Our holy God, oh, how I do truly love to sing to you.
I love to hear and be a part of a congregation that loves you and just sing a melody like holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. Father, I also just love to open your word because I think every time you never let us down. You promise that the very words that we read are breathed out by you. And I can just imagine that as you did that for the first time and they were penned through the Holy Spirit by men, that you did it with such love and such compassion.
Such eagerness and desire. God, thank you for your word. We ask simply that you would help us to rely on your promise because the rest of that verse is that your word, those words that are breathed out by you are profitable. And so God, we ask, please, may the words of scripture that we look at tonight be profitable, the words of scripture that we look at tonight be profitable for growing us into Christ likeness, for equipping us, for making us complete. Oh God, may it be for your glory, may it be for our benefit.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Tonight, I want us to focus together not on a chapter of scripture, not even on a passage of scripture per se, although we are gonna look at the context a bit because we're going to have to, but I want us to look at one simple verb that we find in a very small book in the New Testament. And the word that we are gonna look at this morning, this verb, is the simple verb to keep. K-E-E-P, to keep. To keep is a conscious effort. This is sort of my definition and I stole parts of this from others. But to keep is a conscious effort to maintain or protect in order to continue in a specified condition. Okay, for instance, we can use the term to keep and we do in so many different ways.
There are two that came to mind even this week and even this afternoon as we came home from church. Jill and I are, well we have a lot of things in common. There's a lot of things that we may not have in common where we're able to sharpen each other, but one of the things that we are very much in common with is that we are both very OCD when it comes to our home. And we just like things in their place. We like things put away. We like things clean, her more clean.
I don't mind the dust so much as long as things are where they go. But we like sort of a clean house. We like to keep our house. The problem is there was a few years ago where I succumbed to my children and I bought a basset hound. Basset hounds are not good for keeping a home. They shed like it is their full-time job. I mean they make millions shedding hair all over the house and we have to sweep at least once if not twice a day. We came home today to the dog being very angry to us.
I guess church went over and he was expecting us home so he decided to chew on one of our plastic plants and he threw up four different places in the house. It's hard to keep a house with a basset hound. But there are other things I like.
You might not be so OCD as I am. One of the other things that I really enjoy keeping is a garden. I don't necessarily grow vegetables and all of that stuff well but like my dad and grandparents I love flowers and I love flower beds. But keeping a flower bed is a very difficult thing. It's not simply planting seed.
You all know this of course. But to keep a flower bed one must engage in all kinds of work. And of course you know all about the fact that for the past couple of weeks you know the one thing I have been doing at least once a day if not twice a day and I still can't seem to keep up and that is water the plants. Just to keep them alive. Not even to keep them healthy and flourishing but just to keep them from dying. But we must also if we want to keep a flower bed I have to pull weeds and that's almost a weekly thing.
Add fertilizer, prune and dead head especially some of my favorite plants if you let them grow and just die on the stem you don't see another one. So you have to take care of them and keep up with them so you keep seeing them bloom. I have to protect them. We have I guess one good reason to have the Basset Hound is that we also have living right behind us a plethora. A family that is massive huge of bunny rabbits. And those things can get through the smallest holes.
They love my flowers. And so where my Basset Hound and I at least see eye to eye on one thing is that he loves to chase rabbits. In fact that's what he's bred to do. So there is nothing that I enjoy more than watching him around seven o'clock at night when I open the door and I go get him. And he knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Of course he's too dumb and slow so we can't catch them but he chases those things all over the place until they jump through the fence and his head goes pounding against that fence. To keep can be used for those of us who are trying to stay healthy. We wanna keep in shape.
This of course means a conscious effort to eat right, to exercise regularly, to take supplements, getting enough sleep and I really wanted to make sure I brought this one up especially since we were going to eat ice cream after this. We can keep up with technology, with news, with sports. To keep can mean protecting loved ones. In fact I would venture to say that by default if you were asked to pray, right now if I asked you to stand up and pray, one of the top three sentences in your prayer you would be asking God in some level to keep someone that you love safe. When it comes to discipline, we keep rules, laws. Those of us who are married, it is one of our conscious efforts to keep our marriage strong by all sorts of different things. Notice that with all these different ideas of to keep and there are a lot of them, I didn't even bring up probably half but this idea of keeping, they have something in common. There's a goal in mind. There's a goal in the mind, there's a goal in the mind.
There's a goal in mind with conscious and disciplined strategy to accomplish the goal. This verb to keep is used as an imperative, a command in the tiny book of Jude. It's so small, most of the time we don't read Jude, we pass over Jude, we miss Jude, we don't even really ever go to Jude. Jude if you have trouble finding it is really easy to find, you can open your Bible at the very end, the very last book, Revelation, which I'm sure you know well and just turn to the very first chapter of Revelation and then just turn one page back and you'll find Jude.
Jude is so small there are no chapters but simply 23 verses, but boy are they packed. And we find the imperative in verse 21. In the 21st verse it says this, keep yourself in the love of God. This imperative gives us the goal. Jude wants his readers, wants the church, in fact in this little context he will say beloved.
That's children of God, those that are running the race. Beloved, keep yourself in the love of God. In other words he wants them to remain in, to stay in, to do what it takes, put conscious effort to remain in, to keep yourself in the love of God. I'm not going to necessarily answer the question why tonight but I need to give you the answer.
We're going to sort of come to that at the very end but can I just put this thought in your head. The reason why Jude wants you, church, beloved, to keep yourself in the love of God is simply because there is no better place to be. There is no better place to be in this moment, in this week and for eternity. If you want what is very best for you, if you quote unquote want to live your best life, if you want that for your loved one, the one that you have your arm around right now or the children that are sitting next to you or maybe they are far from you tonight, your loved ones, the way or the reason why we are asked, why we are told to keep ourselves in the love of God is because there is no better place to be.
But what I want to do tonight is I want us to get a little strategy behind the goal. I want us to understand how we go about doing it because I think if you're like me, you hear a command like that, keep yourself in the love of God and you smile and you nod your head with the pastor and go, yeah, that's where I want to be. And yet you find in your practical life how difficult that really truly is.
Not just the discipline of keeping yourself in the love of God, but really even just the want or the desire on a daily basis. Thank God that typically, and I would probably say even more than typically, it's 100%, the Bible does not give us an imperative, a command without teaching us how we accomplish that command. And so we see built around Jude, or I'm sorry, what Jude does is he builds around this imperative, this verb, with three participles. And so what I want us to do is just very quickly look at these three participles. What a participle is is simply a word that somehow modifies the verb, right?
That's pretty easy, right? And so we see the command again is to keep yourself in the love of God and you go, okay, that's awesome, how? And Jude tells us, let's look. Let's read verse 21, 22. It says, but you. Can I explain that just real quick because we're not gonna look at the verses before it. You know, but is always an interesting conjunction.
It means that he is saying, now to you, beloved, don't do what I talked about before. And so if you can picture that marathon race, what I do is I see Jude writing this at around mile 23. And he sees that half of the runners stopped running at some point. Half the runners have decided to sit on the curb and start eating and drinking. Some of them have decided to get in cars and go home. Some of them have said running, I'm done with it enough.
This is too hard. They have given up. But there is still the group now where he says, you, beloved, you're not gonna be like them. You're gonna finish this race. The way that you finish this race is you follow the verb, keep yourself in the love of God. And then he continues on.
So he says, but you, beloved. And then here's the first. You'll know by the ING, building yourself up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. And then here's the verb, keep yourselves in the love of God. And then here's the third, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. So the first thing that we see here when we have this command to keep ourselves, we are to first build. Building yourselves up in the most holy faith. We are to build up to strengthen and to fortify. We know from the great little story of the three pigs that when Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians that he built the foundation, the foundation being the gospel, that when those who come after him build, they must be very careful what they build. Very careful. And so on this glorious gospel, what you don't do is all of a sudden construct the house then with straw.
Because you as the cute little pig will walk in the house and think you've built a beautiful house until the wolf comes along and blows it away. And so we must be careful that when we understand this first word here, building yourself, that we must build with the right things, the right products. And it is this idea of not just building so that it's done and so you can go, I'm finished, but it's the idea of strengthening it and reinforcing it, fortifying it. Another thing that's sort of interesting about this idea of building yourselves up is that it is in the plural.
And so as we go through these three ideas, I want us to grasp both a personal element and a corporate element. And I think this goes with most of the New Testament and most of our spiritual lives. Whenever we're missing one of them, we're missing a huge portion of the gospel. And so first and foremost, what Judah did is asking you, as a believer, beloved, do you have a practice of building in your life? And the way that we do that is through, of course, the scriptures.
We cut time out of our day. Some of us in the mornings, some of us at lunch, some of us are night owls and we spend nights just poring over the word of God. But this idea of building ourselves up but this idea of building needs to be first and foremost this very personal thing, but it doesn't stop there. What's neat is that we are gathered tonight because we understand that we must build together. And so we build our most holy faith in community and we hear the word exhorted together. We are under the authority. We submit together to the authority of scripture and we hear what God has for us, the church.
Now, of course, this building yourselves up is important. Judah also, of course, tells us what we must be building and it is our holy faith. We are to be strengthening our holy faith. The body of objective truth declared in the scriptures. Our doctrines of grace. Simply the gospel as it is communicated to us in the scriptures.
Very simplistically, creation, fall, redemption and the new creation. And really what this idea is, if we were to take this participle, this building yourselves up in the most holy faith, I would sort of define this whole work, this idea of knowledge. We must know the right things.
We must rightly handle the word of truth. In order to keep a healthy marriage, it is vital that Jill and I know each other and that we continually strengthen and fortify that knowledge. If I know nothing about her, then our marriage will crumble.
It will fall apart. And if I think that what I learned about her in the first year of marriage or while we were dating is enough to sustain us through, oh, I'm sorely mistaken. And so this first idea is this idea that we are to continually be growing in our own faith be growing in our love for God through knowledge of Him. Second, we come to this idea of praying in the Spirit or praying in the Holy Spirit.
And I think Jude agrees with Paul. Paul believes prayer to be a very vital discipline for the believer. He says things in Ephesians like praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. In Colossians, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. And of course, 1 Thessalonians, we know all too well, pray without ceasing. This is supposed to be a lifestyle. Prayer is simply communicating with God.
Nothing is off limits. We are to take everything to Him. It is supposed to be intimate communication. And we go to Him and we share all of this knowing that He will not shun us, He will not shame us, because we are covered by the blood of Christ.
But it does, well, it goes a little farther than that. We're not just to pray, but we are to pray in the Holy Spirit, in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, in the power of the Holy Spirit. I think there's a couple reasons why Jude has us praying in the Holy Spirit. And the first is that, again, in this relationship, this idea of being kept in God's love, is I think that He doesn't want us to get in the process of running before Him.
A great way to not run before God and just live our life and hope He just picks up all the mess kind of behind us, the weight cleans up the wake, is when we live our life in continual prayer. Because when we are doing that, what God does is He shapes our hearts and our minds to think more and more like Him. And then we also know that Paul gives us this great promise in Romans 8.26 that, frankly, you and I, even in our prayer, we don't know what to pray most of the time.
So he says, likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So prayer helps shape our thinking. It strengthens our trust. It makes us more aware of what He is doing in and around us.
And again, this is a personal and this is a corporate thing. So we go and we hide ourselves in our closets and we pray to our God in intimate ways. But God also calls us in community, calls us together as His church, and to pray together with the saints. And again, if I were to relate this to a marriage, this makes all the sense in the world, doesn't it? If Jill and I want to keep a healthy relationship, if I want to keep a healthy relationship, if I want to keep myself in the love of Jill, do you think I'm going to communicate with her?
Do you think I'm just going to spend most of my time by myself guessing? No, in fact, communication is one of the most enjoyable things that we can do. And so Jude asks that as he commands you to stay in the love of God, to stay in the love of your Savior, that one of the ways you do that is by praying and living a life that is in communion with, communication with your Savior. That brings us to the third thing, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Waiting is not easy, especially in these days of instant everything. We may agree with Tom Petty that waiting is the hardest part. Why? Because there's nothing to be done while you're doing it.
There is nothing. Well, yeah, there are worse things. But how terrible is it when you take your car to get a simple oil change, and that simple oil change is 25 minutes and you'll be out of here, and you check your watch and it's been 45, and then it's been an hour and 15, and you're just, I mean, the coffee's stale, the internet's not working so you can't get on your phone and do work.
Who are we kidding? You can't have fun on your phone and look at funny memes or what have you. You just have to sit and wait. Well, can I sort of, I don't necessarily think that what Jude is trying to paint here with this picture of waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, I don't think that's what he intends here. I don't think he wants beloved, just wait and at some point we know you're gonna be bored out of your mind. This Christian life is not super exciting. It might be boring, but just wait for him to come back and then things will get great. I don't think that's at all what Jude means, especially if you read through the rest of this book and understand the warfare that is going on and the craziness of this life. Instead, I think what Jude is trying to get across when he says waiting is this idea of anticipation. It's like Christmas Eve.
You can't go to sleep at night. It's like the drop zone. Have you ever been on the drop zone? The drop zone is torture for me, but the kids in my youth group love it. We were just at Carowinds on Monday. Monday was hot.
It was actually kind of a terrible day. I have to admit. But the kids love the drop zone.
Do you know the drop zone? You go and you sit in this round circular thing and you sit in a seat and you pull this, you know, the protection over your chest, and what it does is it very slowly when the ride starts, it just starts going up and up and up and up, and you're not waiting because you're not bored. If anything, you are going crazy. You're anticipating, and you know what you're anticipating? Any second, the thing's gonna stop and drop you at the speed of light. That's torture for me.
But kids love this thing. That's an expectation awaiting on the edge of your seat when is it coming, when is it coming, when is it coming. I think to keep yourself in the love of God is to anticipate the eternal gracious reality awaiting every child of God, and yes, I mean in eternity, but more importantly, that's the wrong way to put it, not more importantly, but just as importantly, what he has for you today and what he has for you tomorrow. As much as we should live our lives anticipating eternity, we should wake up every day of our lives as children of God, as beloved, anticipating the fullness of life that is possible, walking with the Spirit of God, deposited in our hearts, holding hands with Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, as we live our day with him.
And so often, we miss it because our expectations are embarrassingly low, or we just simply do not trust him. Again, there is this idea of personal and corporate, this anticipating, we anticipate together even when the scriptures say in Colossians, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thanksgiving in your hearts. As we hear the number called out and we turn to the hymn and we sing it, some you could tell we sang really loud, right, we know them, and others were a bit of a curveball, but did you listen to some of the words that we were singing? They put smiles on your face, and what we're doing is communicating to one another, encouraging one another to anticipate the mercies of Christ. He says in Hebrews 10, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. We are to get together regularly, why?
To encourage one another, to help each other grow in anticipation of the mercies of God. And again, if I were to relate this idea of keeping a marriage healthy, I don't mean to get a little mushy and to make her embarrassed, but I'll tell you what, it doesn't get old when we're apart how much I anticipate us getting back together again. And that's an everyday thing. It is so fun to drive home from work knowing that I'm gonna get to just hang out with Jill. We're gonna get to eat dinner together.
There's an anticipation in the relationship. How much greater should our anticipation be for our Lord Jesus Christ? Can I take this and tie all this in with the gospel now? Here is the problem, is that again, this command is that you and I are to keep ourselves in the love of God, and here is how. Build your knowledge, continue to grow your knowledge. Pray in the spirit that indwells you.
Anticipate the mercies, the never-ending mercies of God in your life, and you go, yeah! Hold on a second, I can't do that. I seem to, in all three of those, as great as they sound, they all fall apart. I'll be the first one tomorrow, all three of those. I just won't do them.
They won't work for me, they won't work right. I just can't seem to do it. But yet, so desperately, I wanna cling to my Christ. So it reminds me of a really great thing that has happened over and over and over again every summer. And it's simply this, and we're going in two weeks, again, I get to do it again, is that I recall the days when I got to go to the beach with my kids.
We usually go once a year, and I can remember Tess, my daughter, being three, four, five years old, who could walk and barely, you know what it's like being in the sand and in the waves. And Tess is a spitfire. Her personality is way bigger than her body.
It's bigger than most of us put together, Jill and I at least put together. She just goes after things like a bull in a china shop. And so it's the same thing when she was young. She saw those waves, and all she wanted to do was dart out in them and play in them. But there was one thing she always made sure she did before she got in that water, and that is she made sure that I was with her.
And every time, what she did was she would grab my hand, and then she would, and we would, go out into the water together. And she wouldn't step in to see if it was cold. She'd be like, come on, Daddy. And she'd go running. And I would step out into the water with her, and we would hit those waves. And the bigger, the more she'd start screaming and loving it. And her smile would just get crazy.
And you know how the waves hit? They would grab her, and she'd go flying. But she was clinging. And the bigger the wave, well, the more claw marks I would have in my chest and in my back, because she was keeping herself safe by hanging on to me. Oh my goodness, could she hang on to me? And boy, did she have fun.
Parents, you know the reality of that story, though, right? Tess was not holding on to me. She was not keeping herself safe, because she was holding on to me.
In fact, if that were the case, the first wave that would have hit her, I would have never seen her again. But as we go out into that ocean, as she is holding my hand, I am holding her so tightly. I am hanging on to her, and my feet are so grounded in the sand that she is going nowhere.
There is no way I am losing her. Beloved, this is what Christ wants you to get. This is why Jude was writing. Because as much as you try to cling to him, even by the steps that are given to us, the truth of the matter is, you must know that Christ has you. Christ keeps you safe. So as much as you are clinging to him with your prayer, and with your reading of scripture, and with your anticipating his mercies, he is holding on to you, never letting you go, and it is built into the doxology, look at it. It's read in verse 24, it says, now to him who is able to what?
To keep you. 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, authority before all time, now and forever, amen. Brothers and sisters, do not stop keeping yourself in the love of God.
Be like Tess and cling, but know that there is no kind of grip that you can hold on to him, like he is holding on to you for all of eternity. He has you. And because he has you, he will keep you until the day that he either takes you home, or he comes back bodily to this earth. Brothers and sisters, what a glorious gospel truth that our Lord and savior is keeping you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the simple truth that Jesus Christ is able. He is able and willing to keep us. He holds us. And therefore, our assurance should be unshakable. We should be able to hit the waves of this world with smiles on our face because we are not gonna get lost. There can't be a wave.
Well, a wave just can't hit us that's strong enough. Jesus, thank you for keeping us. Thank you for holding us. Thank you for your gospel. We pray this in your name. Amen.
