Christians Are...

Introduction

This morning we begin our study of the book of Jude.

This is where we will be spending our time this Fall.

Jude is an often overlooked book of the New Testament.

That may be because of its length.

That may because it has some strange things in it, including a reference to the Book of Enoch, a book that is not in the Bible.

That may be because people feel the message of Jude is not relevant.

But none of these things should cause us to shy away from Jude.

It may be short, but it packs a punch.

It may have things that seem strange in it, but we just made it through Daniel, so don’t even sweat it.

And it is certainly not irrelevant to our lives and the age that we live in.

Jude is a letter about contending for the truth of the Gospel.

Jude is about taking up arms when the truth is under attack.

We certainly know what it is like for the truth to be under attack.

We live in an age where the cultural norm is to deny God as Creator and to say that our existence is simply the result of randomness.

We live in an age where it has become commonplace for people to speak of “manifesting” reality and to refer to the Universe as if it is God.

This is New Age Spirituality and it is the new religion of America

We live in an age where a sexual revolution has occurred, producing the quickest moral sea change in the history of society on subjects like family, gender and marriage.

We live in an age of on-demand abortive pills and legislated assisted suicide are readily accepted and stances for life will not be tolerated.

And that is just what is happening in the world!

The truth is also under attack inside of the church.

Many churches have traded in expository preaching for a Summer at the Movies.

False teachers continue to peddle the prosperity Gospel

The lies of the world infiltrate the church and some try to create an unholy union between the Gospel and New Age spirituality or the Gospel and the so-called sexual revolution

The issue of contending for the faith is as relevant now as it has ever been.

Therefore, Jude will have much to say to us.

Much to exhort us to.

Much to encourage us with.

Text and Outline

This morning we will start by covering Jude’s greeting— verses 1-2.

These are the very words of God

Jude 1–2 ESV

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

What Jude’s greeting does for us is tell us who the author of the letter is and who he is writing to.

The greeting lets us know right off the bat, the type of people who contend for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is Christians.

And these verses let us know what a Christian is. It lets us know who the Gospel contenders are.

We will have three teaching points this morning from Jude’s greeting.

1. Christians are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1).

2. Christians are those called, beloved and kept for Jesus Christ (v 1).

3. Christians are the recipients of the mercy, peace and love of Jesus Christ (v. 2).

Context

Now, before we get into these teaching points, I want to take a 30,000 feet view of why Jude is writing in the first place.

Why is he writing about contending for the faith?

Jude is not explicit about this, so it requires us to put some puzzle pieces together.

If you look at Jude 3, you will see that Jude had other plans for the letter that he is writing to the church.

However, he shifted gears from writing about “common salvation” to writing about “contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Why did he shift gears?

“Because certain people had crept in unnoticed.”

Jude writes to believers who have been compromised.

People with bad intentions has snuck into the church spreading lies.

So who are these people and what are they teaching?

We will dive deeper on this next week, but here is what I gather:

1) The false teachers seem to be elitists claiming some sort of super-spirituality.

In v. 8 they are said to rely on their dreams...

They are also said to “blaspheme the glorious ones...”

They seem to claim some sort of special revelation from God and they seem to put themselves on par with angels—the glorious ones.

This is a common tactic of the false teacher.

Claim to have some sort of direct access to God others don’t have

Then when you teach, “Who can question the man of God?”

Even Scripture itself becomes subservient to the false teachers’ supposed access to the Lord.

There are some other clues to their elitist claims we will see as we study, but we will leave it there for now.

2) The false teachers seem to be teaching that Christians can live however they feel with no consequences.

Jude 4 ESV

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Quotes about Sodom and Gomorrah and sexual immortality in v. 7 indicates that this false teaching was specifically sexual in its nature.

In essence, the false teachers who claimed elitism were also claiming that if you have been covered in the grace of Christ, you can live however you want to live inside and outside the bedroom.

This is how they perverted grace and denied Christ as Master.

Clearly this is a bad combination— You can live however you want, no matter what Jesus, the Apostles or the Scriptures say, because we have direct access to God and we say this is the way it is.

Jude, hearing about this and understanding the danger for these Christians, takes up his pen and writes the letter we will be studying.

But for today, let’s turn back to his greeting and let’s see who contends in the first place.

Who are the people who fight for the Gospel? Who are the people who call themselves Christians.

Servants (v. 1)

1. Christians are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1).

The Author

The first word of the book of Jude bears the name of the man who wrote it.

Historically, Jude has been understood to be the half-brother of Jesus.

One of Mary and Joseph’s son that were born after Christ.

Mark 6:3 ESV

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Jude is the Judas of Mark 6:3.

Don’t be alarmed by the name difference.

Jude is just a derivative of Judas.

Jude is to Judas, what Mike is to Michael.

Jude says he is brother to James.

This would be “James the Just,” the half-brother of Jesus and the leader of the church in Jerusalem. The one Paul refers to in Galatians 1:19.

Jude and James are fully brothers and they are half-brothers to the Lord Jesus Christ.

There was a time in which Jesus was not believed by his brothers.

Despite all of his miraculous work and authoritative teaching, they did not honor Him as Lord.

John 7:5 ESV

For not even his brothers believed in him.

But once Christ was crucified and resurrected, they changed their tune.

Seeing the man they grew up with, raise up, was enough for them.

Even in Acts 1, before the Holy Spirit falls on the church, Jesus’ brothers have started to gather with Mary and the remaining 11 disciples:

Acts 1:14 ESV

All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

The Servant

But here is the interesting thing about Jude.

We have to go to other places in the New Testament to piece together his identity because he doesn’t come outright and say it.

He doesn’t say, “I am Jude—the half brother of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Much like his brother James at the beginning of his New Testament letter, Jude wants to be known as something else, first and foremost.

Before he would say anything else biographically, Jude wants everyone to know that he is a “servant” of Jesus Christ.

Before he is a brother of James—he is a servant of Christ.

Even before he is a brother of Christ by blood—He is a servant of the Lord Jesus.

The Greek word for “servant” is “slave.” Doulos.

Most English translations render it “servant” or “bond-servant.”

However, the word “slave,” more properly represents what Jude is identifying himself to be.

In Jude’s first-century world, slavery was everywhere.

1 out of every 5 people were slaves.

Some were slaves through debt or being conquered in war.

However, most were born into it, meaning they had never known freedom in their land.

Some slaves had good masters who cared for them and provided them with a life that gave them many privileges they probably wouldn’t have been able to experience onf their own.

Unfortunately, there were others with terrible, abusive masters and that made a hard life even more miserable.

The experience of the slave came down to the benevolence of the Master.

But here is what all slaves held in common:

They has an owner and they were given an objective:

Please your master in everything you do by faithfully obeying him.

Understanding that, we can understand more about what Jude means when he calls himself a “Doulos.”

He is saying, “Before I am anything else—even Jesus’ brother on earth, I am a doulos of Jesus Christ.

I am a slave.

A servant.

And my objective on earth is to please my Master in all that I do by obeying Him.

In using this identifier, Jude is abandoned to the cause of Christ.

We Are Servants of Jesus Christ

If you are a Christian this morning, you are not unlike Jude in this regard.

You are also a doulos of Christ.

A servant or a slave of Christ.

Listen to Charles Spurgeon on this:

Where our King James Version softly puts it “servant” it is really “bond-slave.” The early saints delighted to count themselves Christ’s absolute property, bought by Him, owned by Him, and wholly at His disposal.

Charles Spurgeon

The false teacher in v. 4 will deny the only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

But true followers of Christ do not.

They do not try to wriggle out from under the Mastership of Christ.

They joyfully and humbly submit themselves to it.

I think that this can naturally be hard for us to wrap our minds around in the United States because the term slavery carries so much awful baggage in our culture.

Slavery is viewed as the one of the greatest moral blights upon the history of our nation, so we may recoil a bit at the word.

But try to think of it differently.

We should not view our spiritual servanthood to Christ as a brutal Master over a captured slave in the American chattel slavery system.

Instead, we should think of it more like this:

A mariner is lost at sea in a tiny boat they have made themselves.

The raging sea is destroying the little ship and they are drowning.

They are not far away from sinking into the abyss forever.

About that time, a large, sturdy ship arrives, piloted by a compassionate Captain.

The Captain rescues the mariner and says, “Come aboard and serve me.”

How will the mariner feel?

He will feel love toward the Captain who saved him.

He will feel freedom after being rescued from the grip of death.

And he will feel compelled to honor the Captain by using his freedom to serve the Captain in any way that he can.

This is the picture of us as Christians.

We were sinking into the abyss of death and judgment because in our efforts to sail the raging sea apart from God, we put ourselves in eternal danger.

Christ has come to us and offered us an invitation of salvation and life.

As He rescues us, He calls upon us to serve Him—because if we love Him, we will obey Him.

He has given us spiritual freedom and we desire to use that freedom to serve Him in all the ways He commands.

Not out of obligation, but actually out of affection.

In this way, we go from slaves to death to slaves of righteousness.

Romans 6:22 ESV

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God...

See—in reality, everyone is enslaved one way or the other.

You are either a slave to sin or righteousness.

The difference is that one is a slavery with chains and one is a slavery with love.

In one case, the sinner serves sin because they are lost and depraved and they have no other choice.

They are only free to makes choices within their nature and their nature is sin.

This is why even their best deeds are filthy rags before the Lord.

In the other case, the sinner is set free from sin by the Savior.

The sinner is free to truly obey God and have a new nature and the Holy Spirit to empower them to do it.

So then, out of affection, they are servants—slaves—of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The First Thing People Know About Us

And if we are truly going to be like Jude, this should be the first thing that people know about us.

Before Jude identifies himself in any other way, he wants his readers to know whom his service belongs to—it is to Jesus Christ.

The Messiah. The One who saves His people from their sins.

Ask yourself—what is the first thing that people know about you?

Is it your complaints?

Is it your pride?

Is it your hobbies?

Or is it that Christ is your Master?

The false teachers that Jude is standing up to are known for their perversion of God’s grace into sensuality.

Jude, on the other hand, is known as a servant of Christ.

If you have been rescued from your little, sinking boat of morality, let people know who Your serve.

Lead with it.

Let it be the first thing the world knows of us.

Called, Beloved and Kept ( v. 1)

2. Christians are those called, beloved and kept for Jesus Christ (v 1).

Jude has identified himself and now he identifies his audience.

Those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.

That is about as much detail as we get.

We don’t know who Jude is writing to, we just know that it is a group of believers—likely a church.

But let’s look at these three identifiers Jude gives to the Christians he is writing to.

Called, Beloved Kept.

General terms that can be applied to any believer.

Called

First of all, Christians are called.

This is referring to the way we are called by God into a relationship with Him.

On one hand, there is a Gospel call that has gone out to all the world.

Matthew 11:28 ESV

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden—this is a call to the whole world of sinners.

There is no one who is spiritually laboring and heavy-laden, even if they do not give much thought to it.

Sin is heavy and sinners who do not know Christ, bear that weight.

Therefore, Christ says, “Come to me. Find rest.”

But in the case of Jude’s greeting, this is more than the general Gospel call.

He isn’t writing to the whole world—he is writing to those who are called, as well as beloved in God the Father and kept.

He is writing to Christians.

So what he is referring to here is not the general Gospel call, but the effectual call of believers into a saving relationship with God.

This is not a general call, but a particular call, where God calls those whose names are written in the Book of Life before the world began, to come to Him and be effectively saved.

He will draw them by His kindness to repent and believe.

When they repent and believe, they will justified by Christ.

When they trust in Christ’s death to pay for their sins on the Cross, they are made one with God and looked at as if they had never sinned in His sight.

As those who are justified, they are adopted into God’s household and they become a part of God’s family.

And as His children, they will be sanctified.

He will make them look more and more like Jesus, day by day.

And finally, one day, they will pass from this life into the next and be with Christ forever in heaven and on the New Earth.

These are all true of the Christian—but it begins with God calling the believer and making them alive by His Spirit.

John 6:45 ESV

It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—

Who comes to Jesus? Those who have heard and learned from the Father.

Those who have received the Father’s effectual, powerful call.

Beloved

Not only are believers called, they are beloved in God the Father.

Christians are beloved by the Father.

Matthew Harmon says it this way:

Believers are the objects of the Father’s covenantal love.

Matthew Harmon

God has a love that He has promised to pour out upon His people—His children who have been called and adopted into His household.

We are targets of God’s love.

This is not deserved.

We should have been targets of God’s wrath.

But God has proven His love for us in that He has given us His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us.

On the Cross, Christ became the target for the wrath of God, so that we would not be.

Isaiah 53:6 ESV

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

We are the ones who have turned astray. We should be the targets of God’s eternal wrath.

But Christ, who did not go astray for even a miniscule moment, became the target instead—the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Jesus echoes this in some of His most famous words as He spoke to Nicodemus:

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

If we ever doubt that Christians are beloved by the Father and in the Father, we only need to look at the given Son.

Listen to JC Ryle on this:

The express “he gave” is a remarkable one. Christ is God the Father’s gift to a lost and sinful world.

JC Ryle

We don’t always know why God allows some things or doesn’t allow others things to happen.

We know it is all for the greater glory of His Son Jesus Christ, but we can’t always see it.

And those are the times in which we may be tempted to doubt God’s love.

On those days, we must look to the Cross and remember that “God so loved the world.”

And as those who believe in the Christ of the Cross—we are God’s beloved.

Kept

And lastly, in v. 1, we are told that we are “kept for Jesus Christ.”

Those who are called are beloved.

Those who are beloved are kept.

The Greek word for kept is “tereo” (tay-RAY-oh).

It means to keep, but it can also mean to “guard,” to “watch,” and “to protect.”

This is what the Lord does for us in salvation.

God did not give His Son to save us, just to lose us to Hell again.

He has saved us and will keep us for Christ.

As Paul ends his first letter to the Thessalonians, he said this:

1 Thessalonians 5:23 ESV

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God doesn’t save you and take off on you.

He saves you and transforms you.

He takes the things in our lives that are still corrupting us and He removes them from us and strengthens us by grace.

He changes our desires.

He changes our principles.

He changes our practices.

He makes us more like Christ, one step at a time, until the day comes when we are with Christ face to face.

There is a Day coming when Jesus the Bridegroom will return for His Bride.

And God is seeing to it that on that Day, His Son will find a Bride beautified by grace.

He is keeping us for that Day.

He is guarding us and watching over us.

He will finish what He has started in us.

Frances Havergal

Frances Havergal wrote many hymns of faith and her most famous might have been “Take My Life and Let It Be.”

On the final day of her life, she asked her friend to read Isaiah 42 at her bedside.

When the friend read the sixth verse—“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you--,”

Miss Havergal stopped her friend and said, “Called…Held…Kept! I can go home on that.”

Playing off of Havergal’s deathbed exclamation, we could adjust it for Jude 1 and say, “Called, Beloved, Kept!”

And we can say, “God will GET us home on that.”

It is what we live by and it is what we die by.

It is the foundation for this Christian life.

The basic truths that God has called us, loved us and will keep us to the Day of His coming.

Do not let Satan cause you despair.

Do not let Satan tempt you into hopelessness.

Do not let Satan blind you with circumstances and leave you forgetful of these truths.

You are called, beloved and kept by God Himself.

Take heart.

Mercy, Peace and Love

3. Christians are the recipients of the mercy, peace and love of Jesus Christ (v. 2).

Jude desires the multiplication of mercy, peace and love in the lives of his listeners.

And in desiring these things, he is desiring to God’s people to seek God’s goodness and experience it at an increasing rate.

Sometimes we throw these Christian vocab words around and lose track of how glorious they are.

Let us strive not to do that.

For Jude to pray for these things to be multiplied, he must have a confidence that they are being poured out by God and received in the first place.

Jude understands that for those who are called, beloved and kept—mercy, peace and love are daily realities.

It is promised that this is the spiritual reality of the Christian in 2 John 3

2 John 3 ESV

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.

Grace is God’s undeserved love toward us.

So you can see the promise of 2 John 3—grace, mercy and peace will be with us.

And since it comes from God the Father and His Son Jesus—you can be sure that the promise will be kept.

Mercy is God not giving us what we deserve.

We deserve wrath, but God does not give it to us.

In its place, we get the goodness of God.

Peace is the end of war with God.

We were at arms with God, but now we are reconciled to Him.

We experience His goodness firsthand.

Love is the commitment of God to His people.

God’s love is His expression of His goodness and kindness to us—which is most obvious in the gift of His Son Jesus Christ.

The false teachers that Jude is dealing with were taking the goodness of God and using it as an excuse to sin more.

“If God is for us, then sin all you want.”

But I believe that Jude desires the multiplication of these things so that this would not be the case for his listeners.

He wants them to experience the mercy, peace and love of God more and more so that they would reflect that in their lives.

For who should be the most merciful people on earth? Those who have received the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.

And who should be the most peaceful people on earth? Those who have been made right with God through Christ Jesus.

And who should be the most loving people on earth? Those who have received the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Christians are those who receive mercy, peace and love.

Christians are those who live mercifully, peaceably and lovingly.

That is the difference Christ makes in the lives of His servants.

Duijangyan Irrigation System

In China, since 256 BC, there has been this amazing invention of man called the Dujiangyan Irrigation System.

SHOW PICTURE HERE

They used the natural dynamic of the river to irrigate massive amounts of farmland without any flooding.

It has been the water source for crops for millions of farmers for 2200 years.

It translated the unfruitful Sichuan basin into one of the most productive and fertile regions in the world.

This is a picture of what God has done with you.

He has taken a depraved and unfruitful soul and graciously watered it with mercy, peace and love.

And now, that mercy, peace and love should impact everything around you.

As the goodness of God is multiplied to you, so should His goodness shine through you and touch the lives of others.

We began by saying Christians are slaves of Jesus Christ.

The theme of our servanthood is the goodness of God.

Mercy. Peace. Love.

The goodness we have received from heaven should make a difference in how we obey Christ as His ambassadors on the earth.

Conclusion

Servants.

Called, beloved, kept.

Recipients of mercy, peace, and love.

This is who Christians are...

But this morning, let me ask you—whatever your age—however long you’ve been in church...

Is that who you are?

Are you a Christian?

Christ invites you to be.

He calls you to receive the love of the Father.

He offers you the eternal protection of the hand of God.

He waits to show you His goodness daily and use you to show others.

But it starts with you agreeing with Him that your sin is evil.

It begins with you forsaking your sin.

Turning back from it and turning to God.

Trusting in His Son alone for salvation.

If you do not know Him—pray to Him today.

Confess your sin.

Profess your faith.

Ask Him to forgive you and save you.

Do not delay.

Do not spend another day serving yourself.

Do not spend another day fighting the sea in your man-made boat.

Trust in Christ today.

Be a Christian.