Completed In Joy

Where is all of this headed? We’ll end by fixing our eyes on the promise that God is bringing us to completion—with great joy—and how that future shapes how we live today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you have a Bible or an app, open it to Jude. There's only one chapter in Jude, so we don't have to worry about which one we're dealing with. But it is very near the end of your Bible. It's one of the last very books, and it's a short one. So if you're if you're skimming too fast in a physical Bible, there's a possibility you'll pass it up. But Jude 17 through 25, we're going to be working through together. Five weeks ago, we opened this series with one simple question. This was kind of our aim and endeavor. What does it actually look like when the lavish grace of God captures a heart? What does that look like? We've observed what that looks like in the Macedonian churches, where poverty and affliction overflowed into this joy-filled generosity to bring relief to the saints. We've sat with the rich fool who had everything and built bigger barns to store it, yet he lost his very soul in a single night. We've heard the Apostle Paul describe the God of all sufficiency who multiplies and supplies seed to the sower. We've stood with the people of old and Haggai, the prophet in the ruins of a neglected temple, and felt the weight of a people who built for themselves instead of for God. Last week we watched Antioch released its best leaders and best resources to receive this report of God's work that produced a unique joy that only ascending church could experience five distinct weeks. But yet, underneath all of the preaching that has taken place, there's actually been one thread, one single diagnosis that has run beneath it all. You and I, we struggle to live with generous, open hands. And I think that Jude helps us see it clearly. You and I, we're impatient. We're impatient. What causes us to live close-handedly? What causes us to grasp for the present immediate? What causes us to live with fear and anxiousness and we respond in such unhealthy ways? You and I are impatient. Because the world to come that has been secured by Christ's finished work, that has been promised to us as his people, it feels so distant and so beyond reach, and many of us have even come to the point in our life where we feel as if it will never truly come. And this world, the one that we are living in and experiencing and seeing and tasting, right? It feels immediate. It feels true and more real than a promise. And so our hands reach for what's right in front of us rather than waiting for what's coming. I think that's the root of our greed and our selfishness and our inability to live generously. And this morning on the last Sunday of the series, I think Jude gives us the remedy to this. He doesn't lay out some strategy of virtue for us to try and orient our life around, right? He doesn't establish some spiritual discipline that if we can just get the reps in consistently, we'll conform to something we desire to be, nor does he give us some liturgical rhythm that if we just implement within our family structure, we will actually be able to live open-handedly in the way that we desire to. No, what does Jude do? He lays before you and I a person and a promise. Now, in this passage, there are two kinds of people that Jude points us to. The first kind are the ones that the apostles of Jesus Christ warned the church about. Here's the charge. 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, and it is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the spirit. These scoffers, what are they doing? They're pursuing and following, chasing after their own ungodly passions, their worldly people devoid of the spirit, living entirely for the present, without any vision of a true and hope-filled better future. And so their hands are full of whatever this world offers because they've stopped looking for anything better to come. The second kind of person that's described here in Jude's letter is in verses 20 through 21. Notice the contrast. 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 that leads to eternal life. What is the contrast? What are the people set apart from those of this world? They're building themselves up in the faith, they're praying in the spirit, they're striving to keep themselves in the love of God, they're waiting for the mercy of Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And so Jude's primary diagnostic word for us is waiting. Waiting. But I want you to notice what they're waiting for. Because Jude is very specific, right? They're not just waiting in some vague, general sense. They're not just waiting for something unknown or undetermined or unrevealed. No, they're waiting for something promised to them. They're waiting for something certain, particular, a coming day, the day that Jesus presents his people before his glorious presence without fault or blemish and with great joy. Joy that day. The day that verse 24 is pointing toward. It's the hope-filled future that shapes and forms how we live today in this moment. Because if that day is not coming, if that day is just an empty promise, then we ought to grasp for everything we can here and now, because this is it. So find all of your pleasure and satisfaction and the fulfillment of your desires and what you can reach in this moment. But if that day is real, if it's been secured by Christ, if it's promised to us as his children, if it's been revealed to us through his word, if it's coming, then church, it informs every aspect of how we live our daily life. For the church of who Jude was writing to, it's what keeps their hands open and their eyes lifted heavenward toward a glorious future. But there's something critical in this passage that we have to give our attention to. And it's the very call found in verse 21. Keep yourselves. Keep yourselves. It's as if Jude is assuming drift. It's as if Jude knows that there's a propensity within us to drift away from the love of God, of which we're supposed to be abiding in through this joy-filled, righteous response of obedience to the gospel of grace of which we've been saved to. What causes us to sin more than impatience of a day yet to come? This hurried anxiousness, this fretting and worry and fear of what's in front of us. I have sinned more out of fear than out of maliciousness in my life. Because I love control. I love what I can wrap my hands around right now in this moment when things feel like they're out of control. So this assumption is honest. Jude says, keep yourselves. It assumes that without active, intentional, spirit-sustained effort, we will stop waiting. We'll lose our grip on the eternal, and you and I will fill our hands with whatever is immediately in front of us. You see, we're a people who need this exhortation that Judah's giving precisely because we're prone to forget the day that it's pointing toward. And right at the moment, when the weight of our inability to keep ourselves, to obey this call, to fulfill it and walk it outright, and when it seems like it's unapproachable and crushing, Jude makes this gospel turn 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. Look at what Jude does. He exhorts the church, keep yourselves in the love of God. You're prone to drift, you're prone to wonder. Keep yourself. But hey, church, your hope is not in your own ability to keep yourself in this world. Your hope is in the ability of a sovereign God who holds you in his hand, who has all power and might and purpose and determination to keep you when you can't keep yourself. Everything in this passage, in fact, everything in this entire letter has been building to this moment, to him who is able to keep you. Jude wasn't trying to just lay us with some heavy command or a challenge that we could not fulfill. No, Jude flows so beautifully and naturally to a doxology. An eruption of praise over the God who can keep us when we cannot keep ourselves. And so, church, here's where I will submit that the claim at the heart of this passage connects with the very heart of this series. Since God is keeping us for great joy, we can live with open hands. Since God is keeping us for great joy, we can live with open hands. Here's the freedom of the gospel. You don't have to grasp for anything anymore. That was the truth of Philippians. For Christ, of all that he was able to claim as his own, all that he was able to declare mine over, he let go. He didn't grasp it, he didn't white knuckle it, he just released it for the good of his people, for the glory of his name. And you and I, because of the gospel, we don't have to live grasping. We don't have to construct our own safety and security. We don't have to be convinced that this world is all of the pleasure and delight and satisfaction that is offered to us. We don't have to fill our hands with the present because we're afraid that there won't be enough in the future.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

We can wait.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

We can wait. This is fundamentally why the theology of suffering is so integral to the Christian faith. Why would we suffer if there wasn't something more glorious we're waiting for? Why would we endure persecution if there wasn't a greater joy awaiting us? Why would we live in such a peculiar way to this world if there wasn't a world to come?

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We can wait.

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But better news, we can be kept. We can live with open hands because of the God who keeps us. Not because we finally disciplined ourselves into generosity, but because the God who is able to keep us is bringing us to a day so glorious that nothing in this world worth grasping on to until that day arrives will ever seem worth it. But church, before we receive that vision of a more glorious day of a waiting that is fruitful, we have to be honest with why it's so hard for us to live in this moment. You see, many of us, whether it's outright altogether, day by day, or moment by moment, we've experienced this. We've stopped waiting, and so we've started grasping. We've stopped waiting and so we've started grasping. You see the reality of the scoffers in verses 18 and 19, it's rooted in impatience. It's rooted in impatience. They've stopped waiting for the day that is coming. So they started doing what? Following their own passions, filling themselves with what this world offers right now. And you and I were so often tempted and even prone to do the exact same thing. And it might not be all at once, it might not even be noticeable in our life, because often it plays itself out just quietly, gradually, one impatient choice at a time. Think about your life. When you think about the day that you're in and how you're living in this moment, are the decisions that we make or the actions that fill up our daily life? Is it after a time where we're able to actually set our gaze on Him and remind our heart of the promise of what's to come and the day that is awaiting us and the joy that we will be brought into and completed in? Are we making decisions in our life? Are we living in the day-to-day as a response to being reminded and overwhelmed of that day coming? Or are our decisions determined by the day we're in right now? What do I want? What do I feel I need? What am I scared of losing? What a life change that would be. If we lived every day in eager expectation for that day coming. Right? The day of great joy, of being presented without fault before God's glorious presence. And what are we doing? Like I just said, we're we're filling ourselves with today instead. And here's what it is many of us, we live in this hurried hedonism that's absent of patience. We want joy now, we want delight now, we want satisfaction now, we want fulfillment now. And so we might not consciously be able to call it what it is, but it is a pursuit of hedonism, of the world. Only that it can offer. And the sad part is it leaves us wanting. It leaves us so unsatisfied. And much of this life, it's rooted in this reality of impatience. Our experiences, our upgrades, our stuff that makes us feel full and rich right now. If we can really put it on the table, it's not an act of delighting in God's goodness, for his glory. The garden was filled with food that was a delight to the eyes, and God's call to his image bears was go and feast now. God has no problem with us feasting on his goodness. It's when we misplace his good things to be our God. Most of our right now mentality is not an act of delighting in him, it's an act of impatience with the not yet we're experiencing. We seem to have forgotten that we're heading somewhere to possess something infinitely better than anything that we can currently accumulate in this life. So many of us in this room, our hands are full. They're full. It's in what our grasping is causing us to miss. The freedom of open hands that can grasp hold of Jesus. That's what it's costing us. And the deep, settled joy of a life that's oriented toward the day that is actually, truly, really coming. Others of us respond in different ways, though. Impatient for the day, we we construct our own keeping. We have very little confidence that God will keep us. If anybody's gonna have our back, it will be ourselves. We'll watch out for our best interests, and so we toil and strive. To construct our own keeping. We've grown impatient waiting for the day. But our impatience looks a lot more responsible. Rather than grasping at this present pleasure before us, we've lost confidence in the God who is able to keep us. And so we've taken all of the keeping into our own hands. Right? The retirement account and the financial plan and the carefully managed future that's all rooted in this desire to control our best possible outcome. And again, none of these are wrong in and of themselves. In fact, the scriptures call it wisdom. But when that becomes our God, when we think that they can answer the question that only God is truly able to answer for us, who will keep me? They ultimately reveal an impatience with waiting on the one who's actually able to keep our souls. You see, you and I we're striving to do the keeping that verse 24 says only God can do. And the weight of that self-constructed security, and it's heavy. It's heavy, and it makes us do such sinful things as we desire for this ultimate sense of control. We love control. But can I just tell you, control? It's something that doesn't truly exist within our possession. The most deceptive part of our day is that we're delivered just incrementally, little bits of perceived control that we think we can control everything. But our birth, our death, the suffering that we face, the pain and the hurt that we will experience, it's not in your control. But God is a keeper. God is in control. Every molecule on this earth and in all the cosmos are submitted under his sovereign rule. You see, both of us were waiting for the same day. We're just growing impatiently waiting for it. The already not yet seems a lot more like not yet or not ever. One of us fills the gap with this present pleasure while the other fills it with self-constructed security, but the failure is the exact same. The roots the same, but church, the good news is the remedy is the same. It's to trust in the one who can keep us. Someone able to do for us what we have proven week after week and year after year, we cannot do for ourselves. And so, church, hear this good news. He is able to keep us. He is able to keep us. Now, there are three aspects of this statement that's rooted in verse 24. I think that carries so much weight, not just for this message, but for this entire series. The first is able. He is able. The Greek word for able, it's dinomanu. Present tense, active, continuous. What does that mean for us? It doesn't mean that he was able or that he will be able if we clean our lives up and start making smart choices and doing the right things. No, it's that he is able. Right now, today, in the middle of your impatience and your grasping and your self-constructed security, God is actively, presently, powerfully keeping you. The keeping that God does is not passive in our life. He is with us, keeping us now, in this moment. He doesn't simply just watch from a distance hoping that you will be the one who is able to make it. He doesn't sit back and just wring out his hands in this nervousness that somehow, somehow, you'll be able to keep yourselves for the day that's coming. No, it's in spite of our utter inability to keep ourselves in his love, does God keep us? He's at work in you through his spirit, through his word, through the community of his people, actively preserving you for the moment that verse 24 describes to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory and with great joy. What is that moment he's describing to us? One thing we need to focus on is our blamelessness before him to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless, not because of our perfection, but because of Christ's church, the righteousness that makes you presentable before God, before his glorious presence. It's not yours, it's his.