But you, beloved, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,But you, beloved, keep building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
3 sermons cite this verse
contending looks like in action. He says, but you must remember, beloved, and then you get to verse 20. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God. So this is how Jude is addressing his audience, as those beloved, and he's addressing them this way because this is how he sees himself. So look back up to verse 1. Jude, which, side note, in the original language is actually Judas, but it's translated Jude in English, in part to differentiate him from the Judas who betrayed Jesus. So here in verse 1, Jude says, I am the brother of James. This is so good, because when you dig a little further, you realize this James is the brother, or more appropriately put, half-brother, because of the virgin birth of, anybody know? Jesus. We see both of them mentioned in Mark chapter 6, verse 3. People are asking about Jesus, saying, is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joseph, and Judas, and Simon? That's Jude. And these brothers are likely listed in birth order with James being the oldest, which makes you wonder, well, why didn't Jude tell us that? Like, why'd you say you're a brother of James when you could have put Jesus in there? I mean, that's worth mentioning. But this is what I love about the way Jude is introducing himself, because Jude realizes that physical relationship to Jesus is not what defines him. …
… But still, Jude says, an important part of keeping yourself in the love of God, staying tethered to the love of God, is praying in the Holy Spirit. By the way, that's what our 21 days of prayer are all about. 21 days where you can really focus on practicing this, not just praying, but praying in the Spirit. All right, let's keep moving. Number three, the third thing here. Practice number three, letter C. It says we keep ourselves in the love of God by waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. An important component in keeping yourselves in the love of God is living in earnest expectation of Jesus' soon return. I've told you guys before that the church culture I grew up in was heavy on rapture teaching. And by heavy, I mean we had our yearly prophecy conferences. and we heard sermons all the time about how Jesus could come literally at any moment and rapture the church away. …
I told you there could be five sermons in here. There is a lot going on. Some of it is strange and confusing. It's enough to make you want to scream out, hey Jude! Okay, there's the obligatory, got that out of the way, no more Jude Bellingham, St. Jude's Children's Hospital, Jude Law, Jude the Obscure, no more Jude. Scholars recognize that Jude is an excellent writer. There's lots of illusions. You saw them. Some of them you probably knew, others you weren't sure what was going on. There's lots of examples piled up on top of each other, and there's lots of items. It's full of examples, three of this, four of that, five descriptive phrases, three different groups, four different attributes. The best way to explain the whole book is to simply try to explain it paragraph by paragraph and summarize at the end with this big picture idea, keep. So, you are kept, that's the very beginning. God is able to keep you, that's the end. And most of the letter there in the middle is to say, here's what you need to do to keep yourselves in the love of God. …