We're turning God's Word this morning to Jude, that little epistle just before Revelation. As we come to the second to last sermon in this series, which we've called God Saves Sinners, as we've looked at a number of examples from the Old and New Testament of tragic lapses of people united to the church of God who fell. into sin, gravely, tragically. And as we conclude this sermon, we want to, this morning, try to answer this question, how can we keep from falling? How can we be prevented from falling into these kinds of sins? And then next week, Lord willing, we want to, next time, Lord willing, we return to the series, we want to consider how to recover from a tragic lapse. We want to then be prepared and arm ourselves equipped to not fall. But knowing that God's people can and do fall, we want to also then subsequently in our final sermon ask, how can we recover from such a fall? So we read from Jude verses 1 through 5 and 20 through 25. Sorry, 1 through 4 and then 20 through 25. Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ. Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Now in the intervening verses, the apostle gives examples of apostates, those who fell from their position and became depraved and wandered away from the truth. And then he picks up at verse 20 by saying this, but you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have compassion, making a distinction, but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. It seems that people today, myself included, probably yourselves included, love statistics. We love statistics. We use statistics because they are powerful shortcuts. You see a statistic, you see a few numbers and a few words connected to those numbers, and you've got a lot of information at your fingertips. Statistics are powerful shortcuts because they compress huge amounts of information into a simple numerical statement or numerical fact. And so we love statistics, but statistics have their limits, don't they? The trouble with statistics is they don't tell the whole story. In fact, that's what they're trying to do, to not tell the whole story, but just give us the bare aggregate numbers of a host of stories. But that's partly also their weakness. I'll give you an example. A huge recent study found that 33% of men and 19% of women admit to relational infidelity. And so there's your crisp shortcut. 33% of men, 19% of women admit to being unfaithful in their relationships. Powerful statistics. But perhaps these numbers raise more questions than they answer. You hear those bare stats, and you ask questions like, what's the backstory to all of these relationships in which someone was unfaithful? You ask questions like, what does it take to become unfaithful, or to have a relationship which might appear to drive one person to unfaithfulness. You ask other more painful questions, perhaps, like what was the fallout of all of these examples of unfaithfulness, which 33%, 19% don't even really hint at, do they? Think of broken lives, broken trust, broken families. And perhaps more positively, these statistics ask this question, how can I avoid becoming a statistic? And we hear there's 33% of men. And we might look around and say, well, if there's 100 people here today, am I just going to count out 33% and say, I hope I don't fall into that number. Hope I'm not part of the 33% of men or the 19% of women. How do I avoid becoming this statistic? And this is a real concern for the believer, isn't it? Particularly younger believers who look at the prospect of being faithful, not just to a partner, but to God for the next 70 years. or 60 or 50 or 30 years and you think, wow, how am I not going to just become a statistic of someone who's fallen away from God, fallen deeply in a sin, perhaps never to recover? How can we avoid becoming statistics? I want to encourage us with this thought. Statistics need not be prophetic. Statistics are descriptive. They're not prescriptive. They don't prophesy about what's going to happen to you. You don't have to become a statistic. You don't have to become one of those 33% or those 19%. But in order to not become a statistic, in order to not fall into sin, it seems that we need to live with three realities. Number one, we need to acknowledge that we are capable of stumbling. Woe to that person who says, I am incapable of stumbling. I've got everything together. I'm walking well with the Lord. I couldn't possibly become a statistic. Jude's letter punctuates tragic lapses. and sets them before us to say, you too, my brother or sister, are capable of walking in this same way. We'll consider some of those momentarily. Secondly, we need to live with this reality. God is able to keep you from stumbling. As he says in verse 24, able to keep you from stumbling, to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Jude here is writing, as we heard in the first part of this epistle, he's writing to the called. He's writing to the sanctified. He's writing to the preserved people of God. So we need to recognize that God is able to keep us from stumbling. And then thirdly, we need to live with this reality. We must contend for the faith. once for all delivered to the saints. That's what he says, doesn't he, in verse 3. The faith has been delivered to you. You've received the faith. Now you need to fight for it. You need to strive for the faith. You need to wrestle to remain in the faith. This is where we need to live, brothers and sisters, with this balanced approach. And this balanced approach of solemnity and confidence is able to keep us from sort of a careless approach to Christianity. I could never fall, I could never become a statistic. But it can also keep us from becoming despondent in the Christian life. I'll surely become a statistic. There's no way I can live faithfully for the next 70 years. This balanced approach can keep us from either of those approaches. And we want to take this balanced approach by then, first of all, contemplating sin's consequences. We need to know that we are able to fall, we are capable of great sin, and so we need to know the consequences of sin to keep us from moving in the direction of sin. That's why the Bible has countless examples of shameful lapses. Boy, the Bible doesn't really seem to put its best foot forward, does it, with all of the examples of sinners? Well, of course, the Bible does that to highlight the righteousness of the one person who did not fall into sin, but it also does so to Pound into the ground so many warning signs at the edge of all of the potential cliffs and pitfalls of our lives. Look at what happened to all these people in the Bible. They're warning signs. See, knowledge of pain can prevent pain. If you know that something can hurt badly, you might be kept from living in such a way that could lead to that hurt. That's part of what we do as parents, isn't it? We teach children, you know, things like fire is hot. The stovetop is hot. If you burn yourself, it's going to hurt badly, and so stay away from that hot. That was one of the first, I think it was one of the first words that our baby learned to say when we were downstairs. We have the wood stove. It could peel the skin off her hand if she puts it on. So we said, that's a hot. You don't want to touch that. It's going to burn you. You know that, and maybe that'll keep you from going that direction. If you've ever been a witness of a fire, of an accident, of someone driving carelessly, being reckless, it might make you think twice before driving carelessly in unsafe conditions. If you have a friend who has had part of his face cut off, it might keep you from abusing tobacco. You can go through example after example. These kinds of situations warn us about pain. so that we don't go in those directions with them. And this is what Jude is doing in his short epistle. In verse 7, for example, which we didn't read, he gives the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the people, he says, gave themselves over to sexual immorality and went after strange flesh. They are set forth as an example. Suffering the vengeance, says he, of eternal fire. They're an example. Think about Sodom and Gomorrah when you contemplate sin. He gives another example in verse 11. Woe to them, he says. He's talking about those who have left the faith, gone into sin. Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain. Well think about the way of Cain. He wants us to be aware of that. The way of Cain having run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit and perish in the rebellion of Korah. Three examples clustered into one sentence. Cain, Balaam, Korah. Sin and its fallout. The tragedy of sin. Matthew Henry. says to us, let their error be our awful warning. Friends, we need to be warned about the pain of sin. And we need to think about that, to have the pain of sin be impressed on our consciousness before we face temptation, like right now. If we're sitting here in a fairly safe setting without very many awful temptations, perhaps, because when the temptation comes tomorrow to view pornography or to gossip about a friend, that temptation is not going to look ugly, is it? It's going to look attractive. That woman that you're going to be tempted to take a look at isn't going to look ugly. She's going to look beautiful. and attractive and desirous. And so right now we need to have fixed in our minds that sin causes pain because we're not going to recognize that when our hearts start pounding or when we start thinking about the respect that we might gain from gosping about so-and-so. Every temptation, we could say, is an appealing offer with damning fine print. You ever get one of those offers? You ever get one of those credit card offers? Free money, vacations, bonus points. But there's damning fine print, isn't there, that you might not get to because the offer seems so good. Damning fine print says you're gonna be in debt forever. That's really, really fine print. You'll never recover. This is what sin is like, this is what temptation is like. It's attractive, it's appealing, it's desirous, but there's damning fine print built into those temptations. That's why John Owen rather says this, sin's expression is modest in the beginning. Right? Sin never presents itself in its worst light. You know, the devil never says, apostatize, fall away from the faith, follow after me. No, sin's expression is modest in the beginning. The devil's a deceiver. He knows how to deceive well. So Owen says, sin's expression is modest in the beginning, but once it has gained a foothold, it continues to take further ground and presses on to higher heights. That's why we have to be aware of the pain of sin before we give in even a little to temptation. That's why Owen famously says, be killing sin or it will be killing you. We have to fight against sin because of how painful sin is. It always has this goal to kill, to deceive, to destroy, to usurp. And we need to know that now when we're not under its spell, when we're not enamored by it. And so, friends, we need to contemplate the consequences of sin if we're going to stand firm and be kept from falling. So we think about that now, we reflect on sin. When you see examples of others in the headlines or in your own families, you meditate on that. You know, you hear about a another minister falling into sin, or another Christian popular person, or a co-worker bringing shame on themselves, you reflect on that. You think about the pain and you grieve over that sin as if it was yours. Someone recently, the other day, commenting on the revelation of awful statements made by one of our candidates for the presidency said, you know, this person was caught on tape, but you weren't caught on tape so many times in the past week or the past month for sins that you would be shamed having been caught on tape. And his counsel was, repent, use this example to repent, to think about the pain and the shame and the embarrassment and the loss and to repent. So contemplate the consequences of sin. Secondly, to keep from falling, we need to cultivate grace. The best inoculant for spiritual declension is spiritual growth. A growing Christian will resist sin better than a stagnant Christian. And this is Jude's point. He says in verses 20 and 21, but you beloved, now just think about it. He's contrasting here. He says, but, why would he start by saying but? Well, he's given examples of Cain and Korah and Balaam, those who fell into sin. He says, but, now here's the alternate path, but you beloved. You can anticipate what he's going to say, right? How do we not do what they did? Well, here's how building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. See, we to grow in grace. is to increasingly affirm God's ability to keep us from falling. The more that we grow in grace, the better we know God. We know His love. We know His ability to keep us from falling. So as we grow in grace, we're becoming more united to God. in this conviction that God saves sinners. He saves me. He can save me from falling into sin. So how do we cultivate grace? How do we build ourselves up in our most holy faith so that we do not become like Cain or Balaam or Korah? Well, a number of ways that the Bible would suggest to us. The first is this, that we eat God's Word. What is the most, I don't have a statistic for this, but what is the most probably overlooked way of pursuing health? It's probably our diet, right? I mean, we want quick, easy ways to be healthy, but probably the best way to prevent disease and sickness is the way that we eat, what we're fueling ourselves with, what materials we're giving to our body to be prepared for sicknesses. And this is true in our spiritual life as well, isn't it? What are we eating? The Bible says that we do not live on food alone, but on the Word of God. And so, as Peter says in 1 Peter 2.2, as newborn babes, we are to desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby, that we may mature and become healthy. To put it negatively, Christians who are not regularly, deeply, lovingly devouring God's Word are setting themselves up for a fall. If the Word of God is not taking root in us and changing the way that we think, changing the way that we view sin, and teaching us to look to Christ, we're setting ourselves up for disaster. So positively, one of the ways that we cultivate grace to keep ourselves from falling is by eating the Word of God, consuming it like a newborn baby, an insatiable desire, a desire that cannot be stopped. Secondly, we cultivate grace by communing with Christ in the sacraments. And we think about this, first of all, with regard to baptism. And again, I wish I had some statistics on this, but it seems like, to me, those who commit heinous sins often do so from the place of alienation, isolation, disappointment, loneliness, hopelessness, You read about shooters in public shootings, massacres, and you start digging into the backstory and you say, well, this was a lonely person, a person isolated, that didn't know love or acceptance. And friends, as we reflect on what Christian baptism is, and what it means for us, we see that it delivers us from that place. When God baptizes his children, he says, you belong to me. I desire a deep and lasting relationship with you. so much so that I will mark you with my name and give to you my promises." You see, through baptism, God delivers us from that place of isolation and hopelessness from which we often commit sins. We reflect on our baptism, we remember what God has said to us, what he's done for us. As we reflect on our baptisms, in other words, God is enforcing the covenant of grace. in which He pledges His loyalty to us, and in which He enforces our responsibilities and duties to be faithful to Him. Likewise, in the Lord's Supper, we're nourished, we're supported as God's children, as the Belgic Confession teaches us. We're strengthened as we take the Supper, not ritually, not merely as a habit, certainly not in a superstitious way, but we receive the supper, and as we receive the supper, we say, Lord, you're feeding me right now with Jesus. You are giving your body and your blood for me so that I might be holy, built up, and strengthened against sin. We abide in Christ, says John, As we sacramentally eat His body and drink His blood, we abide in Him and are strengthened from sin. So we cultivate grace by commuting with Christ in the sacraments. And thirdly, we cultivate grace by praying for holiness. And in this connection, we need to view prayer as war. And if prayer is war against falling into sin, we have to wonder, I have to wonder, if there's any rationale behind our prayers sometimes. If we know ourselves to be struggling with a certain sin that could lead us away from God, ought not that preoccupy our prayers. In other words, all of our prayers should not sound the same. Each of our prayers should sound very different because we know what we're struggling with and we make those struggles the focus of our prayers. Our prayers, in other words, need to correspond to our temptations. And, you know, sometimes we pray and we're a little lazy in our prayers, and if someone were listening to us pray, if they were cheeky, they might ask afterwards, you don't have any struggles? No temptations? No sins that you feel are pulling you away from the Lord? You're just concerned about safety? You know, keeping routines. What we do is we identify our temptation. So if you tend, for example, to be a harsh person, you pray for the fruit of the spirit of gentleness. And maybe that's a prayer that you pray for years, daily. Lord, make me a gentle man. I'm harsh. I'm hard on my family. I'm unforgiving. Lord, make me a forgiving person. Immerse me in your forgiveness. If we incline toward isolationism, if we're inclined to withdrawing ourselves from others, we pray about that. Lord, I don't know why, but I don't want to be with other people. I don't spend time with other Christians. I pull away, I withdraw. Maybe I'm scared to open up, maybe I'm scared for people to know me, but Lord, help me in this. And so we pray for those particular temptations. Maybe we're greedy, so we pray for generosity. Maybe we know ourselves to have a wandering eye, married or single, looking lustfully at other people. And so we pray, Lord, for chastity, give me a desire for for holiness and maintaining my body, my mind. The simple point here is that prayer is how we fight against sin, how we build ourselves up in the most holy faith, as Jude exhorts us to do. And so we stand against temptation by cultivating grace, by actively, diligently cultivating, fighting against sin, killing sin. through eating the word of God, communing with Christ in the sacraments, and by praying against the sins that are fighting against us. And then lastly, Jude would exhort us, if we are to keep ourselves from falling, he exhorts us to contend in community. In other words, we are called to be fighters, as he says in verse 3, we are to contend earnestly for the faith. Now we hear that and perhaps we hear we are to fight to keep Christian doctrine pure. And certainly that's part of what Jude is saying here. But the faith is not just a collection of doctrines, is it? The faith is how we live through those doctrines. And Jude said we're to contend for the faith. Theologically and practically, we're to be fighters for the faith. But notice what Jude is doing here. He is not writing to an individual. He's writing to a church. He's writing to a family. And he says to this family of God, contend earnestly for the faith together. Notice he's writing to those who are called, those who are sanctified, those who are preserved. It's a community here to whom he's writing. In verse 3 he says, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend. He's got us in common in his view here when he says, contend for the faith. Matthew Henry again says on this note, we are our brother's keepers. Thinking about Cain, who is referenced in this letter, Cain says, when asked about Abel, where's your brother? He says, what, am I my brother's keeper? Is Abel any of my business? And God's answer is yes. You are your brother's keeper. You need to contend for the faith in community. Let none of us either be that sheep that wanders away from the flock or allow others, as much as in us lies, to wander away from the flock. We're to contend in community. And I want to suggest two ways that we are to contend for the faith in community to keep ourselves from falling. And the first is this, that we would develop spiritual friends. And I want to read a text that we're going to read. We read last week. We're going to read again this evening, Lord willing, from Ecclesiastes chapter four. I want to read it in this service so that it becomes abundantly clear again that this text is not a marriage text. It's not a wedding text. It's a text that highlights the necessity of spiritual friendships. The writer says this, Solomon says this, two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. Now listen, for if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Although one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken. What's Solomon saying here? saying, if you want to fall and be defeated, go through the Christian life alone. The best plan to fail in the Christian life is to try to do it alone. If nobody knows your struggles, if nobody is committed to helping you, nobody's praying for you, if nobody's there to pick you up, nobody's there to warm you when your thoughts toward God grow cold, you are setting yourself up for a fall. I'm going to close with a few references from Pilgrim's Progress, a few illustrations, but the entire book is a sustained argument for spiritual friendship. The overwhelming point of the book is if you were to try to go through this journey called the Christian life by yourself, you would fail. There are so many opportunities to fail, so many slews of despond, so many attacks of the evil one. You will fail if you try to go through the Christian life alone. If you try to Just be present in public things and not open up in private, not make yourself part of that contending community. And so God would urge us this morning to cultivate spiritual friendships, and especially men need to note that word, cultivate. Spiritual friendships don't always come naturally, do they? We have to work hard at it. And sometimes we think, I don't need a Christian friend. I'm a man. I know what to do. I know how to live the Christian life. That's trying to be wiser than God, isn't it? Who urges us to develop spiritual friendships. Secondly, we contend in community by encouraging one another as spiritual friends. Encouraging one another. We need encouragement, don't we? So that we don't fall into sin. Jude says it this way, near the end of his epistle, he says, on some, again speaking to the community here, on some have compassion. And to have compassion is to have a feeling of deep sympathy accompanied by a desire to alleviate the suffering. That's what it means to encourage, doesn't it? We see someone struggling, we sympathize with their suffering, we want to alleviate that. We encourage them, we speak to them, to urge them to not despair. I'm going to give two examples of that in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. In the first illustration, Christian and hopeful have been captured and held captive in Doubting Castle. It's a metaphor. They are doubting the promises of God. Discouraged. And the giant, the master of this castle, is persuading them to commit suicide. He says, here's a rope. Why don't you just end your life? You're not going to make it through. God doesn't care about you. God isn't going to fulfill his promises. You are lost. You're a waste. So end your life. And Christian feels it acutely. He begins to talk about ending his life. And in this setting, his friend, hopeful, says this, my brother, rememberest thou not how valiant thou hast been heretofore? I am in the dungeon with thee, a far weaker man by nature than thou art, and with thee I mourn. Notice that he's having compassion. He's with him. With thee I mourn. And then he says this, but let's exercise a little more patience. And in Bunyan's story, the next day, they remember the key of the promise and are delivered from the castle. But his clear point is, if it wasn't for hopeful, he wouldn't have been delivered. He would have lost hope and ended it. Without that spiritual friend, he could not have contended for the faith. Another example. near the end of the book. Christian and Hopeful have one last difficulty to overcome together and that's the river of death. And Bunyan masterfully tells this harrowing story of Bunyan and Hopeful trying to cross through the river and they drown. They again lose hope at the moment of death. They think about dying and they almost give up. And their heads are under water, they're sucking in water, they're trying to breathe. And at one point in the story, in this narrative, Hopeful's pulling Christian's head above water so that he can talk to him. And this is what he says. He says, brother, I see the gate and men to receive us. And it's with these words that Christian is able to find his footing and both of them cross over together into the celestial city. And again, we're left with this impression that a Christian would not have crossed the river without him. Without somebody saying, brother, I see the city, I see the gates, men are there to receive us, I see Jesus. We need to encourage one another, like hopeful. We need to remind one another of the shortness of the fight. I know the Christian life has been called a marathon, that's true, but it's really, you know, you're looking back probably, you say, well, that's pretty short. If you've attained a number of years, it's a short battle. We need to remind each other there's an end in sight. We need to remind each other of the surety of the gospel. We remind each other of the greatness of the reward. We encourage each other with thoughts of the certainty of the goal. We need to have and be spiritual friends. We need hopefuls. In other words, to help us fix our eyes on Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us, friends, that we have great temptations, but we do not have to become statistics. We do not have to assume that we're going to fall into sin, because such a percentage of people do. But we do have to contend. There are no shortcuts for holiness. We have to fight. And we have to fight in community with one another, bearing one another up. And aided by God Almighty, who is able to keep us from falling and surrounding ourselves with a band of hopefuls, we can have every expectation of success in the Christian life. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your kindness to us in giving us warnings of sin and the pain of sin and teaching us how to grow in grace and growing us through the means that you've given to us. We pray that you would help us to use these means and to help one another along in the Christian life. Preserve us, we pray, by your almighty power. Amen. Let's stand together and sing number 707. Number 707, Jesus, I, my cross have taken. And let's sing the first, third, and fifth.