If you haven't already turned
there, turn to the letter of Jude. And I've told you, church, in the
last few weeks that there's a lot packed into these little phrases. Some people argue in the school
of thought when it comes to teaching the Word in exposition, some
people would argue that, well, you don't, if the Bible doesn't
say it right there, then don't say it. But that's absurd. That's like asking your wife,
are you okay? And she says, I'm fine. If we
take I'm fine as I'm fine and just go fishing, we might investigate
a little bit further as to what's meant behind that. At the same
time, we don't have to read into the Bible what's not there. But
yet, even with any language, when something is said, there's
always an implication. for its meaning. There's always
an implication for its application. There's always something that
we need to understand is understood by the text. For example, when
we began Jude and we looked at verse 2 and it says, May mercy,
peace, and love be multiplied to you. This is more of a a parting
prayer, a parting giving, as Paul would write his letters,
grace and peace to you. And when he closes his letters,
grace and peace be with you. And so the implication therein
of Paul's addressing in that way is that he believed that
the words that he wrote would impart grace on the hearer. And
that when he left them in those words, that that grace is kept
with them through the hearing and the continued reading of
the words. the teaching, the doctrine of the gospel, the doctrine
of Jesus Christ. And so the same is true within
Jude. It's very easy to become a commentator. You know what a commentator is?
I look at commentators like comic books. A comic book, if you've
ever read, I read comic books when I was a kid. I loved comic
books. I wish I still had all my comic
books and we could buy us a heater. But comic books are absurdly,
what's the word? Commentative. You are making
me angry. Now I'm going to pick this microphone
up and sling it in your direction. I mean, you know, why is that? Because that's the way comic
books are. They're sort of linear in their story. You've got a
couple of pictures here and you've got bubbles to write in. So you
can't show a whole lot of action. So you have to actually even
write in the word or boom or hiss, to get the feel. Well, the same thing is true
with any language. The same thing is true with any word. And when
we're in verse 21 today of Jude's letter, and it says, keep yourselves
in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
that leads to eternal life. What's an assumption of Jude
in this writing? That you are in the love of God to begin with.
Do you see the point? What we don't want to do is try
to find a hidden meaning, because the meaning is very clear. But
a commentator would say, yeah, you just got to stay in the love
of God. Moving right along, looking for the day when Jesus comes
back. Moving right along, be merciful. I mean, you could preach
the whole thing in one sermon like that. Be merciful. Is that
really exposition, though? Is that really what it means
to meditate on the Word of God? Is that what it means to take
the Word of God and hide it in your heart and to think about
it and to walk in it? No, it's not at all. That's a
study Bible. And as a dear brother who mentored
me greatly in the faith through the years would say, put down
your study Bibles and study your Bible. I was offended by that
because I just bought me a really expensive study Bible at that
time when I first heard it. You just don't have a clue. I'm as good of a Greek scholar
as you are with this in my hands. To which you'd say, what difference
does it make when you close it? So as we're looking at this writing
here, We need to ask ourselves, what is it that Judah's really
arguing? Verse 20, 21, 22, 23 go together. There's this exhortation, this
contrast as we saw last week in verse 20, that you beloved,
the very word beloved, the very name, the very prescription that comes behind
the word beloved, It requires us to see that we
are the beloved of God. That means that we have received
the grace and the mercy and the peace of God through Jesus Christ.
It means that there's something more to be said than just, hey,
you who are reading. Because there are many who are
not beloved who would read this text. But I would tell you that
as the Holy Spirit grows you in your understanding of Scripture,
as the Holy Spirit grows you through the reading of His Word
in your faith and builds you up in this most holy faith, why
would you use most holy? Because he wanted to overemphasize
the reality of the fact that this objective faith is the real
deal. That it is God Himself exposing
Himself to us. And so therefore we are seeing,
as Paul would say through the words of God, we are seeing His
face. through the logos that became
flesh and dwelt among us. Friends, it is not a joke. It
is not a fun thing. It is not a pastime to be a student
of Scripture. It is a mandate which is empowered
within us by the Holy Spirit of God when we are born again.
That's why so many people live powerless, professing Christ
with this hand and ignoring Him with this one. That's why so
many Christians fail and fall. That's why so many people who
go to church every single week, day in and day out, week in and
week out, year in and year out, every single time they go, they're
seeking for something more than the Word of God. Many people
would sit and go, is the preacher going to be done yet? I wish
we'd have a song service. Nothing wrong with a song service. But don't think you've heard
the Word. Don't think you've seen the face of Jesus. Friends,
we've got a problem in our world today. We've got a problem in
our culture. We've got a problem in our churches. Unless we pay
attention, we'll have a problem as Grace Truth. Do not think
that we're above it or beyond it, for it just takes a moment
for us to put our eye on anything else that's beloved or that's
lovely in comparison to Jesus, and we become idolaters. We become
people who could fall into the same path. Every church that
begins begins with a zeal. Most new churches start with
a fire. They start with a great purpose
and a vision to be godly and to be a people by God's grace
for His glory. But it just takes a matter of
time before the honeymoon is over and the Word of God becomes
mundane and the practice of worship and discipleship and discipline
and prayer just becomes something we do when we're together, not
that which we live when we're apart. And so when we're looking
at this text here today, I would dare not put what is not here,
but I will tell you this, that for our sake, for our sake, we
need to understand what it means to keep ourselves in the love
of God. We need to understand the fullness of the implication
of that. And so for the sake of our theme, for the sake of
the topic of this text, while I could preach about praying
in the Holy Spirit, See how some people, why do you need to preach?
Because Jude says to do it. Not only says to do it, he says
that we're building ourselves up and we're praying in the Holy
Spirit. as we keep ourselves in the love
of God, awaiting the mercy. So it's not that we should do,
it's what we are doing. And so every hearer of these
words would go, I'm not really, how do I know I'm praying in
the Holy Spirit? So that's the purpose of preaching, is that
we can conflict with what we think in our worldview and our
values and our mindset and to spread it over the exam Template
to see if the bubbles that we filled in in our own lives match
with the right answers to see if the litmus test Passes to
see if there is a surefire truth underneath our belief system
in comparison to the Word of God and It's uncomfortable It's
uncomfortable. And I'll be straight with you.
I'm very leery. I'm very scared. Let me use the
truth. I'm very scared of pragmatism
in the church. I'm very frightened of pragmatism
because for so many years in all these large churches that
I was a staff pastor with, among, I don't even know how to say
the right thing. That's so silly. We're people. How can I be at
you? So all this ministry experience that I have in the past, I was
very good at practical teaching. Very good at what I would call
orchestrating behavior modification, orchestrating philosophical changes
and transformations in thinking, causing people to sort of shock
their system and decide, well, I need to think differently about
that. And they're planting that which I think was best in truth in
their minds so that therefore they consider that their own
belief system. And you know what the fruit of that is? Falling
away. You know what the fruit of that is? Helplessness, hopelessness,
guilt. Because we can put the show on,
can't we? The world says, fake it till you make it. Just put
on a happy face. You know all those stories. But what we do
is we stand up there and we are liars. We bear false witness
against our own gospel that we believe in when we fake it. for
the sake of making it. When we express our joy to others
in each other's faces, when they, deep inside, are broken and tearful
and agonizing over their lives, and we say, oh, the Lord is so
good. All the time. And all the time. The Lord is
good. And we just chant this back in two. We've got our banners.
We've got our Jesus stickers. We've got our ikthus. We've got
our tattoos. We've got everything. Magnets on our cars. I mean,
you know, we've got it all. Is it translating to reality
in our lives? Or are we faking it? Do we really
know Christ? Do we really have certainty of
the gospel in our lives? Are we filled with the fullness
of God, as Paul would pray to the Ephesian church in chapter
3? I pray that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
What does John say in his first epistle that I write these things
that our joy may be complete How is our joy complete John
says that we have fellowship with the father and with the
son and with you and indeed You have fellowship with us and we
have fellowship with them. And so we're all in one together
We are one in the body of Christ and we have fellowship and therefore
the fellowship with Christ gives us the fullness of joy friends
You can't have fellowship with Christ outside of fellowship
with the word and in fellowship with his people It doesn't happen
It doesn't happen. And there's a lot of cool stuff
that we can do in the world, but I'll tell you what, in comparison,
it's absolutely boring and dry and hopeless and helpless in
comparison to living our lives out for the gospel. Living our
lives out in the gospel. And so today, I want to remind
us of what Judah's taught us thus far, in the sense of looking
of how to build ourselves up in this most holy faith, praying
in the Holy Spirit, and most importantly today, we're going
to focus on keeping ourselves in the love of God. Isn't that
what you want? Do you want to stay in the love
of God? The love that God has for you,
do you want to remain in it? The love that you have for God,
do you want to hold on to it? Both and, these things. I believe
Judah's more specifically talking about God's love for us, that
we remain in it, we keep in it. And it's a little bit of an irony
because, in reality, the Scripture teaches us all throughout the
New Testament that the Holy Spirit of God is not only the author
of our faith and the author of His love and the giver of grace,
but that God is also the keeper of those whom He loves. And so
for Jude to say, keep yourself in the love of God, it does fly
to the face of some of my own personal belief systems. Because
I used to believe everything was up to me, and then I realized
as I read through John's gospel one day, or one week, or one
month, and it turned into about a 12-year project, is that God
is the one who is doing the work in me. But at the same time,
I also do not argue with Jude who says, keep myself in the
love. James, keep yourself in the love of God. Church, keep
yourself in the love of God. So what do I do with that? Well,
I need to think about it. I need to look at it a little
bit more. I need to understand God's love and what it means
to truly be held to that and held in that. As a way of reminder,
we build ourselves up. It's sort of a caveat, if you
will, a warning. Don't forget these things, a reminder. Jude
says remember he calls us beloved. We're building ourselves up in
the Holy Spirit by the truth of the gospel We look at that
last week the foundation of the Word of God the truths found
in this most holy faith It's not our personal faith. That's
not what Jude's talking about. It's not this subjective faith
in Jesus Christ though without that We cannot see the Lord without
that. We cannot please him without that We're not born again and
we're not part of the body who has the objective faith but the
object of our faith is the Word of God and Where we come from
and where we go to and where our faith is born is according
to Romans 10, 17. They said, well, you're making this stuff
up, Paul says, at the Roman church, who had suffered in their own
consciousness about not being the people of God. They were
worried about the fact that because they were not Jewish by descent,
that they weren't as holy as the Jews who were now coming
to Christ. Paul, as a Jew of all Jews from the tribe of Benjamin,
of the Sanhedrin, he says to them, look, this is not really
what you need to worry about because God is faithful to seek
his own and that those who are Jews are not the seed of Abraham,
but all who are in Christ are the seed of Abraham. And so you,
dear brothers and sisters in Rome, you are the seed of Abraham
because Christ has come to you and you have believed. And the
reason you've believed is because we came to you and we preached
And he says in Romans 10, how are they to believe if they've
never heard? And how are they to hear if no one goes? Blessed
are the feet of those who go and proclaim the gospel of Jesus
Christ. For faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ.
Your Bible should say words of Christ, for all the Greek New
Testament manuscripts say words of Christ, not word of God or
Bible. Either way, we know that the
Bible and the word of God are the words of Christ. But faith
comes there. Life comes through hearing the
Word. God will not save you by me walking through a presentation
and giving you an example and a story and then telling you
to do something in response to it. God cannot save you that
way because God is immutable and God has promised the only
way He saves is through the teaching of His Word and that through
the Word, the Holy Spirit as He wishes, John 3, blows into
the hearts and minds and dead bodies of living zombies and
He brings them to life. And He makes them new. And He
births them from above. Only through the hearing of the
Word of God. And that is the only place we place our faith.
This truth, the faith, the doctrine, the theology, the Bible, the
study. You know what's crazy? I see
people who like to cook. I see people who try different
types of foods. I see people who are professional with their
hands and with their instruments and with their mouths and people
who can use certain types of makeup. How much time do we spend
learning about the types of toxins that certain types of foods can
do to our body. And yet we'll read technical
manuals. We'll go watch videos on these
things. And if someone were to hand you
a chemistry book and say, I need you to learn about this whatever
acid because it's bad for you, you're going to like, whatever.
But when we start thinking about it and we go out, we'll become
an expert in that really quickly. And we'll look at things and
listen to things and read things and purchase things because we
want to know all there is to know about it. But yet somewhere
in the guise of the enemy, we have been taught that the Bible,
we just sort of read through it. It doesn't matter what translation. It doesn't matter who cares about
Greek, who cares about this. Let's just read through it. Friends,
I would say that we are more engaged in fiction when we read
it than we are the Bible most days. Oh, what's going to happen
now? I don't want to look. Don't tell
me. Don't wear your spoiler shirt. I don't want to know. But when
it comes to the Scripture, we should want to know. We want
to know what it is that God is showing us. We want to know Him
intimately. We want to understand His love.
Not just be okay that great-great-granny said, God loves you. And that's
enough. Great. Well, does God love me
the way I love my dog or the way my dog loves me? Does God
love me the way my children love me or the way I love my children?
Because even in that love, it's, I'll spank my dog when they tear
something up. And I'll wish them dead. Oh, if I could just run
them over by accident. I'm being funny and I'm joking.
Please don't call PETA. My children, oh, they love, I
love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy. If you love me, you'll obey me.
Okay, go to bed. Two hours later, why aren't you
in bed? Did you do your laundry? Did you
do your dishes? Did you do your homework? Did you study your math? Do you
love me? Yes. Is that the kind of love
God has for me? I hope not. I hope not. Oh, it's unconditional
love. God loves me any way that I am.
Okay, that's good, but what does that mean? God loves you any
way that you are, but He loves you, and because He loves you,
He transforms you into something new. He doesn't leave you where
you are, because He can't love you the way you are. Because
the way we are without Christ is wicked, evil, depraved, and
unworthy of love. But God loves us anyway. And
so He gives us new life through the Holy Spirit, through the
hearing of the Word, through Jesus Christ, who sufficiently supplied absolute
atonement. Absolute atonement. That means
there is no opportunity that God is not satisfied with us
in Christ. He is. So either He's satisfied
with us or He's not satisfied with us. And that's the kind
of love that God has. And it's so difficult because our world
that we live in is so watered down when it comes to understanding
love. So how is it that God loves us? Well, we'll look at some
of that today. I want you to understand that we build ourselves
up in the Holy Spirit, and we know that. We could, and we probably
should, but right now we're going to look at keeping ourselves
in the love of God. And we build ourselves up in the Spirit by
the truth of the gospel and the foundation of God's Word. And
this does something for us. This is all a reminder, but it
guards us against the invasion of error. That's the whole reason
Jude wrote his letter. He says, I wanted to write to
you about our common salvation, but I had to write to you concerning
these people who have crept in unaware, who have brought error. When we build ourselves up in
the Holy Spirit by the truth of gospel, the foundation of God's Word,
the foundation of God's Word provides safety for our souls.
There's only hope. We can only get to this end over
here in verse 22, I mean in verse 21, in waiting for the mercy
of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can only get there if we have
safety for our souls. If we're sealed by the Holy Spirit
of God, if we know that that which God is doing is absolutely
true. And if we don't know it, if we
don't know what God has done, if we don't know how God has
saved, if we don't know when God is going to do the things
that He does and for what purpose, then how are we going to have
security? How are we going to have safety? How do we go to
bed at night and our flesh goes, I don't think I'm saved? And the enemy goes, yeah, you're
not saved. And our neighbor goes, I don't
believe in all that Jesus stuff. It's probably hogwash. And then
we watch the History Channel and we see even more that throws
us out of the loop. And all of a sudden we go, where's
my hope? And some well-meaning soul comes and touches us on
the shoulder and says, don't worry about your salvation. Remember
that prayer you prayed? That did it for you. Really? Hallelujah. So maybe those Word
of Faith preachers are right. That if I say it, I speak to
my wallet and I say, you big, fat, rich wallet, it'll grow
overnight. If I do like some of the people that like to say,
okay, you know, I'm six foot three, and I weigh 300 pounds,
and I'm 1% body fat, and I'm strong enough to pick up a house.
If I say that enough, it'll happen for me. That's how ridiculous
some of these people think. That's how ridiculous it is to
think that you have security in your salvation because of
the words you use to God. It's even more ridiculous to
think that because you were sincere. You know what my biggest apologetic
is against sincerity in receiving Christ as Savior? Then why is
it that one out of two marriages end in divorce, and yet none
of them ever, that I've ever talked to, when I ask this question,
did you really mean till death do you part when you stood before
God and that pastor and that altar and that people? Yes, I
did. So you were absolutely sincere. Yes, I was. Then what happened?
Are you going to approach the gospel with the same sincerity
you approached your wife? Does that make us scared? It
should make us tremble in our boots because our hope is in
the love of God alone. Our hope is in the love of God,
evidence through Jesus Christ, and the foundation of God's Word. And what it does for us as we
build ourselves up in that, we build upon the truth, and it
enables us to pray truly in the Holy Spirit. We pray truly. How
do we know that? Because Romans 8 teaches us that
in our weakness, In our weakness, the Holy Spirit prays for us
with words that cannot be known. Utterances, groanings like a
woman in childbirth ready to give labor. She's not given in
good oration. For those of you who have never
seen childbirth, it's not very articulate. It's not even comprehensible. Grace upon grace, the foundation
of God's Word, manifests in our lives continually when we build
ourselves up in this most holy faith. When we build ourselves
up in the holy faith, which is found in the Word of God, it's
only in the truth of Jesus Christ, and only in the Word of God is
that truth revealed, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, that
the world is blinded by the God of this world. Unbelievers are
blinded by the God of this world to keep them from seeing the
light of the gospel, so they cannot believe. But God, who
said, Let there be light, has shone in our hearts to give us
the knowledge of the light of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ." And what that means in 2 Corinthians chapter
4, going in through verse 6 and 7, is that God has given us the
full face of His glory through Jesus, through the gospel, which
is written in the pages of the New Testament. There's no other
way. There's no other way. in the foundation of growing
and building ourselves up in this most holy faith through
the Word of God, here and here alone, will we know and find
and keep the love of God near us. That's it. It's the only
way we're going to know. So in the beginning of this whole
portion of keeping ourselves in the love of God, it's only
through the Word of God that we will know it, find it, keep
it, receive it, and live it. So there's a couple of things
I want us to understand. First, keeping ourselves in the love
of God, just like building ourselves up in our most holy faith, is
God's work. But it is evident by our motivation
and passion to do so. So in other words, if God does
the work, but then yet because God does the work, He produces
the fruit of that work, okay? God does never plant grace in
the heart of a man that lays stagnant. Ever! It's never happened in the history
of the world that there may be stagnant days, seasons, but there's
never a stagnant heart for those who are born again. We are never
okay with just existing on our way to heaven without seeking
and desperately wanting to passionately fan the flame of zeal in our
hearts with the gospel. It does not happen. It does not
happen. There's never been a man that's
been born again, go back to his same trough on Monday. There's
never been a man who's come to the altar of grace and was the same guy in his own
thinking that day. Never. God produces the fruit
of His work or He is no God. And that's why the Scripture
is replete with evidences and commands and questions and tests
about if we say we are in the light, we walk therein, lest
we lie and do not practice the truth. When we hear the Word of God,
We're motivated. The Word of God in us creates
passion. And in the Word of God, we find God's love for us. We
see it all the way through. He loved us first. We love Him
because He first loved us, John writes. We see the love of God
in Ephesians. Paul writes in Ephesians 2 that
because of His great love with which He loved us, we see this
great kindness, we see this great mercy. The love of God in Ephesians
2 said that we were once dead in our trespasses and sinned
against Him like the rest of humanity. We were once children
of destruction, objects of wrath. But God, being rich in mercy
because of the great love with which He loved us, caused us
to be born again. You see that? So God's love is
effectually seen in the giving of the Son and the sending of
the Gospel to the hearts of dead men and women and children so
that they can become alive. God's love is effectual always
when it's sent out. God's love always brings fruit
amongst those who He rebirths. Through God's Word, we understand.
It's not only revealed, but we understand God's love. And something
that we understand about God's love is that God's love never
began for us. God didn't start loving me the
day I recognized and it was revealed to me my need for salvation.
God's love didn't start for me the day that I first expressed
within my need for a Savior. That the realization of my lacking
in ability to please God in holiness That's not the day God began
to love me. God began to love me before there was me. Before
the foundations of the world, Paul says in Ephesians, God loved
me. Before I was, He was. And He
loved me because God does not change His heart and God does
not change His mind. God does not change Himself nor
His plans or His decrees. For all that we see in the Scripture,
even when it says God changed His mind, the full intention
of God before the world began was to come to the outcome of
that which finally happened. God's love never started because
it's always been. Knowing the love of God for us
creates then a love for Him. We see this in the Scripture.
We see this. And what does that look like?
Well, our love for God results in a changed life. Our love for
God results in a powerful life. Our love for God results in a
desire to be intimate with His Word and intimate with His people. Our love for God results in a
passion for prayer, a continual pattern for prayer, a continual
conviction for prayer. Our love for God results in a
dedication to holiness, a dedication to scripture, a dedication to
the people of God, a dedication to church attendance, a dedication
to worship, a dedication to the gospel, a dedication to sharing
our faith, a dedication for empathy and sympathy and affection for
those who are less fortunate. We see that this transforms us.
The love of God for us and our love for Him results in a strong
love for each other continually, even in the cost of ourselves.
Even when it hurts us so much that we would rather die than
love, we love anyway. It results in a clear understanding,
not only of that we love God, but how God loves us. This is
the gospel. The good news is that God loves
you, though He shouldn't. Do you understand that gospel,
good news, evangel, the Greek word, where we now have created
the word evangelism, which has been turned around by every company
in the world now. Instead of salesmen or PR people,
they have evangelists. Hey, you know how easy that is
to change? Because the church no longer has evangelists. The
church have relationship partners, assimilation gurus, self-help
people. The church has people who say,
we're going to evangelize the lost by feeding them something,
praying over them, getting the name on the card, seeing if they'll
do something about it, and then following up with them until
they tell us to leave us alone, then we're done with them. There's
no prescription for that. You know what evangelism is? As you go, wherever you are,
in any circumstance, even if it costs you your life, when
God puts a person in front of you and the Holy Spirit of God
within you gives you opportunity to share your faith. Your faith
is shared in this way. Jesus says in Matthew 28, 19-20,
He says, All authority in heaven and earth
has been given unto me. Therefore, because of this, what's
a therefore therefore? Every time you see therefore
you ask, what's it there for? The therefore there is because Jesus
has all authority over all creation, all the cosmos, heaven and earth. Therefore, as you go, make disciples
of all nations by teaching them to obey everything I've told
you. And because I have all the authority and because this word
is authoritative in my name, I'm with you to the end of age.
So you're not by yourself, it's me speaking through you. It's
me. It's Jesus speaking through us.
It's God's Word speaking through us. And what does it look like
to share our faith, to share the love of God? You ever had
somebody just out of the blue come up and ask you, how come
you look so joyful? How come you have happiness?
Or what do you do for a living? Or what is going on with your...
Or how about the price of gas going down? Praise God! Okay. Thank you, Lord, that we
can save three dollars a tank now. And that's great. But what's most important? Talking about gas? Talking about
football? Talking about painting? Talking about music? Talking
about whatever it is that we like to talk about? Or the gospel?
What's most pressing on our hearts? What's burning the most inside
of us? Is it the fact that God loves
us? Here's what evangelism looks
like in the outline of Matthew 28, in the outline of the New
Testament, is that when we have opportunity, we actually are
able to say, God is going to bring His wrath upon you, because
you and I, by nature, are wicked. And God is holy and there is
no escape from His holy justice and His holy judgment and His
holy wrath. And if He lets you go, you are... He is no God of holiness. So you deserve the judgment of
God, for you are a sinner. They can argue that with you
all day long. But God, being rich in mercy because of the
great love in which He loved you through Jesus Christ, gave
you life. Now see, how do you say that
to an unbeliever? Because that's all the Scripture
gives us. And then the question is, do you believe in Christ? Are you believing in that truth
as yours? Are you trusting in the fullness
of that reality as though it is yours? As Paul tells the Thessalonians,
for we are not destined for wrath, but as Jesus was raised from
the dead, we are destined for eternal life. Are you destined
for eternal life or are you destined for wrath, for eternal judgment? The good news is, is that God
not just provided a way, provided a certainty for you. And you
know what people do with that? They want to go, well, how do
I get saved? What must I do? What does Jesus
say when they say, what must we do to be doing the work of
God in John 6? He says, this is the work of
God, that you are the believing ones of the Son, that you believe
on the Son whom He has sent. He says in John 17, this is eternal
life, that they know you, the one true God of the Son, Jesus,
whom you have sent. Do you know God? Not have you
received Him. Has He received you? Do you know
Him? Are you intimately involved in
the power of the gospel with a relationship with Jesus Christ,
not through your actions, not through your efforts, but through
the mighty hand of our holy God, who in His absolute love and
mercy forgave Eve and Adam? forgave David, forgave Abram,
forgave all of those people throughout history, and He gave them access
to Himself. And He forgave them by faith
they believed He did forgive them, because they knew that
God had promised the one Lamb that would come one day to satisfy
His judgment against them. And their hope was in the fact
that God would provide propitiation for them. And in Romans chapter 3, Paul
says it very clearly, that Jesus came to die and it was just because
God had forgiven all the saints of old. And had he not crucified
Jesus, God would have been a wicked, evil judge. God put forth Christ as propitiation,
Romans 3.21, in order to display His righteousness. Why? Because
without Jesus Christ, there is no righteousness, there is no
rightness in forgiving sinners. There is no possibility of forgiveness.
The gospel, the evangel, is that God did that for you, where you
put your faith in Christ. How do I do that? You exercise
it. You pray for it. You plead for
it. You run into it. You move. You
know what? No man can run to God except
God call him up there. No one comes to me except the
Father. Give him to me. So it's okay to say, run to Christ,
believe in Christ, come to Christ, receive Christ. Friends, you
can't do it and there's no effort of works, there's no expression
of words, there's no application of faith. It's just a forever,
unreserved, absolute, always eternal commitment to the sufficiency
of Jesus Christ who paid for the sins of our own lives and
satisfied the Father. And we are free from the judgment
of that sin. We call these things the gospel.
Grace Truth Church calls the gospel the doctrines of grace.
What do we want? The doctrines of grace or the
doctrines of man? Friends, the teaching of grace, that's what
doctrines of grace mean. The teaching of grace in Scripture
is that very thing. Man is unable to do anything
effectively toward his salvation. And that even when he does good,
it is filthy rags before God. So God gets all the glory. God
gets all the credit. God gets all the praise. Why
does the church exist on earth? To the praise of His glorious
what? Grace. Does it say to the praise of
His glorious opportunity? Does it say to the praise of His glorious
warmth? Does it say to the praise of
His glorious wealth? Does it say to the praise of His glorious
provision? Praise of His glorious affection? It says, "...the praise
of His glorious grace." We worship God for His grace. We worship
God for His unmerited favor toward us in power, effectively, certainly,
so that we can live. So as we're keeping ourselves
in the love of God, it's like building ourselves up. We have
these results in our life. We're building up. church, and
the building up of ourselves is inclusive of the building
up in the love of God. So it's not just holding, as
you'll see in a minute, it's building up in the love of God. And in two ways, our understanding
and the application and the power of God's love for us, and the
application and understanding and the reality and the truth
of our love for God. So in these things, our love
for God Establishes a love in us. This is the evidences that
I was talking about for truth. We love truth. We hate error.
We love righteousness. We hate sin. We love justice. We hate bigotry and evil. Establishes a love in us for
truth. It establishes a love in us for truth and it protects
us from error. How do we know that what we hear
on the radio is wrong? Well, I don't listen to sermons.
I'm not talking about sermons. I'm talking about news. I'm not talking about... maybe
sermons too. How do we know what we see on
the television is truth? Well, I thought just teaching
the Word, that's when you get truth and error. No, every word
that comes out of anyone's mouth is either truth or error. For
example, let me just pave it out in this way or pour it out
in this way. We see people making much of
nothing when they celebrate people who are just like me and you
who go to the bathroom and wipe their butts. And yet, they are
esteemed as greater than all people because they're on a picture
screen, television screen, the radio. We find ourselves consumed and
fantasizing and realize, oh, that's awesome. Friends, as God's
children, when we see a Bible in public or we see someone teaching
the Word of God versus we see some famous person like, I don't
know, let me pick on a brother if he ever hears this, Michael
Jordan. Where would we go? I made a comment in 2001 when
I was preaching in Brunswick, that I believe, and I could tell
by the antsiness of this congregation, about 600 of them that day, and
I could tell, as I'm preaching, I'm preaching out of Revelation
2, I'm just ready to go. You know the zippers? You could hear a zzz. I only
had about 10, 15 minutes left in the service. It was quarter
to noon even. I could hear this. And I thought
to myself, you know, I remember one of my mentors who said that
he got saved. God saved him. He became a believer
because he was overcome by his sin one night after going out
clubbing in college. And he dug up in his dorm room
a Bible. And he started in Matthew and
he read the entire book of Matthew, read all four of the Gospels. And laying in his bunk bed, he
began to cry out to God and confess his sins. He's like, God, I'm
wicked. And God saved him so he could
see his sin. Saved him because he heard the
word. And he gets everybody up. He played football. And all the
people that lived with him were players. He woke them all up
the next morning. And he tells a story. He says,
because I was the biggest, they listened to what I had to say. And he
wakes them all up and says, we're going to church. Never been to
church in his life. And they found a church and they
went in and they sat on the front row. He said he could not believe
it because he walked in and it was all packed out, but there
was a front row seat. He couldn't believe it. He said,
oh my gosh, somebody has really missed out on this one. We got
a front row seat. Can you believe it? So here's
all these college semi-pro football players sitting on the front
row and this man born again, and he's excited. because this
man is reading and teaching out of something he just read the
night before. And he can't believe it. And he's trying to contain
his excitement. If you knew the guy, he's a very,
very loud, excited guy. And he said he turned around
because he just couldn't wait to see everybody else sitting on
the edge of their seats. And he saw what he says is one
of the most wicked things he's ever seen. And what he says with that, he
says, I can't believe that people care more about the roast and
the oven than they do the God of their salvation. And it made him angry and it
hurt him. Why is that? Because most people
who sit on the teaching of God's Word every Sunday are there because
it is what is required of our culture, not because they're
born of the Holy Spirit. We have a love for God, because
God has a love for us, and it gives us a striving for truth. The world says, love this, see
this, go here, spend this, go after this, grab this, be this,
believe this, and it's all error. You've heard of biblical worldview,
secular worldview. Friends, there's a biblical worldview,
but even in the biblical worldview, there's a view of truth and there's
a view of error. The question is, are we living
in an error-filled world? Do what we believe about everything,
is it tainted by the secularism of our society, of our culture,
of our flesh? Because in reality, the love
of God for us that gives a love for Him, it gives us motivation
for glorious worship, to the praise of His glorious grace,
for awesomeness. For thinking to be able to say,
as the old hymn that's been ringing in my ears for the last few months,
is that, and the things of this world grow strangely dim in the
light of His glorious grace. How much time do we bog ourselves
down, as Hebrews would say, to take off anything that's, to
remove the sin that so easily ensnares? Take it off. And in the metaphor there in
Hebrews, he's talking about one who runs a race and who goes
after the one who has already finished the race, who is Jesus
Christ. And all those in Hebrews 11, that hero, hall of fame,
if you will. Who have gone before and will
finish the race as Paul writes the young Timothy it says come
to me I'm being poured out like a drink offering. I've fought
the good fight. I've finished the race I've run
the course now that all that is left for me all that I have
all that matters is that I get the crown to which is mine the
crown for which I have fought the crown for which I have lived
the crown for which God has sacrificed Jesus the Son to Give me by his
absolute mercy that I was a lover of the law and a lover of holiness
and a lover of God But I count all that as garbage for the countless
worth of G knowing Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord That's
what it means to keep ourselves in the love of God That the world
grows dim that the world goes strange and friends. This is
a war in us. I This is a war in us. Well, I
don't want to be anybody. I want to have a good job. I
want to have a good reputation. I want to have a good house.
I want to have a good home. I want to have this. I want to have...
Friends, do not love the world or the things of the world, the
lust of the eyes, the pride of life, the pride of possessions.
These things are not from God but are of the world and all
who love them are not in God. For they push away the love of
God. And all these things are passing
away just like the world. We have a love for the worship
of God because God has first loved us. And God's love for
us, on the other side of this coin, Jude phrase his freight
here, it implies that we are indeed in the love of God. We
are in the love. He doesn't say, get in the love
of God. He said, stay. Keep yourself in the love of
God that you are in already. So there's an implication there
that Judas saying to his readers, you are in this love. You have
been given this gospel. You have eternal life in Christ.
You are a holy priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are
a people. You are the beloved. You are
the church. And being in the love of God
means that God's love for us has given us faith that we have
believed in Christ for our eternal hope, waiting for the mercy of
God through Jesus Christ our Savior and our Lord. We have
seen the face of Christ and we have bestowed upon that face
our most greatest affection. God's love for us is manifest
fully in Christ. There is no other way. There
is no other means. There is no other hope. There
is no other reason to worship God except in His grace. Now,
there's a bunch of reasons, but when it comes to the church,
that is the foundation of it. We thank Him in all things, even
the death of ourselves and our loved ones, the valleys, the
darkness. We praise Him in it all. We thank
Him in it all, but we praise Him for His glorious grace. Because
without God's grace, the darkness of this life is for nothing.
And a matter of fact, without the grace of God, the most painful,
horrible things we can experience in this life is heaven compared
to judgment. Building us up in the love of
God, what is it? Real quickly, let's look at what
it really looks like. What does it look like? Building
up in the love of God is keeping ourselves in all reality in the
gospel. It's keeping ourselves in the
Gospel. It's keeping ourselves in the love of God by faith and
dedication, by a continual believing. John 3, 16. For God, and I'll
use this translation, so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have eternal life. You know that? What is that?
That is those who are so believeth. Whoever so believeth." You know
what, whoever, whosoever is just a formal English word for whoever. The idea of believing is that
it is a continual thing. It's not a one-time event. You
can't believe in something that doesn't change you forever. It's
not belief. It's just a parting shot. I'll push that button just to
make sure. Yeah, I know it's true, but believing in something
is not believing that it's true. The Scripture's clear in that.
The demons believe in trembling. Many, John 2, many believed in
the name of Jesus because of the signs and wonders that He
did. But Jesus, He Himself did not entrust Himself to them.
He did not believe them, for He knew what was in man. No one had to tell him what was
in the heart of man. And now there was a man named
Nicodemus in John 3 who came professing, we know that you
are the one come from God, for no one can do that which you
do except God be with him. And Jesus says to him, your confession,
as sincere as it is, dear brother, is worthless. You cannot even
see the kingdom of heaven, much less enter it, unless you're
born again. Keeping ourselves in the love
of God is inclusive of many things. Let's go through them quickly.
You are in the love of God now, so it looks like this. We are
striving in the love of God. We are thriving in the love of
God. We are striving to rest in the
love of God. We are basking in the love of
God. We are glorying in the love of
God. I think Spurgeon, in the context
of this particular idea, says it this way, is that when you
go out in the sun and you want to have time in the sun, because
the sun is beneficial, it's healthy, and if you've never been to London,
it can be a dark place, so finding that opportunity for sun is important. And he says you find sun and
when you see it in your house, you open the windows that it
might come in, it warms you, you rest in it. You stay in it,
you bathe in it. That's what it's like to remain,
to strive to be in the love of God. You see the love of God
in you, you see God's love for you, and you hold there. We do
that in our relationships, don't we? Most men would forsake their
very limbs for the woman they love when they're trying to gain
them as a wife. I'll swim the deepest ocean,
I'll climb the highest mountain, jump off a cliff, catch myself
on fire, run backwards. I'll take a one-hour lunch break
and I'll drive 23 miles to meet you for lunch, one way. But then what happens when it
comes to our relationship with our Heavenly Father who has loved
us greater than that? Why is it so, why does it wane
so? Because we're not keeping ourselves
there. Live as though you are in God's
favor. This is what we need to understand
that Judah is saying. To keep ourselves in the love
of God is also inclusive of living as though we're in it. The love
of God is the favor of God. And not only do we have His favor,
which we cannot lose, live so that God would be pleased with
us. Well done. Well done is what we want to
hear. You barely made it. Get in there. We don't want that. We don't
want the First Corinthians model of ministry that we build on
everything except for the foundation and that it is destroyed by fire
and we escape barely but we smell like smoke when we get there. We don't want to get there and
have a nickel worth of a crown to lay down at the feet of our
Savior. We want to strive to remain in the favor, not just
in the favor of God. You can't come out of the favor
of God, but we need to live as though we are in the favor. Strive
to keep Him glad with us. Our motives, our affections,
our words, our actions, our thoughts. Find joy in the great affection
of God toward us and in our love toward Him. Fulfillment is ours
in Christ for our thirsty souls. So we must drink. We must keep
drinking. We must take the bread. We must
keep eating. We must keep running. We must
keep being fulfilled and we must be satisfied. We also see keeping ourselves
in the love of God, keeping ourselves in the Gospel, it means living
out our love and obedience. This is evidence of the love
of God in us. Jesus Himself says that explicitly. That if you love Me, you will
obey My commands. So disobedience to Christ, disobedience
to the Word of God is an act of hate, not love. And we talk
about the perversion of the grace of God over there in the first
few verses. These are the people who pervert
the grace of God into lucidiousness, sexual immorality, false teaching,
giving license to sin. This is what it looks like when
we say, God loves me so much, He'll let me keep sinning. Friends,
we cannot live that way. It is beyond a misunderstanding. It's blasphemous against the
Holy Spirit of God. It is unbelief, and it may mean
that we are unregenerate. Oh, what do I do, Pastor, if
I find myself there today? Cry out with the fullness of
your heart that God would give you repentance, because there
is a season in every man's life where God shuts the door of grace. He turns people over to the reprobate
mind. He seals them for destruction.
That's not the God I love, and you don't love the God of the
Bible. Well, that's the Old Testament God. No, it's the New Testament
God. Well, it's in John chapter 12,
Jesus very real clearly says, it says there in the narrative
that many people, many of the Sadducees and Pharisees believed
in Jesus, but they dared not speak a word for they loved the
glory that came from man rather than the glory that came from
God. And Jesus speaks these words from Isaiah 6. He says, this
is written for you. It's fulfilled right now in your
presence that you want to believe, you can't believe because I've
blinded your eyes because of your hardness of your heart. So your consciousness goes, I
think this guy's the real deal, but you have no affection for
me. Jesus says that. You honor me with your lips,
but your hearts are far from me. You can be religious all
you want to be. You can be Christian living all
you want to be. But friends, if you're not born again, you
have nothing but judgment. There's no peace. You're making it too hard for
me. It's impossible for you, friend. You better plead for
the grace of God to establish itself in your heart effectually.
You better pray that God would save you out of your affection
for this world. You better cry out as long as
there's breath in your lungs. And when God does save you, you
cry out to the praise of His glorious grace as you look at
the sin in your life and you hate it with disdain. You cry
that God would save you continually and would hold you perfectly
as He's promised to do. And in turn, as He holds you,
He would keep you in His love by giving you a heart to not
love those things anymore. Don't sit passively by and allow
the false hope to rise up into your heart and be deceived. Staying in the love of God is
accomplished as we, listen, store up, this is what I think, store
up holy affections for and toward Him. We store it up. that we hope in Him, that we
live in Him. And you think of several reflections. Where do you get that in Scripture?
Well, I think of the parable of the soils where Jesus is teaching
His disciples. He's teaching the multitudes
and He teaches in parables. And He says this, I teach in
parables so that they cannot understand and believe. Why would
He do that? I don't know. Jesus Christ is
God Almighty. He can do what He pleases. Our
Lord is in the heavens and He does as He pleases. Jesus says
to Nicodemus, How can I be born again? He says. Jesus responds. You see the wind? You see what
it blows, but you can't see it. You don't know where it's coming
from. You don't know how it's going to work. You don't know when it's going to
come. The same is true with the wind of God. It blows where it
wishes. And it does where it wishes.
But it only comes through the hearing of the Word. So, we are
to store up affections toward Him. There's the parable of the
soils. You've got hearts, humans. The
soils are hearts of humans. And you've got the sower, who's
whoever. He could be a mule like Balaam,
Balaam's donkey. He could be a pastor. He could
be a child. He could be whatever. And that person sows the Word
of God and the Word of God falls in their hearts. Several of them
receive them, receive it with joy and gladness, but it falls
away because the strains of life come up and choke it out. They
go, I can't take the pain of following Christ. I'm just going
to do my own thing and be at peace. The temptation comes to
some of them, and they love the world more than that, so they
just leave it and go. The sun comes out and scorches
some of it. The birds, which is Satan, comes and steals it
away. That takes you to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. For the God of this
world has blinded the eyes of unbelievers to keep them from
seeing the light of the gospel. They cannot believe, they cannot see,
because the God of this world has blinded their eyes. Well,
how do we defeat that? Only through the grace of God,
through the Word of God, will God send His Spirit to overcome
the blindness of the dead. And what is the one soil? The
soil that's good already. Do you notice that in the parable
of the soils? The soil that's good already, the Word of God
goes in there and it takes root and it plants and it produces
multi, multi, multifold fruit. Why is the soil good? Because
God made it good. He cultivated it. He tendered
it. He did it. He made it good. It was ready
to receive the Word. How do we know who's ready to
receive the Word? We don't. That's God's Word. We are to
sow it. We're to keep ourselves in it by preaching it to ourselves.
Another example of how that works in direct application, not a
parable, but a story of a discourse, a dialogue. Jesus meets with
the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler hunts him
down and follows him and kneels before him and calls him God.
Oh, good teacher. No one is good but God, Jesus
rebukes him. He stays in the position of worship. thus giving
the illustration that this rich young ruler accepted Jesus' rule
that God alone is good, so I stay in my state of worshiping you
as good teachers, so therefore I agree with you that you are
from God. And this man says, I love the
Lord, I love the holiness of God, I love the commandments,
and I keep them all. And Jesus says, well, go and
do one thing. Take everything that you love, and I'm paraphrasing
here, take everything that you love that you own, all your wealth,
and give it to the poor. And you'll have riches in heaven.
And then he commands him to follow him. He says, then you come follow
me. I'm the way to the eternal life."
And this guy says, well, sorry. And he walks away dejected, for
he had much wealth. There was a dichotomy there that
was birthed inside this man's soul. I really want eternal life,
but this Jesus doesn't seem to be the guy that's going to give
it to me the way I want it. So, I'm going to go ahead and just
walk away from this. But in some sense, he's dejected.
Maybe he knew for sure that that was the truth. And he saw the
reality of his heart that he loved his wealth and his stature
and his holiness and his righteousness more than he did Christ. Either
way, staying in the love of God is to recognize this stuff in
our own life, to push out those things which stand in the way
of our love for the Lord. So that we might live in Christ,
that we might love as Christ loved, that we might hope in
Christ alone. We live in Christ by living as
Christ lived. How did He live? To the glory of the Father, in
obedience to the Father, with affection to the Father. It's
God's love for Jesus that guaranteed Jesus' resurrection. It's Jesus'
love for the Father that guaranteed His crucifixion. Do we love Christ that way? Do
we pray as Christ prayed, as He teaches us to pray? Do we
concern ourselves with the awesomeness of Christ? Are we enamored and
overwhelmed by His glory? Or do we spend so little time
looking at Him through the Word that we don't even have it in
our… it's not even there? Are we concerning ourselves with
gratitude and joy and satisfied every single moment of our day?
Are we regulating our very being and conscience with Christ as
its center? What do I mean by that? I mean this. You know what
you think about when you're driving or when you're daydreaming or
whatever. We think about problems and issues
and people we love and things we enjoy and what we can't wait
for and what we hope in or what we're worried about. Why can't
we transform those thoughts as we recognize them into focused
thinking on Jesus? We don't have to be in church
or have our Bible out. I'd recommend not doing that
while you drive or sleep or shower. So when do we think we can take
these opportunities to push out these worldly thoughts? and to
put to death the flesh, and to focus on concerning ourselves
and even our minds with Christ at its center, so that we may
love as Christ loved, we may live as Christ lived, we may
hope fully in Christ, as it says there in verse 21, waiting for the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. We long for
His purpose in our lives. We long for His will in our lives.
We look forward to the day, to the culmination of His mercy,
when He comes to receive us, when He comes to take us as His
own. As we wait for that, we're waiting
for that. That's the endgame, guys. The endgame is not retirement. The endgame is not legacy. The
endgame is not property. The endgame is not bequeathing
our stuff to our children. The endgame is not good Ivy League
college degrees. That's not the endgame. The endgame
is no matter what, life or death, prosperity or poverty, sickness
or health, all for the glory of God, that we stand before
Him and He says, well done. Keep ourselves in the love of
God that He may say that. So, you see why doctrine's so
vital? You see why understanding and
learning the Scripture and studying the Scripture is so vital? You
can't get that with a card on the mirror. And I believe in
memory of Scripture, but that's not going to grow you in grace.
It'll plant some seeds in there that'll assist you along the
way. We've got to study God's Word. We've got to understand God or
we misunderstand His very nature, then we don't know Him. In the
end, if we're not keeping ourselves in the love of God, we're not
in the love of God. And God's hope that we think
we have is just a senseless wish, not a sound promise. If we're
not building and keeping ourselves in the love of God, we're digressing
and forgetting Him. Are you forgetting Him? Or are
you holding fast to your confession of hope in Christ Jesus? Beloved,
God has not forgotten you. He keeps you, as we'll see next
week. Look at that. Let me leave it
with you because some of us get discouraged. Look at that. 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 and authority
before all time and now and forever. Amen. And the reality is, is
that while God keeps us, it's not opportunity for us to sit
in sin and ignorance and apathy. We are to press into Him to prove
that He's holding us. Are you in Christ? Have you believed
in Christ? I pray this day is the day that
you repent of your way and your will and your sin and you believe
in the gospel of Jesus, that God's love is sent to you through
Jesus Christ and His holy life and His holy sacrifice and His
amazingly holy resurrection from the dead. That is your hope,
church. And if you find yourself not in that grace today, would
you plead with God to give you the heart to see and believe?
Let's pray. There's nothing more to say,
Father, for Your Word has said enough. We praise You for the
mighty hand of power that You've given us when we should have
received the mighty hand of judgment. We praise You for Your hand of
mercy when we should have been mashed under the winepress of
Your fury. God, thank You for saving us.
Thank You for helping us to see Jesus Christ as our only hope. Solidify in us, Lord, that we
are to keep ourselves in Your love as You have sealed us in
Your Spirit, as You've made us Yours and given us to Your Son
Jesus as His bride. Help us to be a bride that makes
You smile, that helps the world to see that we have a Father
who is merciful, and gentle and loving and most of all, holy. Let us reflect your face as we
live our lives. Father, whatever may befall us,
whatever is grinding against the peace of our soul at this
very moment, Lord, we thank you that you are our comforter and
our healer and our very close friend in a time of trouble. So we pray that you would just
work with those who are not here, those who are ill, Lord, those
who are going to funerals today, those who are working, Lord,
those who are distraught. Be with them, help them know
that you are there and that we, their brothers and sisters, are
praying for them. And we pray these things in Jesus'
name, amen.