MAC KIRK

 Jude vs 20 ( and all that comes before)   " But ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." vs. 20 “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself...

 Jude 8-11        Errorism is terrorism for sure as one commentator put it.  But positively Jude speaks to the believers who are preserved & continually preserved in Jesus Christ, and called /loved by God Himself.  We are looking at vs 8-13 in their highlights illustrated by the apostasy of Israel, the rebellion of some of the Angels, the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Covenant and applying this to the "ungodly men" , vs 4, and of course the  unbelief that pervades all of this.   We left off with the end of vs 7 in our previous message and it was something we briefly touched on, " the vengeance of eternal fire."  The so-called believers, called ungodly,  that actually were apostates, ( that is they had fallen away from real belief in Jesus Christ) were like the angels that fell away--- Jude , the brother of Jesus , tells us.  They were arrogant and prideful as well as those who practiced the unbelief an...

 Holy Communion. I Corinthians 11: 26 & 28 Two words from the NT illuminate the Sacrament. 1.  "  For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." Show is katangello means pronounce, proclaim the Lord's death till He come.  Hebrews 9:15-16 " He is the Mediator of the New Covenant, by means of death...for where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator." Robert Bruce , 5 Sermons on the Sacraments:"  The Sacrament is appointed that we may get a better grip of Christ nor we get in the simple word.  The Sacraments are appointed that I might have Him more full in my soul." Who is to take?  Confirmed people, that is those who have professed faith in Christ with the Elders, the Session & they have publically joined the Fellowship/Church. ---"the feast of Passover, the Old Testament type of the Lord’s Supper, “did not admit all guests indiscriminately,but wa...

 Jude 5-7  Three Loving Reminders or Warnings.    Have you ever wished someone had given you a proper warning before you did something ?  When I was in support of the Haiti invasion in 1994,  I was deployed to Puerto Rico as the Chaplain .  There I happened on a Chaplain friend who had been with me in California.  We enjoyed getting reacquainted.  While there I was in San Juan, the capital, and bought some dried fish that was in the display window.  I got very sick after eating it and was put in our unit medical facility.  Later the Chaplain I knew said, " Oh, I could have told you , ' don't eat the dried fish.'"  After all my misery I wished he had told me before I ate it. Jude says to remember.  2 Peter 1:12 the similar book to Jude says , " I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance ( of the steps in the Christian life)".  Even though Jude says, " you once knew this, how that the Lord , having saved t...

  The Way of Holiness/ The Way of Love----Matthew 5 and Deut. 10 Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18 1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23 Matthew 5:38-48 Psalm 119:33-40 The Collect O ETERNAL God, through whose mighty power our fathers won their liberties of old; Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.   The Epistle Deuteronomy x. 17. THE LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: he doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which t...