Contending for the Faith wit..

Today we are, as you might expect, returning to St. Jude's epistle. So you can please turn there in your Bibles to the epistle of Jude. We have four verses left to look at in our series through Jude. This is now the 10th sermon, and we'll be considering two of these last four today, verses 22 and 23.

Here Jude is going to give the church some key instructions regarding the way in which we are to contend for the faith. He spent a lot of energy telling us all about the false brethren who have crept into the church. These are people who are imposters, who pervert grace and deny the Lord. They stand condemned for their many sins. They're regarded as an urgent threat to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

But here, right at the end of his letter, Jude is going to give us what might be a rather unexpected instruction. He's going to urge us to show mercy. And this, as I want to show you today, is a crucial part of what it means to contend for the faith. We must contend for the faith with mercy. So that's what we'll be considering today.

But as usual, I want to start with prayer and then we will read the text. So let's address the Lord. Our Father, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, thank you once again for this incredible privilege of opening your word, hearing your holy voice. We acknowledge, Lord, that these words that we're about to consider are holy words. These words are able to make us wise, not with the ever-changing wisdom of the world, wisdom that's passing away, but, Lord, with heavenly wisdom concerning eternal things.

We've come here today, Lord, to hear truth, We want to receive your doctrine. We want to be approved and corrected and trained in righteousness. So Lord, be gracious to us. Use this holy word powerfully in our lives. Teach us how we are to show mercy.

Equip us to contend for the faith. Steer us clear of every obstacle and error and pitfall into which our sinful hearts are so prone to lead us. Lord, we ask that you would yourself lead us into truth. Thank you, Lord. Be with us.

Amen. So as usual, I want to read the letter. As usual, we'll read the whole thing for context. This will be the 10th time now we've read through Jude. I hope we're getting more familiar with it.

This is the epistle of St. Jude. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God to sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those he did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains and in gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desires serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Woe to them, for they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness, that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires, their loud-mouthed boasters, showing favouritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who leads to eternal life. and have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire.

To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Now to Him, who is able to keep you from stumbling, 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. Throughout his letter, as we've just read, June's central concern has been to call faithful Christians to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the Saints.

The Church has been entrusted with a precious deposit of divine truths for the salvation of souls. There's no greater earthly treasure, and this treasure has been delivered to the saints, that is, the holy ones, who are identified as those who are called, beloved, and kept. And yet, as Jude says, this faith is under threat. The saints must not leave this treasure unguarded. They must contend for this faith, lest this precious treasure be lost.

Contend is a powerful word. It's a call to fight and to struggle for the faith. called to contend implies an opponent, someone to contend against. And Jude tells us who these opponents are in verse four. For certain people have crept in unnoticed.

And long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. These are people who are part of the visible church. They don't belong to the body of Christ in a spiritual sense, but they are part of the outward manifestation of the church. They are part of a Christian congregation. So the greatest threat, according to Jude, to the faith doesn't come from outside the church.

It's not tyrants or governments or open atheists or other religions. No, the faith is most urgently threatened. by those who claim to hold it. People who are in the church, who are with us in our love feasts, who are joining in public worship. These people claim to treasure the faith once delivered to the saints, but in reality, they twist it, they distort it, they pervert it to suit themselves.

Jude goes on now. So we've studied now in some detail to describe these people. whom I've been calling false brethren. If we are to contend effectively, we have to understand what we're up against. The nature of the threat needs to be clear to us.

So that is what Jude has been doing. But now in this last section of his letter, just before his concluding doxology, Jude has been giving Christians now some final instructions. We saw several weeks ago when we were last in Jude, that he's calling us to look after our own faith. We can't contend for the faith effectively unless we are each one of us personally walking with the Lord. But a tragedy would be if we were so preoccupied with the fight to contend for Christian doctrine if we failed to savingly benefit from that doctrine ourselves.

So let us not contend for Christian truth as hypocrites, but contend while actually living it with real living faith of our own. He calls us to keep ourselves in God's love, building ourselves up in our most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. We have to be personally persevering in the faith using God's appointed means. But then having urged us to this, Jude does now finally calling the church to show mercy. This is what he says in verses 22 and 23.

Have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. So having secured our own faith, we're now to reach out to others with mercy. This might seem a bit unexpected, because Jude has been preparing us for a fight We've been warned about how these false brethren are a horrific threat, enemies of the gospel, condemned to damnation.

We've been told what to look out for, so we're on alert. Our swords are drawn, metaphorically speaking. We might be expecting, therefore, a call to ruthlessly crush this enemy, to show no mercy, to lash out the smallest hint of dissent. And it would be very natural for us, flesh to react this way in the face of danger. And that's exactly what Jude wants to avoid by writing this passage.

He doesn't want to disarm us. I want to be very clear about that. He doesn't want us to let down our guard, but he is eager to make sure that we're armed with the right weapons for this fight. And it turns out that one of the most effective weapons we could have in the fight against false brethren is mercy, if we know how to use it. Jude doesn't seem to have a lot of hope for the false brethren themselves.

He says they were designated for this condemnation. He lumps them in with all the ungodly who will be judged on the day of judgment. But what we have to understand is that the church can't be neatly divided into just two categories. It's not just true brethren on one side who are immovably strong in the faith, and on the other side, people who are permanently hardened in their heresy and unbelief. In fact, between both extremes, there are a whole spectrum of people who may exist within the context of the visible church.

There are some, for example, who are genuine believers, but who are really struggling. Maybe they're riddled with doubts, perhaps because of the influence of false teachers. But then on the other side, there may be others who are not yet saved, but could be. Perhaps they've made a false profession of faith. Maybe they've been influenced very deeply by false brethren, but they're not yet hardened beyond hope.

By the grace of the Lord, they may yet come to true faith. So we can't adopt a simplistic one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to dealing with problems in the church. Different situations necessarily call for different approaches. In all cases, scripture is going to urge us to show mercy, but what this looks like will differ. This is what Jude recognizes in this passage that we're looking at today.

As we have it here in the ESV, Jude is going to speak broadly of three categories of people. He doesn't define these groups very precisely, nor are his instructions to us very detailed, but as usual, there's actually a lot here for us to explore. And so that's what we want to do today, so that hopefully we're more prepared to deal with situations like this that arise within our own church. But today, I just want to examine these three categories. First is the group of people who are those who doubt.

We're told simply that we must have mercy on these people. The second group are described as being in the fire. These need the urgent mercy of being snatched out of this fire. Finally, there are others who need to be shown mercy, but with fear. And these, as I'll explain, are those who need to be corrected over gross sin.

And our mercy in this case needs to be carried out with great fear on our part, lest we fall into sin ourselves. The conclusion of all of this, I hope, is simply that we'll be better equipped to show mercy in a careful and biblical way as we seek to obey the Lord and contend for the faith in the context of His Church. So let's look. In the ESV, in verse 22, we read, However, you might have something a little different, depending on your translation. And I always feel I have to acknowledge these things when they occur, because I know that we use a variety of different translations here at Cornerstone, and I think that's a good thing.

Certainly wouldn't discourage you from using your favorite translation. But if you do have the King James or translations based on the same Greek text, like the New King James, for example, you'll have something like, and of some have compassion, making a difference. And actually verse 23 is a bit different as well. In the King James, we only have two different categories of people distinguished rather than three. It says, and if some have compassion, making a difference, and others say with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh.

So this is just a bit different. I know in my view, I don't think this changes the ultimate meaning a great deal, but it is going to affect how we explain it and exposit this in terms of structure. But for our purposes today, I am content to defer to our modern versions like we have in the ESV. So that is what we're going to go with, but I just wanted to acknowledge this in case you were confused looking down at your Bible and seeing something a little different. So again, the text we have before us is, and have mercy on those who doubt.

This is the first category of people Jude is going to mention to us, those who doubt. So there are many reasons why a person in the context of the church might be brought into a state of doubt. And some doubt is more serious than others. Doubt concerning matters central to the faith, of course, is going to be the most problematic. Saving faith requires a real trust, a living confidence that the eternally begotten Son of God really came in the flesh and dwelt among us.

that he died and rose again for sinners. So we should be concerned for the souls of those who doubt these things. But we should also recognize that faith and doubt can, to some extent, coexist. Remember the man in Mark's gospel with the demon-possessed son. I believe, help my unbelief.

The fact is that the human heart is rarely perfectly rational or self-consistent. We contain many contradictions in our souls. So we shouldn't be quick to regard people as unbelievers just because they're having struggles with their faith. In the context of Jude's letter, the people he has in mind are clearly doubters in the church. So these are professing Christians that have perhaps fallen under the influence of false teaching in some way.

They've perhaps been caught between the faith once delivered to the saints and the corrupted faith of the false teachers. They're not certain anymore who's right. It might even just be that the bad example of the false brethren has caused doubts to arise. Can all this talk about repentance and freedom from sin really be true if the church has tolerated these people who show no transformation at all? Doubts often arise out of seeing hypocrisy in the church, and there's an obvious mismatch between our doctrine and our practice that naturally causes people to wonder whether it's all true.

Ultimately, we can't say for sure exactly what doubts Jude has in mind in particular, but I think he's been deliberately being very general. So what he means to cover is all of these things and more. Regardless of the exact nature of these doubts and what's caused them, his instruction is to have mercy on these people. To have mercy means to show compassion, to show pity, where instead we might've given judgment, condemnation, harsh treatment, To show compassion, to show mercy, is to act kindly to people, beyond what's deserved, aiming at their good. This is important because it would be so easy in our zeal for orthodoxy to crack down hard on people who are wavering on important doctrines.

These people are compromised, they're part of the problem. You can imagine what it would have been like to receive this letter from Jude. Wouldn't it be so convicting to hear that your church has been inflicted by these false brethren like a disease? Entering the church, just imagine the sinking feeling in your heart when you realize, look what we've allowed to take place in our church. We naturally want to respond to this strongly, decisively.

Jude's letter is very much a call to action. We'd be strongly convicted to act. We'll want to remove any trace of this threat from the church. But Jude's warning us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There may be doubters, peaceful people with a weak and fragile faith whom we might hurt very badly if we don't take a gentler approach.

Gentle, I think, is the right word. I want to point you to a few passages of scripture that highlight this point, because gentleness is called for even in more extreme cases than doubting. First, I want you to have a look at 2 Timothy 2. So let's go there to 2 Timothy 2. Chapter 2, we'll read from verse 24.

Paul is here writing to Timothy, who is serving effectively as a pastor in the Ephesian church. This is his instruction to Timothy about how he should deal with difficult people in the church. So I want to read from chapter 2, verse 24. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

So notice, first of all, that Paul isn't here addressing doubters, but those who are actively opposing Timothy's ministry. This is a much more serious sin than doubting, although doubting is a sin. To doubt the word of the Lord is not a good thing in his eyes. But indeed, attacking the ministry of a man of God is a very serious matter. But even in that case, Paul regards kindness and gentleness as non-negotiable.

Timothy is to be kind to everyone. He is to be patient. He is to correct his opponents with gentleness. And all of this is with the goal and the hope that by the grace of the Lord, they might be granted repentance. Indeed, this is to be the goal of all kinds of church discipline.

So mercy is always required. Paul says this writing to the Galatians, Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Notice that this is real mercy. It's concern for the soul of the one who needs it. Worldly mercy merely affirms people in their errors.

Worldly mercy is useless because it only cares about seeming nice and supportive and empathetic. Real biblical mercy, by contrast, is concerned about what's really good for you. from an eternal perspective. Notice this involves correcting the one in error and restoring the one caught in transgression. The goal is that the one in error would be brought to repentance.

And that often does involve saying some hard and uncomfortable things that won't always feel merciful. Real mercy is difficult that way. But these things are always to be said gently or refusing to compromise on truth. Another text on gentleness that I think might be even more relevant to this passage about doubters is a passage about defending the faith in 1 Peter chapter 3. So let's go there to 1 Peter chapter 3.

This is a classic text that's often used to speak about apologetics, that is, defending the faith. That's relevant here, of course, because one way that we might want to correct those who are doubting will be to give reasons for our hope, reasons to believe the truth, just as we would with a complete unbeliever. Now in this context, Peter is addressing the issue of persecution, Christians who suffer for the sake of righteousness. And it's here that he talks about the proper way that we are to make a defense for our hope. So let's read from verse 14 of 1 Peter chapter three.

So verse 14 of 1 Peter chapter three. But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be God's will, than for doing evil.

So we shouldn't fear persecutors. Instead, we need to honour the Lord and be ready with a defence for anyone who asks. The way that we must give this defence is with gentleness and respect. And if this is the manner in which we are to answer unbelievers who directly oppose us and seek to persecute us, how much more should this be our manner with a brother or a sister who's doubting? Let us be ready with a defence, even a powerful and robust defence, but delivered with gentleness and respect.

This is how we can have mercy on those who doubt. We can respect them by not belittling them, or shunning them, or failing to take their concerns seriously. We want to listen to their concerns. We want to find out where these doubts are arising from. And we should be ready then to give a defense for the truth.

We need to show them that they can have confidence in the gospel. We need to show them exactly why they should reject whatever false teaching they've been so tempted with. We need to point them to Christ as the one who is supremely trustworthy, in whom we can place all our confidence and our hope. So we have to have mercy on those who doubt. We hear about the next group of people in the church who need our mercy in the first half of verse 23.

It says, save others by snatching them out of the fire. These are a different group of people, others who are in an even more precarious situation than the doubters. These are people who are currently in the fire, and need to be saved by being snatched out of this fire. So let's consider what this means. To be in the fire is obviously a very dangerous situation.

Something that falls in the fire is about to be burned. Depending on what the item's made of, you might be able to take a pair of tongs and quickly snatch it out, and perhaps it won't be too badly burned if you're fast enough. And I think this is the image that Jude's using. It immediately makes us think of urgent, immediate peril. There's no time to waste.

The fire is already at work. Fire imagery should make us think of hell and the final judgment of God. The judgment of the wicked is described by our Lord in the Gospels as the unquenchable fire and the eternal fire. Jude himself has already used fire in the context of judgment. In verse seven, he says, the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah serves as an example of the punishment of eternal fire.

It was a kind of foretaste of hell. So when Jude talks about people in the fire, we're very justified in seeing these people as being under the judgment of God. You need to be saved from this judgment. And indeed scripture elsewhere uses this language to describe this exact situation. I want you to come and see this from the book of the prophet Amos.

Amos chapter four. Here God is addressing Israel through the prophet Amos and condemning them for failing to return to him, despite all the warnings and judgments they have already endured. You can read this in Amos chapter four, verse 11. He says, I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning, yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord. So there's been a situation where some of the Israelites have been overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah, but others were saved.

This is described with the image of a brand plucked out of the burning. By brand, it just refers to a burning stick or a branch. This is quite a dramatic image. Imagine a burning branch on fire being pulled out of the fire and rescued, narrowly avoiding destruction. The same image is used in the book of Zechariah.

Chapter three, so let's go to Zechariah chapter three. We read this fairly recently in our corporate readings. And I'll read just the first few verses. Zechariah chapter three. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire? So here Jerusalem, or perhaps Joshua himself, is described with the same language, a brand plucked from the fire. In context, this refers to the return of the people represented by Joshua to Jerusalem from exile.

Jerusalem was a city under severe judgment, but now it has been rescued. It's been plucked from the fire because the Lord has chosen it for deliverance. This helps us to understand what Jude is trying to say. People he's talking about are in the fire, meaning they are currently under the judgment of God, condemned, in danger of eternal damnation. Remember that even before the final judgment, unbelievers are described as being under wrath, being condemned already.

So Jude is most likely talking about unbelievers in the church who have been seduced by false teaching and have not embraced the true faith. These people are under wrath, but they don't know it. They are in urgent spiritual danger, just like a branch in the fire that's already burning and about to be burned up forever. Even from this terrible condition, however, salvation is still possible. Faithful Christians are called to snatch these burning brands out of the fire to save them.

Now, properly speaking, of course, only God can save. It's entirely outside the powers of any of us to convert the soul of a sinner. But as I often like to emphasize, God uses means in accomplishing his purposes. And this includes salvation and the maintenance of salvation. This is particularly through the preaching of the word.

I'll read this for you from Romans 10. We're very familiar with this passage. We reference it quite frequently, but it's worth revisiting. Power of the word. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. They have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?

So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So Christians are sent out by God to bear the good news, to be messengers of God, by which he affectionately calls his elect to faith. So Christians can play a vital part in bringing God's people into faith. For this reason, scripture does sometimes speak of Christians as saving people, in the sense of having an instrumental role in bringing that person to faith. Paul speaks this way to Timothy, for example.

He says, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. James writes like this too. He says, my brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death. and will cover a multitude of sins.

What James writes about here is very much in line with what Jude is calling the church to do. If there is someone in the church, anyone among you, to use James's language, anyone who wanders from the truth and into doctrinal error or other sin, that person needs to be brought back, needs to be saved by snatching him out of the fire, saving his soul from death. So how are we to do this? First of all, remember that Jude's language is urgent. Save others by snatching them out of the fire.

To snatch is a sudden, forceful action. You snatch when you know that there's no time to lose. You might not have another chance. If we see someone wandering from the truth ensnared by false teaching, we're called to act. Don't put it off.

Our lives are so fragile, we might be called to judgment at any moment. Secondly then, in acting to save the soul from death, what's required is a renewed teaching of the truth. We need real rebuke, correction, and teaching from the Word of God. I'll remind you again of that passage we read in 2 Timothy. I think this is even more relevant here.

2 Timothy chapter... 2 verse 24. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth. They may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil.

being captured by him to do his will. When dealing with opponents of the truth, correction is called for. We give correction in the hope that they'll come to their senses. Paul further exhorts Timothy along these lines in chapter 4. Here he expands on the idea of correction a little further.

He writes, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge, the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

They'll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. So Timothy is called to preach the word. He is to do so with patience and teaching, reproving, rebuking, and exhorting. As I understand it, to reprove is to tell someone that they're wrong, to expose their errors.

Rebuking goes along with this, but is perhaps even more authoritative. It's a demand to stop. You must not do this. Think of how Jesus in the Gospels rebukes demons, or even at one point, the winds and the sea. To exhort, then, is a little different.

Rebuking and reproving are negative, but exhorting is more positive. When we exhort, we're encouraging or urging someone to do something. All of these things come into play when we're seeking to snatch people out of the fire. First, we reprove. We have to urgently show them why they're wrong from the scriptures.

We warn them about their terrible condition before God. We then rebuke. We sternly call them to stop what they're doing, abandon their errors. And finally, we need to exhort them to truly come to Christ. We call them to faith.

God may perhaps grant them repentance. If sadly that doesn't happen, Paul's instruction from chapter 3 applies. He says, avoid such people. Their irreverent babble is to be avoided, as he says in chapter 2. As he writes to Titus, as for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.

Such a person should have no further part in the visible church, unless or until there is real repentance. Now this is to protect the church, because falsehoods tolerated within the church are a great danger. This is again from 2 Timothy 2, verse 16. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying the resurrection has already happened.

They are upsetting the faith of some. If such people refuse correction, refuse to be snatched out of the fire, we are to avoid them and their babble, lest they drag others into the fire with them. And remember, even in this, we're not failing to show mercy. Such a serious consequence is a form of rebuke that we can pray can lead someone to finally see their errors and repent. But let's finally consider the second half of verse 23.

Jude writes, To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. So once again, we're being asked to show mercy, but this time what's needed is mercy with fear. And as we do this, we have the instruction that we must be hating the garment stained by the flesh. So we'll have to figure out what this means. First of all, notice that we're not given any direct description as to who these people are.

In the first case, we had those who doubt. That's clear enough. In the second case, it was clearly the people in the fire that is under God's judgment. But who are these people, these others who need mercy with fear? I think a crucial clue is found in the second clause, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

Scripture in several places uses the idea of a stained garment or dirty clothes to depict the state of sin and guilt. I referred to Zechariah chapter 3 earlier to talk about the brand plucked from the fire, and the same passage actually also talks about stained garments. So I'm going to read this passage for you in Zechariah chapter 3. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan.

The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. He is not bare, so brand, plucked from the fire. Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who are standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him. And to him, he said, behold, I've taken your iniquity away from you.

I will clothe you with pure vestments. And I said, I then put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by. So hopefully you see the picture.

Iniquity is depicted as filthy garments that need to be replaced with pure and clean garments from the Lord. You can find similar imagery in the book of Isaiah and in the book of Revelation. So when Jude talks about garments stained by the flesh, he's referring to sin that hasn't been put away by the grace of God. The source of the sinful stain, we're told, is the flesh. This isn't referring to the physical body per se, because we know that the flesh isn't in itself sinful.

Adam was created upright in a physical body. Our Lord, assuming our nature, became flesh and dwelt among us, and He was perfectly sinless. Of course, we all await the resurrection when we'll be raised incorruptible, but still in very much physical bodies with flesh and blood and bones. When we hear in scripture references to the flesh, especially in Paul's writings, what's being referred to is usually our sinful fallen natures that we inherit from Adam. Our flesh is us acting in ourselves apart from grace, apart from the spirit.

And it's indeed in our flesh that we carry out all our sinful inclinations and desires. You might remember that Jude has already been talking in these terms. We hear about the sexual immorality of Sodom and Gomorrah. We hear about the false brethren defiling the flesh and acting on bodily instinct like animals. They are following their own sinful desires and ungodly passions.

That is, they're stained by the flesh. So I think we're very justified in seeing this as a reference to people in the church who are deep in defiling sin. This fits the description of the false brethren. To these people, we are once again called to show mercy. Adhere especially with fear and while hating the garment stained by the flesh.

And these two points I think are very important because they're going to clarify for us how we need to show mercy and make sure that we're showing mercy in the right way such that we won't endanger ourselves or others. So the second point about hating garments stained by the flesh we now know is a reference to the stain of sin, the stain of guilt upon the soul. We're called to hate this, as indeed we should. We need to hate the stain of sin and the guilt of sin with our whole heart. Of course, we have to start with ourselves.

We don't start by hating the sins of others. But as the Lord says, once we've pulled that log out of our own eyes, we'll see clearly to address the speck in our brother's eyes. And indeed, that is what we should do. We should hate the things that stain the garments of others just as much as we hate the things that stain our own garments. If we love someone, we should certainly hate what's harming them and what's separating them from the Lord.

Our hatred for their stained garments should therefore motivate us to show mercy, bringing the gospel to bear in the hope of delivering them from their sins. That being said, I think Jude's main aim in telling us about hating their stained garments is to ensure that our own hearts are appropriately guarded when it comes to stepping in and showing mercy. Our hatred for the stain of sin should act as armour for our souls. against temptation. I say this because I think there's clearly supposed to be a connection between the fear with which we are to show mercy and our hatred for the stained garments.

So I want to explore this a little bit. When Jude says that we have to show mercy with fear, we could potentially think of this in one of two ways. We might think of fear in the sense of the fear of God, that is reverence and awe of God as a consuming fire. And indeed, Jude seems to be using that word in this sense in verse 12. He says, the false brethren feast with you without fear, that is perhaps irreverently.

But secondly, we could try to understand this in the sense of fear of danger, that is fearing for ourselves, lest we be tempted or influenced by these people into the same sins. And some commentators that you read might take one or the other view, but in my understanding, I don't see this as mutually competing options. Because if we're living in the fear of God, and we understand his holiness and his righteous wrath towards sinners, that necessarily involves a healthy fear for ourselves when it comes to our own temptations to sin. And I think Jude's point here is just that in reaching out to mercy to these people, we need to be on guard for our own souls. Paul makes this exact point in writing to the Galatians.

This is in chapter six. Brothers, if anyone is caught any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Then he adds, keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. This is the same point as Jude, but stated in different words. In our gentleness and mercy in seeking to restore the one in transgression, we need to watch ourselves, lest we too be tempted.

There is real danger here, but what kind of danger? Well, I think we can identify a few dangers associated with this kind of situation. First, we might be tempted to self-righteousness. I'm better than you. I wouldn't fall into that kind of sin, but I am going to come and condescend to come and help you.

But no, each one of us is incredibly vulnerable. Self-confidence in our own righteousness is only setting up ourselves to fall, and badly. Second, I think we need to watch our hearts carefully as we show mercy to sinners, because it's very easy to compromise truth and end up making excuses or reducing the seriousness of the sin in question. Because when we start to feel pity, compassion, or empathy for someone, we might start to feel that God's law is a bit too harsh. We might want to soften the edges a bit, lest we push the sinner away or cause offense.

I think this happens a lot. We fail to share the fullness of what God's word says, because we have this misplaced sense of compassion. So we have to keep watching ourselves, lest in this compassion, we lose sight of the truth. Finally, we have to be careful in spending time with these unrepentant sinners, because of the way they might be influencing us. Too often, a heart of mercy can cause us to let our guards down.

We can become careless. We might want to reach out and be friendly, to perhaps have an opportunity to show biblical correction or to share the gospel. But in doing so, watch out for their influence over you. Watch out for spiritual overconfidence. Don't think that you're too spiritual to be influenced.

People often say, well, Jesus ate with sinners. But be careful, you're not Jesus. Scripture is clear that there's danger here. The Apostle Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

He explains on this in a few verses. But now I am writing to you, not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother, if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. He says later in the letter, Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. So we have to be very careful as we reach out with mercy.

Show mercy with fear, with love for the sinner, yes, but with real hatred for the sin. Hate even the garment stained by the flesh. Once there has been a gracious call to repent, you have to remove yourself. And once again, if there is no repentance, the church will have to act with excommunication. The person needs to be publicly removed from the congregation.

This is very sad when that happens, but often necessary. Remember that even excommunication is to be seen as an act of mercy. You might remember the case of gross sin in the Corinthian church. Paul writes this. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Removing a man from the church and sending him back into the world is described as delivering him to Satan. This is a drastic move. The notice of the goal is that his flesh would be destroyed and his spirit would be saved. The idea seems to be that this kind of discipline would have a sanctifying effect that results in his repentance and restoration to the church. So remember, in the case of those deep in sin, we have to show mercy with fear.

So as we conclude, I want to just review what we've seen. Judah's shown us that we need to contend of the faith with mercy. Mercy is to be our weapon of choice in this fight. I'm talking about real, robust, biblical mercy. It's gentle and patient and kind, while firmly rooted in truth and motivated by concern for people's souls.

Now how this mercy manifests will need to vary depending on the circumstance, and Jude has given us three test cases to consider. First was those who doubt. These people, according to Jude, need to be shown mercy. Believers who are weak and struggling in their faith shouldn't be merely condemned and rejected, along with rebels and false brethren. Gentleness is required in all cases, but here it's especially necessary.

It's incumbent upon the Church to encourage these people to trust the Lord. And just as we would do with any unbeliever outside the Church, we need to make a defense and give a reason for our hope with gentleness and respect. Second, we looked at those in the fire. These people, I argued, are unbelievers in the church under the wrath of God. These are people in imminent danger, like a branch thrown in the fire, and they need to be snatched out of that fire.

This is a situation that calls for a more urgent and forceful kind of mercy. They're to be saved from their fire in the same way that any unbeliever needs to be saved, and that is through the gospel. They need to be warned of their danger and called back to Christ. They need to be reproved, rebuked, and exhorted with complete patience and teaching, but also with a sense of real urgency. Third then was those with stained garments.

These are also unbelievers, but these are especially distinguished by being deep in defiling sin. Their guilt is upon them, like filthy, stained clothes. Like all the others, these people also need mercy. But here, the believer who's stepping in to interfere, or to intervene, I suppose, is warned to do this with fear, hating sin, because we are in danger when we do this. And I identified a few ways in which we might be in danger.

First, through self-righteousness. Second, through the temptation to compromise truth out of compassion, and thirdly, or in danger through the sinner's bad influence on us. So we need to show mercy, but carefully. As Paul puts it, keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Now I think all of that, I hope at least, is easy to understand in principle.

I hope we get it. You can tell me afterwards whether you did. But what I want to ask you to reflect on as we conclude and as you go forth in your week, is what does this really look like in practice? What would this look like for you personally, to actually act with mercy with people in the church who might fall into one or more of these categories? Because what Jude asks here is actually really hard.

This kind of mercy requires discipline, self-control, conviction. Just think of a case where perhaps you've been personally offended. Maybe you've been sinned against. Maybe you're disgusted with someone's sin or their false teaching. Maybe you're angry, outraged, perhaps not without reason.

Well, in that case, can you still calmly, gently bring the gospel to that situation, caring more about that sinner's soul than for your own feelings? Well, I wish I could do that. I would hope I could do that. But I also know that I am very weak in these matters. And I know that I'm not the only one with these weaknesses.

So may the Lord help us. I know in my flesh, there are a million things I'd rather do than have a difficult conversation with someone where I have to call them to repent. It's one thing to know that you should do something. That's another thing to actually bring yourself to carry that out. Each one of us have to reflect on these things for ourselves because showing mercy in difficult situations is June's call on each one of us.

This is not just a matter for pastors to handle or deacons. Sometimes it may be wise for church leadership to be involved, but Jude's letter is addressed to every member of the church. So think about this, pray about this, consider perhaps how you've handled these situations poorly in the past. Take a moment to repent, take a moment to consider what it would look like to do it better. The Lord is gracious.

Even as he calls us to do difficult things, we can trust that he can equip us by his grace to accomplish these difficult things. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for your grace and kindness and mercy toward us. We all were sinners, doubters, who lay in the fire about to be burned.

We all once had filthy garments stained but flesh, but we were washed, we were cleansed. You took us out of that fire and you showed us mercy. May we who have been shown mercy be ready to show mercy. May our hearts be like the heart of Christ, who is gentle and lowly. A bruised reed he did not break.

May we be ready to contend for faith humbly, gently, but firmly, even urgently, because we know what's at stake. Give us wisdom, Lord. Give us discernment. Give us grace not to shrink back from what a difficult task is that you've called us to do. That we would have the courage to choose what is right and good and true over what's easy.

Lord, may we do these things for your glory. I pray these things, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen.