself, to see all things through the lens of God's word. Doesn't matter that you own a Bible. It matters how much of that Bible is inside of you.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a British physician turned pastor who in the 1960s wrote a book called Spiritual Depression. In that book, Lloyd-Jones argued that most of our spiritual struggles, our spiritual depression, he said, comes from listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. We spend our days, he said, asking our hearts how they feel when what we ought to do is tell our hearts what God's word says. That means the most important sermons you're ever gonna hear are not the ones I preach from this stage right here. The most important sermons you're ever gonna hear are the ones you preach to yourself day by day. By the way, this is why a pet peeve of mine is when a worship pastor, none of our worship pastors do this, but it's a pet peeve of mine when a worship pastor opens up a worship service by saying, well, good to see everybody. How y'all feeling today? And I wanna shout out from the audience, I feel lost and confused and discouraged and condemned. I didn't come in here to get in touch with my feelings. I came in here to hear what God's word says. Don't ask me how I feel. Give me some good news. Jude says that keeping yourself in the love of God

means fortifying your heart against the corrupting influence of false messages because everywhere around us, he says, that's what the whole book is about. You got a corrupt world trying to bring you down and you can't just turn off those voices, y'all. You can't hide away in your yellow submarine. No, okay. There you go. That's an easy one. The corrupting influences are everywhere and you're not going to be able. able to resist the deceptiveness of false teaching unless you have fortified yourselves, unless you've built yourselves up in faith. One of my favorite illustrations of this goes back to the OG Nicolas Cage illustration of this church. The illustration that literally started it all 15 years ago. That's a whole story in and of itself that I'll tell you sometime. But in this original Nicolas Cage illustration that I used, it was from his movie, The Rock. In this movie, there's some bad guys who steal a green to poison nuclear gas and they threaten to destroy San Francisco with it. So they establish a little operation center at Alcatraz, The Rock. The green nuclear gas is extremely dangerous. If you're exposed to the gas, it eats your face off, really nasty stuff.

If you get exposed to it, the only hope of escape, the only hope of survival is an antidote that you have to inject directly into your heart using this needle that is like that long. Well, at the climax of the movie, Nicolas Cage is wrestling with one of the bad guys who's got one of the green nuclear gas containers in his backpack and Nicolas Cage takes it and shoves it in the bad guy's mouth and punches him in the face and the ball of green nuclear gas breaks open and starts eating the guy's face off, which you think is a good thing. But then Nicolas Cage realizes that he's now been exposed to the green nuclear gas. So he starts to run away from the gas through the halls of Alcatraz, but the green nuclear gas just follows him. Nicolas turns down corridor after corridor trying to get away from the green nuclear gas, but every time the gas just somehow knows where he is and it just follows him. Finally, Nicolas Cage comes to a point where he cannot go any farther, but then he remembers that he's got a vial of the antidote in his backpack. So he pulls it out. And he unsheathes the needle and he hovers that needle over his heart and builds that drama in that scene

like only Nicolas Cage can. And y'all, that needle is so long and you're thinking, don't do it, Nick, don't do it. It's better just to get eaten by the green nuclear gas. But as the music swells, he shoves that needle into his heart and he pushes in the antidote and he is saved. And that's basically the end of the movie. That, friends, is what Jude says the word of God is like, okay? Everything in this world, Jude is saying is working to corrupt you. And to make matters worse, sin lives in your own heart also. So the corrupting message of the world actually appeals to your flesh. That means there's nowhere you can escape. Your only hope is to get the word of God deep into your heart. See, I know that some of you are trying to outrun discouragement or fear or shame this weekend. And you got some little step process to try to keep negative thoughts away. I'm just telling you, you can't. That gas is everywhere. It never stops coming for you. Some of you are trying to outrun temptation. There's nowhere you can run. The answer is not running faster. The answer is getting the gospel deeper.

So before I move on to our second thing, let me just ask you to consider how well are you built up in the faith? This year at student camp, I asked our students that same question. And I gave our high school students a little quiz to get them to consider how much of their lives were actually saturated and fortified by God's word. Here's how the little quiz worked. I gave them a portion of a lyric from a popular song. And then I asked them to complete that lyric if they could. I'm gonna give you the same quiz and I'm gonna use the exact same songs I gave to them just to see how you do. Tell you what, if you get them right, I'll give you a hundred points for each of these, okay? Any Ella Langley fans out there? She's from Texas, I can. There you go. Okay, pretty good. All right. Any Swifties, Swifty fans? Okay. All right. Romeo, take me somewhere I can. There you go. More of you knew that than just said that. I know you're embarrassed, but you know it. Let me reach back a few years. All right.

Katy Perry. Baby, you're a firework. Come on. There you go. Come on now. All right. More of you know that. There's like five of you participating right now. By the way, some of you older people are sitting there all smug and self-righteous thinking, well, I don't know any of those songs. All right. Finish this one if you know it. Just a small town girl living in a. See, I didn't have to give you the name of the band on that one. So don't be so smug and self-righteous. Plus you've known every Beatles song I've referenced so far. The point is many of us are pretty well-versed on what Ella and Taylor and Katy and Steve think about life. Can you finish these lyrics? Fear not for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will. I heard one of you. He's telling you how not to be afraid or dismayed. That feels pretty important to me. I will strengthen you. I will help you.

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. How about this one? Hebrews 11, one. Now, faith is. My right hand. He's telling you what faith is. It's the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. First John 4, 10. This is love. Not that we love God. Y'all, this one feels important. He's literally defining for you what love is according to God, and that's gonna be the pattern for how you love your spouse. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Y'all, these are not obscure verses I pulled out. These are key promises in the Bible. I'm just saying, is it possible that you know Taylor's thoughts on love more than you know God's thoughts on love? Listen, Taylor just got married, and I wish her well in her marriage. I'm sure it was a thing. But let's just all be honest, okay? None of us can say for sure that she's still gonna be married to Travis in 10 years.

History in situations like this would suggest maybe not. Nick Cage is on his fifth marriage, and if he can't make it, what hope is there for anyone in Hollywood, am I right? So I don't know where she's gonna be in 10 years. I really don't. But I can promise you that God's love will still be as strong 10,000 years from now as it ever was. To keep yourselves in the love of God, you gotta know it. So here's how you can do that, okay? I wanna make this as practical as possible for you. You need to prioritize small group this semester. Yeah, but it's another night out in the week. Yes, it is. But you gotta prioritize it because it's how you actually get to know the scriptures. You gotta memorize verses. You gotta start a daily quiet time if you don't do one. I even put four down here that my family uses, different members of our family. Of course, some are daily revival, naturally. Lectio 365 is one that I'll use periodically. Sing by the Worship Initiative, that's one of my wife's favorites. The Bible Recap is a great way to take yourself through the Bible. Remember the great Chinese evangelist, Leland Wang, he's one of the founders of the exploding Chinese church.

He encouraged Chinese Christians in the 1950s to adopt the rule, no Bible, no breakfast. I'm not gonna take any physical nourishment into this body until I have fed my soul on God's word first. That is a principle I adopted when I was a teenager and I've lived by it for nearly 40 years now. Getting with God is the first thing I do in the morning and it's what you should do too. You should read Christian books. You're like, which one should I read? If you just get my transcript, actually at the bottom you'll see a footnote and I put about 15 in there for you that you can start with. You need to listen to podcasts where people discuss the Bible. All right, we have a new one, in fact, we're starting here called The Bullpen. It's like the post-sermon discussion where we're gonna go deeper into the passage, talk about related things, stuff going on in the culture, difficult questions. My point to you is that rather than filling up your mind with meaningless blather all day, secular music, two randos talking about the latest starting lineup for a sports team, maybe what you should do is fill your heart and mind with God's promises. Second way we keep ourselves in the love of God is he says we pray in the Holy Spirit.

See, the Christian life is not just a knowledge thing, the Christian life is a spiritual power thing. It's not just education that changes you, it's spirit empowered transformation that changes you. Filling your head with theological facts is not enough. The promises of scripture have to be turned into cries for help by which you release the very resurrection power of God. And yes, there was one of you that caught that one there, a numb of another great Beatles song. That's an obscure one, give yourself 200 points, okay? D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, whom I quoted earlier, went on to say this, I spend half my time telling Christians to study doctrine and the other half telling them doctrine is not enough. Y'all listen, this Bible is not a book of facts, it's a book of promises. Over 3,000 of them, if you're counting, many of them activated by prayer alone, meaning it's just a promise on the page until you pick it up and you claim it by prayer. So don't just read through your Bible each morning, pray through your Bible. Any passage that doesn't lead you to cry out to God for help, well, then you've read it wrongly. By the way, I want you to notice that little phrase, in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy, we pray in the Holy Spirit. See, prayer is not just a one-way conversation with God in which you tell God a bunch of stuff

he already knows anyway. If that were the point of prayer, then that would be very inefficient, us telling God a bunch of stuff he already knows. He knows, no, prayer is supposed to be a two-way communion between you and God. There's a fellowship with God aspect to prayer. This is part of what makes Christianity dynamic and fresh in your life. You're not praying to a distant God or learning facts about a God-man that walked the earth 2,000 years ago. You are communing with a present spirit who is active within you. Like I've told you, the Holy Spirit shows up 59 times in the book of Acts. In 36 of the 59, he is speaking. You say, well, that was then. That was back in the days of the apostles. Things are different now. Listen, y'all, I get it. There were some special things happening back in the first century. They were writing the Bible. That was pretty special. But I am sorry. You cannot convince me that the only book, the only narrative account that God gave us describing what it looks like to walk in the spirit, I'm talking about the book of Acts,

you're telling me that that book is filled with a bunch of stories of people we have nothing in common with? I'm sorry, I just don't buy that. It's like John Newton, the Puritan, author of Amazing Grace said, how could it be possible that that which was so essential to the spiritual life of the early church has become irrelevant in ours? You pray in the spirit. Let me tell you how I try to practice this in my own prayer time each day. Every morning, I try to spend some of my prayer time listening. I've divided up my prayer time into categories, categories of things and groups of people that I pray for in various days of the week. Often, I will say, as I did this morning when I prayed, God, as I pray through each of these people on this list, if you have something specific you want me to pray for this person, some promise you want me to claim for them, some word of encouragement, some word of warning you want me to give to them, I put that on my heart as I pray. And often when I pray for that person, sometimes I'll stop and I'll just be quiet. Listen, I always say this, and this is very important. Some of you desperately need to hear this next line I'm gonna give.

The first thing that pops in my heart, I do not necessarily or automatically conclude was from the Holy Spirit. But it might be, and so I start there. Sometimes that will prompt me to say to this person, I said this to a friend this last week, hey, you know, when I was praying for you, this promise really came into my heart in a heavy way. I don't know for sure, but I wonder if there's something in this promise that God is wanting to say to you right now. And in this case, my friend actually said to me, that is exactly what I needed to hear. And he told me about the situation that he was going through. I have friends who do this kind of stuff with me, and often it is so encouraging and it is life-giving. Now, I wanna be clear. A lot of times Christianity means walking by faith when you're not feeling anything. A lot of my Christian life is like that. I don't get up every morning and feel warm fuzzies fluttering around in my heart. But still, Jude says an important part of keeping yourself in the love of God, staying tethered to the love of God, is praying in the Holy Spirit. By the way, that's what our 21 days of prayer are all about. 21 days where you can really focus on practicing this, not just praying, but praying in the Spirit.

Now, let's keep moving. Number three, the third thing here. Practice number three, let her sing. It says we keep ourselves in the love of God by waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. An important component in keeping yourselves in the love of God is living in earnest expectation of Jesus' soon return. I've told you guys before that the church culture I grew up in was heavy on rapture teaching. And by heavy, I mean we had our yearly prophecy conferences and we heard sermons all the time about how Jesus could come literally at any moment and rapture the church away. Sometimes for Sunday night church, we'd show End Times films with live action guillotines. We had detailed charts up around the church about what contemporary political figures best represented the seven-headed beast of revelation. And so I grew up expecting the rapture at any moment. And on more than one occasion, this is not an exaggeration, on more than one occasion, as a kid, if I yelled up the stairs and my mom and dad did not respond immediately, I would run up the stairs in a panic, just sure that I was gonna find their clothes in a pile on the floor that I had been left behind because I wasn't really saved. By the way, I'm not sure why we always assume

people would be raptured naked, but we did, okay? Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. I would suggest that churches like ours now have the opposite problem. We rarely think or talk about Christ's return anymore. I mean, just ask yourself, when was the last time you had the thought today? Today might be the day of Jesus' return. See, Jude says to keep yourselves in the love of God. You actually think about that almost every day. You live in a posture of waiting for, expecting His return, ready for it to happen at any moment. Did you know the second coming of Christ is the most talked about doctrine in the Bible? It's mentioned roughly 1845 times. That's because the apostles understood that we won't live rightly until we learn to live expectantly. You see, without an expectation of Christ's return, suffering is gonna feel really heavy and really permanent to you. It's gonna feel devastating. That's as good as life is gonna get. Criticism from others is really gonna sting you. It's gonna define you. It's gonna crush you. Materialism is gonna feel really compelling to you. I mean, you'll be like, YOLO, right? This is life, get all you can, hold on to it. You don't wanna be miserable forever.

Do you need to have, you gotta have a good life, so get all this stuff. This is as good as it's gonna get. If you don't see life as brief and Jesus as close, the appeal of comfort and luxury will be too strong. Now, you'll probably stay involved in church, but your passions will be in those material things. You take vacations all the time, own new stuff, multiply. You just do all this stuff. You don't long for His return, you don't long for things on earth. If you don't live with an earnest expectation of Christ's return, I promise you, listen, sinful temptations will be too hard for you to resist. There'll be some temptation, and you'll think, I know that's wrong, but what is life if I can't have this pleasure? You're in an unfulfilling marriage, and there's the opportunity for adultery, and you think, is life even worth living if this miserable marriage is as good as it gets? I need that simple pleasure to feel alive. Listen, that's how sin works. You forget the brevity of life and the eminence of Christ, and you start to live like this world is all there is. But see, if you know He's returning soon, and you're in a posture of waiting, you'll be able to endure all of those things. It's kind of like, I have a hard time turning down a snack when I'm hungry,

unless I know there's a big meal coming right around the corner. If I don't know when my next meal is coming, I'm not gonna be able to say no to that Snickers bar. But if I know you're taking me out to a deluxe steak dinner with appetizers, and sides, and desserts, I will say no to the Snickers bar out of anticipation for the coming meal. Thomas Aquinas said it much more eloquently than that. He to whom eternity is sweet can easily part with earthly things. If you know heaven is indescribably sweet, you can forgo the earthly Snickers. So Jude says, stay in a posture of earnest expectation of Christ's return. Now, some of you are like, wait, wait a minute, pastor. Jude told them to live in earnest expectation of Jesus' return, but Jesus didn't come back in their lifetime. In fact, it's been 2,000 years, and He still hadn't come back. So were all these apostles wrong to live with that sense of imminence? No. See, the attitude of readiness is more about your posture toward this world than it is about you knowing the specifics of the timeline. God wants us to live with the constant awareness

that this world is not our home. Some at church, He really could come today. Do you believe that? He could come before you pull out of that parking lot. If you believe that, you probably won't be so rude to the guy that's directing you. He could come before I finish this sentence. He could come. See, if you really believe that, you would take sin more seriously and suffering less so. Don't put repentance on tomorrow's to-do list. He really could come today. So there you go. Those are three ways you keep yourselves in the love of God. Now, really quick, I told you that was the bulk of the message. What Jude does after he does that is he then gives two parting things to close the letter. After saying, here's how you keep yourselves in the love of God, he's like, here's how you can help keep others in the love of God too. See, Christianity is never a solo project. It's something we do together. So Jude's last instructions are about how we can come together to help each other not stumble and fall. A hundred points for a handful of you, okay?

That another great Beatles song. Verse 22, have mercy on those who doubt. Save others, he says, by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. What's significant here is that Jude tells us that we have to approach different people who are struggling with the allure of the world differently, depending on who they are. There are some, he says, that you need to show compassion to. Have mercy. on those who doubt. The word mercy there indicates how a parent treats a child who has fallen down. You speak gently and tenderly to them. Others, he says, you should confront. You should snatch them out of the fire. By the way, that phrase is most likely a reference to Lot, who you might remember got seduced to live in Sodom and Gomorrah. It was corrupting his family, so his uncle Abraham prayed for him. A couple of angels went into Sodom, literally took Lot and his family by the hand and pulled him out of the city before God destroyed him by fire. Jude sees in that a picture of what we gotta do with some people.

I'm reminded of one of our UNC students a few years ago. He was on the UNC baseball team. He used to go into his buddies' rooms on Sunday morning and literally pull the covers off of them and tell them they were going to church. They'd be all hung over and protesting, and he would literally pull them out of bed, and they'd come sit in our final service, still hung over, still looking and smelling like death, but they were there. You're like, well, that sounds aggressive. Yeah, well, we baptized several of them. And by the way, one of them became one of our church planters a couple of years ago. So I wouldn't be too critical. Some you speak tenderly to, others you confront. Jesus did this, right? I mean, he loudly denounced the Pharisees, and he also sat down intimately with a couple of them, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, they were both Pharisees. With those guys, he had gentle, tender, quiet conversations. He said, well, how do I know which approach to use, the tender mercy approach or the snatching approach? Well, obviously, it's based on their heart. For example, there are times that I'm dealing with somebody in sexual sin, and I pick up that there's a lot of confusion and pain going on there. I've talked with teenagers, for example, who were struggling with a same-sex attraction, who just couldn't understand why God had not

immediately taken this attraction away from them when they asked him to. Or maybe they'd been villainized or alienated by their family and friends, made them feel like they were barely even human. And I know that what they need in that moment is compassion and kindness, even as I speak the truth plainly to them. I know that what they most need at that moment is not somebody thundering from the pulpit at them. They need understanding and compassion. I've learned that for a lot of teenagers, even more painful to them than the same-sex attraction is the problem of unanswered prayer. Why didn't God immediately take away this desire when they asked him to? And that affects how I talk with them, of course. Other times, however, I discern that what I'm dealing with is somebody who is brazen and defiant in their sexual rebellion, somebody who thinks they are wiser than God is, and so I take more of a prophetic tone with them. Knowing which posture to take is something you have to discern by the Spirit. In both cases, though, hear this, in both cases, you have to tell them the full truth. Notice Jude says, we warn them, hating even the garment stained by the flesh, that's a euphemism, Jewish euphemism for sex, means even when you're tender,

you're clear about the evil of sin. Listen, I know what society is like right now. I know there are a lot of us who in the name of gentleness and respect and toleration will not speak truth to a friend who has gotten into sexual sin. That is not love, Christian, that is cowardice. Sexual sin, gender confusion, those things have devastating effects on those who embrace them, and if you love somebody, you will warn them against it. Please do not be a coward when your friend needs the truth. Love always tells the truth. Love warns, love confronts, love runs into burning houses to snatch people from the fire. That brings us to Jude's ultimate conclusion, how ultimately it's Jesus who keeps us in the love of God. Look at verse 24, 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, authority before all time, now and forever, because salvation belongs to him forever and ever, amen. Here's Jude, ends his book by saying, it's only Jesus who can keep you. By the way, this is a beautiful example of parallelism. Verse 21, he says, keep yourselves in the love of God.

Verse 24, now to him who's able to keep you, only Jesus can do it. It's like I told you the very first week in this series, the example of my kids when they were little, standing with me in the ocean. Told you it's not the strength of their hold on me, but the strength of my hold on them that keeps them safe in the crashing waves. If it were up to any of us, we'd lose hold of Jesus and wander out from under the protection of his love. The other night, three of my kids and I were talking, one of them brought. about the passage in Luke, where just before the temptation, Jesus said to Peter, Satan has desired you, Peter, to sift you like wheat. And one of my kids said, Dad, I've never heard that verse before. I read it in my quiet time. How come you've never preached on that verse? You've never told us this verse. And they said, what we figured out was the question was, if Jesus was going to tell Peter that he was praying for them, why did he pray this for them? Like, I'd be like, Jesus, if you know Satan's going to sift me like wheat and you're going to pray for me, pray that Satan would leave me alone. Fair? Jesus said, no, no, no,

I'm going to pray something better for you, Peter. I'm going to pray that God will give you faith to endure Satan's attack. Listen to me. Had Jesus not prayed that for Peter, Peter would have permanently fallen away. What kept Peter grounded was Jesus' prayer for him. Right here, that promise. What Jesus prayed for him is what kept Peter in the faith. That was Peter's hope. Christian, that's your hope too. Listen to me. Jesus, this morning, is praying for you. Maybe you feel weak. Hey, I got good news. He never grows weary. In fact, God's word tells us, those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up on wings with eagles. They'll fly spiritually. Maybe you feel like you've messed up too many times and there's just no hope for you. Jesus says, no, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. When you're tired and ready to give up, he's just getting started. The gospel is that God did not choose you, friend, because you were righteous. He didn't choose you because you were strong.

He chose us when we were guilty and dead in our sins and we weren't looking for him at all. He stepped into our lives and gave us his righteousness and his life. And here's the deal. If God didn't look to our righteousness or our strength in us to save us, he's not looking to those things to keep us either. Maybe you've fallen again and again, and you're not sure why you should even try standing back up anymore. I'll tell you why you should try. Because 2000 years ago in a cold, dark grave, a dead man came back to life and he stood up. And when you don't have the power to stand up, he stands up in you. Summit, your future is no longer defined by the failures of your past. Your future is defined by an empty tomb. Jude doesn't conclude this book saying, hey, now to those of you strong in faith, he ends by saying, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling. If you make it, it's gonna be because of Jesus' strength, not yours. So lean on him. Friend, hear me, this umbrella is here for you. It's offered to all who will come underneath it. It is for the weak. You may not feel strong enough to make it as a Christian.

I got good news for you. You don't need to be. He's got strength enough for the both of you. You may not feel like you're worthy enough to earn God's love. Hey, you're not. Good news, you don't have to be. His love is offered to you freely as a gift. Jesus' love and forgiveness is given to all who will receive them by faith. His resurrection power is all given to anybody who will just come to him and receive it. I want you to bow your heads if you would. At all of our campuses, bow your heads. I just sense in here this morning that there are some of you that are ready to give up. In fact, truth be told, you're struggling. You don't have the strength to keep going on. Maybe it's to be a parent. Maybe it's to say no to a temptation. Maybe it's to press through a struggle. Maybe it's to keep going. I don't know what it is. Here's what I want us to do at all campuses. Could you just stand to your feet right now? Everybody, let's stand together. I want us to stand on one of our worship teams to come. In just a minute, I'm gonna open up these altars. We'll have people on the prayers on the sides, elders, prayer team members.

You guys go ahead and get in place. They're there to pray with you if you need it. I'm gonna invite others of you. If you wanna pray with them, fine. You wanna come down here and just kneel, bring a friend, come down here and just say, God, I need your help. Some of you need to come down here and just ask him for help, ask him for his spirit. Again, we're here to pray with you if you want, or you can just pray by yourself or with a friend. Now, some of you are like, well, can I stay in my seat and do that? Yeah, of course you can, right? God is never farther from you than a cry of faith, and you can do that anywhere. But there's something declarative about coming down to tell Jesus you need his help, right? Yeah, you can pray in your seat, but I guarantee you it will make a bigger impact in your heart if you come to this altar and tell Jesus you need his help. I promise you, I promise you he will meet you here. Let me give one other invitation before I bring. our worship teams and call you to respond. Some of you have never surrendered your heart to Jesus. You've never given your life to him. You've never received him as your savior. You've hovered right around that line and you're thinking about it this morning.

I'm gonna invite you to this morning, cross the line of faith and receive Jesus. I'll give you an action step. I want you to come down and talk to one of these people on the sides and just say, I wanna give my life to Jesus. And they will pray with you and they will pray over you and they will show you what that means, okay? So I'm gonna pray. And then when I say amen at all of our campuses, as our worship teams come, I want you to use these altars to respond the way the spirit is putting in your heart to respond. Father, I pray in Jesus' name for the descent of the Holy Spirit. Come, minister in this moment and accomplish what you want to accomplish. I pray in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, amen. We open these altars, you come even now, our worship teams will come and you use this time for prayer. We're opening these altars, you come even now, our worship teams will come and you use this time for prayer.