Jude 1-4 In Times of Crisis

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his series, Short Letters, Big Stuff, a study in 2nd and 3rd John, and also Jude. Let's listen in.

Well, welcome, Recast Church, to the Recast YouTube channel. I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here, and obviously this has been a strange couple of weeks, but I am just very grateful again, and I've said this before, but I'm very thankful for technology to be able to bring a message to you every week, and to be able to at least gather together around some common truth from God's Word.

I hope that this morning, or whenever you're watching this, I'm recording this in the morning, but actually know that you might be watching it at a different time, but hopefully you're able to grab a Bible.

If you're with a family, sit down with your family and watch this. If you have young children, I love what Ginger, our youth director, said, is just to kind of have reasonable expectations for those youngsters in this.

I recognize that a lot of times we think, Sunday morning, it's got to be church, it's got to be family together, and a lot of tears and frustration can happen centered on that, and so just encourage you as much as possible to be willing to pause it if you need to, be willing to come back to it later, be willing to settle the kids into another activity or.

Something like that.

Maybe the best time for you to watch this is after you've put your kids to bed, but I do encourage you to take in God's Word as much as possible to kind of continue to connect with your Recast Church family.

We're a church that gathers in Matawan, Michigan, and just a word here about what constitutes.

A church.

What the Church Is and Why Scattered Worship Is Not the Same

I wanted to get that out here as kind of a little bit of an intro to the message, but also just a thought to plant into your mind. What is a church? What constitutes a church? I've seen and heard some really funny statements swirling around during this time of a mandated stay-at-home policy here in the state of Michigan, and so I think that some of the statements that I've heard really, really are confusing if you understand the biblical idea of what a church is.

You cannot have church by yourself. To put the words alone and church together cannot mix. That's an oxymoron. That's when you take two words that are opposite that don't go together and you put them together.

Alone church. The word church means the gathering of the called-out people of God. The gathering of those who have been called out to gather for His worship and for His glory and for His name. And I think it makes kind of a lot of sense that you cannot gather by yourself.

And further, a church in the New Testament has some marks that are not the marks of a family. So you might say, well, I'm gathered together with my family, we're believers, so we're.

A church.

No, you're not a church, and here's the reason why. There are marks of a church, things that, checkboxes that have to be checked in order for you to actually be a church according to what the New Testament says.

You have to have some order of leadership, deacons and elders and some structure. You need to have order and not chaos. You need to have an intentionality of love that comes from the Bible to the church and instructions.

You need to have an intentional accountability structure in place with church discipline and that type of stuff. And you need to have intentional opportunities to use your spiritual gifts in an intentional.

Way.

And also, you need to have the mutual upbuilding and encouragement of people who are different.

Than you.

Like, those are marks, those are some of the marks. That's not a comprehensive list, but those are some of the marks of a church. And so, what are we doing right now, recast? What are we doing during this time of isolation?

We are a church that is scattered right now. But whatever we're doing on Sunday morning, do not think that sitting down and listening to this is getting your church on. What that does is that feeds into the notion that church is something I attend, it's something I take in.

It's just an experience. And at the end of the day, no, church is a relationship with one another in God. We are seeking to connect to a common message this morning. And through this message, through YouTube, we're trying to seek to connect to this common message with brothers and sisters in Christ, and that's a good thing.

But if we really understand church, if we really know what we're talking about when we use the word church, we acknowledge that this season right now that we're in is less than ideal. It is not the standard.

It is not what God desires for us. We need life together in community, face to face. We need to be able to put our arms around a brother or sister in Christ who wasn't raised in the same household as us, that doesn't look like us, that comes from a different set of parents and a different set of backgrounds and a different set of baggage that they bring, and to allow our lives and God's life living in us to impact them for encouragement, for rebuke, for correction, for the standard of truth, and for all of the things that need to happen in the body of the church.

And so we need the gathering of people. And I hope you're missing this gathering. I hope there's something missing from your life as you haven't been able to gather together with your church. I can tell you in all honesty, I miss you.

I really do. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I miss the gathering of God's people. I miss the connection time. I miss the coffee and the donuts, but I genuinely miss the smiling faces and the contacts and the communication that happens on Sunday morning.

I look so forward to gathering together with you soon, whatever soon might mean. But all of that description of what a church is ties in well with the opening of the book of Jude that we're going to be looking at this morning, the first four verses.

Jude’s Greeting: Called, Beloved, and Kept

In this short series where we've been covering the small letters of 2 John, 3 John, and Jude, we've been given a glimpse of the church in crisis. The church in that early stage, under the writings of John, it becomes abundantly clear that there is a crisis in the church, and then Jude really dovetails with that nicely, and that's one of the reasons to take them off as a chunk, is because they're dealing with some of the same issues, some of the same crises.

You see, the church in that era and in that age was not being threatened by virus or disease.

Physically.

That's a threat in our culture. That's a threat globally right now. It's called a pandemic for a reason. It is global. It is worldwide. But it is indeed in our text what the church is facing is a threat from a theological virus.

Falsehood, I would contend to you, falsehood, I suggest to you that falsehood spreads much like a virus. One person contracts a false notion and carries it into a new community where it may produce a new outbreak of falsehood, and it continues to grow.

And what is at stake in this virus, this theological virus, is very, very, very significant. Now, certainly I wouldn't downplay COVID -19, but I would say this virus is crazy dangerous compared to COVID -19, especially since when we consider the reality of what Scripture has to say, according to the testimony of Scripture, salvation comes to us by believing the truth of Jesus Christ.

That's how salvation comes to us. So Jude gives a greeting this morning, and then he's gonna jump right into his purpose for writing. And I want you to listen in as I read this. Listen to Jude as he begins with encouragement, even as he sets out to warn the church about theological viruses in their midst.

And so the first two verses, imminently encouraging. The second two verses, getting down to the focus of us contending for the faith. And so open your Bibles, if you're not already there, to Jude. I'll give you a second, because it's clear in the back of the, actually, I'm not gonna give you a second.

You can pause it if you need a second. But clear at the end of the Bible, get to Revelation, and then go one book back. It's tiny, it's easy to miss. But Jude, verses one through four, and I would love it, if you don't have an app, I would encourage you to download the ESV Bible app, by the way.

The ESV Bible app, there's better apps out there. The reason I love the ESV Bible app is that it's crisp, it's clear, and it is the app that I open that gets me to the Bible the quickest. There's other apps that I use, Bible .is, if I want the Bible read to me.

It's got a lot of different versions, a lot of different translations. There's YouVersion, there's BibleGateway, there's all different kinds of apps that are.

Out there.

But when it comes down to a website, I think BibleGateway, I don't know if they have an app yet, but there's all different kinds of ways you can access the Bible online. But the ESV Bible app, it's crisp, it's clear, it's pretty straightforward, the search feature is great, one version to deal with, gets me into the Bible the quickest of any Bible.

App.

So anyways, Jude chapter, speaking of getting into the Bible quickly, let's get to this,.

Let's read it.

Jude, verses 1 through 4, whoever's listening, and this is the privilege that we have on Sunday mornings at Recast, to actually read the Word. We're committed to that, we do this every week. 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.

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 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.

Let's pray.

Father, I come to you this morning just asking on behalf of my church that you would provide encouragement, that you would provide love, that you would provide endurance and strength during this time of isolation.

I know that even in this, there's such a variety of different experiences and things that are going on in households and homes. Father, I pray that you would protect those who fear, that you would bring them to a deepening sense of faith during this time.

And then for those, Father, who feel fearless, I pray that you would give them a sense of responsibility and obligation to their brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors and relationships around them, to take this seriously for their sake.

And Father, I pray that to my church, to Recast Church, that you would multiply mercy, that you would multiply peace, that you would multiply love, even as we're distant from one another now and that we would long and look forward to the time when we can gather together.

I pray that you would be with the proclamation of your word now. Speak through me what is accurate. Speak through me clearly and speak through me with zeal and passion that is consistent with the content of your word.

It is a glorious word, it is a true word, it is a powerful word, and I pray that it would be respected in the delivery this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, get your cup of coffee, get your own donuts or breakfast or whatever.

If you have to pause this, get settled in, and let's dig into Jude 1, 1 through 4. The Holy Spirit, I'd suggest to you, knows much better than I do. He knows what we need and when we need it, and this week in Jude is no different.

I had planned on this series long, long ago as I sat down and came up with my six-month plan of preaching through, and here we are at Jude today, and I found this week what I needed for my soul in this introduction to the short letter.

This word, this truth, this is spoken to my heart. It's connected with me. It's only four verses, but it packs a punch of encouragement at the front end and a caution at the back end, a caution that I think we all need, a caution that comes to us at a time when we're probably looking for different preachers to listen to, and we've got more time on our hands, and we've got books to read, and we've got things, just so much media bombarding us and coming at us, and man, do we need a message of contending for the faith in an era, in a time like this, and man, do we need encouragement at a time like this.

As far as the book begins, it begins with a name. It begins with the name Jude, and as far as when we think about scholars trying to look at history and trying to figure out, and textual scholars trying to figure out who this Jude is, Jude is pretty consistently attributed to be, considered to be the Jude who is mentioned as the half-brother of Jesus Christ himself.

That is, obviously, Jesus being only born of Mary, the virgin birth and all of that, but that's why we would call him the half-brother. You could just call him the brother of Jesus, but Mary and Joseph's youngest son that we have record of is Jude, at least if the order in Matthew chapter 13, verse 55 is accurate, and that's an order of birth, which it often would be in that age, in that time.

Then we have James the oldest, and Jude, or Jesus, really, the oldest, but James the oldest recorded of Joseph and Mary, and then Jude being the youngest, and so the reason that we believe that that's the case is that Jude calls himself the brother of James, and the most prominent James during this era was James the brother of Jesus, who also has a book of the Bible named after him as well.

He wrote the book of James. So you have that in there, and then you also have church, the early church fathers who were those in the generation right after, like, they sat under John's teaching. So John discipled a dude, and then those dudes would be known as the church fathers, those who interacted with and knew the apostles themselves, and they testify in their writing.

So we have a bunch of things that they wrote, and they basically say, yeah, Jude, the brother of Jesus, wrote this. So they're pretty direct about that, to such a degree that scholars across a variety of different opinions and thoughts still believe that this is quite likely the brother of Jesus who wrote this.

And so a tidbit of interest about the name Jude, it was such a common name in that era, and during that time in the first century, that Jesus, think about it, he chose twelve disciples, twelve, and two of them have this identical name.

Two of them are named Jude, identified as Jude. And it might further interest you to know that in Greek, the name is actually Judas, or Judah, Judas or Judah. I can imagine why it would be maybe preferable for the early church fathers to have called him Jude instead of Judas, or maybe Jude himself didn't prefer to be called Judas after that whole betrayal thing by the other disciple.

But besides being the half-brother of James, Jude also identifies himself as the servant of Jesus Christ. Now if historians have it right, and we have the right Jude, which I'm pretty confident that we do, just by the sheer weight of testimony that this is Jude, the brother of Jesus, then this is crazy significant that he would identify himself.

Now that anybody would call themselves the servant of Jesus is a huge thing. To willingly submit to ownership by another is a pretty big deal, especially when we know the human heart. I live in a human heart.

I know what a human heart is like, and if yours is anything like mine, which I believe by the testimony of Scripture that it is, then to be owned by somebody to actually have somebody else call the shots in your life is never a comfortable thing.

It's never the desire of the human heart, you know what I want? I want somebody else to run my life. I want somebody else to tell me what to do. Well, no, that's not the case, and so we know that it's crazy significant, but even more so because not many people would be willing to call themselves the property of their actual brother, the brother that they grew up in the same household with.

Yeah, my big brother, yeah, he's my owner. I do everything he tells me to do. He tells me to jump, I say, how high, while I'm already in the air, right? Is that the way that people respond? But the word servant shows who Jude considered himself to be living for.

Who did he live for? Who did he work for? Who did he obey? And he says in this brief introduction, I work and serve the wishes of Jesus Christ. I serve him. To such a degree that the idea, the word servant there is slave, I just do what he tells me to do whenever he tells me, and when Jesus, I think Jude would say this, when Jesus says jump, I'm already in the air.

What a great reminder here at the start that will be filled in more for us later by the end of verse four. This is a good reminder for me to consider during this time of quarantine and uncertain times, and it's just to ask the question here at the start as we see Jude testify, as we are gonna see that he criticizes others for not acknowledging Jesus as master and Lord by the end of verse four, ask yourself this question.

Literally ask it. Who is my master? Who do I serve? Everyone listening to this podcast, everybody who is tuned in right now is serving someone. All of us. You are serving someone. And so the question just becomes, who will it be this week?

Whose tune are you gonna dance to this week? Who will you serve today? Who will you serve in the next hour? Jude shamelessly identifies himself as an owned man. I'm owned. And how I identify myself, Jude, the brother of James, who is a pretty big shot in the Jerusalem church, he's one of the leaders there, but really, what I want you to know.

About me, I serve Jesus.

He is my master. He is my Lord. He is my king.

He calls the shots in my life. And although this ownership, this slavery to Jesus is a metaphor, it's not like Jesus went to the slave market and bought himself a Jude. It's metaphorical, but this works itself out in his life in a moment by moment, circumstance by circumstance, quarantine by quarantine, difficulty by difficulty, struggle by struggle.

It works itself out that he would desire to do things according to Jesus Christ in any and all circumstances. Now, I just want to point out, Jude didn't always follow his brother. As a matter of fact, his brothers, the brothers of Jesus, didn't even really get it while he walked on this earth.

But many historians see a shift in his brothers, and particularly, at least what we have recorded for us, James and Jude, after the resurrection, man, they're lit on fire for God. They love him. They acknowledge Jesus as their master.

And what changed? Well, they both came on board with their faith, and faith really, at the end of the day, in their big brother, after he was raised from death. And I imagine that that might rattle us a little bit, too.

To observe and to see your brother strung out on a cross and hung up high and whipped and beaten so that he would have bled to death were he not to be crucified. And to see him in that state, and to observe him take his last breath, there's no reason to assume that they might not have been there at the foot of the cross.

We know that their mom was there to see that, and then to encounter him days later, healthy and whole, and encouraging others. So even in identifying the recipients of this letter in verse 1, Jude gives us encouragement.

He's setting out to try to encourage the church, and he's tailoring his introduction to his audience. And so, they're being challenged to disbelieve the centrality of Jesus. We're going to see that in verses 3 and 4.

Challenged to believe that Jesus is all of it, and so he introduces himself as a servant.

Of Jesus.

And then, he further is going to go on to tell us that this church that he's writing to is being enticed to live for themselves, abusing grace and adopting an anything goes attitude was what was happening in the church.

And one of the reasons he's writing this letter was to stem the tide of people living however they wanted, and abusing grace, and so Jude identifies them as the called. He identifies them as beloved in God.

And the third thing is kept for Jesus, called, loved, and kept. Called, loved, and kept. And these are three powerful modifiers over us, church. Three powerful things that I think God wants to speak into our lives during this time of quarantine, during this time of distancing, during this time of isolation.

Who are we? We get a lot of time to spend with ourselves or with our families or, you know, pulling our hair out in chaos. Maybe you're an introvert and you're stuck with a bunch of extroverts, or you're an extrovert stuck with a bunch of introverts, or you're an extrovert stuck by yourself.

I don't know what it is, but here are three things that God wants to speak into your life through the word today. The first is called. What am I?

What are you?

If you're in Christ, if you are a part of the church, and I don't mean a member of Recast, I mean if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your master and your Lord and you're all in with him and you've asked him to save you, called.

This is a powerful word spoken over your life. God's voice has gone out, called to bring us together. But be careful to avoid leaving this call too general. You see, he doesn't say all are called. He says the church are the called.

Some want to say that everyone is called in identically the same way globally. Well, certainly the message goes out and the message can be, you know, in Romans 1, the message can be clearly seen by the things that are created around us so that no one is without excuse.

His voice is speaking through the created order in a general way to all calling them. Come and look at me. Come and see me. Come and dig into my word so that you can know me better. So that you can come to realize I have loved you and I have made a way for you.

So in that sense, there's that kind of calling, but the church is defined as called because God has assembled us with his voice. To get too deep into the theology here at this one word might run the risk of ruining the purpose for which it was written, which is encouragement.

So let's rest for now on the reality that we are those who are called to assembly. We are called to the gathering, called to the worship of our great and glorious God. And that's a good definition of the word, the Greek word ekklesia, which is where, wherever you see the word church in the New Testament, it's that word ekklesia, which is a Greek word that means the called out gathering of God's people.

We are those that God has called out from among all the nations, among all the people of the world to gather together for his worship, for his glory, for his honor. So what are we?

What are we, church?

We are the called, those who have been called out. And what have we been called to? Well, we've been called to something, not just called out from the world, not just carved out and rescued, but then called into love in the Father, beloved.

You are called and you are loved, church. We are beloved in God the Father. The realm of love is the eternal Father himself. That's why we're beloved in God the Father. The place of our love is with and in God.

And as those who have been called out from the world into the realm of the Father, we are recipients of his love, his favor shining upon us. Another way to think of love is a goodwill, and for God, that is an eternal goodwill that comes from him to his called out people.

A glorious reality, and COVID -19, this novel coronavirus, does not change this. It does not change the love of God in your life.

Think about it.

I'm gonna ask you a question, and it's a question you can answer quickly right now.

Where do you live?

Where do you reside right now? Where are you abiding right now? You might say trapped in my home, trapped in my apartment, trapped with my family, trapped away from my friends, trapped away from my family.

I don't know what it is for you. Going back and forth to my essential employment, stuck without employment. What is your reality? Where are you abiding? Where are you living? Because if you are a follower of Christ, and you are all in for the worship of God, and you're in the kingdom of God, then in an ultimate sense, I want to remind you, and I want you to remind yourself that you live in the kingdom of God the Father.

Abide in him. Live in him. Lean into him, and you will abide in his love if you live in him. The church is made up of those people who abide in his love, because our ultimate home.

Is with him.

Not some pie in the sky, and a sweet bye-bye, not after this life, well then I'll be with.

Him.

He's available to you now, church.

Lean into him. Lean into his love.

Our home is not where we lay our head on our pillow. Our home is with God. So we're called, we're beloved, and lastly, church, we are kept.

Kept preserved.

We are preserved for Jesus Christ. This theme's going to be picked up at the very end of the letter in verse 24, where we're reminded that he's able to keep you from stumbling. That word keep is the same word that we see here for kept.

So we are kept now, and he is able to keep you from stumbling. God has not saved us so that we can now do whatever we want. Instead, we've been called out from the world into the love of God the Father, so that we can be kept in sanctification for the glory of Jesus Christ.

That he might be lifted high, that he might be elevated, called, loved, and kept. Are you letting those three words define you? I hope that you can see the powerful implications for the way that this truth should impact the way that we're processing this time of crisis around us.

I hope, church, that you're able to step up and lean into the things that God says and declares are true of his church. We are called out of wrath under the tyranny of our sins into the love of God through the salvation of Jesus Christ, and our hope for future grace comes from his ability to hold on to us.

Not our ability to hold on to him. Not our ability to cling tightly. Not our obedience and our ability to do everything, cross every T and dot every I. No, if it depends on that, we will fail. We will not have a righteousness of our own, but a righteousness given to us by God in Christ, kept and held by our Father.

Through whatever dark valleys may come, even, yes, the valley of the shadow of death, whatever comes our way, kept by the love of our Father, as his called out people in, beloved in God.

The Father.

Contend for the Faith Once for All Delivered

So now that he's identified his audience, that's the identification, that's Jude telling us who he's writing to, us, called, beloved, kept, the church. He's identified his audience, and he wishes upon the called, the beloved, and the kept, he wishes for them to experience three things, and he wants these things multiplied, not just added to their life, but multiplied, growing, increasing, abundantly, exponentially increasing in our lives.

And I wish these same three things for all of us, Recast. These are three things that I want for the people of God here in our community. The first is mercy to you, Recast. May God's exceptional faithfulness, I think that's a good definition of his mercy, his exceptional grace, exceptional faithfulness poured out on all of you, that you would not receive what you deserve, but you would receive rather instead an abundance of his forgiveness, an abundance of his righteousness poured out on you.

The second thing, not just merely mercy, but peace, Recast, peace be to you. May you find in your life an increasing shalom, even as things around us are in chaos, and there's uncertainty, and there's fear swirling around us, and the internet is just full of junk and crud and falsehood, and fear mongering, or conspiracy theory, or whatever it might be, but may your life increase in shalom, and shalom is not the absence of war.

Now that dumbs it down a lot. Shalom is a rightly ordered life in relationships. So like this kind of shalom, may your relationship to the earth, Recast, may your relationship to each other, may your relationship to God be rightly ordered in this time of fear and.

Uncertainty.

And lastly, love. May you lean into and grow into and increase in the agape love of God, agape being the Greek word that means the unconditional, unearned love of God. God's unearned favor and kindness is ours in Jesus Christ's church.

May it be multiplied to you in this crisis, even as Jude is calling down an increasing measure on a church in crisis in the first century. They're in crisis, and we're in crisis.

The crisis is different.

The crisis is not a virus, but it came in like a virus. It was unseen. But before we go on to describe the virus in verse four, let's first follow the flow which shows us how desperate this crisis was in the early church.

You see, Jude has encouraged the church. He's spoken truth over them. He's spoken blessing to them. He's wished on them really good things like mercy and peace and love. He wants good. But now we find out that he had a plan to write a letter to the churches.

He planned to encourage them. And by the way, the likely context of the churches that Jude was writing to, some scholars would tend to lean towards him writing to Jewish background churches in the area of Israel, modern day Israel.

But regardless of where the actual location, geographical location of the churches that really he was ministering to, that Jude was ministering to, he was hoping to write to them about the gospel and their common salvation.

He says, you know what, what I really wanted to do is I wanted to sit down with my pen in hand and with some parchment, and I wanted to write out just some encouraging unity type stuff about the gospel.

I wanted to really zero in on Jesus' righteousness given to us, his blood shed for us that brings us into unity together, and that common bond that we have, the common, he says, common salvation. Not common as in average, not common as in normal, common as in together.

He's not together with them, much like I'm not together with you, and so I would love to just sit down and talk with you about our common salvation, and don't forget that we're together, don't forget that we're united in Jesus, and he says, I wanted to sit down and I wanted to write you a letter like that.

He was probably hoping to write an encouraging and educational letter about unity and the salvation we have through the cross of Jesus Christ. That's what he sat down to do, and he says, I was very eager to do so.

I was enthusiastic about that type of letter, but, he says, now instead he has received some information that changed the plans before he had a chance to put the pen to paper. He says, changing plans, and he is now writing this letter with a very different purpose.

He found it necessary, he said, I found it necessary, in verse three, to appeal to you church to contend for the faith, to fight for the faith, to war for the faith, to battle for belief. Imagine a commander writing to the front lines telling them, I was hoping to write a letter of commendation, I was hoping to send you a letter and identify who to commend and this unifying thing, and we were gonna have a celebration and a party and we were gonna talk about the truth and we were gonna have a pinning ceremony for those who get promotions and everything was gonna be exciting.

We were gonna do a little bit of training, it was gonna be great, and instead, I now find it necessary to write marching orders. Instead of a peacetime message, church, what I have for you is a wartime message, he says.

And the word contend is a word commonly used in the Greek language outside of the Bible to designate, so we have words that occur in the Bible and we can compare those and look at the way, but then there's a whole body of ancient Greek writings that we have access to, and this word is used commonly in there, the word contend, and it's used in sports, sports, sporting competitions with a winner and a loser, things that we're missing out on right now.

Some of you are super sad and it's almost kind of like losing your blankie to not have sports to watch on TV, but even this is a good season for some of us to focus on other things, but he wants them to go to battle for the faith that has been clearly laid out to the church and he wants them to contend for it, to fight for it, to battle for it, much like a competition on the gridiron or basketball, greats out on the court.

The faith here in context is the body of central truths that have been clearly delivered to the church, that is the saints, when he says saints think the born again believers, the ones who actually have new life in Jesus Christ, and he says there has been a body of truth, I'm going to call it the faith, and it's a body of doctrines, a body of belief, a central core of the Christian life that has come clearly to the church through the teachings and writings of the apostles.