Jude 20-25. "This Year, Keep Yourselves in God's Love."

In this podcast episode, Tim starts off discussing his in-laws stay at an all-inclusive resort. He provides this example to state, just as guests enjoy endless amenities within the resort's boundaries, so too does God freely provide all we need within His kingdom. Then presented is the challenge for us to remain in God’s love, building our faith, praying in the Spirit, and faithfully fulfilling our callings as we wait for Jesus’ return.

Through God’s Word, we are equipped to address our doubts, rescue others from spiritual danger, and extend mercy to those caught in sin—all while recognizing our shared need for God’s grace. Ultimately, Tim will encourage us to trust in God’s promise to keep us in His love and present us blameless in His presence with great joy. Let’s listen together as Tim unpacks Jude’s powerful message of hope and perseverance.

This Sunday sermon, based on Jude 20-25 , was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on November 24, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)          

Transcript

To God alone be glory, majesty, power and authority, now and forevermore! Amen.

A couple weeks ago, my wife’s parents took a trip to an all inclusive resort. So long as they stayed within the resort’s boundaries, all the amenities - food, drink, pool, more - all were available to them without further charge. But if they would have gone outside the resort, that would no longer be true. Outside the resort, they had to pay.

You and I are residents of the kingdom of God. We have become residents by God’s grace, which - you’ve heard me say this - grace means, “gift-giving love.” God has brought us into his kingdom as a gift, freely given; earned not by works, so that no one can boast. 

When we talked about God and money and us and the relationship of those things last week, I hope and pray that you went away with this lesson very clear: We do not buy our way into God’s kingdom. Not with our money, not with our actions, not with our achievements. We are brought into God’s kingdom by grace, by God’s love, and in that same love, God continues to provide us with all the blessings we enjoy day by day.

In our second reading today - our focus reading for this message - Jude encourages us, “Remain in God’s love.” Don’t leave the all-inclusive resort. We can’t afford to, and why would we want to? Over this last year, as we’ve read through Mark’s Gospel, we’ve seen Jesus’ power in action. We’ve seen the love and the mercy of Jesus in action. What could we want in life beyond being cared for by such a Savior? The Lord is our Shepherd; we lack nothing.

So how will we keep ourselves in God’s love in this coming year? Through Jude, God instructs us on exactly that, just as he promised he would through the prophet Isaiah in our first reading: “Instruction will go out from me.” Here’s how God says we remain in his love. We build ourselves up in our faith; we pray in the Holy Spirit; and we wait for Jesus.

What does it mean to be built up in the faith? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans ten that “faith comes from hearing the message about Christ.” God brings faith to life in our hearts through the good news of his love shown in the work of Jesus, our Savior. His Word is also what continues to build up our faith - our trust in him. 

So we build ourselves up in our faith when we read God’s Word personally. We build ourselves up in our faith when we hear God’s Word jointly, in worship or group Bible study. And we are built up in the faith when we learn from one another through life together as believers. The young of the Church are built up as their elders share lessons learned from their walk with God. The elders of the Church are built up as the young share with them the new questions and situations which they face day by day. We build ourselves up as we take all this that we learn, in all those times and places, and we put it into practice in our lives.

We remain in God’s love, we also read here, as we “pray in the Holy Spirit.” Jude is not speaking here of one particular kind of prayer, as if we could have prayer that was in the Spirit and prayer out of the Spirit of God. What causes prayer to be “in the Spirit” is faith. This is why Jude first speaks of “building ourselves up in faith” and then “praying in the Spirit.” All Christian prayer is “in the Spirit.” Indeed, without faith, there is no prayer, properly speaking.

If we bring the verse which comes just before our reading into the picture, we see this more clearly. In the middle section of the letter, Jude warns his readers about false brothers and sisters, who will disturb and disrupt Christian churches by contradicting God’s Word in teaching and in practice. He says, Jude verse nineteen, “These people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts, do not have the Spirit.” So when, in verse twenty, Jude speaks of “praying in the Spirit,” he is not speaking of different modes of prayer. He is assuring his hearers, “you who keep yourselves in God’s love have God’s Holy Spirit.” 

This is the promise that God makes to all who believe in him, as Paul writes in Ephesians chapter one: “When you believed, you were marked in Christ with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” When God brings us to faith, he sends his Holy Spirit into our hearts as a seal designating that we belong to him, like the wristbands my in-laws received at their resort, which marked them as guests entitled, within the bounds of the resort, to the agreed amenities. 

There’s one more action which God tells us here “keeps us in his love.” The way our English translation renders verse twenty-one separates this one from the other two. But in verse twenty-one, we read that we keep ourselves in God’s love by “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We stay in God’s love as we wait for Jesus.

What does waiting for Jesus look like? Next fall, Waiting for Godot will be on Broadway. (I would love to see that.) Is waiting for Jesus something like Estragon and Vladimir’s ordeal? They sit around and they talk about Jesus’ crucifixion, and the thieves who hung with him, and the one who repented, and they quote the book of Proverbs. Is that “waiting for Jesus”?

Jesus himself tells us, in verse thirty-four of today’s Gospel, what it looks like to wait for him. A wealthy man “leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task.” To wait for Jesus is to act according to the work he has assigned each of us in life. If we have a job, to wait for Jesus is to faithfully do our work! If we are parents, to wait for Jesus is to parent our children! The word theologians use for the various roles we all have in life is vocation. We all serve in multiple different vocations. To remain in God’s love by waiting for Jesus is to faithfully execute the duties of our vocations.

As we do that, we encounter other people. There is no vocation which exists apart from neighbors, other people. Jude outlines three classes of neighbor with whom we will interact as we live the lives Jesus has given us. (Jude likes to use groups of three in his letter.) There are those who doubt; those who are in danger; and those who are sinning.

Who are those who doubt? These are people who seem at times to be one foot in, one foot out of God’s kingdom. What doubts might they have? Well, how much time do we have this morning? 

They might have theological doubts (“Is the Trinity really in the Bible? Is baptism really for all people?”). They might have ethical or moral doubts (“Does God really condemn everything but heterosexual marriage when it comes to sex? Is a fetus really a baby?”). They might have more personal doubts (“Will my family really make it through to my next paycheck? Does God really love my loved one, whom he’s letting struggle with mental illness?”). Their doubts could be of yet another sort entirely.

Look again at that verse, twenty-two. Someone tell us all, what does God say we should do to the person who doubts? [“Be merciful.”] Thank you. Now, what does that word “mercy” mean? It’s a mirror image of grace. Grace means, “Getting a benefit one doesn’t deserve.” Mercy means, “Not receiving a penalty one does deserve.” 

What penalty does someone who doubts deserve? Well, in any instance where someone questions God’s Word, they deserve to be sent away from the fellowship of the Christian Church. Anyone who hears God’s Word and says, “Yeah, but…” deserves to lose the opportunity to hear that Word.

But God is merciful. And he tells us to be merciful as well. Mercy toward those who have doubts means not drop-kicking people out the church doors for having questions. Mercy is patience. Mercy is asking questions in response, so we can understand their doubts and worries and waverings, and so we can respond accurately and helpfully.

Jude next speaks of those who are in danger. Verse twenty-three, “Save others by snatching them from the fire.” What is “the fire”? It’s the harm which sin poses to them. At times, God gives us the opportunity to keep someone from harming themselves and others through sin. A Christian high school athlete who finds out that a teammate is considering human growth hormone to get a competitive edge has the opportunity, as a teammate and a friend, to keep their friend honest. “What you’re considering is dishonest, and it’s a horrible health decision.” Jude’s illustration of fire calls to mind a parent snatching their child’s hand back from a candle.

There’s one final category of neighbor we encounter in the course of life. Those who are actively sinning. In our interactions with them, Jude says, we “show mercy, mixed with fear.”  Mercy here means that we aren’t focused on making sure that people pay for their sin. Above any other result, we hope for their salvation. Yet we call sin sin. The “fear” here is not fear of sin, or of people. It’s fear of God. We fear and honor God by sharing his Word clearly with these neighbors.

Hopefully, as we looked at those three categories, you came to the same thought I did. “Can’t I find myself among these groups at times?” Don’t I struggle with doubts at times? “Does God really call this or that sin?” “Will God really follow through on this or that promise?” Don’t I step into danger, knowingly and unknowingly? Don’t I sin?

All of that is stepping outside of God’s love. It’s walking off the resort without my wallet and hearing the gate lock behind me. It’s not a situation we want to be in. So what do we do? That’s where everything Jude listed above, as ways we remain in God’s love, comes into play. We want to build ourselves up in the faith alongside brothers and sisters who, in love for us, can pray for us and come to rescue us.

But more certain than the results of our own actions - more certain even than the results of our brothers’ and sisters’ actions - God promises that he is the one who keeps us in his love. He is, verse twenty-four, the one who is able to keep us from stumbling and the one who will present us before himself blameless one day. That day is the day that we see Jesus. 

We will either see him return to earth on the clouds with the angels - as he promises in our Gospel reading - or, if we die before then, we will see him in heaven. Either way, our response to the day we see Jesus can be the same. Jude promises that we will have “great joy” when we see Jesus; joy greater than the joy of an all-inclusive vacation in Cancun. Joy that will come from knowing that by grace we will be in God’s presence forever; from knowing that the Lord Jesus “will wipe every tear from our eyes,” knowing that “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away” forever and ever. To the God who will keep us in his love be glory forever! Amen.