Sermons

Remembering is essential to our spiritual growth.  Remembering is the means to track our God-with-us story.  From before when we first believed God was a work in each of our lives.  It doesn’t just occur in a conversion event.  If we are willing to reflect and consider the ways and the means of God’s hand in our lives, we learn to recognize how He works, how He challenges us, and the way that He is.  And consequently, the better we know Him the deeper we can come to love Him and the richer and stronger our lives in Him can become.                                                                                                                                      

Our discoveries that come from remembering, become the substance for our faith, our witness, and our service to Him.  There have been many things that were set in place that God used to bring you to Himself.  When you are attentive to those things in reflection, you learn what sovereignty looks like, the omniscience and omnipotence of God working together in God.  Those memories become the light posts that we can draw upon when faced with new challenges.  God was after us for some time whether we expressed our faith early or later in life.                                                                                                                              

Jude reminds his readers of their stories in order to secure their perseverance in the present circumstance.  The scoffers in his context specifically were scoffing at the doctrine of the Day of the Lord and holy living that God had called the church to.  Jude ends his appeal to his beloved friends in Christ with both an urgency and a blessing in light of who God is.

Keep Him in mind who has the power to sustain you.  Sustaining you for the purpose of holiness being presented before God for the glory and joy of Christ.  We give to Him all glory, majesty, control, and authority over life from the beginning to the end.  May it be so!

            Short expressions are often the richest expressions from the quill of those God calls to write.  What then do we notice in these few sentences?  So, God know us for who we are, Jude writes, to remember, is frequently repeated in the scriptures.  And forgetfulness of divine directions inevitable tends toward spiritual weaknesses.  The NT writers were convinced that they were living in the last days.  Attacks on the faith from within and without was viewed as a sign of the nearness of the last days.  The issue both then and now is that there are those who change the grace of God into a license for immorality of one kind or another.                                                                                                                                 

These scoffers are people who “mark out boundaries in order to separate” or to be divisive.  They divide by looking down on others, but Jude believes they do not possess the Spirit at all, making them apostate in their faith.  So, Jude, recognizing the threat of these scoffers, urges his fellow believers to contend for the faith.  The best approach is to concentrate on a spiritual construction program through an ever-deepening grasp of what God in Christ has done for them.  The building up describes the spiritual practices that cultivate the life of Christ in us.  This cultivation is a communal event, that is, it is done together in community.  Cultivation through worship, the study of the Scriptures, prayer, teaching one another, and various spiritual practices.                                                                            

The thing that makes our faith most holy is that it comes to us by the revelation of the Holy God regarding Himself.  Our faith is different than all other religious faiths.  In addition, praying in the Holy Spirit includes the many ways the Spirit leads us in prayer.  Prayer has a major role in our being built up within our lives in Christ.                                                     

Jude encourages his audience further with responding to God’s love as the way we maintain and strengthen our relationship with Him.  Persistence is called for in this matter as is often the case in matters with God.  As Jude continues, having developed our spiritual life it is important to express that life in the service to others.  In this context especially to those infected by false teaching his encouragement is direct, “Be merciful to those who doubt.”  The false teaching leads to doubt God’s Word.  Jude’s hope is hopeful, that if it isn’t too late, he hopes they might be recovered by the influence of faithful believers.               

Jude ends his short letter with a doxology, a blessing and praise directed to God.  It is our part to maintain a steady gaze upon God; it is God’s responsibility to do the active protecting from evil attacks whether untruths or the sinister attacks of the evil one.  He can hold us up keeping us from stumbling.  The grace of divine strength and ability is available for those who will draw on it.  He can bring us into his presence with great joy both His joy and ours.  In the words of our mentor, “God’s supreme object is to make the church of believers fit to be presented to Himself as a sacrificial offering.”                                                      

The declaration of praise highlights four of God’s attributes; glory (divine radiance), majesty (the kingliness of God), power (the absolute dominion God has over His world), and authority (the sovereign ability to do all that is necessary to meet human needs).  Words to cover the past, the present, and the future.                                                                                              

This is both a word of encouragement and challenge.  For his audience the encouragement is this.  From the beginning of your faith to the present the message has not wavered.  Is that true of you and me?  It is an old warning.  The hand-appointed first followers of Jesus warned us about days like this.  The message is clear-cut and straight forward.  There will always be those who seek to draw you away from the truth.  In a way, that is the way the evil one works.                                                                                                            

The warning is this.  The closer we get to Christ’s return the more the scene will be populated with religious liars of one kind or another.  They sound confident, but they can be recognized as arrogant, proud, immoral in one way or another, control-oriented, and self-centered people.                                                                                                                                       

These spiritual vagrants exercise their power in creating divisions, using their strengths to tear down others and in fact there is no evidence of the Holy Spirit attending them.  It is one thing that those who make up the world have no clue.  We wouldn’t expect them to know the truth.  But there are always those that the evil one uses to disrupt the community of faith.  It was true in Jude’s day, and it has continued throughout the history of the church.  Satan’s strategy has always been to corrupt the church by stealing the truth away and in other ways, killing and destroying the church.  Every time we read another issue of “Voice of Martyrs” we are faced with the killing and destroying.                                     

On the other hand, we have ourselves.  It is on us to cultivate the seed of Christ sown in our hearts.  We cultivate the seed by praying in accord with the Holy Spirit in the many manifest ways He has gifted us, holding ourselves to the truth of God’s love while we wait for Him.                                                                                                                                                 

As we understand God’s mercy for us show mercy towards those who are struggling to believe.  It is on us to lift them up.  Reach out to those who are lost whether they are among us which is Jude’s concern or for those outside the faith in the world for their destination is fire without faith in Christ.  Those who populate those outside the faith are all around us every day of our lives.  Remember where you have been and then show mercy toward those who are mired in the stink of sin.                                                                           

The purpose of Jude’s doxology is to set our minds on that which is true, that which is real, and that which we have been given to capture our vision.  All power is His and He is inviting us to fill the screen of our lives with the pervasive truth of who God is.                                            

So, remember what you know!  St. Augustine said it this way.  The past is the present plus memory.  Remember what God has done with the experiences of your lives, the choices that were made for you, and the decisions that you made.  God was present to bring you to this day.  When you could not – He did!  The present is what God is doing today in the present moment.  Some of it is what you are conscious of and some of it is mystery to you.  The future is the present plus your imagination.  God will take what you know and still will surprise you with what you don’t yet know.                                                                         

This doxology is what God wants us to hang our hats on.  We need to learn these words and we need to hold them in our minds, our hearts, and our souls.  No matter what, life is about Him!