1. Please pray with me. May
the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your
sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen. This is the Last Sunday of the
Church Year---the Sunday of the Fulfillment. Today, the Word of God focuses our
attention on the end of days, when the Lord Jesus will come again "in clouds with great power and glory"
(Mark 13:26). Waiting for God's mercy
on that blessed day we as Christians keep the faith and remain in the love of
God patiently showing mercy to all who struggle with doubt and sin (cf. Jude 20-25). The message is taken from Jude 20-25 and
is entitled, “The Blessed Hope,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed that “the loss of hope and courage can have a
deadly effect on man.” As a result of his own experiences in a Nazi
concentration camp, Frankl contended that when a person no longer possesses a
reason for living … no future to look forward to, he shrivels up and dies. “Any attempt to restore a man’s inner
strength in camp,” he wrote, “had
first to succeed in showing him some future goal.” (“Man’s Search for
Meaning” by Victor Frankl, quoted in Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching, ed. Michael Green, [Grand Rapids: Baker Books,
1989], p. 194.) So it is with life. Life is a
concentration camp, in the sense that none of us gets out alive. But, we can
have something to look forward to. We don’t have to shrivel up and die. After warning his readers about the dangers
of false teachers and the need to resist them, Jude concludes his epistle by
presenting a doxology of hope. “God is
able to keep you from stumbling now,” he declared, “and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with
great joy!” What a hope. What a day to look forward to. What a reason to
keep going. Scripture calls it the “blessed
hope” (Titus 2:13), and so it is.
3. Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us
this blessed hope of glory in heaven through His death and resurrection and yet
sometimes we do feel a sense of despair and hopelessness in this fallen world
of sin we live in. Maybe you are
severely depressed right now, especially since the holiday season is here and
you’re still thinking about your loved one who has passed away. There’s conflict in your family right now and
you don’t see a way out of it anytime soon.
Perhaps you just lost your job and you’re not sure what you and your
family are going to do now. Maybe you’re
dealing with your own difficult illness or the illness of a friend or family
member and the doctor’s diagnosis isn’t good.
Or, you are really struggling with your faith in Jesus right now and you
are looking for help. All of these
events in our lives can leave us with a feeling of hopelessness and
despair. So where do we turn when we are
in the valleys of this life? Well, Jude
has an answer for us in today’s epistle lesson.
4. Jude 20-21 says, “20But you,
beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit;
21keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ that leads to eternal life.”
In order for us to keep our eyes fixed on the blessed hope that Jesus
has won for us through His perfect life, death, and resurrection from the dead,
Jude says that we as
Christians should keep ourselves in God’s love.
Jude illustrates an important truth of our Christian lives: our own
spiritual willpower that was once dead in sin at birth, has been reborn. We now
once again possess the image of God through faith in Christ. We can now say, “I love to do your will, O Lord.” And
since God has chosen to communicate with us through Word and Sacrament, and
since God gives spiritual strength to us for spiritual warfare through Word and
Sacrament, we can choose to let God strengthen and protect us through His Word
and Sacrament.
5. In verses 20 and 21, Jude mentions
three aspects of how Christians stay in God’s love looking to the blessed hope of
glory that is in our Savior Jesus. First,
we as Christians can build ourselves up
in the faith. False teachers can’t harm you if you are armed, shielded and
protected. The battles of Christianity are fought not on military battlefields
but in your heart and mind. Build yourself up! How? Read the Word. Hear the
Word. Sing the Word. Share the Word. Remember the Word. Eat and drink the body
and blood of the Lord. Satan’s lies and bribes will shrivel up under the bright
light of the Bible’s truth. Despair and fear fade away when you and your Savior
are united through the blood of the covenant.
6. Second pray in the Holy Spirit. After God has spoken to you in his Word,
you speak to God with your words. Communicating with God strengthens your
relationship with him. Pray with confidence, knowing that the Spirit has given
you faith in Jesus, which makes you God’s child. Pray with confidence, knowing
that the Spirit intercedes for saints who don’t quite know what or how to pray.
Pray with confidence, knowing that the Lord hears every request, has no limits
to His power, loves to hear from you, and delights in meeting the needs of His
children. He makes things happen for you to bless you.
7. Third, we can wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Christians we
know that in spite of all our labors, we’ll never be able to purify this planet.
It’s sinful & corrupt. God’s plan is to come soon, melt it down, and make a
new heaven and earth. Our ultimate goal then as Christians is to experience the
saving mercy of Christ when He returns, and that blessed hope keeps us moving
forward.
8. Jude also tells us in Jude 22-23, “22And have mercy on those who doubt; 23save
others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear,
hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” Jude wants people who have experienced
the mercy of Christ to show mercy to other people: to show mercy to those who
doubt, not despising them, but patiently encouraging, rebuking, leading, and
loving. We’re to show mercy to those
whose feet are already getting hot from hell’s fires by trying to prevent their
spiritual suicide, caring enough to speak God’s law against their sin and God’s
promise of Gospel to those who repent of their sin. As a Christian you are to
show mercy to those who are spiritually rotten, but with fear—that is, taking
care that their corruption doesn’t infect you. If it helps, visualize their
inner spiritual disease as if it were oozing infectious slime right onto their
clothes. Remember, Jesus never held back
His love from tax collectors and prostitutes, but neither did He condone their
sinful lifestyles.
9. In all of these things as we’re
awaiting the blessed hope that awaits us in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we
hear St. Jude tell us in verses 24-25, “24Now to him who is able
to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of
his glory with great joy, 25to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now
and forever. Amen.” Even though we as Christians can do
a lot of things to protect ourselves from the devil, the world and our sinful
nature, Jude’s doxology gives comfort to those whose faith is under assault by
assuring them of God’s promises to keep His children from falling. For even our
own efforts at worship, Bible study, and prayer often fall short. What a relief
to put our lives into the hands of Jesus who is committed to getting us home to
heaven!
10. When we’re exhausted by the
struggle against sin and Satan, we can lift up our eyes to our great, changeless,
majestic God. His power and authority
are unlimited. Jesus’ victory over sin and Satan is a fact! As Christians we can realize that all our
troubles are only for a little while.
Let us give Jesus all the honor and glory that we can for the blessed
hope of eternal life He has given to us.
As the hymn writer Philipp Nicolai reminds us, “Oh, joy to know that you, my Friend, Are Lord, beginning without end,
The first and last, eternal! And you at length—O glorious grace—Will take me to
that holy place, The home of joys supernal. Amen, Amen! Come and meet me,
quickly greet me! With deep yearning, Lord, I look for your returning.” Amen.
