The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God Ministries is available
at www.DesiringGod.org Our scripture reading this
morning is from the book of Jude, verses
17 through 25.
But you, beloved, ought to remember the words
that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of
our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying
to you, in the last time there shall
be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts.
These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly
-minded, devoid of the Spirit.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your
most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting
anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ to eternal life.
And have mercy on some who are doubting,
save others snatching them out of the fire,
and on some have mercy with fear, hating
even the garment polluted by the flesh.
Now to Him who is able to keep
you from stumbling, and to make you stand
in the presence of His glory, blameless, with
great joy, to the only God our Savior,
through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty,
dominion, and authority before all time and now
and forever.
Amen.
Father in heaven, I ask for your help
now again, in this last Sunday of the
year 2000, to open the meaning of praying
in the Holy Spirit.
From verse 20.
Lord, I long to live there and breathe
there, and I long for this church, the
other churches that are represented here, to breathe,
to live in this experience of praying in
the Spirit.
And so I ask that you'd come and
help me in these two Sundays that we
dwell on this.
Give me your heart and your mind, your
demeanor, your truth.
Let there be an anointing on these services
so that people are awakened from the slumbers
of prayerlessness into vigilance that keeps them in
the love of God.
So come and help me now, I ask
in Jesus' name, the name we always pray
in, so that you, through Him, might be
glorified.
Amen.
We begin every year this way because
prayer is the breath of the Christian life.
It's the breathing of the Christian life.
You breathe out prayer and you breathe in
grace.
Don't go an hour without breathing, you might
suffocate.
And because nothing decays in the Christian life
like the desire to pray.
It's there, it's strong, the year gets off
to a good start, and then it decays.
And so it's the most vital and the
most vulnerable thing, isn't it?
So vital and so vulnerable.
That's why we start.
You know, I can imagine naysayers saying, Oh,
why do you do a prayer week?
You're supposed to pray all year, why have
a prayer week?
Well, because we're so weak and it's so
important.
That's why you got to stoke the fires
again and again and again in order for
this thing to be real.
And so I'm praying that as we enter
2001 in a few hours, God will move
on you and He will set you to
praying with books or prayer meetings or messages
or whatever.
He'll set you to praying alone in your
closet.
May He give you a place and a
time this year and set you to praying
in families.
If you have children, get them together, dads,
and pray with them.
If you don't and you're just a couple
or after the kids are in bed, couples
pray together.
Yeah, it's hard sometimes.
It's a real barometer of your life together,
whether you can open your mouth and pray.
There have been times when Noel and I
got on our knees, we couldn't pray together.
Things were so bad among us, between us.
And that's good to know.
Peter said your prayers will be hindered if
you don't love her according to knowledge and
cherish her as a joint heir of life.
It's good to know when you can't pray
together.
It's good to know that.
And then fix it, work on it, whatever
it costs, pray together as spouses.
And then pray in small groups.
Make prayer central in small groups, praying for
each other.
Pray here in prayer meetings.
We have six prayer meetings a week stated
in this church.
Just watch the bulletin.
I go to four of them every week
and lead them.
And those half hours go by just like
that.
They're open to the whole church and they
are powerful times.
I love Friday morning especially because that's when
I begin my sermon thinking hard.
And to be bathed in a half an
hour of fellowship of prayer out there in
the commons is very precious to me.
It would be precious no matter what your
walk of life.
Don't let this year go by without being
in a room with people who pray corporately
with each other.
And then pray all day.
Pray without ceasing.
Pray in your car and pray at work
and pray while you're fixing the meals and
changing the diapers and washing the clothes and
washing the walls and shoveling snow.
Pray.
We breathe.
Don't go an hour without breathing spiritually.
You might suffocate.
That's my prayer.
Let's be a praying people.
Well every time I come to this week
the Lord helps me.
Does unusual things for me because the Lord
loves to hear his people pray.
And so he stirs up pastors to get
excited about prayer when they need to.
And he does it in a different way
almost every year.
This year he did it by bringing across
my path a little book by Bruce Wilkinson
called The Prayer of Jabez.
And the reason this book hooked me, I
haven't read the whole thing and I'm told
there are some things in it I wouldn't
like.
It's okay.
I read books like that too.
And you can read discerningly.
But what hooked me about this book is
that it's all based on an experience he
had with the word 30 years ago from
a pastor who was my pastor while I
was in college in the last two years,
namely Richard Sumi, who was also a chaplain
at Dallas where Bruce experienced him.
And what I remember about Richard Sumi, and
it ties in with this book, is that
he was known for taking absolutely obscure texts
and finding diamonds in them.
So he'd go to the genealogies of First
Chronicles, you know.
All these names.
And he would go there and he'd find
one where the author said a little something
about the person.
And that's who Jabez was.
Jabez.
And this little book is called The Prayer
of Jabez.
And Jabez gets two verses in the Bible.
That's all.
We don't know anything before.
We don't know anything after.
We just know two verses about Jabez in
First Chronicles 4, 10, and 11.
Let me read them to you, and then
tell you what Wilkinson experienced when Sumi preached
from these two verses.
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and
his mother named him Jabez, saying, because I
bore him with pain.
Now Jabez called on God, the God of
Israel, saying, O that you would bless me,
and indeed enlarge my border, and that your
right hand would be with me, and that
you would keep me from harm, that it
may not pain me.
And God granted what he requested.
And that's the end of the story.
He appears in redemptive history.
He prays a big, expansive prayer.
God answers him.
End of story.
And Sumi preached on that, and challenged everybody
to be like Jabez, and lay hold on
God for some great blessing in your life,
for the nations, and for kingdom purposes.
And here's what happened after he heard that
sermon.
Pulling a chair up to the yellow counter,
I bent over my Bible, and reading the
prayer over and over, I searched with all
my heart for the future God had for
someone as ordinary as I.
The next morning, I prayed Jabez's prayer, word
for word.
And the next, and the next.
Thirty years later, I haven't stopped.
If you ask me what sentence, other than
my prayer for salvation, that has revolutionized my
life and my ministry the most, I would
tell you that it was the cry of
a gimper named Jabez, who is still remembered,
not for what he did, but for what
he prayed, and what happened next.
So here's my question for me, and you.
What are we, from the Bible, laying hold
on as a vision for our lives, and
not letting go of God until He gives
it?
You got a vision for your life?
Do you know why you're on planet Earth?
Is there something that has captured your imagination
and your dream from the Bible so much
that you'll take hold of God and say,
I won't let you go until you do
this great thing through me for you and
your kingdom.
Is there anything you'd think that way?
So what I did when I read that,
is I stepped back and I just asked
myself, Okay, what have I prayed for 30
years?
What's been my Jabez prayer?
And to be honest, I had to say,
the prayer I have prayed probably most often
the last 30 years is that God would
save my kids.
Then maybe that God would keep me married
and faithful.
But let's ask the question just a little
differently, because those are just little prayers.
I mean, they're incredibly important.
Why else do we pray them every day?
But let's ask, what have I prayed?
What has John Piper prayed of a kingdom
kind, of a larger kind, over and over?
What's been the most frequent prayer that God
would do?
So I had to ponder this.
And I'm not sure about this, because memories
are really fallible, right?
But here's what I think for the last
30 years would be the case.
I think it would be some form of,
God, let my life count for the hallowing
of your name.
Hallowed be thy name, unpacked.
Hallowed be thy name, let me hallow your
name.
Let me be a means of others hallowing
your name.
Oh God, that my life might count for
the hallowing of your name.
I can remember, this is what came back
to me, I can remember 30 years ago
in seminary, at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, for
three years I'd jog down one side of
Orange Grove Boulevard, and then turn around and
come back eastward, and the sun would be
often rising as I finished this two, three
mile jog.
And I would force myself the last hundred
yards or so to sprint, just to push
myself.
And I can remember how the heart would
beat so hard, the thought would come into
my mind, I'm going to die.
I'm going to drop dead, I'm going to
have a heart attack.
I'm only 24.
And I would push myself right on through,
and I would raise my hands like this
as I ran, just like an Eric Little
kind of tape break, you know.
And I would say, God, I couldn't say
it out loud because I'm just...
In my mind I would say, God, don't
let me live one minute longer than I
can be an instrument of hallowing your name
in this world.
And I still do that.
Thursday morning, I was up running.
And I finished with the same sprint, at
age 54, I did with 24, and my
heart was beating so fast, I said, I
really could die, now I'm 54.
And I did exactly the same thing, and
I wasn't planning for this illustration either.
I didn't think of this until yesterday.
I said, Lord, if I die, let me
die.
But if I live, don't let me live
any longer than I can be an instrument
in hallowing your name.
Doing it myself, and bringing others into the
hallowing of the name of God.
Hallowing, hallowing, hallowing.
Old-fashioned word, right?
Sanctified, it means treasuring the name of God,
reverencing the name of God, honoring the name
of God, glorifying, cherishing, esteeming, praising the name
of God.
I want to be used to bring others
into the experience of knowing and loving and
honoring and cherishing and treasuring and magnifying God.
That's what my life is about.
I think I've prayed that more than any
other kingdom prayer for the last 30 years.
What are you praying over and over again?
What are you laying hold on God for?
Think about it.
That's what this week is for.
That's what New Year's resolutions are for.
Step back, reassess 2000.
Nobody's satisfied with 2000, right?
Nobody in this room says, I feel really
good about my prayer life in the year
2000.
Nobody.
Everybody feels, I've got to do better.
I want to do better.
I can do better.
God helping me.
And so, let this week be a gift
to you.
It's the beginning of the rest of your
life.
You don't have to be strapped into what
you were.
God Almighty is in you.
He will take you forward into something great
and better.
But, linger over the word until you get
a Jabez prayer.
And then pray it over and over.
Until God, in His mercy, grants it to
you.
Pray, pray, pray.
Let's go to the text.
Jude, next to the last book of the
Bible.
Verses 20 and 21.
I want to use it to put authority
under what I've just said.
That's all just John Piper exhortation there.
I think it's biblical.
I want to try to show from this
text how crucial and biblical and God supported
these exhortations are.
So, here we are at Jude.
One chapter, Jude verses 20 and 21.
We'll be on it today and next Sunday.
Let's read it.
But you, beloved.
You, loved ones.
Building yourselves up on your most holy faith.
Praying in the Holy Spirit.
Keep yourselves in the love of God.
Waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord
Jesus Christ to eternal life.
Thomas Manton is a Puritan 300 years ago.
He wrote a commentary on Jude.
23 pages on these two verses.
Rich, dense, gloriously God-centered pages on two
verses.
Every phrase in the verse deserves two sermons
at least.
So, this phrase is going to get two
sermons and that's all.
Then we'll do other things.
So, the phrase is praying in the Holy
Spirit.
What is that?
Praying in the Holy Spirit.
So, I have one observation today and it
isn't going to be the one you had
thought.
That's next week.
Not going to tell you what it is
today.
I'm going to tell you that praying in
the Spirit is a divine means that God
has appointed for keeping us in the love
of God and safe for eternal life.
I'll say that again.
It's the main point.
The only point of the message that's now
underway.
Praying in the Spirit is God's appointed means
by which we keep ourselves in the love
of God and thus safe for eternal life.
That's the point of the message.
Now, I don't know whether in your vocabulary
the phrase means of grace is there.
I want it to be there.
I'm going to put it there now and
hope that you will embrace it as a
very helpful way of describing the relationship between
God's decisive work and my dependent work.
This is last Sunday sermon again.
God does things decisively in and through us.
We do things dependently on His doing within
us.
How are those related?
How do we talk about that?
One way to talk about it is to
say God has grace that is powerful to
bring about changes in our lives, but He
also has means of grace that we're engaged
in.
Our wills are engaged in.
Our bodies are engaged in.
Our minds are engaged in.
Our emotions are engaged in.
They're all means by which He is sovereignly
working out His purposes.
So, means becomes a crucial word to handle
biblical, theological vision of life.
So, we'll see this.
We'll see this here.
Let's look at the context.
Verse 20.
You, beloved, building yourselves up.
I want you to notice the participles here
and how they lead toward the main verbs.
It's very important.
If you have a version that doesn't show
them that way, then change versions.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your
most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.
Now comes the main verb.
Keep yourselves in the love of God.
Now, the reason that's important is because these
two participles at the beginning are ways to
do the main verb.
Building yourselves up, praying in the Holy Spirit,
keep yourselves in the love of God.
So, a way to keep yourself in the
love of God, and that's crucial for your
life.
He who has no love for the Lord,
let him be accursed, Paul said.
Staying in the love of God, whether it's
my love for God or His love for
me, doesn't matter right here.
Both are absolutely crucial that we stay in
them.
Depends on my praying in the Spirit and
my building myself up on faith.
On faith.
Now, this is all about perseverance, therefore.
That is, it's about staying in the love
of God.
That's what this little book, Jude, is about.
It's about this big word, perseverance, or keeping,
or enduring.
Staying in the love of God.
Oh, so many Christians have mechanical views of
the Christian life.
You get in and then everything's mechanical after
that.
You get in by praying a prayer, signing
a card, and then it's mechanical.
And what you do has nothing to do
with it.
That's not the biblical vision of the Christian
life.
This text says, keep yourself in the love
of God.
How?
Praying in the Holy Spirit, building yourself up.
Praying is a means, a means, of keeping
yourself in the love of God.
How do you stay in the love of
God?
Keep yourself in the love of God.
This is something you do.
You do this.
Isn't that amazing?
You keep yourself in the love of God.
Keep yourself in the love of God.
You do this.
That's part of the context.
Here's another part.
Verse 1.
Same chapter.
No chapter divisions here.
Verse 1.
Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, brother of
James, to those who are called.
Oh, don't you love to be called?
Called, Christian.
Loved in God, the Father.
Don't you love to be told you are
loved?
And here's the key one.
Kept.
Either by Jesus Christ, as some versions have
it, which is okay and right, or for
Jesus Christ.
The Greek can handle either one.
There's no way to know.
Whether you know Greek or not doesn't matter
here.
The ambiguity is there.
But what's clear is, this is a passive
verb and you're not doing it.
You're being kept in verse 1.
You're being kept.
So you're doing it in verse 21.
Keep.
Same verb.
Greek and English.
Keep yourself in the love of God.
You do it.
Verse 1.
You are being kept by another.
Who's that?
Well, the NIV says it's Jesus.
The NASB says it's for Jesus and somebody
else must be doing it.
Who's doing it?
Why did the NASB translate it for Jesus
instead of by Jesus?
Kept by Jesus.
I'm sure I'm being kept by Jesus.
The blood of Jesus.
The intercession of Jesus.
The spirit of Jesus.
I know that's true theologically.
Why did the NASB not translate it that
way?
And I know why.
They're smart.
They looked at the whole context.
Let's go to the end of the story.
Sometimes the beginning of the story is illuminated
by the end of the story.
Very famous doxology.
Verse 24.
Let's read it.
Now to him who is able to...
What?
Tell me.
Keep.
Now to him who is able to keep
you.
So, who is it?
Who is it in verse 24?
Do we get told here?
We do indeed get told here.
Crystal clear who it is who keeps us
in verse 24.
Now to him who is able to keep
you from stumbling and make you stand in
the presence of his glory.
This is what I want.
Isn't it what you want, Christian?
You want somebody with almighty power to keep
you so that you will stand before the
Son of Man when He comes and not
shrink back in fear of His wrath.
Amen.
That's what we all want.
If it depends on me, ultimately I'm a
goner.
So I need a sovereign intervening of somebody
to keep me, hold me in the love
of God.
Who is it?
Read on.
Verse 25.
Namely, to the only God, our Savior, through
Jesus Christ.
So the keeper is God the Father.
Through Jesus Christ.
Now I'm not going to quibble about that
translation in verse 1.
It's absolutely right.
Jesus keeps us because when the Father does
it through the Son, the Son is our
keeper as well as the Father.
And so is the Spirit.
We'll see this Trinitarian thing next week when
we look at this praying in the Spirit,
praying in the name of Jesus, praying to
the Father.
Prayer is a massive Trinitarian event.
So let's not quibble about the by or
for Jesus.
Let's know that the verb in verse 1,
kept, is illuminated by verse 24 and 25.
Namely, God Almighty, the Father and the Son,
conspire by the Spirit to keep me for
His glory.
None let me fall.
A man came up to me after the
first service.
Ah, this is so good.
I wish I had thought of it.
He said, have you ever heard any old
preacher say like I did one time, it's
very hard to stumble when you're on your
knees.
See the word stumble there in verse 24?
Who's able to keep you from stumbling, or
your version may say falling.
Very hard to fall or stumble when you're
on your knees.
In other words, prayer is the means.
This is the point I'm going to make
in just a minute.
Prayer is the means that God uses, God
uses, now we know it's God, verse 1,
verse 24, this is God, uses to enable
me to keep myself in the love of
God by prayer.
Now, does anybody here last Sunday's message coming
through?
We got a decisive worker here called God.
We got a dependent worker here called me
and you.
And these two works are essential for eternal
life.
But the second one, mine, depends on the
first one, God's.
God's decisive work enables my dependent work.
And my dependent work enabled by God's decisive
work is absolutely essential for my perseverance in
eternal life.
Oh, that we might rid ourselves of the
mechanical notion of eternal security.
Mechanical notion, not the reality.
I'm a believer in eternal security to the
soles of my feet because of Romans 8
.30. Those whom He justified, He glorified.
No question, God's people will endure.
But how can they be sure they'll endure?
Well, the mechanical view says it doesn't matter
what they do, doesn't matter how they act,
doesn't matter whether they pray or not, just
they're secure, period.
They pray, they're safe, they're in.
Not biblical.
Keep yourself in the love of God.
Well, doesn't that make me secure?
No, because God is at work in you
to will and to do His good purpose.
It makes you utterly dependent, not on God
at the beginning of your Christian life, but
utterly dependent on the sovereignty of God moment
by moment in your Christian life.
That's a big view of God.
That's a big view of the grace of
God.
Some people have grace nicely tucked away here
at the beginning and then they're going to
work their way either or not, and it
doesn't really make any difference whether they do
or not because they're in.
The Bible does not have a static mechanical
view of security.
It has a dynamic, engaged view of security.
In other words, don't be like the cynic
who hears these things and says, well, if
I'm kept by a sovereign God to be
presented as blameless before the throne of God,
it doesn't matter whether I'm vigilant in prayer
to keep myself in the love of God
or not.
You know what that's like saying?
It's like saying, since life is a gift
to me, it doesn't matter whether I breathe
or not.
I'm just going to spend an hour underwater.
Try it.
Prayer is the Christian's vital breath.
Don't say, it doesn't matter if I breathe
because God gives me life.
That's crazy.
That's stupid.
Let me put it another way.
This is a test kind of.
If you do not treasure breath, you don't
treasure life.
And if you don't treasure prayer, you don't
treasure eternal life.
Test yourself.
Is eternal life kind of just a little
phrase in your head that's supposedly to get
you out of another phrase called hell?
Two phrases, got this hell phrase, got this
prayer phrase.
Yeah, I believe that stuff.
Or is it a desperately needed work of
God and a cherished gift to you?
Do you cherish prayer?
I mean, when you hear God say to
you, ask and you'll receive, seek and you'll
find, knock and the door will be opened.
Do you just blow up with, I can't
believe you're telling me a sinner that I
can relate to you that way.
That I can come to you day after
day and breathe out my needs and have
you breathe in grace to meet my needs.
Really?
I mean, if you don't love prayer, you
don't love God.
You don't.
If you don't love prayer, you don't love
God.
Ask any wife.
He says he loves me, but the last
thing he wants to do is talk with
me.
The last thing he wants to do is
spend time with me.
Tell her about it.
You want to hear an example of how
to pray?
And then I'll stop.
How do you pray persevering or prayers for
perseverance?
That's what we're talking about here.
We're saying that you are to keep yourself
in the love of God.
As a means of God keeping you in
the love of God.
Because his work is decisive and yours is
dependent.
And we're saying prayer is the participle that
defines how you do that.
Praying, keep yourself in the love of God.
Now praying then is the means by which
we're kept in the love of God and
thus safe for eternal life.
How do you pray?
What do you say?
I'll give you one example.
Luke 21, 36.
This is Jesus telling us.
Keep on the alert at all times.
Praying that you may have strength to escape
all these things that are about to take
place.
And stand before the Son of Man.
He claps it down.
Keep on the alert.
Praying that you may have strength to stand
before the Son of Man.
Again, what's the alternative to standing before the
Son of Man?
Answer, falling in judgment and fear before the
Son of Man.
Standing before the Son of Man means he
appears and you stay on your feet with
a smile on your face.
Confident in the righteousness of Jesus Christ that
you are accepted in the beloved.
And to cower and to fall and to
cringe like many will do calling on rocks
to fall on them is owing to prayerlessness.
Pray, keep on the alert.
Praying that you may have strength to stand
before the Son of Man.
Why?
Because prayer decays.
Breath, the desire to breathe spiritually decays.
It's an insane thing, I know.
That the desire to breathe would begin to
wane and we would say, let's just spend
time under water.
In prayerless sin.
That's the water.
Prayerless sin.
Let's just spend time under there because we're
kept by God.
We'll make it and we don't need to
breathe in order to be alive anyway.
Well, my message is over and I'm pleading
with you.
Breathe in 2001.
Lest you suffocate.
Breathe.
Personal devotions are breathing exercises.
This is not a legalistic thing.
The reason we do personal private devotions and
family devotions and church devotions is because we're
so prone to stop liking breathing.
And we undertake exercises to keep our lungs
strong and to keep our all day long
kind of breathing.
So that in the car you're breathing.
Oh God, help me.
Bring me home safely.
Help me to have a good, tender, warm,
loving spirit towards my wife when I get
home.
And patience with my kids who want to
play when I'm dead tired.
Oh God, help me, help me, help me.
All day long.
I mean, if you're like me, you are
one.
Your heart is a factory of needs.
Longings.
And therefore, if you just release that, you'll
be praying all day.
There won't be any breathless hours.
Let's pray.
Father, tonight the year ends.
The millennium ends.
Century ends.
There's never been in the life of anybody
in this room a better time than to
lay aside the old man.
All of his prayerlessness.
And to put on the new man.
Clothed with prayer.
Would you work it in us, please?
Work it in dads to be good leaders
in prayer at home.
Work it in roommates to get together and
pray.
Work it in teenagers so that they're forming
little clusters and groups of prayer.
College students, get them praying with each other.
Lord, and would you give everybody a Jabez
prayer for some great kingdom purpose that they
lay hold on.
And now may the Lord grant you to
keep yourself in the love of God by
praying in the Holy Spirit.
And all God's people said, amen.
Amen.
This is Desiring God, 2601 East Franklin Avenue,
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406.
Desiring God exists to help you make God
your treasure.
Because God is most glorified in us when
we are most satisfied in him.