Jude 1b

Well, we're in week two, and we're still in verse one. How about that?

Last week we learned two truths from verse one, for the half of verse one. And the first was that Jude is a book that is very similar to our time period today.

And it's a very important book for us because the same problems that we face in today's world, the same issues that we face in the church, the same remedy that Jude argues for exists for us today.

The remedy that Jude describes in the book is that we hold fast to the word of God, that it's in clinging to the truth that we have defense from all of the things that are happening around us.

And Jude begins his book with the truth about who we are. He starts with himself in verse one,

A, if you remember. He told us who he is. He's Jude, he's the brother of Jesus. He's the one who at one point abandoned him and mocked him and turned away from him, but yet he's the one who bowed down and worshiped him as well.

And while we're not the biological brother or sister of Jesus, we can identify with Jude's story, we can identify that at some points in our life we've abandoned

Christ and that we've mocked him or we've turned from him, or our lives have not been submitted to Christ.

But also like Jude, that's not the end of our story. For all who are in Christ have been ransomed by Christ, have been bought into relationship with him.

He purchased us as slaves. And as we learned last week, a slave is not something of no status.

Of course, as a slave, you have no status in and of yourself, but you have a shared status.

You have an alien status. You have a status of who you belong to because it is not who we are, it's whose we are.

That's what we learned last week. Because we are Jesus Christ, because we are his possession, we have his status, we have his worth, we have everything.

So that's what we learned last week. Today, I want us to focus on four things. First, I want us to do a little bit deeper dive into the book.

Last week we looked at what led to the writing of the book, but this week I want us to actually look at the book itself a little deeper.

And then when we're finished with that, I want us to look at three points that Jude lays out for us, and he does it quite nicely.

Jude loves the number three. He tells us that we are called, that we are beloved by God the

Father, and we are kept for Jesus Christ. So we're gonna look at each one of those three things, and we're gonna find out what that means for us as the people of God.

So, a little background on the book. The book, like we said last week, I believe was written in the mid -50s to 60s, which means that persecution was on the rise.

Jude lives in a world that was completely hostile to God, and it was coming on multiple different fronts.

We believe that Jude wrote the book from Judea, that's Israel, so he would have been persecuted.

He would have felt the reality of persecution from three different fronts, as it were. Imagine an island that's being attacked on three sides.

You would have had the Romans, who hated Christians because of one very simple reason. Christians worship

Jesus Christ as Lord. Rome didn't care at all if you worshiped a billion gods. It didn't matter to them.

They just cared that Caesar was Lord, that Caesar was number one in your life. And because Christians said we can't worship anyone but Jesus Christ alone,

Romans actually accused Christians of being atheists, because they couldn't believe that you would never acknowledge

Caesar as Lord, so therefore they must be atheists. How could they believe in this peasant messianic king from Nazareth?

Now, this is a little background information. We don't find this in Jude, but the Romans would sometimes give exceptions to this rule, and they gave exceptions to the

Jewish people, where the Jews did not have to follow emperor worship. The Jews were an obstinate people.

They were a very pesky people to the Romans. So the Romans felt, from a geopolitical standpoint, it was easier to just say, okay,

Jews, you win, you don't have to worship Caesar as Lord, just don't cause any problems, because as soon as you tell them they have to worship

Caesar as Lord, they'll rebel, and then Rome has to send their armies, and they have to spend a lot of money on war.

So the Romans extended that to the Jews, but they did not extend that to Christians. That freedom to not worship

Caesar as Lord was not given to early Christians. They were seen as a sect, as a heretical offshoot, and they were persecuted.

Jews would turn them in to the Romans at will, and they would mercilessly punish them or kill them.

Now, that's kind of the backdrop of the Roman persecution. In a few years, Rome's gonna come in and burn the city of Jerusalem to the ground.

It's gonna scatter the church, and God's gonna use that event to spread the gospel all over the

Roman world, because persecution often spreads the gospel. It's not the worst thing in the world, because God uses the pain and uses the persecution to spread his church, but I just say all of that to say that they were experiencing persecution at this time.

Christians were also being directly persecuted by the Jews. This is the second front of persecution.

The Jews themselves were persecuting them because they could not believe that they would worship Jesus as God.

They knew that God is one, that he's one God. He's not a triune God. So the Romans thought that they were atheists.

The Jews thought that they were heretics, and we see in the early stages of the book of Acts that Paul is persecuting them, the apostle

Paul, who later would be a great advocate for the Christian faith. He's persecuting them. He's enslaving them in jail.

He's signing off on their murder, and we know that Paul wasn't the only one. This was a culture of death that was happening in early

Judaism against Christianity, so we see that these two fronts are really opposed to the church, and that's the context that Jude is writing in, but to Jude, there was an even greater threat to the church.

There was an even greater sort of attack that was happening, more so than the Romans, more so than the

Jews, and that was the infiltration of wolves into the flock of God. Jude believes that this has the potential to undo the church, not persecution by the

Romans, not persecution by the Jews. It's the infiltration of wolves that Jude is most concerned about, and what

I want us to do is I want us to take a moment and just look at the book of Jude in whole. I wanted to do this last week, but I didn't have my four beautiful bookmarks to be able to do that, so this week, we're gonna read the book of Jude, and we're gonna talk a little bit about the context for which

Jude is writing. It says in Jude 1, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God, the

Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

Now, beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation,

I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints.

So right off the bat, Jude is saying, I wanted to write you a happier letter. I wanted to write you a theological treatise about what salvation is and what it means that we're saved.

He wanted to write that book, but that's not the book that he wrote, because as we'll see in verse four, problems are creeping into the church.

Verse four, it says, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of God into licentiousness, that just means they use a license to sin, and they deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.

So what is happening is in the earliest parts of the church, people are coming in and they're preaching a different gospel.

They're preaching a gospel that doesn't involve Jesus Christ. They're saying that you can do whatever you want, you can sin however you want, and God's grace will just somehow cover that, and what

Jude is gonna tell us is that they're not Christians. They're not saved. It says, now,

I desire to remind you, though you know all things, once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

So Jude is saying that those who are wolves in the church, their destination is destruction. He says, and angels who did not keep their own domain, he's talking about fallen angels, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

So he's comparing false teachers and their destiny and their judgment with the judgment of the fallen angels.

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, after exhibiting as an example and undergoing the punishment of eternal fire, yet in the same way, these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh and they reject authority and they revile angelic majesties.

But Michael, the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, we'll talk about this passage.

This is an apocryphal passage Jude is quoting. We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks. It might seem strange to you.

It's not in your current Bible. So I just point that out. Did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, the

Lord rebuke you. But these men revile the things which they do not understand. So they revile

God because they don't understand God. They don't understand him and his character. And the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam and have perished in the rebellion of Korah.

The picture that we see painted here is that these false teachers have come in and they're not welcome. They're not following after the

Lord. They're not regenerate. They're not saved and they are destined for destruction. And it says, in the last time, skipping down out of verse 18, the last time there will be mockers following after their own ungodly lust.

And these are the ones who cause division, who are worldly minded and who are devoid of the spirit.

So what Jude is saying in this book is that there's a greater threat than Rome. There's a greater threat than the

Jews. There's a greater threat than the outward persecution. And that's the infiltration of false doctrine and wolves into the true church of God.

And it will rip apart the true church. And if you don't believe it, history will bear this out. Every time that a church departs from the truth of the word of God, it is not long before they are completely dead.

Because truth is what Jude is telling us to contend for. Actually, the thesis of the entire book is verse three.

After Jude's greeting, he says, beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation,

I felt the necessity to appeal to you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints.

So what Jude is saying is that at the center of all of this, that we are supposed to contend for the truth, for the beautiful mysteries of salvation.

We're supposed to contend for the truth that is revealed in God's scripture because the church is and always will be vulnerable to attack.

That's a reality. As long as the enemy still exists, who steals, kills, and destroys, and as long as he is a roaring lion who seeks to devour those whom he may devour, the church is vulnerable to attack because the church holds fast to the word of God.

But here's the thing. We are not defenseless. We are not defenseless against the attacks and the schemes of the enemy because Jude says that we can contend for truth.

That is our defense. Every single attack, every attack that has ever come upon the church or come upon God is an attack on truth.

Look at the scriptures. He starts with Eve. Did God really say? He's attacking truth.

He's attacking the word of God. Did God really say? He comes to Jesus when he's in the wilderness and he tests him three different times.

You'll notice he tests him out of Deuteronomy. He tests him out of the book of Numbers. Satan is trying to twist the word of God.

That is his MO. He comes to modern denominations in the same way and says, is really scripture the word of God?

Can you really trust this book? Is it really infallible? Is it really inerrant? Is it really sufficient?

And history, again, will bear this out that Satan begins to win in a culture when he starts perverting truth.

But the church is victorious when she clings to it. That's the point Jude is making.

That we're to hold fast to the word of God and that is the weapon that we wield against all of the schemes and attacks of the enemy.

Truth is important. We live in a culture where it's okay to be a

Christian but it's not okay to have good doctrine. Why do we need to worry about doctrine? But I tell you, doctrine is disproportionately important because Jude is saying that these men who have false doctrine aren't even

Christians. Knowing our Bible and knowing what it says, doctrine is disproportionately important.

We can't just say because it's hard to study the Bible or it's hard to understand it that it's not important.

That would be like a soldier saying it's hard to work out and exercise, therefore I'm gonna let my body go and when

I go out on the battlefield, I'm totally ill -equipped for the battle and probably gonna die.

Knowing the Bible is important. Knowing what doctrine is is important. And of course, there's all kinds of doctrine.

There's good doctrines, biblical doctrine. There's false doctrine. So we have to be discerning. But to not have a robust view of who

God is in the scriptures is to invite satanic attack in your life. It's to be ill -equipped and prepared for the battle that rages on every single day.

Jude's saying that savage wolves are gonna come. They're gonna come into the church. He's saying that by opposition or by our opposition that we're vulnerable to attack but the truth of God is our defense.

The truth of God is our defense. It's our individual defense.

It's our defense as a church. And we're called to contend for the truth by clinging to it.

Now today, I want us to look at the most magnificent truths. Some of them, the most magnificent truths you can find in the entire

Bible. These three little statements that Jude tells us that we are called and that we are beloved and that we are kept.

That truth, when we really understand what it means, will help us be able to face anything.

There's nothing the world can throw at us if you know you're called. There's nothing the world can throw at you if you know you're loved. There's nothing the world can throw at you if you know that you're being kept and preserved by Jesus, for Jesus, for all eternity.

So I want us to lean into the truth so that we can cling to it so that the wolves and so that the problems and so that all the things that society and Satan himself can throw at us won't shake us.

I want us to understand the truth. So we're gonna start in Jude 1. We're gonna finish in Jude 1, which is a really great accomplishment.

Jude, a slave of Christ and the brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God the

Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Now notice he says the called. Jude is talking to believers and the context of the book bears this out.

He's talking to a remnant of believers who have faith in Jesus Christ. He's not writing to every single member of this church.

He's not writing to every single person who's heard the gospel because, remember he said, wolves have crept in.

So he's not talking to them. They're not the called. They're not the ones who are loved by God. They're not the ones who are being kept.

He's talking to the Christians here. And I think it's important for us to acknowledge right away that there's tens of thousands of churches in America that are gonna be meeting this weekend and not every single person who's there has sincere faith.

Not every single person. Billy Graham even said that he would be surprised if more than 50 % of people who attend church have sincere faith in Christ.

Now I don't know if that's true or not. That's Billy Graham. Maybe he was wrong. But 50 % seems hard.

But the point is is that the church is not pure. The church has all kinds of people who come and not all of them have saving faith.

There's wolves. I think it would be easy for us even as a church to say, this can't apply to us.

We're brand new. We're so biblical -centered. We love the

Bible so much. We sing songs about the Bible. We read 14 chapters of the Bible per week in our services.

It clearly can't be about us. But Jude says they crept in unnoticed. Jude said no one know.

I was reflecting on this today. It is entirely possible that if not already at some point in our season as a church, whatever the

Lord gives us, a wolf will creep in. Someone, maybe even today, might not have sincere faith in Christ, may be used by the enemy as a wolf.

I don't believe that. I don't think that. But it says they crept in unnoticed. This is serious.

We have to examine ourselves. We have to make sure that we're in the faith so that these truths that we're gonna talk about today apply to us.

Jude's effectively splitting his congregation into two parts. He's talking to the elect. He's talking to the faithful.

He's talking to the ones who are saved. And he's talking to those who are marked out for destruction. He's talking to the called.

And he's talking to those who are under condemnation. That's the two groups that Jude is talking to.

And on the surface, it's probably difficult to understand or ascertain which group a person falls into because on the surface, they all go to church.

Jude doesn't accuse them of missing church services. He doesn't accuse them of being tardy or being late.

No, I think they're there and they're participating. So they're all going to the same church. They're all singing the same songs.

They're all listening to the same sermons. But yet there's something different about them. One is called and one is not.

And that's what I want us to explore. What does it mean to be called by God? That's what Jude says, that we are called.

What does that mean? Well, there's three ways the Bible talks about calling that I want us to understand.

I'm gonna hit two of them a little bit more than the third, but I'll start with the one that I'm not gonna spend much time on.

And we talked about it in the Belgic Confession today. You can go outside and you can look at the sky.

You can look at the plants. You can look at things in a microscope. You can look at things in a telescope.

And you can tell that we are not here by accident. We were created by God. And there's this generic call that goes out to all human beings on the planet that everyone is without excuse.

That calling will not save, it will only condemn. Because if we reject the

God who created everything, we are under condemnation. The second call is a universal call.

It's an external call. It's the gospel call. It's the call for Christians to go out into the world and to preach the gospel to all people, to all nations, to every tribe, tongue, and people.

That call can be rejected. That call, you can hear the gospel and you can say, I don't want it.

And then there's a third. The Bible talks about a call that cannot be rejected. The Bible talks about a call that you cannot turn away from.

The Bible talks about a call that we would call efficacious. It means it's effective. That means that it does what it says it's going to do.

There's two calls that condemn, but there's one call that utterly saves. And I want us to spend our time talking about that.

Because this is important to understand why Jude can say, you being called gives you hope. Being called doesn't give you hope if you just raise your hand and say, yeah,

I'd like a savior who takes me to heaven, and then I go do whatever I want. That's not the hope that we have. There's a deeper hope that if we understand this word call that we'll understand what it means and why we can have hope.

Now, I'll start with the universal gospel call. That's the call that should go out to all people to repent and turn to Christ.

That's our job as Christians to go out and preach the gospel. And again, some will reject that and some will accept it.

But then there's this internal effectual call. Remember, effectual means effective.

While the universal call goes out to all people, there's also a calling that goes out to just believers. Notice that Jude calls these people the called.

He doesn't say that you're potentially called. He doesn't say that you made a decision. He says, no, as a status, you are the called.

They're the ones who not only heard the gospel, but they responded to the gospel, and there's a difference in their calling.

And it's my contention that as we understand this, we'll understand what Jude is saying. Now, Romans 3 .12,

let's start there. The gospel is preached to all people. It says in Romans 3 .12, there's none righteous, not even one.

There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. All have turned aside and together have become useless.

There's none who does good, not even one. So what Paul is saying right off the bat is man in his natural state can't turn to God.

He can't repent. He's not righteous. Turning to Christ would be an act of righteousness, but yet Paul says there's none that are righteous.

Turning to Christ would demonstrate that they have spiritual understanding. Paul says they have none. Turning to Christ would mean that they're seeking after God.

Paul says no one does that, so we have a problem. It's an impossibility to turn to God in our natural state.

It's an impossibility to turn to God on our own human effort. Sin has done something so profound to the fabric of humanity that we can't even seek

God. Even if the gospel is preached, we can't understand it. We cannot turn to it.

It's almost like a corpse lying in a coffin. But you can go up to it and say repent, believe, and turn to Christ, and it's falling on dead ears, literally.

Natural man in his natural state is dead. That's what Paul's getting at. Ephesians 2 says the same thing. Don't feel the need to turn with me to every one of these verses.

I'm gonna post this on social media so you'll have all of the references. We're gonna do a tour of the Bible for just a moment, so we'll be here for just a moment.

Don't wear your fingers out. Ephesians 2, one through three says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

The Princess Bride, great movie. We're not mostly dead, we're all dead in our sins,

Miracle Max would tell us, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince and the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Don't miss what he's saying there. We are dead in our trespasses and the only life that we have as non -believers is the spirit of Satan himself that's coursing through us.

The spirit of disobedience. So we're not only dead, we're animated by him, by Satan.

That's the spirit that is working in the sons of disobedience. And it says that we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of our flesh and of our mind and we were by nature children of wrath.

Without Christ, we're incapable of leaving our fleshly life, our worldly pursuits. We cannot indulge in godly desires.

We're incapable of responding to the call of the gospel. We're incapable of repentance and we're only able to refuse

God. This is what Paul is saying. And this is not an isolated verse. This is kind of all throughout the

New Testament. And I want to point out, if we left it here, no one would be saved. No one would be saved because we are all dead in our trespasses and we cannot turn to Christ on our own.

But Paul doesn't stop there. Paul goes on to verses four through nine and what he does there is he differentiates between the two calls that I've been describing.

The gospel is preached and the Christian who turns to Christ because God has called him from death to life.

He differentiates these two in verses four through nine. Let's look at what he says. He says, but God, there's so much power in the word but sometimes and just, it's a turn.

You are dead in your trespasses. You are, but God, you were dead. You were falling after your own sinful lust, but look at what

God did. God being rich in mercy because of his great love, which he loved us with, even when we were dead and our transgressions made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved. And he raised us up with him and he seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourself. It's the gift of God, not as a result of work so that no one can boast.

Look at what he's saying here. He's saying, but God who is rich in mercy made us alive.

He didn't say responded to our request to petition for life. He said that we were dead lying in a coffin and he made us alive.

It says that he raised us up with him. He doesn't say that we raised our gaze up to him.

He says he raised us up, that he seated us with him. The only person working in this verse is

God. God is the one who is moving. God is the one who is working. He's the author of salvation.

And this has massive implications because what it means is that when we finally repent and when we turn to God, it means that before we could do that God has first turned to us.

And God has awakened us and brought us to life because dead people can't do anything. What it means is that God had to make us alive before we could even choose him.

God must work against our sinful human wills in order to save us. God must work in spite of our spiritual death in order to make us alive.

God works against our rebellious nature to overwhelm us. He stood over our rotting spiritual corpses.

This is me being poetic. Derek makes fun of me for this, so forgive me. He stood over our rotting spiritual corpses that were lying on a gurney bound toward hell and he resurrected us.

That's what happened. He went to the morgue and he brought us back to life. That's what Jesus has done.

Without his work on us, there is no faith by us. Without Jesus's work in us and on us, there is no faith by us.

And what it means is his work is always effective. It's like an ER doctor when someone comes in after drinking and driving and they get into a major accident, their heart is stopped, they're lying on the table.

If the ER doctor doesn't shock them back to life, they're dead. And without God shocking us back to life with the power of the gospel, we are dead.

The gospel being preached may be rejected by many, but no one who

God determines to raise to life stays dead. No one God decides to awaken remains asleep.

That's what it means for him to have an effectual call. It's effective, it's always effective. He always saves who he intends to save.

Why? Because our souls were dead so that we could not choose

Christ. He did that so that we could respond to him. There's many verses in the Bible that say turn to Christ.

There's many verses in the Bible that say choose Christ. There's many verses in the Bible that say respond to him, love him, turn to him, but the point that I'm making is there's something that happens before that.

Before you can choose Christ, he has to awaken you. Before you can choose Christ, he has to bring you to life. It's almost like you wake up still lying in the coffin that has your name on it, and the first thing that you see is

Jesus Christ standing over you, loving you, calling you to himself, and in the beauty of his gaze, you say yes, yes.

Yes, I accept you. You wouldn't have done that if he didn't bring you back to life. You would have been dead.

It's in his work that we see him. It's in his moving that we respond to him.

That has to happen first, and it says in Ephesians that he does this because he's gracious, and he does this because he's loving.

He does this because he alone is powerful enough to resurrect us. He does this, ultimately, there's something bigger happening more than just God loves you and me, and he does, and we celebrate that.

There's something larger that's happening. He does it for the surpassing riches of his glory.

God saves us so that his glory will ring to the ends of the cosmos and further. His glory is why he saves.

He does it for his namesake so that we could never boast, so that we could never think that, ah,

I saved myself, and this is where I would disagree with some who say that I chose

God because when you say that, what you're implicitly saying is that I was a little bit more spiritual than my neighbor.

I was a little bit more intelligent than my brother. I had something in me that told me I needed

God, and I needed to choose him, and you're sharing the glory with God when you do that, and God says,

I will not share my glory with another. What we need to say is that I was made alive in Christ so that all

I could choose was Christ, not in my sin, I chose Christ, and God responded to me.

God worked on me, and I responded to him. That's what the Bible's saying, not that we reached our hands up to God and said,

God, come down and save me. God came down and saved us so that we would reach our hands up to him. That's what we're talking about, and I wanna show you this in Matthew 22.

Beautiful parable, and again, it differentiates the call of gospel being preached and God effectually calling.

I want us to see this. Jesus says to a group of people, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come.

So what Jesus is saying metaphorically here is that one day, he's gonna throw a feast. It's called the wedding feast of Christ.

The marriage supper of the lamb. It's in Revelation, and only the people who have been invited are going to come, and while we are here on earth, we are to tell people the gospel.

That's what he says. He sent out his slaves. We're Jesus' slaves. Let's move on. Again, he sent out other slaves saying, tell those who have been invited.

Behold, I have prepared my dinner and my oxen and my fat and livestock, and they're all butchered and everything is ready.

Come to the wedding feast, but they paid no attention to him. And they went their own way.

No, or one to his own farm, and another to his business, and the rest seized his slave, and they mistreated them, and they killed them.

But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies, and he destroyed those murderers, and he set their city on fire.

And then he said to the slaves, the wedding's ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go, therefore, to the highways, and as many as you find there, invite them to the wedding feast.

Those slaves went out into the streets, and they gathered together everyone that they found both evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

But when the king came in, this is dramatic, what's happening here. When the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man who was there who was not dressed in wedding clothes.

And he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes? And the man was speechless. And the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are called by the gospel, but only few are chosen.

Many are called, but only few are chosen. What Jesus is saying is there's three groups of people in this passage.

There's the Jews who came and murdered Jesus, who killed his son. They rejected him over and over and over again.

And then there's this one man who kind of represents all who come in improperly.

They receive the call of the gospel, but they're not truly saved. And they come into the service, and maybe they do it for moralism.

Maybe they do it for relationships. Maybe they come to church for any other reason other than Jesus Christ. And Jesus says that they're imposters to the faith, that they're not truly in the faith.

And as a result, they're cast out. But there's a final group, and that's the group who've been chosen by God.

And this is right here in the text. Many are called, but few are chosen. And I think distinguishing between these two, understanding that the gospel is preached to many.

Some will reject it. The ones who accept it, though, the ones who come to true faith in Christ are the ones who've been chosen.

And I think this is important for us to understand because it's gonna make a lot of sense in a moment when we see what

Jude is saying. But I also understand that this truth has fallen on some hard times in the church.

There's lots of people who maybe have heard terms like Calvinism and Arminianism. I don't wanna deal with those terms today.

Those are human terms. Those are eras of time that representative of people who believe certain things.

I want us to press in and see what the Bible says. I want us to see what God has to say, and if we don't like it,

I pray that we would wrestle with it. And if we don't love what it's saying, I pray that we would ask

God to help us with it. There have been many men who've wrestled with the truths that we're gonna talk about today who almost gave up their faith because they could not conceive of how this was possible.

One of my favorite men of all time, R .C. Sproul, threw his Bible across the room when he thought, how could God be the one who chooses us?

Jonathan Edwards, another one of my favorite men, he's long been gone, he said that this was the thing that almost caused him to leave being a

Christian. It's biblical, but it's hard, and I wanna treat it with sensitivity, but I want us not to talk about theories.

I want us to talk about what the Bible says. So in Jude, we start off, the importance of this, it starts off with a grammatical argument.

Forgive me, I'm gonna be a nerd for a second. This word is an adjective, and it describes the status of who we are.

It doesn't describe the action of what we do. We don't respond to God and become called, we are called, it's a status, it's an adjective.

Beloved in the passage, and kept are participles, and you're like, why does this matter?

I took English a long time ago, I don't need to know about what participles do. It is important, because these three terms are not on the same status.

We are called, and the participle shows us the consequence. It would be like me telling you that I had a disease called cancer, hair loss, and fatigue, and then you would say to me, you have cancer.

The hair loss is the result of that. The fatigue is the result of that. Jude is saying, you are called.

The result of that call is that you're loved by God. The result of that call is that you're kept safe for Christ.

So Jude is prioritizing called. He's saying that it's important for us to understand.

This is why I'm taking quite a bit of time on this word, because Jude takes time offsetting it grammatically.

In Greek, word order matters, but it doesn't matter. He puts it as the very last word in the verse.

If you tried to read this in an interlinear Bible, where you're reading word for word, it would make no sense.

It would be like Jude threw all of his words in a paper bag with scrabble chips, and he just shook it up, and he threw it out on the table, and it's like, here you go.

In Greek, you can do that. You can put a word at the end of a sentence to emphasize its importance.

So he's not only grammatically made it the most important word in this sentence, he's also structurally made it the most important word in this sentence, which is why

I think we should make it the most important word for us to consider today. So I wanna do a little bit more work on this.

I wanna show a little bit more about what calling actually means, and we're gonna look at two things. God is the only one who can call.

That's point one, and point two is that we are called according to his plan, and it's an eternal plan, and it's a plan that's been working out since the foundations of the world.

So that's the two things we're gonna go into. God is the one who calls. In John 6, 44, it says, no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. No one, in Greek, it's a very technical word.

It means no one. That was funny. I thought that was funny.

No one means no one. No one can come unless God himself draws them. It doesn't mean some.

It means no one. No one can come, and this showcases the fact that we cannot turn to Christ unless God has first drawn us.

No one turns to him in faith. No one cries out for repentance unless God does the work. Our seeking

God doesn't save us. It's God seeking us that awakens us to salvation.

That's what John is saying. 1 Thessalonians 2, 19 says, for you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaim to you the gospel of God.

So they're proclaiming with a lot of effort the gospel. They're preaching probably day and night. You are witnesses, and so is

God. How devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved towards you believers, just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging you and imploring each of you as a father would his own children so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the

God who calls you into his kingdom. What Paul is saying is they preached the gospel, and they preached it fiercely, and they preached it often to the

Thessalonians, and they preached it with all their might and with all their power, but it was God who called. Notice the difference.

They preached the gospel, but it was God who called them into his kingdom. Do you see the difference? They responded to the gospel because God extended his call.

Their preaching didn't have any power whatsoever until God awakened their hearts. Without God's effectual call, they could not have responded to the gospel.

1 Thessalonians 5, 24. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ, and look what he says then. Faithful is the one who calls you, and he is going to bring it to pass, meaning that our entire sanctification is dependent upon God, meaning that our soul and our body being preserved is dependent upon God, meaning that the even fact that we turn to him is dependent upon God.

God is the one who is faithful. Scripture says earlier in Old Testament, even though every man is a liar,

God's the one who's faithful, and it will come to pass. There is not a single person that God intended to save that is not saved.

I think about this from a baseball analogy. Ted Williams was probably one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

He hit 400 in a season, which is unbelievable. So that means four out of 10 times he hit the ball into playable, or into where he could get on base.

Four out of 10. Jesus is a billion out of a billion. He never fails to save those who are his.

Ted Williams is nothing. He's a no one in comparison. Four out of 10.

Going to church won't keep us in the faith. Our listening to sermons won't keep us.

Only the effectual call of God on our life will preserve us so that we will not be lost.

You could throw an Olympic swimmer into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and they will make it further than you and I, but they will not make it to shore.

John Bunyan, I was reading, sorry, I was listening to a book while I was painting a house this week.

It's a really good book, by the way. He says that we hang over the flames of hell by a single thread, and it's either a thread by which we have spun, or it's a thread soaked in the blood of Jesus Christ that will not ever break.

Only our faithful God can save and rescue us. That's the point. Our own human effort can't do anything.

First Peter 1 .15 says, be holy, or be like the holy one who called you.

God is the one who calls. First Peter 2 .9 says, but you are a chosen race. You've been chosen.

A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

We didn't call ourselves out of darkness. He called us. First Peter 5 .10, after you suffered for a little while, the

God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself protect you, confirm you, strengthen you, and establish you.

It's God who calls, it's God who sanctifies, it's God who glorifies. God is in control of every aspect of our salvation.

Second Peter 1 .4 says, to those who've received faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our

God and Savior Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our

Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of God who called us by his own glory and excellence.

So it's God, again, who calls us. For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world.

I think the picture's becoming clear. God is the first one who calls. We call out to God after God has called out to us.

God has to awaken the death inside of our soul in order for us to respond to him. Every one of these verses is pointing out

God is the one who calls, and we can go through 100 different verses that say we have to choose

Christ, we have to turn to Christ God, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Yes, but God must awaken us to be able to see it.

God must awaken us to be able to know it. He must awaken us to be able to love it because by nature we're haters of God.

By nature we're revilers of God, and we need God to do the first work in us in order for us to turn to him.

All throughout the New Testament we see this in shadows of the Old Testament. He's not waiting on us to understand who we are.

He comes to us to reveal who he is. Without God making the first move we would not see him.

So that's point one. God is the one who calls. The second point is that the call of God, the effectual call of God, the always effective call of God is a part of his eternal plan.

It's a part of his plan that he's been working since the foundations of the world. Jude says we're called.

The Bible teaches us that that plan's been working out for all of eternity. God did not send his one and only son to die hoping that someone somewhere at some point might choose him.

He didn't play Russian roulette with his child. He sent him for a specific mission.

He sent him to a specific people. He sent him for a specific purpose. When Jesus said it is finished he did not mean

God I did my part, now let's see if anyone responds to it. He meant it is finished.

Redemption is finished. All those who will ever come to Christ, it is finished.

R .C. Sproul, one of my favorite teachers, when I was a young Christian I would listen to him in my room on podcast.

And before I even knew what discipleship was R .C. Sproul would disciple me on his program called

Renewing Your Mind. And R .C. Sproul, he's went on to be with the Lord since then a year and a half ago.

But I cherish these words that he says. I love R .C. Sproul. He's a great man.

I can say that now because he's dead. He didn't tank his ministry. He didn't cheat on his wife. He made it to the end.

He's faithful. I commend him to you as a good teacher. He said I don't think we wanna believe in a

God who sends Christ to die on the cross and then crosses his fingers hoping that someone will take advantage of that atoning death.

Our view of God is different than that. Our view of God is that the redemption of specific sinners was the eternal plan of God.

And this plan and this design was perfectly conceived. And it was perfectly executed so that the will of God to save his people is perfectly accomplished by the atoning work of Christ.

John 10, 14 says, I'm the good shepherd and I know my own and my own know me.

He's saying that God has some that are his and they know him.

John 10 down just a few verses in 24 through 29 says, the Jews gathered around him and they were saying to him, how long are you gonna keep us in suspense,

Jesus? If you are the Christ then tell us plainly. Jesus answered them,

I told you. And you did not believe the works that I do in my father's name. These testify of me.

But you do not believe me, why? Because you're not my sheep. You don't believe me because you're goats.

I don't know if we know this or not. I didn't know this. Actually, I feel really silly that I didn't know this.

When the Bible talks about sheep, it doesn't talk about goats becoming sheep. It talks about moth sheep being found.

Goats are different animals. They don't become sheep. But moth sheep can be found.

It says in 26, but you do not believe because you're not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them.

And they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand. That means that if you're a

Christian in Christ, you cannot be taken away from the love of God. You cannot be taken away from Christ because you're in his firm grasp and we are not powerful enough to remove ourselves or someone else from him.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hands.

All of Jesus' sheep respond to him. All of them follow after him. None of them perish because they're his.

We know, and I wanna say this, there's a term in theology called limited atonement. That's the one that hangs people up mostly.

We know that Jesus' blood is powerful enough to save people not just that have ever lived on earth but could ever live in a million earths.

His blood is not limited in its power. It's limited in its extent. It's not limited in its power to save.

It could have saved everyone. It's limited in its extent on who he saved and who he saved is by God's sovereign plan and it was a plan he's been working out for all eternity.

Look at what it says in Romans 8, 28 through 30. We know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love

God to those who are called according to his purpose. Those who love God have been called by God.

For those whom he foreknew, meaning before they even existed he knew them, and he predestined them, meaning that he determined that they would be his, and become conformed to the image of his son.

He's not only knew about them, he pre -chose them and he determined that they would be sanctified into the image of his son

Jesus Christ so that he would be the firstborn, this is Jesus, among many brethren.

And these whom he predestined he also called and these whom he called he justified and those whom he justified he glorified, meaning we will make it safe to eternity with God because of his call on our life.

Not because of our effort, not because how perfectly we obey him, not because we wake up every morning and we read the

Puritans or do any other, a number of spiritual disciplines. We are safe because we're his, we are safe because we're called, we're not safe by our human effort.

Ephesians one, three through five, says blessed be the God and father of our

Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, you were chosen before you were created, you were chosen before the earth was created, before infants babbled and before the sun was hung in the stars, you were chosen and he predestined us as adoption, as sons through Jesus Christ according to the kind intention of his goodwill.

So before you and I took our first breath, we were called by God if we were in Christ Jesus. God chose us to be his people.

John 15, 16 says, you did not choose me, I chose you and appointed you that you may go and bear fruit and that your fruit would remain so that whatever you ask of the father in my name, he may give it to you.

He's saying you didn't choose me, I'm the one who chose you and I chose you for a purpose, a purpose that I've been working out since the foundations of the world that you would bear fruit, that you would do good works in Christ, not to save yourself, you would do good works because he has saved you.

Ephesians two, eight through 10 says, for by grace you have been saved through faith and it's not of yourself, it's the gift of God, not as the result of your works so that no one can boast for we are his workmanship and we are created in Christ Jesus for good works which

God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. This is an astounding point,

I wish I could spend more time but before you were born, everything that God had ever called you to do in Christ, he had already determined and he called you to step into it and he called you to live in it, not in your own strength because you can't, you're dead, he called you in his strength, he called you.

Second Timothy one, eight through nine says, therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me his prisoner but join me in suffering for the gospel to the power of God who has saved us and who has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purposes and grace which was granted to us in Jesus Christ from all of eternity, we are called because he is good, we are called because he is faithful, we are called because he poured out his infinite love and kindness onto us, not because we're good, we're miserable,

David's favorite word is that we're wretched, we are, he's good, he's kind, he's faithful.

In the very beginning or in the very middle of the Bible, some scholars would argue this, I love this, I told this to someone recently,

Jonah chapter one verse 17, the very center of the Bible is this line that says salvation belongs to the

Lord, salvation doesn't belong to us, the saving belongs to God, that's the central thesis of the entire

Bible is that God saves sinful people by his power and his power alone. Ephesians 1, nine through 14 says, he made us or he made known to us the mystery of his will, he made it known to us, let's not forget that, we didn't just come about this knowledge because we heard a good sermon, he made us know the mystery of his will according to his kind intention which he purposed in Christ with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times that is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on earth, in him also we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to his purposes who work all things after the counsel of his will to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory, in him you also after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation having also believed you were sealed in him with the

Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with the view to his redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory, what

Paul is saying is that the reason God chose us is for the praise of his own glory, God save us so that the universe and the stars and all creatures could look at how good is this

God, how good can this God be that he would save people like us, we often get hung up on the fact why doesn't

God save everyone? Well, let's look in the mirror, why does he save us? Knowing what all we've done, knowing what all we've perpetrated against him and yet in love and in kindness for the praise of his glory, he saves wretched sinners like us.

Our salvation is not meant to be something that we claim as something that we did or we decided or we raised our hand at a revival ceremony, our salvation is supposed to point us to how good

God is. How could he save me? How could he save somebody like me, like us?

Ephesians 1, five through six, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved, we are saved so that God would get infinite praise.

We are saved so that God would be made much of, we are saved, he says he chose the foolish things in this world to shame the wise.

If we don't see ourselves as the foolish ones, I think we're missing what God has actually done for us, how

God condescended to our level in order to rescue us and save us and breathe life into us. His eternal plan in salvation was to magnify his great name and when

I say that God alone can call, it's because God throughout all of history was writing the story of his glory.

That's what this means and I think that we have the tendency to level the charge at God, God, this isn't fair,

God must not be loving, God must be unjust, God can't love people if he doesn't save everyone or if he doesn't at least make it available to everyone.

Well, Paul addresses this in Romans chapter nine. He says, what shall we say then?

Is there any injustice with God? May it never be. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it does not depend on man who wills or the man who runs but on God who has mercy.

For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole world.

So then he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires. And the question that we must wrestle with today is not why does

God not call everyone? The question I think that's even more central to that is why would he have mercy on anyone?

Why in the Garden of Eden when he said, in the day you eat of the fruit you shall surely die, why are we even here?

Why are we even gathered as a church? Why are we a church plant that God is by his grace allowing us to meet?

It's because he did not give us what we deserve. When we talk about fairness, we don't want fairness.

We don't want God to be fair because fair means we all go to hell. What we want is

God's mercy. That for whatever reason God has decided to choose sinful people like you and I, we are saved because he did it.

Many people struggle with can I lose my salvation? Well, if you were the one who worked it, you've already lost it.

But if God is the one who worked your salvation, you cannot be lost. You cannot because God is the one who did it.

The question is whether we will trust God. The question is when we read this, will we rewrite what these verses mean because we don't like the implications?

The question is will we believe the Bible says what it says and that will we trust that God knows what he's doing?

Will we trust that his ways are higher than our ways? Will we trust that he chooses some because of his perfection and his thinking and that we like Job stand at the mountain and say

I can't even speak. How can I in my own limitations understand the heart and the mind of God?

I don't pretend to understand salvation. I'm bewildered every time I think about it that God would save me, that God would show me his grace.

I don't pretend at all to understand. The longer I walk in this life, the more

I wonder why would God save me? And Calvinism, which says some of these things, has gotten a bad name.

It's called often the frozen chosen because you get young men who are puffed up with pride that God chose me and then you've got this thing called cage stage where they're so obnoxious the best thing to do with them is put them in a cage and there's this idea that there's this snarky pride that seeps into our life because we're the chosen ones.

That is totally inappropriate. If you really know who God is in all of his magnificent purity and you really know who you are, it should astonish you about your salvation.

We should be the most humble people in all the world. We should be the most gracious people in all the world. We should never for a moment have an ounce of pride because we know who we are and we know who

God is. Why did God have mercy? He wasn't obligated to show mercy.

Paul answers these questions in Romans nine again and we've been building to Romans nine because it's a challenging chapter of the

Bible but I think that it really makes these things clear. Paul says, you'll say to me then why does

God still find fault? For who can resist his will? Either you're saved or you're not saved.

What does it matter? Why does it matter that we even are here today? Why does it matter that we still need to turn to Christ after he has awakened us?

Why does this matter? And Paul says, who are you, old man, who answers back to God?

Will the thing molded say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Or doesn't the potter, that's

God, have the right over the clay, that's us, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and for another common use?

What if God, this is rhetorical, of course God did this, Paul's saying, what if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath because all of us deserve it, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction and he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory.

What Paul is saying, God can never be accused of being unfair, even those who are not saved have been given an entire lifetime of happiness, they've been given marriage, they've been given kids, they've been given life, they've been given all kinds of experiences that we are not owed as sinful creatures, and that is a testament to his mercy.

It says in the day you eat of it you'll surely die, but they live. Babies are born year after year after year, and God's mercy is abounding in the fact that he lets the sinful world continue as sinful as it is.

So God cannot be accused of being unfair, he is merciful, but in the same way the fact that he could save creatures like us magnifies his glory.

Even us whom he called not from among the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles, as he said to Hosea, I will call those who are not my people my people, and her who was not my beloved, my beloved.

God doesn't owe mercy to anyone, but think about the astounding fact that us who are rebels of grace have now been called beloved by God, and that's where we come back to Jude.

When Jude says that we are called, he is saying one of the most astounding phrases in all of the

Bible, that sinful creatures like us can be saved, and not only saved, but loved.

Hosea says it in the Old Testament, those who were not beloved will be called my beloved, they will be brought to belief, they will be brought to faith by the working of God alone, we didn't choose him, he chose us, and he began that work in eternity past, why?

That plan was for our joy, that plan was for our encouragement, and that plan was for our hope, and that's where I want us to land for the rest of our time here, is that when savage wolves creep into the congregation, which is what

Jude is talking about, when problems mount, and when we come under attack, there is a shore, and there is a steady hope for every single believer, because it doesn't depend on you, and it doesn't depend on your effort, when it does, you're utterly vulnerable to attack, but when it is

God who has called you, you are safe. Jude says to those who are called are beloved in God the

Father, we are called, we are called into the

Father's love. Jude is not only saying that this letter is addressed to people who are the frozen chosen, they're

Christians, but yet they don't have any grace or any love, he's saying that we are called into God's love,

God's love that has been manifest for all of eternity in the Trinity, we are called into that.

When he says in, that is, I'm gonna be nerdy again, that's a dative of sphere, that means that there's a sphere or realm of God's love that we are called into, so that we can experience

God's love, so that we can know God's love, that's what it means why we're called, that's why we can have hope, because now we can know the love of God that was unknowable to us, but now, because we know

God's love, we can never be unloved, that's what Jude is saying, and isn't it funny that Jesus is the only person up until this point that is called beloved, he's the beloved son of God, and yet because we are called, now we get his status, because he was beloved, now we are beloved, because he is known by God, now we can be known by God, and that is

Jude's point, and that's why we took so much time to get to it, because when things happen in our life, don't lose heart, you're called, don't lose heart, you're loved, don't despair,

Christian, because you are called by God and beloved by God, no matter what happens in this church, no matter what happens in your life, no matter where culture goes, you are called and you are loved by God, by the firm hand of God, you have an irrevocable status, that life, that death, that misery, that heartache, that nothing can ever take away from you, nothing, because you didn't earn it, only because God is holding you firmly in his hand can you have it, and because of that, you cannot lose it, he's called you, he loves you, he's producing the love of God inside of you, could there be any news better than that?

With all the problems that we face today, with all the ways that we're tempted to doubt, we are called by God, we are loved by God, but even more than that, we are kept for Christ.

Jude says to those who are called, beloved in God, enjoying the love of God the

Father, they are also kept for Jesus, in some Bible translations, you'll see that it says kept by Jesus, I don't have time to explain why there's a difference there, but it's more likely that it means kept for,

Christ, that we are kept for Christ, which means these present sufferings are not even worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed when the day of Christ Jesus, when he comes and he rescues us, we are being kept for Christ, which means we can never be lost, if Jesus is keeping us for eternity to be in relationship with him, he will not let any of us slip out of the grasp of his hand, we are not only kept by Jesus, we are kept for Jesus, we are kept for the day of Christ, when he returns to this planet, and he makes us his own for all eternity, that means you're safe, that means you can't be lost, that means your bad day can't undo your salvation, that means your bad year, that means when you have a car accident,

I've had some trouble with these things in the past, and anyway, terrible driving record, all of that cannot take you from the love of Christ, nothing can snatch you out of his hand, nothing, because you're called, because you have that status, you cannot be unloved and you cannot be lost, these are firm and fixed realities in your life, let hell break loose all around us, you're called, let the world implode into rubble, you're loved, let heaven and earth break away, let

Satan and all of his armies come after you with whatever they can throw at you, may you have the most awful set of circumstances ever imaginable, but you cannot fear because you're being kept for Christ, nothing can take you out of his hand, nothing,

I wanna end with Romans eight, some of the most beautiful verses in all the Bible, after everything we've said, that you're called, beloved and kept, and let these verses wash over you as I read them to you, what then shall we say, if God is for us, who can be against us, he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things, who will bring a charge against God's elect,

God is the one who justifies, God is the one who condemns, Christ Jesus is the one who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us,

Jesus is standing at the right hand of God for you, who will separate us from the love of God, will tribulation, will distress, will persecutions, will famine, will nakedness, will peril, will sword, just as it's written

Paul says, for your sake we are being put to death all day long, we are considered like sheep that are ready to be slaughtered, but in all of these things, we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us, for I am convinced, if you want to memorize a verse, this is the one to put to memory, for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our

Lord, this is why Jude tells his people, when they're struggling, when they're doubting, you're called, because if you're called you're loved, and if you're called you're kept safe, and there's nothing heaven, hell, or earth can do about it, because what