Jude. This small book is next to the
book of Revelation. It is second to the last book
in our Bibles. We'll be looking at the first
three verses this evening. And the title of the message
is The Common Salvation. The Common Salvation. Verse 1 of this small book of
Jude says, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, the brother
of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved
in Jesus Christ called. mercy unto you and peace and
love be multiplied. 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. The apostle of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who is here called Jude, is the same disciple that is
called elsewhere Judas. And in another place he is called
Thaddeus, and in another place he is called Libias. For all
these names have the same meaning, the same meaning. It has to do
with His constancy, His consistency in praising God. and they call him Jude partly
because they wanted to separate him from Judas Iscariot. If you remember, Judas is the
one that betrayed him and who would want that name? So this
man, he was either called by the Apostles Jude to separate
him from Judas, but mostly it is because his name is the same
with Judah, which means to praise God. Now Jude here, he denotes
himself by this title. He gives himself this title,
Jude the Servant. of Jesus Christ. This is the
same title the Apostle gives himself in most of his epistles. The Apostle Paul says it in Romans,
that he is a servant of Jesus Christ. In Titus, he says Paul,
a servant of God, Apostle of Jesus Christ. James says the
same thing as well as Peter. This title of servant, the servant,
is this not a good title? the servant of Jesus Christ.
Is that not a good title for you and me who are believers
in Christ? Are we not servants of Jesus
Christ? You bet we are. We who believe
in Jesus Christ own Him as our King. And if He is our King,
then truly we are His servants, His slaves. People don't like
to use that word. But I'll tell you, in using it
in connotation with Christ, I'll use it. I am His slave. I am
His slave. A slave of Jesus Christ. The believer in Christ serves
the Lord. How? Are we serving like a slave
here under an earthly master? No. We serve under a heavenly
master. And the psalmist said, serve
the Lord with fear and gladness. This is a good title for you
and me. This is a joyful title for you
and me, the servant of God. Would to God that His people
whom He has saved would set it in our hearts to serve Him, to
cease to serve self, You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot
serve the flesh and Christ. Would to God that we as His professing
servants would honor Him by serving Him in every part of our life
and do it with gladness. Is it something to bemoan us
to serve Him? No. No. Not His servants. We ask the Holy Spirit to please
give us the heart even tonight of Judah. I want that heart.
I want the heart of a servant. I want to serve the Lord Jesus
Christ. I beseech you therefore by the
mercies of God that you present your bodies. That's not, that's
illiteral. Present your body, your life
in service. Why? Because he's had mercy on
you. Because he's had mercy. May God open our hearts to serve
Him and say with Job, though he slay me, though he kill me,
yet will I trust him. This should be our hearts. Do you not think that would relieve
a lot of our pressures, a lot of our troubles? Just to fall
out and say, I serve you. Though you kill me, I serve you.
Believer, let us by faith see that though we are more than
conquerors in Christ, we are also counted sheep for the slaughter. As it is given unto us to believe
on the name of Jesus Christ, remember it is also given to
us to suffer for His namesake. Are you a suffering saint? Are
you under great heaviness and assault by the flesh, Satan,
and this world? Do you suffer the hatred of your
family, your friends? Are you the target of those that
you love the most? Are you used and persecuted,
lied and betrayed? Jesus said, happy are you. And
Matthew, he said, Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake. For theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for
my sake. Rejoice. Is that not totally
opposite of what the flesh says? The flesh says murmur. The flesh
says complain. Christ says rejoice. Rejoice
in your suffering. Rejoice in your persecution. For yours is the kingdom of heaven. Is there any greater prize? Is
there any greater prize? No, there's no greater prize.
Christ is our reward. We should rejoice in our suffering
because He hath made us meet. He hath made us qualified to
be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. He's
delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into
the kingdom of His dear Son. You and I are His servants. What higher office could there
be than to be the servant of Jesus Christ? These men run around
and they think they're really getting somewhere being the chief
administrator of some department in the government. No. You have the best office. You serve a king. And not only
a king, the king. You serve the king. May we do
so like Jude. Let's put this title right next
to our name. A servant of Jesus Christ. Now
in this small book, this chapter, one chapter in this book, and
is divided easily into three parts. The first part is tonight
what we're going to be looking at. It's the common salvation. That's what Jude said he sets
his heart to do, is the right of the common salvation. And
then gives us that common salvation as we'll see in verse 1. But
at verse 4 down to verse 19, Jude is here telling us that
we must contend for the faith by recognizing false teachers. It is important for the church
to recognize. So he exhorts us to see these
false teachers. And then verse 20 through verse
25 he concludes with the comfort of the saints. And so tonight
we're just going to look at the first part of this. The common
salvation. He said, I determined in verse 3, Beloved,
I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation. Now although every believer in
Jesus Christ has a different experience, we each have our different experiences
and circumstances that led us to our spiritual birth. We can see this by the Apostle
Paul. The Apostle Paul's experience was not ours, was it? He was
raised a Jew. He was a Pharisee. He was a very
learned man. This man, the Apostle, was zealous
for his religion. And he was so zealous that he
persecuted the church. He would imprison or kill other
believers. He consented to that, even the
stoning of Stephen. That's not our experience. The
Lord met him on the road to Damascus and saved him. Now, our experience
may have been a religious one. You may have had a religious
upbringing. You may have been, you know,
brought up in the church. But truly, There was grace that
led you to a certain point. There was grace and providence
that moved things around you so that you would be under a
certain man at a certain time to hear a certain message. And
you heard that message and you believed. Well, I'll tell you
this. If you have believed on Jesus
Christ, our experience may be the same, but our salvation is
no different. I like that. Don't you? That
way you don't have to look around and compare everyone's salvation
and say, well, he's got a better one than I do. No, you have the
same salvation. We all have the same Savior,
the same Father, and saved by the same Spirit. We all have
been created in Christ Jesus unto good works. We are His workmanship. We are His creation. What a blessing
this is, because we're prone to confusion. Who's confused
easily? We're confused easily. And so
when you're walking about and you see somebody and you say,
well, man, something's different about his salvation. Well, I'll
tell you, if his salvation is different from what the apostle
here puts in this first verse, then you can know this, his salvation's
none at all. And so there's no need to be
confused about this. No need to be confused to see
if you're saved or not, because this is true about everyone's
salvation. This is true right here. And
I'm glad your salvation is not one bit better than mine. I'm
glad. We are all saved by the same
free grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Now there are
three things. Look at this first verse here. Three things that
are common to everyone who is saved. Look at what Jude said. Jude, a servant of God, a servant
of Jesus Christ, a brother of James, to them that are sanctified
by God the Father. There's the first one. If you
are saved, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, it is
true of you and me that we have been sanctified by the Father. And this word sanctified simply
means to set aside something for holy use, to choose. God had chosen vessels. Now there
were a million cups, but there was only one cup. There was only
one altar. There was only one mercy seat. There was a whole bunch of invitations,
but there was only one. And I tell you, that God has
chosen His people by a common election. A common election. The Father has from eternity
chosen you. Every believer in Jesus Christ
has this common root of our salvation that by God's free and sovereign
and immutable grace of the Father, We were elected, sanctified,
set apart by the Holy Father for His holy use. God says this
of Israel, who is a type of His church. The people of Israel,
those Jews in the Old Testament, they were chosen people. They
were a chosen people. And God says this of them in
Deuteronomy 7. He said, The Lord did not set
His love upon you, or choose you, because you were more in
number, for you were the fewest of all people. But because the
Lord loved you, and because He would keep His oath, which He
had sworn to your fathers, hath the Lord brought you with a mighty
hand, and redeemed you from the bondman from the hand of Pharaoh,
King of Egypt. The Apostle Paul tells Titus
this. He says that we were saved not
by works of righteousness which we have done. This election was
not because of who we are. Now if anybody thinks we're somebody,
well we all think we're somebody. We all have that nature to think
that I'm different. Isn't that what the little videos
tell our children that they're special? I'm special, special. That's what we grow up believing.
Everybody else is in another category and it's me. I'm special. Not if you've been chosen. Not
if you've been elected because you know this about yourself,
you are nothing. You and I are nothing but sin. Nothing but sin. We, by nature,
are sinners, born dead in trespasses and sin. We, by nature, are foolish,
disobedient, and serving different lusts and pleasures of our own
minds and hearts. And this is how we came out.
This is not what we've become. This is how we came out. I remember Brother Jack Shanks
talking about a young man that was in his office all the time,
he was a principal for a while, and he's in his office all the
time and his mother came up to the school and she said, well,
my boy, he's been running with the wrong crowd. And Jack said,
your son is the wrong crowd. That's true of us. That's true
of us. We are the wrong crowd. We're
sinners. There was nothing good in us.
There was no reason for God to choose us other than He would. There's no other reason. Scriptures
are clear. All our righteousnesses are as
menstrual clothes. Filthy rags. And God's speaking
of your best things when He says that. Your best things. As it
is written, there's none righteous, no, not one. There's none that
understandeth. There's none that seeketh after
God. By the way, try to tell that to teenagers. There's none
that understandeth. They think they know everything.
That's just the way it is. There's none that understandeth.
There's none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of
the way. They're all together become unprofitable. None that doeth good know not
one. Is that not plain and simple concerning us? We know this.
Therefore the apostle concludes by the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified. None. Therefore God has told us, He's
told us that the root of all salvation begins here. The sanctification
of the Father. the election of God by sovereign
grace. Any man who denies the election
of God, that the election of God is not
by grace, is one that Jude says has turned the grace of God into
lasciviousness. Anyone who says that election
is because of works or because of what God saw in you, that
is an ungodly man, and that is... I have no understanding of that
kind of salvation. Do you, believer? Do you have
any understanding of that? No. We have a common salvation
that we know that came directly from the sovereign mercy of God. Paul says, If by grace, then
it's no more of works. Otherwise, grace is no more grace.
You see, they turn the meaning. They twist the whole meaning
if they say that God chose you because of something you did
or would do. There is no saint of God who
will deny this gospel truth because we know ourselves. We know ourselves to be complete
sinners, complete sinners. Therefore, we praise God who
sanctified us by His sovereign grace. Is that not a reason to
praise God? By this doctrine of our common
election, God the Father moves us to humility. Is that not a
practical reason for His electing grace to move us to humility. If anyone is moved to pride by
the doctrine of election, they've not learned it aright. The doctrine
of election is the most humbling and humiliating doctrine in the
world. If anyone is moved, if it moves
anyone, believers, it moves us not to boast of self, but to
boast in our God. Doesn't election make you want
to boast in God? I want to brag on Him for His
gracious, sovereign mercy. And that's common to every believer.
Now, second of all, look at this. To them that are sanctified by
God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ. Our common preservation
is in Jesus Christ. Now as God the Father sanctified
us to salvation by His sovereign election, He also purposed that
our salvation be in Jesus Christ. Everybody knows this, that everybody
here anyway, Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3, it says, Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Where? In
Christ. According as he hath chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world. And he chose us
in him that we should be holy and without blame before him.
This reveals to us that we were given to Christ. So when it says
that you are preserved in Christ, it is because the Father gave
you to His Son. You will believe this is common
among us. We have this in common. That
the Father gave us to the Son. And the Son received us and promised
to be our surety. Promised to be our guarantee. That's what the word surety means.
It's a guarantee. Every time I go to the store,
somebody wants to sell me a guarantee. You notice that? They're all
trying to, hey, that's got a little warranty with it, but you want
an extra guarantee? Then you have to pay for it.
You know, and then when you pay for it, you lose a receipt or
something, and you can't get them to do anything for that
equipment. I tell you, Christ's guarantee
is nothing like that. His guarantee was before the
foundation of the world. He guaranteed, just like Judah,
guaranteed the safety of Benjamin. Jesus, our Savior, by an eternal
oath, swore that He would be our guarantee. I love John chapter 6, don't
you? It's one of my favorite chapters in all the Scripture.
Jesus said, I came down to do the will of my Father, and here
it is. Here's the will of my Father,
that of all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing. Now,
those are not confident words. I should lose nothing, but raise
it up again at the last day. Do you think He's lost one? Do
you think that the Son of God lost one that the Father gave? Him in eternity? Absolutely not. That's why Jude uses the word
preserved in Christ. Preserved, kept in Christ. Guaranteed. Our salvation, our
common salvation is one that's guaranteed. It's guaranteed by
the eternal Son of God. Jesus said about us, His sheep,
He said, I give unto them eternal life. Now I'm going to ask you
a very tough question. This is a deep theological question.
When does eternity begin? Did it begin when you believed?
No. If it began when you believed,
it's not eternal. That's why the scripture uses
the word everlasting and eternal. It's everlasting after you believe. But it was eternal before you
believed. He gave you what He swore He
would give you from the beginning. What a great word. What a great
message. This is His message. He said,
I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.
Again, confident words. These are sure words. Never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. What if one professes
to believe and is finally lost? Well, that's because he was just
a professor of faith and not a possessor. He didn't have this
common salvation that you and I have that believe on Jesus
Christ because I know that my Savior said, I shall lose none
of them. I give unto them eternal life
that I had with my Father promised them in eternity. I give it unto
them and they shall never perish. This is our common salvation.
This is our common salvation preserved in Christ from eternity. This doctrine of eternal life
that was in Christ from eternity should move our hearts to be
thankful. Are you thankful? We should be so thankful that
God gave us to his Son and preserved us in Christ from all eternity. Set your affection. This is why
you and I should set our affection on things above because that's
where our Savior is. That's where our Lord is. That's
where our King is. That's where all our salvation
is. It's in Him where He sits in
heaven. For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ
in God. Where's your life? Believer, where's your life?
Is it here? No! I'm dead. And my life is
hid there in heaven with Christ. That's where my life is. And
not only are we preserved in Christ, but I tell you, believer,
we are preserved by Christ. By Christ. He was our surety
from eternity, but he has also preserved us in salvation by
coming and dying for us. The Scripture teaches us that
Jesus, who was our surety, was as a lamb slain before the foundation
of the world. In other words, He was purposed
to die when He agreed to the Father to receive us, to be our
surety. He was promised. He promised
the Father that He would be our Lamb, that He would be our sin
offering, so the Scripture tells us. He was as a lamb slain from
before the foundation of the world. It was to Jesus Christ
the Father looked for all the salvation of His people. You remember all those saints
in the Old Testament. They were His children. They
were preserved in Christ, yet Jesus had not yet come. He had
not yet come and performed what he had promised to do. So God
gave them types and pictures and shadows. He pictured Jesus
by the ram caught in the thicket. You remember when Abraham was
to offer his only son. And he said, God will provide
himself a lamb. And sure enough, God provided
that ram, caught him in the thicket, and he slayed that instead of
his son. Is that not a picture of what
Jesus did for us? Yes. Remember the Passover lamb
and how the firstborn was to be killed when the angel of God
passed over. If they did not have the blood
of the lamb on the door, then the firstborn of that house would
surely die. But everyone who had the blood, He passed over. You see, that's
why they call it the Passover. Because He passed over. He passed
over everyone who had the blood. But I tell you, Jesus is no longer
pictured in types and shadows. He's already come. He's come
and fulfilled all those types by offering Himself to God for
us. Believer, we are preserved by
Jesus Christ because He became our representative man. This
is important. This is altogether important
that Jesus became a man for a reason. He didn't come into this world
for no particular reason. He came for one reason, and that
was to be our representative man. Adam represented us. Adam represented us in the garden,
and when he sinned, so did we. We sinned in Adam. I tell you,
believer, if you're a partaker of this common salvation, when
Jesus Christ obeyed God, so did you. So did you. It says, For by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, even so by the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous. We were born ungodly. I like
this. Someone wrote this. Sin is a
noun. It is what I am. Sin is a verb. It's what I do. Sin is an adjective. It describes me. Sin is an adverb. It describes what I do. Sin is who I am. It's what I
do. It describes everything about
me. Doesn't that sin describe everything about you? But I'm so thankful for the gospel
of Jesus Christ because the righteousness of God also describes me. It
also describes me. Because in Christ is all my righteousness. When He obeyed God, many were
made righteous by His obedience. And so, believer, we were preserved
in Him. We were in Him when He was walking
in this world. And when He was obeying God,
so were we, by a representative. But now the righteousness of
God without the law is clear, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by the faith
of Jesus Christ. I'm so thankful it's by His faith.
Could you say your faith was enough to be righteous faith?
No. We couldn't say that about our
faith at all, but the faith of Jesus, I can say that. His faith
was righteous. He honored God. And this righteousness
is unto all and upon all. imparted and imputed, charged
and put inside of every believer in Christ. You that are partakers
of this common salvation, you are partakers of the righteousness
of Christ. The Apostle tells us that we
are made partakers of the divine nature. Isn't that something? What a blessing that is. And
not only were we preserved by His righteousness, but also His
blood. His blood. You and I both know this. There
is no gospel without blood. There's no good news for you
or me without blood. And not just any blood. Only
the blood of Jesus Christ. Because God is holy and does
mark sin, How infinite would that ledger be? Anybody keep
a list of things? They used to call it a ledger
book. I don't think they have much anymore. Imagine how long
the ledger book would be if God marked our sins. And He does.
God marks sin. How infinite would that ledger
book be? Could you count your sins even
today? We could count them, but I tell
you we wouldn't be accurate. Consider the justice of God against
our sins is everlasting hell. Truly, if you're a believer in
Christ, you not only know there is a heaven, you know there is
a hell. And consider the pit The bottomless
eternal darkness that Jude calls in verse 13, the blackness of
darkness. And yet believer, our sin deserved
such hell. Did it not? I know there was a time where
we didn't think much of sin. But now that God opened our heart
to see what sin is, we know that sin is exceedingly sinful. And yet Christ bore the bottomless
pit of hell for our sins to blot them out. Imagine the infinite ledger of
our sins now coated, dipped in the blood of Jesus Christ, blotted
out forever. My sins and your sins, if we
were preserved in Christ on that cursed tree, then our sins were
imputed to Him, and He bore them away forever, cast them into
the depths of God's forgetfulness, never to be seen again. He paid
our sin debt. And you and I have that in common.
We have that in common. Jesus bore our sins in His own
body on the tree and suffered for them. Behold, is it nothing
to you that pass by? Behold and see if there's any
sorrow like unto my sorrow. Was there any sorrow like unto
His sorrow? Can you compare your sorrow to
His? You who have sorrows, can you compare them to His? We can't. His sorrows were infinite sorrow. God sent fire from above into
his bones and prevailed against him. Now your father cries out to
your heart, dear believer, behold, I, even I, am he that blotteth
out thy transgression for my own namesake. You can't find any reason why
he'd blot them out for your namesake, can you? I can't either. God says, I'm gonna blot them
out for my own namesake. That's good. That's good news. He said, I will cleanse them
from all iniquity whereby they have sinned against me. I will
pardon them. Are your sins blotted out? Oh, sinner, repent and believe that your
sins may be blotted out. Our Savior, when He laid down
His life, He gave Himself for us, He died for us, and there
is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. And I'm so thankful that we were
preserved in Him when He rose again from the dead. Aren't you?
We were preserved in Him when He was righteous, we were preserved
in Him when He was dying on the cross, and we were preserved
in Him when He rose from the dead. Why is a resurrection so important? Not only is it unique, because
no other religion has this, The resurrection is important because
it justifies the Lord Jesus' offering. It shows us that God
accepted His offering. And when God accepted His offering,
and He rose from the dead, we rose with Him. And so in glory,
right now, sits a man on the throne of heaven, ruling over
all things, for your salvation. Your salvation is preserved for
you in heaven. It's the same word the Apostle
Peter uses that is reserved in heaven. Reserved, ready to be
revealed. Is this your salvation? Are you preserved in Christ Jesus? Lastly, regarding the common
salvation, everyone who is chosen of the Father, preserved in Christ,
is also called. Look at that in our text. He says, not only preserved in
Christ and, the word italicized there, called. Called. This common calling is the evidence
of God's choosing and Christ's redemption. I know that God has
an elect people. I know that Christ died for those
people. How is it do I know I'm one of
those people? Are you called? Have you been born again of the
Spirit of God? There's evidence. There's evidence
that you and I have this common salvation. All our salvation's
in Jesus Christ. And we believe on Him alone. That's what it is to be called.
It is to be raised from the dead. This common calling Every time
the gospel is preached, aren't people being called to believe?
Yes. Every time I preach to you, I
call to you, sinner, believe. Sinner, trust in Christ. And
whosoever will, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I tell you
that with all sincerity and hope that sinners would believe. But
truly, I can only call you physically.
Only God can save you spiritually. People will say, well, if God
chose and Christ redeemed, then why do you preach? I say with
Spurgeon, sir, if you would kindly point out the elect to me, I'll
only preach to them. I don't know who they are. All I know is they're called.
They believe, and you know what happens to them? They continue
to believe. Do you believe? Have you been called of God? The day is coming and now, the
hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice
of the Son of God and they that hear shall live. Are you alive? You are if you believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and life come together. They're never apart. Never apart. When God the Holy Spirit comes,
And he cries to your heart, come forth. Is he asking for a decision? No. It's a command. All right. Have you heard the command? Have
you come forth? Then this is our common salvation. And I'm going to give you one
last practical thing. I'm going to give you a use,
the reason why we preach this common salvation continually. Is there anything else that I've
preached to you? I preach to you this message constantly,
and it's for this reason, because believers are troubled people. Believer, are you cast down in
the slew of despond, held up in doubting castle? Have you
been turned aside by Mr. Worldly Wise Man to find assurance
in the law? Are you being attacked by that
foul beast of Paulion, accused of your conscience before God
of your sins? Are you lured to vanity fair
in the things of this world? Are you approaching the river
of darkness? whose swift cold currents flood
your soul, in every trouble, in every trial, in prosperity
and poverty, in sickness and in health, in life and in death,
look to Jesus Christ. Look to Jesus Christ by faith
in Him alone, which is our common salvation.
If He chose us, if He redeemed us, and He called us, will He
not keep us? Yes. He will keep you. Is there any doubt that God will do what He said
He will do? Now there's doubt that we'll
do what we say we'll do. But there is no doubt that God
will do what he says he will do. And he says he will keep
you. He will keep you. May God give
you such comfort and peace concerning this common salvation. Let's stand. We'll be dismissed
in prayer.