Jude chapter one, I'm reading
from verse one and I'm just going to read the first couple of verses. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ
and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the
Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. Mercy unto
you and peace and love be multiplied. Mercy unto you, and peace and
love be multiplied. This portion of the book is Jude's
introduction, and it really is a very short introduction. But may I suggest to you that
it nevertheless packs a punch. It's only two verses, and it
is both a salutation, what's a salutation? Well, it salutes,
it says hello, it's a greeting. It's a salutation or a greeting,
if you like, and it's also a prayer, as we will see in a moment. Jude. has first identified himself,
he says he is a servant of Jesus Christ and he is the brother
of James. So he's identified himself, he's
one of the Lord's apostles, and then he has spoken of those to
whom he is writing. He has identified those to whom
he is writing. And we spent a little bit of
time last week thinking about who these people are. His message
is addressed to the sanctified, the preserved, and the called
of God. Sanctified by the Father, preserved
in Jesus Christ, and called. Being sanctified by God means
being set apart from the main body of fallen humanity and made
holy by God with perfect, imputed righteousness. Let me say that
again because it's important to understand what Jude is saying
here. He is calling the people to whom
he writes sanctified by God. That God has set them apart from
the main body of fallen humanity and made them holy with a perfect
imputed righteousness. Here is a people who are holy
with a perfect imputed righteousness and it is to these that the Apostle
is writing. This was a work, the sanctification
was a work done by God in eternal election. When God chose a people
for himself and set them apart in Christ, made Christ both their
substitute and their surety, their representative, their mediator,
if you like, within the covenant, so that Christ represented all
those that were set apart, sanctified by God in him. And last week
we read about this when the Apostle Paul told the Thessalonians,
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief in the truth. So this is common to the
apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are singing from the same
hymn sheet, they are preaching the same gospel, the message
that had been delivered to them by the Lord Jesus Christ. So
here Jude is identifying those to whom he is writing and he
furthermore says that this people who are sanctified have also
been preserved. Preserved in Jesus Christ. Now
preserved means delivered, guarded, kept safe. and these people are
guarded and kept safe by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is something
that Christ did by atoning for our sin and cleansing us with
his blood. All who believe are protected
so as never to lose our salvation. and we are called when we are
brought to faith by God the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit who
enables and convicts and converts God's elect those whom he has
sanctified and placed in Christ, God's elect, Christ's redeemed,
those that he is preserving, are now called by the Holy Spirit
so that here each of the persons of the Godhead are seen to be
united in the deliverance and salvation of this people to whom
Jude is writing. So that, you see, Jude is being
very precise, very explicit concerning who this letter is addressed
to. And sure it is, anyone can read
it. Anyone with an education can
pick up a Bible and read these words. But only those who are
saved by faith, only those who are sanctified, preserved and
called sanctified of God, the preserved in Jesus Christ, can
claim its blessings as their own. And it's about those blessings
that we are going to think today. Jude is telling us in this second
verse that he is praying for God's grace upon these very same
people that he has previously identified. And it's noteworthy,
I think, that Jude has just identified his audience as being God's chosen
people gifted with the greatest blessings in salvation that could
possibly be conceivable. I mean, what else could a man
desire than the promises of eternal life and eternal glory, united
with Christ in God's presence? The greatest blessings imaginable. Jude has identified his readership
as possessing. Paul calls it, after all, a great
salvation. And yet he goes on to pray for
something more, that these people might be helped and supported
with spiritual assistance while we remain in this world. So Jude
is understanding something here. Jude is speaking to us about
us possessing, about God's elect believers, possessing. a wonderful
salvation, a great and glorious salvation, amazing blessings
in Christ and yet he is also adding to us within the space
of a couple of verses that he knows we're nevertheless going
to struggle in this world. That he knows we're nevertheless
going to be afflicted and persecuted and confronted with weakness
and trial and problems and trouble. So that As long as we live in
this fallen flesh, Jude knows, inheritors as we are of God's
wonderful blessings, we will continue to be subject to sin
and temptation in this world. And while we are no longer held
captive by Satan, we shall nevertheless continue to need daily portions
of grace to meet the challenges of life. And we all need this. We all
need this. You need this and I need this. You who are old, you who are
sick, you who are suffering, you who are in pain, you who
are tempted, you who are tried, you who are weary and weak and
tearful, and you who are young and with so much of your life
ahead of you, let me tell you that the testimony of your older
friends Under the Gospel is this, that life is hard and it's difficult
and you need the Lord. You need the Lord's help. You
need his grace. We have proved it, those of us
who are older, and you will prove it too. And Jude is telling us
all that we need daily help. We need daily grace. Jude's prayer
In this little verse, and it's really only, what, is it less
than 10 words? I think it is. Jude's little
prayer is that God's elect and Christ's redeemed will be supplied
with all the mercy and the peace and the love that we need for
our Christian pilgrimage here on earth. Now let me say something
about that if I may. Some of the old writers used
a phrase and I sometimes use it and I'm just going to use
it again but I'm going to explain it. Some old writers used to
call our life our life, our walk, and our conversation. They used
to call it Christian's experience in this world. Our life, our
walk, and our conversation. And that means the life that
we live, the things that we do, and the demeanour, the way that
we go about our talk and our experiences. Our life on this
earth, our dealings with men and women in this world and our
witness, our witness also to men and women of our day. Now that might be a witness to
a husband or a wife, it might be our children, our friends,
our neighbours, it might be the boss at work, it might be our
customers, our clients. But we live our life, we walk
our walk, we conduct our conversation in this Christian pilgrimage,
in this way of living before the men and women of this world.
And we are susceptible to all the problems and the trials and
the troubles that this flesh can bring and that the and that
Satan can tempt us with and that this world can inflict upon us. Jude knows that despite all the
blessings that we have by grace in the covenant, we shall need
more grace to live a Christian life in this world and therefore
He prays to God on our behalf, like the faithful apostle that
he is, that we might be further blessed with an added supply
suitable to our need. A full supply, a sufficiency
of mercy and peace and love for our life and our walk and our
conversation in this world. So let us look at these graces
for which Jude prays on our behalf. The first one that he identifies
is mercy. And Jude is looking for the Lord's
people to experience God's mercy. Mercy is an attribute of God. It is God is merciful. It's a characteristic of the
divine nature that describes God's dealings with his creatures. There is a sense in which God
is merciful to all. to all men and women, to all
His creation. In as much as He has created
all things, that He gives life to all, and that He hasn't destroyed
everything. We could find a way of construing
mercy to explain that. We all exist under the canopy
of divine mercy. But the highest evidence of God's
mercy is his dealings with his elect in the covenant of grace. And God has revealed the perfection
of his mercy by sending the Lord Jesus Christ to be our saviour who deserved only judgement. and who deserved to feel his
wrath because of our sin. He has shown us the perfection
of his mercy by sending Christ to be our saviour. So that when Jude speaks here
of mercy being multiplied, He's not so much asking for that work
to be repeated. How could it be? The Lord Jesus
Christ has died once. You can't multiply that highest
perfection of mercy demonstrated once at the end of the age for
the salvation of God's people. But what he is asking is that
the Lord might increase and enlarge our view of Christ's work and
our understanding of Christ's work and increase and enlarge
our experience and our appreciation of what the Lord Jesus Christ
has done. Jude knew that Christ's church
would be tried by false teachers. He knew that it would be tested
by false doctrine, that it would be tempted by false attractions. That's what he is going on to
write about in the coming verses. He knew that we would need fresh
applications of cleansing blood to ease our consciences and to
restore our faith day by day by day. He knew that we would
sin. He knew that we would have to
rediscover pardoning mercy in Christ's substitution on our
behalf and his redemptive work, his shed blood. He knew we'd
be afflicted in our minds in our body, in our emotions, in
our spirit, he knew we'd be attacked. He knew that we would often be
in need of divine comfort, we would often be lacking compassion,
and we would want for Christ's tender care. And like wayward
children, we would be in need of constant discipline and direction
and also constant love and reassurance. because we are, day by day. If we realise it, that's what
the Lord's people are. We're a contradiction to ourselves. We hold as a truth the great
doctrines, the great teaching of Scripture as far as our standing
is concerned, our glory, our blessedness, the grace that is
ours in Christ, and yet we are so conflicted in our own souls,
in our own minds, in our own hearts, in our own experiences.
So that experiencing God's mercy repeatedly in our daily lives,
in so many unexpected, in so many kind and gentle ways, as
the Lord is gracious to us, enables us to feel the Lord's mercy. and to live to honour and serve
him with praise and gratitude despite all the trials that we
face and all the mistakes that we make. And daily applications
of mercy confirms the hope that we have of the finished work
of Jesus Christ, of his saving mercy and of his sovereign grace. So that when Jude is here asking
that mercy be multiplied to us, it is that we might experience
new and fresh applications of God's mercy that was revealed
in the work of Christ towards us. That's why the Gospel is
so important. That's why we need to hear it
again and again and again. It's why I liken it so often
to food, to our daily bread. That's not original. We need
to come back and be nourished. We need to come back and be fed
because this gospel is what keeps us afloat. It's what enables
us to go on in this life. And similarly, it is God's peace. Peace is the second grace that
Jude prays to God for us. Peace is reconciliation with
God. It is a fruit of Christ's substitutionary
atonement. That's what the word atonement
means, at-one-ment. we are made at one, we are reconciled,
we are reunited, if you like, with God. God is reconciled to
us because every reason for offence has been removed and laid upon the Lord Jesus
Christ. For God's elect, It is as though
a search is made for all possible reason why God might be angry
with us, why God might find fault with us. And lo and behold, no
reason is found. No reason is found for God to
be angry with us. We are sinners, we are rebels,
we are iniquitous people, we are unworthy but we are pardoned
and our debts are paid by a surety on our behalf. And God is reconciled. There
is a mediator who has gone between God and man and made peace for
us. This is God's gospel of peace. Atonement is both anticipated
and accomplished in the covenant of grace. and therefore appropriately in
scripture it is termed the covenant of peace. God has made a covenant
of peace with his people in Jesus Christ. Our awareness then of
divine peace, our sense of God's pleasure in place of God's anger
is discovered once again and experienced once again by faith. Faith is the means by which we
discover and experience God's pleasure instead of God's anger. Faith in the promises of God. Faith in the person of our saviour
and deliverer who has been revealed to us in
the gospel. And this is why the gospel is
also called the gospel of peace. It brings glad tidings of good
things. Namely, peace with God. And yet our faith is not constant. I wish it was. And it isn't. Our faith is not constant. It
ebbs and flows. It rises and falls. Sometimes
it may be strong. Mostly it is weak. And as we
meet with the challenges and as we face the hardships of this
life, when we sin against God, when we lose our sense of peace
with God, not because God is angry, but because our faith
has stumbled. And maybe we feel unwell, maybe
we are enduring pain, Maybe we feel bereft of Christ's
comfort because our faith is faltering under some kind of
strain, some emotional strain, some mental strain, some physical
strain. And Satan comes. He comes at
those moments. He comes when we are weakest.
He comes and he reminds us of our past sins. And he stirs up
the sorrows that went with those sins. and they cause us again to lose
our sense of peace because the eye of faith has been deflected,
because the eye of faith has been distracted from looking
to Christ's blood as the source of our peace. And Jude knew that the world,
the flesh, and the devil would try the Lord's people in many
and varied ways. So he prays that our peace will
be multiplied, commensurate with our need. So that even when our faith is
weak, there's a sufficiency in the dispensation the dispensing
of divine peace to offset the weakness, to offset the shallowness,
to offset the failure of our trust. Our God does not punish his people
in anger. He may discipline us in love
to restore and to reset and to recover our fellowship with him. but he does not punish us in
anger. He is always reconciled. He is always placated. The Bible word is propitiated. There is no wrath of God. There is no wrath for his children. Our Lord Jesus Christ stood forth
as the propitiation for our sin and he has made peace by his
blood on the cross. We lay hold of that peace for
comfort and assurance by faith and because Jude knows our faith
is often weak, he asks for a multiplied peace for when our faith is most
tried and strained. So he has done the same for peace
as he did for mercy. He says, let the application
of a sense of peace be given commensurate with the need of
a faithless people. And then he asks that the same
be done for love. Love is another perfection in
God. Love is everlasting, love is
unchanging, love is ever constant towards the elect in Christ. And indeed the Saviour tells
us in John 17 that the Father's love to the elect is the same love
as he has for his own Son. Now I think that is extraordinary
and I hope never to to fail to think that that is extraordinary.
The love that the father has for the son is the same love
that he has for his people. It's an extraordinary statement
and yet it is fully consistent with Christ's substitutionary
role in the covenant as our surety and as our head. Such is the
closeness, such is the the union that we have with Christ, that
is the father loves the son so he loves us in exactly the same
way. Christ endured what we deserved
for our sin and we have secured what Christ deserved for his
obedience. The Lord Jesus is God's beloved
Son in whom he is well pleased. And that love and pleasure is
our portion too. It's our portion too. But what is it that's going on
when we don't feel God's love? What is it that's going on when
our own love for the Lord grows weak and cold? And once again,
this is the effect of sin. This is the effect of sin in
the flesh. It's our lack of faith. It's
the rebellion of the flesh against the goodness and the kindness
of the Lord, our Saviour. Let us understand, let us be
sure, let us nail this fact down. God's love is constant and does
not waver when ours does. God's love is always full and
therefore it does not lend itself to multiplication. You can't
multiply the infinite. But once again, it is fresh applications
and fresh apprehensions of that love that is in view by Jude. And these we enjoy when God the
Holy Spirit comforts our heart in trouble, increases our faith
during trial, defends our soul under attack by giving us fresh
views of the work of Christ on the cross on our behalf. So that all of these graces that
Jude prays for, mercy, peace and love, are multiplied to us
by a strengthening of our faith And so Jude's prayer for the
Lord's elect is that our faith might be strengthened and our
views of Christ enlarged and enhanced under the preaching
of the gospel. At those very times when the
enemy creeps in, that's what he's about to say. There are
certain men kept in unawares. He had a need to write about
these things to us because of the challenges that we will face
at those very times when the enemy creeps in to do his damage. It's when the fresh supplies
will be dispatched, will be dispensed from heaven and the new stock
of grace will be provided. and I'm kind of done but let
me just say a couple of more things by way of application
here because I think there is a strand here too which is useful
to us. When such graces are enlarged
in our souls and are multiplied to us, surely they are an encouragement
to us to seek them also as Jude sought them. As Jude has sought
them for us, it's an encouragement for us to seek them for our brothers
and sisters in similar straits to our own. We can follow the
example of Jude and make similar petitions to God on behalf of
others. and do so as Jude did in the
name of the Lord, whose name the Father notices and for whose
sake good gifts are generously granted to his people. So as
we feel the blessings and benefits of the multiplying of these graces
in our own souls day by day, let them provoke us to ask in
turn that the same graces be multiplied to our brothers and
sisters in similar need to us. And another thing we can say
is this, what we do enjoy from the Lord's hand by way of mercy,
by way of peace, and by way of love, let these graces that we
experience by faith be replicated in our lives, in our pursuit
of walking after the example of the Lord by walking in the
way of the Lord. Because the Lord has told us
in Matthew chapter five, he says, blessed are the merciful. for
they shall obtain mercy. If we have obtained that mercy
from the Lord and that mercy is multiplied to us as Jude prayed
on our behalf, then let us be merciful to others that we might
experience more of that multiplication in our own lives. Blessed are
the peacemakers, they shall be called the children of God. And
just as love and peace and mercy characterises God, and is his
highest perfections, so let us love our brothers and sisters
in Christ. Let us live peaceably with our
neighbours in this world and let us be merciful to those who
need mercy. We love him because he first
loved us. And Peter says, be ye all of
one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren,
be pitiful, be courteous. And John tells us, hereby perceive
we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and
we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. This little
introduction leads us into Jude's principal purpose for writing. That is his warnings against
those false teachers who would do the church harm. However,
firstly and wisely, before confronting us with all the dangers around
about us, the apostle has reconfirmed our sure and certain standing
in Christ. and he has reminded us that all
our strength in times of trouble lies in fresh supplies of God's
grace in Christ. And Jude's going to return to
that in his doxology at the end, for he will remind us then that
it is Christ who is able to keep you from falling, and to present
you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. Our Saviour will preserve us
all the way to glory and He will bountifully supply such multiplied
graces as we require day by day. He will supply mercy, peace and
love for all our needs according to His riches in glory. Amen.