“But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, while waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” ESVUK
Jude 20, 21 (Jude 14-23)
Waiting For God, that title could refer to the twenty-year old British sitcom that has run for years on PBS. If you’ve seen it, you will know that it’s filled with humorous stories of a Tom and Diana who refuse to go quietly into the night in their Senior’s residence. The penny-pinching manager takes every opportunity to run the home at a profit for the Board of the Directors. When he cuts back on the quality of the food, for instance, Tom goes on hunger strike and Diana, a cynical, former photo-journalist with connections, threatens to publicize his folly. In episode after episode, this unlikely partnership wreak havoc with Harvey, the manager’s, plans and the younger generation seems inept in the face of these two wily seniors who refuse to settle while “waiting for God.”
Waiting for God. In a way all of us are waiting for God. Ten or twelve years ago, I was out on a pastoral visit. I went to see a lovely lady, Grace, who was a part of my former congregation. Grace was well into her 90s when I last saw her. She was struggling and hadn’t been able to get out much for a couple of years. She was sharing with me how her body was just tired out when she uttered the memorable words, “I think that God’s forgotten me.” Grace would just sit in her living room, day after day, waiting for God.
The early Christians were very aware that they were waiting for God too. It is a part of the Gospel message that one day the messiah will return, bring the current age to a close, and usher in the kingdom of God. With this in mind, Jude was concerned for his people’s well being. They had come a long way in their relationship to Christ. He did not want them to miss out on God’s kingdom on account of an ungodly group that had infiltrated the church. This group, says Jude, were “perverting the grace of God into sensuality and denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.” Some had laid aside the law of God and were teaching others to do likewise. The grace of God covered everything, they said, live as you please; they perverted the grace of God into sensuality. Others were questioning Jesus’ role, denying his lordship and denying that he was the messiah. Jude says to the Christian community, “Stand up! Stand on guard for the true gospel that was given to us by the apostles.” We covered this in the opening sermon of this series on Jude. But today, we come to the other thing behind this letter, some practical advice while waiting for God and dealing with the ungodly. While waiting for the messiah, says Jude, build yourselves up in the most holy faith, pray in the holy Spirit, and keep in the love of God.
Jude’s advice is not bad advice for any age. Perhaps, not bad for our age, for today we are finding that more and more people seem to be moving away from, and opposing, traditional Christian faith than ever before. Maybe you saw the front-page article in the Toronto Star last week entitled, “Saving religious real estate from damnation.” The article spoke of dwindling congregations. Congregations that were booming in the 1950s. 60s and 70s have grown so small that they are no longer able to afford the upkeep on their buildings let alone have a minister. Churches great and small are being sold to whomever. The situation is particularly dire in Quebec where former churches are now home to concert halls, circus schools, climbing gyms, public libraries, palliative-care centres, condominiums, community centres and daycares. One downtown Montreal church serves as a nordic spa & gym. Another in the town of Coaticook, near Sherbrooke, Que., has been turned into a glow-in-the-dark mini-golf course. It’s incredible what has happened in the last forty or fifty years. Unbelievable! and it’s not much better elsewhere. We ourselves know the pain of closing churches in Toronto. What has happened? Why have so many deserted the Church?
I could name a number of things but perhaps one isn’t far removed from the issues of Jude’s day; for too long we tolerated revisionists, people who would redefine the faith, question Christ’s teaching, question the need for a Christian lifestyle. For too long the basic faith of the apostles has been under fire even from the pulpits of the Church. Christianity, instead of being a radical belief became something that did not stand for anything. If Jude were around today, he would tell those of us who are left to stand up, contend for the faith of the apostles. While waiting for God, build yourselves up in the most holy faith, pray in the holy Spirit, and keep in the love of God.
“Build yourselves up in the most holy faith.” What’s that about? Jude was pointing Christians to the truth that had come primarily from the eyewitnesses to Jesus, the apostles. Build yourselves up in the truth about Christ – not in the thought of some Johnny-come-lately, or our own ideas and desires.
Last year in association with my doctoral work, I had the privilege of engaging fifty United Church lay leaders and clergy on a number of topics and one of the things I asked was, “What is the basis of your theology? What influences you most?” They were given ten options, some being more experiential – like culture or experience; others being more traditional such as Bible or sermons that they listen to. The answers were intriguing. Most people listed “experience” and some “inner sense” as their main sources of theology.
Now experience and an inner sense are well and good but some of us see a problem with these kinds of influences if they are the main sources of theology. The problem is that the “truth” they provide may be transient, it can follow human whim or the winds of culture. N. T. Wright notes that experience itself lacks the stability that we need to function as an authority. He states,
It is … because ‘experience’ is fluid and puzzling, and because all human beings including devout Christians are prey to serious and multi-layered self deception… that “authority” is needed in the first place… To speak of “experience” as an authority, is to admit that the word “authority” itself is being dismantled, unable now to function either as “court of appeal” in the old wooden sense or, in the more biblical sense, as “that through which God exercises Kingdom-establishing power.” … If experience is itself a source of authority, we can no longer be addressed by a Word which comes from beyond ourselves. At this point, theology and Christian living cease to be rooted in God himself, and are rooted instead in our own selves.
If we want to get beyond this, if we want to uncover the holy faith that is ours in Jesus Christ, it seems only logical that we get as close to Jesus as we can and engage the reports of the eyewitnesses in the written Gospels and the New Testament. Jean Calvin writes of us being like poorly sighted people when it comes to understanding God using reason and experience alone. We don’t get very far. Everyone comes up with a god of their own choosing. When we encountering the Word of God, however, Calvin says, it is like putting spectacles on the poorly sighted person, suddenly everything opens up and we can see clearly. This is why I’ve tried to encourage as many people as I can to engage the scriptures. They are really all we have to get close to Jesus while we wait for God. Jude asks us to be built up in the most holy faith, we need to get to know Jesus more and more.
I have an older friend who is a very solid Christian man. Nothing seems to shake him. I remember when I was first starting out in ministry, one of those blockbuster newspaper reports came out that seemed to indicate the demise of Christianity. I was concerned and fretted about what the fallout would be in the Church. After listening to me go on for a while, Gordon just quietly said, “Well, David, let us just trust that the Lord will continue to build his church.” I shook my head, I wanted to do something, but deep down I knew he was right. One day, I asked Gordon what gave him the faith he had; how was he so steady and faithful? What made the difference? He said, “I think it’s just time in the Word, and particularly John’s Gospel and letters, they always encourage me in faith and belief.” “Build yourselves up in our most holy faith,” says Jude. We need to spend time with those who knew Jesus first hand while we wait for God.
The second thing that Jude says is “Pray in the Holy Spirit.” Somewhere along the line, it seems to me that for many people, Christianity has become a knowledge-thing. We want to learn more about God and we turn to books on theology and even the Bible. But good as these things may be, Christianity has never been merely about knowledge, it’s also about relating to God. God invites us into a relationship, into his very presence, he wants us to commune with him, to know him, and this process begins with prayer.
I recently watched the popular television program, Nashville. In one of the last episodes, the main character, Rayna James, is sitting in a hospital chapel. The love of her life is undergoing surgery to save his life and she begins with something like, “Lord, you know we don’t talk much and I’m not good at this but… (and she begins to pray for Deacon).” For many people that is about where things are with prayer, they don’t engage in it much. Even self-professed Christians struggle with it. An author recently interviewed a group of American evangelicals about prayer and he wrote, “Typically the results went like this: Is prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often do you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes. Do you find prayer satisfying? Not really. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Not often. Many,” the author continued, “experienced prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. They regarded it as important, even paramount, and felt guilty about their failure, blaming themselves.”
I had lunch a while ago with a very good friend with whom I did doctoral work many years ago. Young is Korean. He has had a tremendous life and ministry and is well liked. Over lunch, I noted a great vibrancy in his voice and demeanour and asked what had been happening. He said, “I had to change. It hasn’t been easy but I had to change. In fact, I’ve had to repent,” he said, “of my condition and ask God for forgiveness.” I was a little concerned and asked, “What do you mean?” “I’ve been ignoring God, ignoring prayer,” he said. “I’ve been too busy. I may know a lot about God but I don’t really know God. I’ve had to change and it’s changing me.”
Mystery, awareness of another world, an emphasis on being rather than doing, even a few moments of quiet do not come naturally to us in this hectic buzzing world that we live in. Yet, prayer and stillness, give us a sense of something greater in the universe. They can bring everything in life back into realignment, help us to see truth, see ourselves, and ultimately they lead us to God. Jude encourages us while waiting for God, “Pray in the holy Spirit.”
Build yourselves up in a most holy faith, pray in the holy Spirit; the last thing Jude says to us as we continue to wait for God is, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” Sometimes in groups, words can take on meanings that are not immediately apparent in the literal sense of them. It is interesting that when the early Christians uttered the words, “Keep yourselves in the love of God,” they had something quite specific in mind. We get a sense of it in John’s first letter when he asks, “If any one sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.” It becomes clearer when John writes, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” And in his Gospel, John writes, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” So when Jude said, “Keep yourselves in the love of God,” it was a direct attack on the antinomians, the “ungodly” people who were going around telling people that they could live as they choose. Jude was upholding the word of God, upholding the example of Jesus, he’s indicating that if we love God, it will be obvious in how we live, we will honour God with our lives.
The whole idea of right and wrong seems to be up for grabs these days. Ravi Zacharias, in his book, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism, sums up the current situation with these words:
The logic of chance-origins has driven our society into rewriting the rules, so that utility has replaced duty, self-expression has unseated authority, and being good has become feeling good. These new rules plunge the moral philosopher into a veritable vortex of relativisations. All absolutes die the death of a thousand qualifications. Life becomes a pin-ball game, whose rules, though they be few, are all instrumental and not meaningful in themselves, except as a means to the player's enjoyment.
Christianity is, however, a totally different worldview. It is not a relativist situation in which each individual autonomously chooses how to live. Christianity looks to One with far more knowledge and wisdom than we do and says, “We tend to mess things up, show us the way.” Jesus modelled that way in a life of honouring God, caring for others, and living out God’s morality. It is spelled out for us in page after page of God’s word. As Christians we are called to take that and apply it to our own situations today. We are called to be different, to live on a higher plain, a higher plain in the world, a higher plain in our business dealings, a higher plain in our moral stances, a higher plain ethically, a higher plain in our homes as we interact with those closest to us.
So there it is. Jude’s call goes out to us still. While waiting for God, and in the midst of declining churches, and people proclaiming alternate gospels, build yourselves up in the truth about Christ, pray in the Holy Spirit, and keep yourselves in the love of God by honouring his word in how you live. It’s really a rounded Christian life. Stay close to God’s word, stay close to God’s presence (prayer), and stay close to God’s ways and when the messiah returns you will hear the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”