MERCY & FIRE Jude 16-23

The context of Jude's admonitions summarized in key words taken for the title of this sermon are clarifying truths to reinforce the faith of the believer. There is amazing and eternal grace in Christ for the saints, albeit this mercy is weighty indeed. It is salvation from the fiery judgements stored up in the furnace of God's just wrath awaiting final judgement of the unrepentant. Because the stakes are so high, the apostles and their cohorts could not afford to tolerate corrupting influences within the confessing church of Jesus Christ. Therefore they instructed stewards of the church with epistles of warning and equipping like the book of Jude. As we have noted throughout our sermon series from this book, Jude is preparing his readers to oppose anything or anyone who would seek to diminish or deny the glory, majesty, dominion, and authority of Jesus Christ our Lord. In verses 16-23 we continue to catalogue his descriptions of the ungodly and his admonishments to the holy. These distinctions understood and applied fortify us to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints”. Today we consider those who cause divisions vs. those showing mercy to those who doubt and worldly people vs. those called to save others by snatching them out of the fire.