If you turn in your scriptures
to Jude, I thought we'd begin a series on Jude. I was chatting
to my friend Alan the other day and talking about various things
that have happened here and elsewhere amongst our brethren over this
last little while and he said that these are winnowing times. These are times as they always
have been where the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is in a
situation where it seems very vulnerable and precarious and
it seems attacked in many ways from outside and within. And
yet the scriptures remind us again and again and again that
our God reigns, and He will have His will in all of this world,
and all of what happens will end up rebounding to His glory
and to the good of all His people. So He does work, and He is sovereign,
and He is in control, and all of the blood-born children of
the Lord Jesus Christ are perfectly safe and secure in Him. But Jude
is one of those glorious letters that's the last of the epistles.
Jude was a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. He was
actually the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he
wants to designate himself a servant and a brother of James. And he
writes to them, to a particular group of people, to them that
are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Christ Jesus
and called. Mercy unto you and peace and
love be multiplied. And it's very evident from the
next verse that Jude had sat down to write, to write a letter
about the common salvation. Beloved, when I gave all diligence
to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for
me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Now these people that he speaks
of here are not newly arrived in the church. They had been
there from some of the earliest days, but obviously for Jude,
and this is the last of these epistles in the New Testament,
obviously for Jude the weight and the seriousness and the heaviness
of all this and the immediacy of it was laid heavy on his heart
by God the Holy Spirit. And so he turned from talking
about our common salvation, which he'd actually talked about there
and he'll come back to in the final verses, the ones that we
sing every week here. And this is the reason, verse
4, 4, certain men crept in unawares. And just to make sure that any
opposition to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, any enmity
from within or from without, is all under the sovereign hand
of God. It's by the determinate counsel
and full knowledge of God that all things come to pass. But
certain men, these certain men crept in unawares who were before
of old ordained to this condemnation. Then he describes these men in
these next verses. They're ungodly men. turning
the grace of our God into lasciviousness. And as strange as that might
seem, I think the simplest meaning of it is that people will say,
as we've been told, that if you do not preach law and you do
not preach works, if you just preach the gospel and you preach
the grace of God, then people will be lascivious. I've been
told again and again and again, if you do not preach law to people,
how on earth do you get people to live moral lives? How do you
get people to live faithful lives before this world and before
other men and before God, unless you put them back under the law?
That's what they say. They say that the grace of God
alone will lead to lasciviousness. You have to add some works of
the Lord. And of course what that means
is that they're denying the only Lord God, because the Lord God
who saves His people, the Lord God who preserves His people
as we saw there, preserved in Christ Jesus, sanctified by God
the Father, the gospel that saves people is the gospel that sanctifies
people. and to deny the sovereign hand
of God in sanctification. See, people will acknowledge
the sovereign hand of God in so many ways, won't they? And
they'll acknowledge the sovereign and eternal hand of God in justification
and election and all of those things, but then they'll deny
the sovereign hand of God in sanctification. They'll say that
sanctification is a necessary work of man in cooperation with
God. And it's denying the lordship
of God, isn't it? and our Lord Jesus Christ. I
will therefore put you in remembrance that once you knew this, You
see, he wants to put us in remembrance just as we have a remembrance
service at the end of our meetings each Sunday morning because we
forget all the time. We are continually in the business
of forgetting. Though once you knew this, how that the Lord,
having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward
destroyed them that believed not. And the angels, which kept
not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath
reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, under the judgment
of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and
the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over
to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth
an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise, like
Sodom and Gomorrah, these filthy dreamers defy the flesh, despise
dominion, they reject authority, they speak evil of dignities,
they speak evil of glorious ones. There were warnings issued, Sodom
and Gomorrah, there were warnings issued, warnings issued by a
righteous man, Lot, and the warnings were unheeded. Yet Michael, the
archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about
the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation,
but said, The Lord rebuke thee. But these, these filthy dreamers,
These that despise dominion reject authority. These that speak evil
of dignities. They speak evil of those things
which they know not. But what they know naturally,
as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. What
they know is what can be discerned by the natural man, not spiritually
discerned. Woe to them! For they have gone
in the way of Cain and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for
a lord, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah, in the rebellion of
Korah. These are spots in your feast
of charity. There they were in the church,
attending the Lord's Supper, attending the meals where they
celebrated the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
They feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. There is a healthy reason to
fear God. It is a promised blessing of
the everlasting covenant that He will put His fear into His
people. They are clouds without water,
carried about by winds, trees whose fruit withereth without
fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. raging waves of
the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom
is reserved the blackest of darkness forever. And Enoch also, the
seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the
Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints. to execute judgment
upon all, and to convict all that are ungodly among them of
their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of
all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against
him." You see, all of it ultimately is a denial of the Lordship of
our Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? The words are spoken against
Him. They are denying Him in verse
4 and they speak against Him in verse 15. These are murmurers,
complainers, walking after their own lusts, and their mouths speak
as great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because
of advantage. They are flattering people. That's
what it means. To flatter people for their own
advantage. Whenever people want to flatter
you, the reason they flatter you is so that you'll flatter
them back again. That's what goes on, doesn't it? All the
time. You've met flattering people. They flatter so they can be flattered.
That's why Paul in Galatians talked about those who want to
make a fair show in the flesh. But beloved, But beloved, remember
ye the words which were spoken before the apostles of our Lord
Jesus Christ, how that they told you that there should be mockers
in the last time. This hasn't happened outside
of the sovereign hand of our God. There should be mockers
in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. So when you see them, you shouldn't
be surprised by them. These be they who separate themselves,
these be they who create divisions, sensual, unnatural, unbelievers,
not having a spirit, but you, beloved. building yourselves
up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves
in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life, and of some have compassion. making a difference,
have mercy on those who waver, those who are doubting for some
reason. The merciful are merciful to
those who are in trouble, aren't they? And others side with fear,
pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted
by the flesh. Now unto Him that is able to
keep you from falling and present you faultless before the presence
of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, all of
this is wisdom from our God, to the only wise God our Saviour,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. It is a remarkable letter,
isn't it? I suppose it is responded to
in so many different ways. But when you look down that list,
you look down that list of the characteristics of those people
and you look down at that church which has these people in it
and these people about it, you realise not only the frailty,
the seeming frailty of the Church in this world, but also I trust
that you are made aware of the fact that these things are a
description of so much that's in our flesh, isn't it? You look
at it there in verse 5, they believe not. How much unbelief
is mixed with the little faith that we have? Verse 8, They despise
dominion. How naturally we reject authority. How naturally we reject. When
someone says, do this, we naturally respond in rejection of it. How much
of our lives are like these dreamers. are taking the things of authority
from anything other than the Word of God, from feelings and
from thoughts and from impressions. And how much is just known and
perceived and operated on naturally in verse 10? How much do we know
just naturally? Rather than just saying this
is what God says, end of story, and going to the Word of God.
We do go chasing after all sorts of other things when God's Word
just reveals very clearly what's happened in the beginning and
what's happened at the end and what's happening in the middle.
How often, in verse 16, have we walked after our own lusts? It is a description of all this
opposition to the Church, but in sad ways it's a description
of our Adam Flesch, isn't it? How often we want men to hold
us in admiration. How often. We are prone to treat
people in flattering ways of all sorts that we will actually
have the gratification of their fellowship and their friendship
and their estimation of us because of something that we need from
ourselves rather than looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. The
list could go on. I suppose That's why I love the
fact that this book has these glorious bookends to it, doesn't
it? It begins with a description
of the children of God, isn't it? The children of God are those
that are sanctified, they are set apart, declared to be holy
by God the Father, to them that are, not them that might be,
they are already, they are always seen as united to the Lord Jesus
Christ and God the Father looks to them through the lens of his
son, and he doesn't see them separated from his son for one
tiny second. And how much we need to be preserved
in the Lord Jesus Christ. When I look through that list
and I think of the fragility of what's going on and fragility
of my flesh, no wonder verse 2 is such a blessing, isn't it?
I need multiplied mercies, brothers and sisters. And mercies have
been multiplied to the children of God. You think of the mercies
that are multiplied to you in this last years that we have
been together. Mercies that have protected us
from people who have been false teachers. Mercies that have protected
us from the falls and the frailties and the weakness of our own flesh.
Mercies multiplied, multiplied and multiplied and multiplied.
I wonder John speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ and He came and
we are the recipients, all of the children of God, we are the
recipients in John 1 of grace, upon grace, of His fullness,
have we all received grace or grace? He gives grace and He
gives more grace and He gives more grace and He gives more
grace. I need multiplied mercies. I need multiplied love. I need all of that to be multiplied
so that I can have multiplied peace. The only peace we have
in all of this is that our God reigns and He reigns with a sovereign
hand over all of His people and over all of the circumstances
of this world. These people were ordained. These
events should come to pass. Just like all of the events in
all of creation, our God reigns over everything. And I love the
fact that He, at the end of it in verse 24, He's able to keep
you from falling. I don't know about you brothers
and sisters, I find myself falling, falling, falling, and I look
and I am just so thrilled at the fact that we have multiplied
mercies, that He is able to keep you from falling, and it's His
responsibility. It's His responsibility of the
great surety, isn't it? To present you faultless before
the presence of His glory. and he does it, we think that
he has to have grace and he has to have mercy and he has to have
love. We think so often it has to be extracted from him, don't
we? But in fact, he does it, in verse 24, he does it with
exceeding joy. That was the joy that was set
before him. When he went to the cross, what was the joy that
was set before him? The joy of having his bride with
him, perfect and spotless and holy and undefiled, having perfectly
honoured the law of God, being perfectly fit and right to be
in his presence. Don't you long to be in his presence?
Don't you long for that day when you'll see him? Just imagine
what it's going to be like to see him, to actually see him. to be in His presence. And when
you get there, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus, it will be
a place of exceeding joy on His account, won't it? The joy of
glorifying His Father's holy name, the joy of revealing all
of the remarkable character of God. to the only wise God, our Saviour,
Majesty, Dominion and Power. Glorious Majesty, Dominion over
all things and the power to carry out that which He has promised
to do. And it's now. It's now and forever. So often we need to be like Elisha's servant. I love that
prayer in 2 Kings 6.17, don't we? Where there's Elisha in his
little shack with his servants and what do they see on the hills?
They see this army, this vast army on the hills, all of the
army of that nation arrayed against just one man, just to stop one
man, just to stop Elisha, just to stop Elisha. And what does
Elisha say to him? I pray, I pray Thee, open the
eyes of the young man that he may see. Open my eyes, Lord,
that I might see. Here you are in the midst of
all of this, which looks so dark. Open my eyes that I might see,
that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes
of the young man and he saw. And behold, stand and see. Behold means to look in amazement.
Be amazed at what you see. Behold the mountain was full
of horses and chariots of fire around about Elisha. God says
that His angels encamp around His people. That's why Hezekiah,
when he had that letter from Sennacherib, Sennacherib's ambassadors,
saying, give up, Hezekiah. We have just marched all the
way down here from Syria. We have marched through every
town and we have conquered everyone. Who on earth do you think you
are in your little Jerusalem? Who do you think you are standing
opposed to us with our 185,000 troops outside? And Hezekiah,
Hezekiah surrounded by all of that, and with that prospect
before him, Hezekiah went up into the house of the Lord. and
he spread it before the Lord. He went up into the house of
the Lord. One angel, one angel that night killed 185,000 troops. One angel, and there are angels
camped around God's people, and there are angels that are watching
over all of his people. May the Lord open our eyes I
just wanted to spend a little bit of time before we close.
It's been a long, hot day for lots of us. Summer's coming on. All of this, all of this which
is in eternity Eternity past is at the end of the sanctified
and preserved in Christ Jesus. All of this becomes a reality
in the lives of God's people because of that lovely word at
the end of verse 1, and called, and called. So that's what's
necessary, isn't it? To open the eyes and to unstop
the ears and to give us eyes to see the Lord Jesus Christ,
we must have that call from God. Now, in His wisdom, the Lord
puts that call at the end of that list there. because that's
in a sense how it works out in the providence of God, but in
the lives of God's people. We don't know that we are sanctified
by God the Father. We don't know that we are preserved
in the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't know that our God is
wise. We don't know that he has glory
and majesty, dominion and power forever. We don't know that he
keeps and preserves his own. We don't know that he presents
us faultless. before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy. We don't know those things until
we are given life and we are given as Paul found on that road
to Damascus. When God calls His own, when
they hear the voice of the shepherd, when they hear the sound of the
gospel, the good news, not good advice, the good news about who
the Lord Jesus Christ is. I love how Paul describes it
in Galatians 1.15, but when it pleased God. when it pleased
God. It's called the time of love
in Ezekiel 16. When it pleased God, when it's
God's time of pleasing. Who separated me from my mother's
womb. Paul had absolutely no idea until
that moment that he'd been separated from his mother's womb. He had
no idea that in all of that wickedness and all of that evil that he
had done in all of his life prior to that, and all of his legalistic
self-righteousness, which was nothing but multiplied sin, whitewash,
sepulchres. He had no idea that the Lord
Jesus Christ had borne all of those sins in his own body on
the tree, and that in the eyes of God, Paul was his beloved
child. when it pleased God who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace." So when
He calls people, He always calls them by grace and He calls them
into grace. He never calls them by works
and He never calls them into works. He calls them by His grace
and when He calls His people by His grace, to reveal His Son
in me, Galatians 1.16. that I might preach Him among
the heathen." He doesn't need to go to a Bible college. He
doesn't need a training from men. If he's met the Lord Jesus
Christ, he's equipped to be His witness. The Lord Jesus is the
Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd knows His sheep.
He knows them personally. And He calls them by name, doesn't
He, in John 10.3, He calls His own sheep by name. He names his
own. They are the poor. They are the
broken hearted. They are the ones that are captive. They are the ones that are in
need of multiplied mercy and peace and love because they have
nothing in themselves that warrants anything from God. He calls them by name and He
doesn't just lead them, He leads them out. He leads them out of
this world, He leads them out of the religion of this world,
He leads them out of their self-righteousness, He leads them out, He leads them
out and He leads them into His fold. He's a good shepherd. I
know my sheep, and I'm known of mine. And he lays down his
life for the sheep, and other sheep he has, John 10, 16, which
are not of his fold, not of his Jewish fold. Them I must bring,
he must bring them in, and they shall hear my voice. They'll
hear the call of the shepherd's voice, that there shall be one
fold and one shepherd. My sheep, John 10.27, my sheep
hear my voice. They hear His voice. That's what
our church is standing for, isn't it? We just want to hear what
God says. I'm not interested much in what
a whole bunch of dead theologians have said. I'm not interested
in what the people of this world are saying. There is just one
thing that comforts the sheep of God, that we hear His voice. We hear Him calling us. My sheep hear My voice, I know
them and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life,
and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of My hand. My Father which gave them Me
is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of
My Father's hand. I and My Father are one. What glorious comforting words,
brothers and sisters. What was the Jews response? Picked
up stone and stoned him. What's the response of the sheep?
What a remarkable saviour. What a remarkable saviour. Let
me hear his voice yet again. Speak, Lord, for your servants
here. There is this calling, isn't
it? There is a general call that goes out. There's a call, the
call of the reality of the existence of God from nature. There is
a call of the reality of something of the character of God in the
work of His, work in the consciences of people. And there is, in the
preaching of the Gospel, there is a call going out to all that
may hear. There is a general call, but
the call that Jude is talking about is a description of the
people who are the called. The called hear the shepherd's
voice. The called are the ones who are called of God with an
irresistible and effectual call. They are the ones that are called
by the Gospel. And as we saw from Galatians
1.15, it's a call of grace. And as Jude finishes, it's a
call, it's a call to glory. If he calls you by his grace,
He'll call you into glory. And it's a call that comes by
the Gospel, doesn't it? It doesn't come from other activities,
other things that men do, nothing that these filthy dreamers, nothing
that people know naturally. It is simply God who says it
is be pleased Him by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. God saves His people. God saves
the them. God saves the ones that are sanctified. God saves the ewes in verse 2
of Jude. God saves the beloved. He saves
the beloved and He gives them life and He gives them faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He does it by a sovereign
power, a sovereign power, dominion and power. And he does it, as
I said, through the preaching of the Gospel. You see, we keep
quoting that verse in 1 Peter 1.25, it's by the Gospel that
the Word of God is preached unto you. The Word of God has not
been preached until the Gospel has been preached. And where
the Gospel is not faithfully preached, there is no word from
God according to God. It's a call of pure, free, undeserved
grace. When you look through that dark
litany of the enmity against the Church and the enmity that's
in our Adam nature, we are in need of multiplied mercy. We
are in need of grace. We are called by the superabundant
grace of our God. And this call is a call that
draws God's people. It's through His loving kindness
He draws His people. It's a sign of His everlasting
love. He's not going to have His everlasting
love and not have it and have the object of that love with
Him. That's why, as I said earlier in Ezekiel 16, there is a time
of love. That's why it's so important
for people to hear the Gospel. The one thing that we should
have on our hearts again and again and again is that people
come and hear the Gospel. They won't hear it from us, hear
it from someone. Hear the Gospel. Hear the Gospel. It comes as a result of His everlasting
love, of His sovereignty. And one of the verses that I
just love is in Romans 11.29 where it says that the gifts
and calling of God are without repentance. What a remarkable
statement from our God. The gifts and calling of God
are without repentance, which means that they're completely
unchangeable. It's completely irreversible.
As in some translations, it's completely irrevocable. God has
no reason ever to change it. It's a call to everlasting life. And so those who are called,
they shall be preserved, preserved in Christ Jesus, preserved for
Christ Jesus, preserved by Christ Jesus. Faithful is he that calls
you. 1 Thessalonians 5. God calls His own. He calls them with an irresistible
call. And He'll call it in such a way
that despite all of what we've read of the corruptions, all
of what we've read of the enmity from outside and from inside,
from those ones that sneak in, they creep in unawares. I don't
need to know who they are, I just need to know that our job and
our task is to keep preaching the Lord Jesus Christ and keep
telling people, look to Him. Don't look away to anything else,
just look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Go to the Word of God, don't
go to dreams and visions or anything else. Go to the Word of God,
delight in His authority, delight in the authority of His Word
and delight in the fact But as Jude speaks of, mercy, peace
and love multiplied to you. And we know there is something
that all believers know. We know that all things work
together. All things are worked together
for the good of them that love God. To them who are thee called. It's a description of the children
of God, the called, isn't it? It's God's description of His
people. They are called according to
His purpose. For whom He did foreknow. That
means that that's not a description of God's knowledge, it's a description
of God's eternal everlasting love for particular people. He
doesn't have any shortage of knowledge, our God. When you
create all things and you rule all things, how dare people say
that He had to learn something. whom God did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren That's what we're looking at, isn't it, in
Acts, the Lord Jesus Christ is the firstborn, the firstborn
from the resurrection among many brethren. He's there with them,
and they'll all be brothers and sisters in him. Moreover, whom
he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called,
them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. Brothers and sisters, it's all
in the past tense, a completed activity of our great God. May that the evidence of His mercy unto
you and the multiplying of His love
to you. And may that bring peace, multiplied
peace. Let's pray.