Well, good morning and welcome to Great Commission Church. My name is Don McKenzie and I'm a part of our pastoral staff. Our pastor, Trevor Davis will be back next week, but today we're going to continue our verse by verse study in one of the shortest letters in the entire Bible. It's named after its author and it simply goes by Jude. Now, it has 25 verses.

And today I said in the first service, we are going to cover the last five verses in Jude. It's verses 20 to 25. And after the message was over, a man came up to me. I thought he was going to tell me how great it was. And he said, you know, by the way, that's six verses.

And I went, really? I was wrong in my third sentence of my sermon. 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. So we're going to deal with verses 20 to 25, the last six verses of Jude. And I would like to start this morning by asking a question.

Have you ever noticed that it seems that we warn people about little things all the time? For example, a couple of months ago when we kind of had a big snow, I was getting ready to leave the house to drive up here to work and my wife had the audacity to say to me, drive carefully. And I replied with, oh, wow, thank you so much, sweetheart. Because, you know, if you hadn't of warned me, I was going to stick with my plan to drive like a wild man. But because of your warning, I will drive carefully now.

Brad, do you think I actually said that to my wife? Alex, do you think I said that to my wife?

Well, as somebody said to me after the first sermon, I know you said no because you're still married, right? I enjoy my marriage. That is not how I replied.

But what if she had said this to me? What if she had said, hey, I just heard on the news that on 03:02 cars are sliding off right and left and there's wrecks everywhere. Now that would have gotten my attention, right? I probably then would have said, wow, I didn't know how bad it was. Gosh, I need to rethink this.

I probably should just stay home. So her very specific warning got my attention, made me think, and even changed my plans. This is what the Letter of Jude is all about. It is a detailed, super serious warning about some very real and dangerous people who were in the church trying to influence people and pull them away from from each other and the true gospel of Jesus Christ. The danger is so real that it should make us ask this how Then do we remain faithful to the real Jesus of the Bible and not fall away?

How do we survive their evil influence? And the answer to that question is what we're looking at today in the six verses of Jude 2025. And I want to summarize Jude's answer to this question. How do we remain faithful? And the answer, in summary, is, you can't do it alone.

Now, this becomes so obvious as we work through these six verses. You simply cannot remain faithful to Jesus Christ all by yourself.

So let's start with verses 20 and 21. And let's read those Jude wrote, but you, beloved. Building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God. And I'm reading this out of the ESV in case somebody's wondering, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. Now, when Jude wrote his letter, he wrote it in Greek.

And the Greek clearly denotes whether a word is singular or plural. For example, look at the second word in verse 20, the word you. Is it singular or plural? Is it but you as an individual, or is it but you all, but you all as a group, y'all? Well, you can't tell in English, but in Greek, it's plural.

In fact, there are 10 plural words in just these two verses. Now, I'm going to read these two verses again, and I'm going to highlight every word that's plural. And you'll see that there's 10 of them. Okay? It says, but you.

There's one. Beloved, two. Building three yourselves, four up in your. That's five. And praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

Everything Jude is writing is not to you as an individual, but to us as a group. Now, that honestly needs to sink in. None of this is about your private, personal, spiritual disciplines.

It is all about group activity. And he gives us four of them. And I want to list them right from these verses so we can see them first. It's building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting or looking for Jesus to return. In these four group activities, there is only one command that we're supposed to obey.

Which one do you think is the command? And I'll give you a hint. It's the one that does not start with a word ending with ing. So which one is the command? Keep.

Right. Keep yourselves and the love of God is the command. Now, Remember, Jude's not commanding you as an individual to do this. He's commanding the group to keep themselves, plural, in the love of God. See, according to Jude, you can't do this alone.

He's commanding the group to keep themselves in the love of God. Okay, that was point number one. There is one command here, and it's given to us as a group, not to you or me as an individual. Now, what does it mean to keep yourselves in. In the love of God?

That's an interesting phrase. My wife Phyllis and I have talked about this a lot. And here's the simplest illustration that we came up with that seemed to resonate with both of us. The love of God is like a dome. And you're either under the dome of God's love or you're outside and under the discipline or judgment of God.

And our job as a group is to keep ourselves in the sphere of God's love, to keep ourselves under the dome of God's love. If you want to be in the love of God, where do you go? Where is this dome or covering of God's love? Well, actually, it's really obvious in this passage. It's the group he's writing to, believers in Jesus who group together.

And Jude wants these groups to obey this command. Now, in the Bible, these groups are unashamedly called churches. And churches are not buildings. They're the people of God in a local area who commit to one another to follow Jesus together. We just illustrated it with our global offering.

We do it when we have the Lord's Supper. We do it in a lot of ways. And according to Jude, if you're not part of one of these groups, you are not keeping yourself in the love of God. You are outside the dome of God's love. Now, look, I fully understand.

We live in a culture, and even around the world, this is rarely believed by most professing Christians. But it's one of the lies of these false teachers here in Jude. They want you to believe these false teachers that all that matters is just you and God. The group is nice, but it's not necessary. Let me say it again.

The world wants you to believe. Okay, the group is nice, but it's not necessary. That, according to Jude, is a lie. It's like saying God's family of beloved children is nice, but I don't need God's family. I'm just fine with God, and God's just fine with me, even though I'm ignoring and belittling God's family.

Well, God is not fine. With that, and this is Jude's warning, there is no safety with God apart from being actively engaged in one of his local families. You either put his family first or you will eternally die under his judgment outside the dome where he expresses and pours out his love. God's not playing games here. You either follow his commands or you're going to end up following your own made up ideas just how you think it should work.

And that's exactly what the false teachers were promoting. So Jude commands the group, don't wander off. Don't stray away from the dome of God's love and protection. This is why God created local churches. It's because he loves us so much.

So we're commanded as a local church to keep ourselves in the love of God. But as a thinking congregation, you're going to say, well, then how do we do it? How do we keep ourselves in the love of God? And that's what these two verses are about. So let's look at those two verses.

The answer is the words that start with ing. Put those two verses back up there, if you would. The first ing word in verse 20 is what? Build ing. These are the ing words.

The first way that we keep ourselves in the love of God is by building ourselves up on our most holy faith. This is actually the focus of our Sunday morning service and our small group ministries. On Sunday, we focus on worshiping Jesus and learning the Bible. And during the week we gather in smaller groups, mostly in homes. And we share our lives with one another.

We talk about the Lord Jesus and how to follow him in specific situations that we're going through in our lives. Okay, what's the next ing word? Praying. Praying in the Holy Spirit. Now, this is not about tongues, but it's for the group to be praying in harmony with the Holy Spirit's will.

And the Spirit was sent by Jesus to continue his ministry on earth and to glorify his name, the name of Jesus. So we seek the Lord in prayer in a variety of ways. Here at Great Commission Church, we had an elder pray for us a moment ago. We do this in our small groups. We pray for one another.

We also have prayer ministry at the end of every service. On Sundays and every third Sunday of the month, we have a focus on prayer ministry. And it's wonderful to see how the Lord Jesus ministers His love to us within the sphere of his love as we are keeping ourselves in the love of God. Now, what's the last ing waiting? And this phrase that Jude uses there, it's about the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this speaks about our desire to serve him because we're waiting for our Master to return, and we don't want him to find us unfaithful, disinterested in him and his family. So these 3ing words explain how we as a church keep ourselves in the love of God. It's by engaging in these activities, which we do on Sunday during the week in small groups. And we volunteer and serve, waiting for Jesus to return. Now do you see how it is impossible to do this alone?

You must be part of a church to obey this group command. So Jude 2021 tells us that we should strengthen one another in the faith. Now, Next in Jude 22 and 23, he's going to tell us that we have to rescue one another from danger, because this letter is about danger. Hey, have you ever had to call 911 before? I hope not.

But a couple of years ago, I called 911 because my wife Phyllis had a spell, and, gosh, she just wasn't getting better, and it really scared me and her. So I called. We went to the emergency room, and everything worked out okay. But it got me thinking. What if I hadn't been there?

I had an aunt who lived alone after her husband died, and a neighbor found her dead on the floor of her kitchen. And it just broke my heart to wonder how all that happened while she was alone. And could she have been rescued if someone had been there? Well, my wife did have someone to help her. Me.

And after I did all that I could, I realized I can't do this alone. So I called 911 and Praise God, we have 911. And they showed up and it helped. Well, Jude, in these next two verses is reminding the church gathering that we are our own 911 system. There are members of our church who will trip and fall and need help getting up.

And if you're older like me, they have fallen and they can't get up. But it's true. It's true. And guess what? As a church, we want to help.

Help goes on all the time. And if we don't help, well, could they spiritually die alone? And the love of God hates that idea. So Jude identifies three types of 911 emergency categories. And I'm not going to go into each one of them because I don't have time, but here they are.

Let me just list them. It's those who doubt, those who drift, and then it's those who defect and depart. Doubt, drift, defect and depart. And it seems like they get increasingly more critical from doubting to departing. Look at these verses.

Let me read them. Verses 22 and 23. Verse 22 says, and have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire. See, they're drifting and they're not heading toward a good place, they're heading toward judgment.

And he says, you've got to grab them because they're drifting. And then he says to others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. It seems that these folks have gotten so far and they're like a drowning person. If you really don't know what you're doing and you try to save, they'll drag you under and kill you. Also, that's how defected and how defiled and how committed to the wickedness they have become.

Even though you try to rescue, you've got to be careful, hating even the garment stained by all the fleshly activity. But in these two verses, Jude gives us some spiritual medical advice on how to deal with each category. God's way of dealing with struggling spiritual children is the word mercy. You see it in verse 22, and have mercy on those who doubt. And then the last category in verse 23, he says to others, show mercy with fear.

God's remedy for for us as a group is to show mercy with one another. See, it's so easy to simply shame people, condemn them, judge them because they're struggling with sin or they have some problems. And yet God says, no, I want you to be merciful. Jesus is so kind, and he wants us as a group to grow to be more like him. So he says, hey, leave the judgment to me.

I can handle it. I want you to focus on rescuing them, but do it with mercy. And I'm going to tell you, rescue work is hard and mercy is hard. Judging and criticizing, it's easy, right? I mean, it's the first thing.

But God wants us to be merciful. He'll take care of the judgment. Now, members of Great Commission Church, I know it can be embarrassing to ask for help or even be in a situation where you need help, but our church is good at this. We love helping one another.

And I want to tell you a huge way that as a church member, you can help your fellow brothers and sisters who are struggling. Every year at Easter, we have a special offering. We call it our 10 man offering. 10 stands for those in need. And we ask our members and anybody else that might want to help to give generously over and above what you might normally give, because we use that money to help hurting people.

The vast majority of it goes to the members here in our church. It's our 911 fund. Look, you have no idea how many people we help week to week, every month, every year, because we do it confidentially. There are many people sitting in this room right now who have been blessed by our 911 spiritual rescue operations. And I thank God that He cares so much about us under the dome of his love and care that he orders us to be mercifully on the alert to rescue our hurting, struggling, wandering family members.

And it's a very real danger. We will lose sheep this year, and they will be shredded by the world, the flesh, and the devil, even though we endeavor to rescue them. So we have seen in Jude 20 to 23 to strengthen one another in the faith. Number two, rescue one another from danger. And now we're going to see, number three, that we have to rely on God's power together.

I mean, we can't do any of this in our own strength. It's just too much. But Jude gives us a glorious promise here. It's from God to let us know that he is at work to make sure that we can make it. So let's look at verse 24.

Jude gets to the end of the letter, danger, danger, danger everywhere. And he says the only solution is that you stick together. And then he just bursts forth with praise to God. So he says in verse 24, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. Well, in verse 24, what is God able to do?

He's able to keep you, and that you is plural. He's able to keep y'all.

Now, when Jude talks about stumbling, he's not talking about stumbling into sin. Because this is something we all struggle with, right? We're all fighting sin all the time. We win some, we lose some. Jude is talking about stumbling and completely falling away from the true gospel of Jesus Christ, as evidenced by your eventual defection and departure.

Every church has members who are false converts. Of course, we don't know who that is, but these folks eventually just give up and they chase after the world and they live as they choose rather than believing in Jesus and living as he commands.

So the question becomes, Lord, how do you keep your true people from falling away? And his solution was to create the church and make it a dome of his love and protection. It's really not difficult. See, the church is merely his organized spiritual family, and it's the story of the New Testament. Jesus said that he would build his church and the gates of hell.

Hell would not prevail against it. The church is the safe place. All the powers of hell cannot penetrate the dome of God's love and protection. So be engaged. Be a part of us to keep ourselves in the love of God.

A local church, being an aggressive, engaged part of it protects you from hell, Jesus said, and the powers of the enemy. The Bible says that Satan is like a roaring lion going about to see who he can snatch away and devour. And one of his strategies is to try to cut you away from the herd and get you out from under the dome so he can pounce and rip you to shreds. Now, if you're saved, you have felt the call of the wild in your soul. What I mean by that is you feel the pull of the world and your own flow, flesh and the enemy.

And if you keep listening to that, then you'll start to doubt, get confused, and then you'll drift. And this happens to every member of Great Commission Church. But for most of us, because, hey, we're here. But for most of us, we suddenly feel an urgent to run back to the herd because maybe we feel ashamed or we have regret or guilt and we think, oh, Lord, I need to get back right with you. And you know, a part of that is to be right with his people.

And so this is why we're so happy to see folks who have been drifting or wandering. It's because this is the safe place. It's a place of mercy. I get God's mercy all the time. I want you to have it all the time.

Well, where does that urge come from? Just over and over, where you just go, I just. I just gotta. I just gotta keep being apart. Where does that come from?

Well, it doesn't come from your sinful flesh, I can tell you that. It comes from God because he is able to cause you to keep seeking after him.

It's like a circle. How does God keep his people from falling away? Well, he provides them. How does he do it? Well, he provides them, a local church, and then he commands them to keep themselves in his love, to keep themselves in the church under the dome of his protection.

Well, if you do, then it just shows that God is keeping you from falling away. And if you fall away, then it's obvious that he's not keeping you from falling away. Now look, if it were not for God behind the scenes keeping us from falling away, we would. But God is able to Keep us faithful and continuing to serve him in a local church. But if you look up and you go, well, you know, I kind of go on Sunday, but of course not every Sunday.

I want to say, hey, you're in danger, you're in danger. Just embrace the safe place. Experience the love of God more fully. You will. This is what the Lord is telling us to do.

The Lord says, look, you have a responsibility and it's to obey me because I know what's best. But I want you to know I'm behind the scenes helping you obey. So if you're here and you're committed to be here and you're a part of small group and you love to be a part of our prayer ministry, Holy cow. Praise the Lord. His love is all over you.

He is helping you be a part of a group that wants to stay in his love. Well, let me close with two questions. Number one, are you keeping yourself in the love of God by fully engaging with his people or have you been drifting away from the safety of of his family? Now, if you are drifting, there's a reason. And it's always either misplaced priorities or sinful practices or both.

This is why we need a Savior. And God says one of the ways also to keep ourselves in his love is by praying in the Holy Spirit. Now, after we dismiss, you could take a step toward keeping yourself in the love of God by letting one of our prayer ministry teams pray for you. And if you feel resistance inside your soul to that, oh, I don't need anybody to pray for me. Yet you're struggling.

Fight it. Surrender to your merciful God, do it his way and experience his love in a group setting. Secondly, here's a question. If Jesus were to return today, would he find you faithfully loving and serving him within your local church or standing on the outside? See, if you're not an active member of a good Bible believing Jesus loving, merciful local church, you're standing on the outside.

Now, if you profess to be a Christian, God never designed for you to be an orphan. He's way too loving for that. So stop wandering. Come under the dome so you can keep yourself in the love of God with the rest of us. Join Great Commission Church or some Bible believing Jesus loving church or you will die outside the love of God and be under his judgment forever.

This is the message of Jude. It's his warning. You can't do it alone, so don't.

Now I want to close by reading the last two verses of Jude because they exalt the glory and the power of our God, which is all the more reason why we should surrender to him, do it with joy and say, you know what I'm going to do life God's way. Let's just read these two verses. Jude 24:25 now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, falling away and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank youk for sending youg Son to die for sinners like us. That was just the start of it. And then youn let us be parts of spiritual families where we can grow and develop in safety and security. Thank youk for Great Commission Church. Praise you Lord, that we get to be part of one of your local spiritual families.

Just pour your love out on us. More and more we ask in youn name, Lord Jesus, Amen.