Jude 1:24

The Great Keeper

Him that is able to keep you from falling. Jude 1:24 (AV).

Our text is at the end of one of the gloomiest books in the Bible. We know little about the writer of it, but he must have been well known among the Christians. His Epistle is written to the whole Christian Church to men and women of different race and outlook on life, but who in religion are at one, for Jude speaks of a common salvation. He was very much in earnest. He saw that many of those who began well in the Christian life were living in a way that showed God was not in their thoughts; and he said very hard things to them.

The Epistle of Jude is a mysterious little book, but the stern writer of it has a loving heart. You are sometimes afraid of a teacher who appears very stern, and who, if he says an encouraging thing to you, puts in a little word to keep you humble. Yet, after a time you may discover something that makes you respect him. Such men are often very downright and good. After his hard words Jude breaks into a message of hope to the Christians who had been forgetting God. “There is One,” he says, “who both can keep you and will. He will not only keep you from falling but will do it so that He will, at last, present you without faults, before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy· ”

Jude wanted to alarm those Christians simply because he saw their danger. It is told of one of the great painters of Italy that, being engaged upon a fresco inside the dome of a lofty cathedral, and standing on a platform hung more than a hundred feet from the floor, he paused to look at the effect of his work, and, absorbed in his art, kept walking backward for a better view, till, forgetful of danger, he had almost reached the platform's edge, unconscious that two more backward steps would hurl him down to death. A brother artist, seeing his danger, but afraid to speak lest a sudden shout should precipitate the fall he was anxious to prevent, seized a brush full of paint and hurled it against the face of the brilliant figure on the dome, completely spoiling the labor of many days. But that saved the painter's life; for, resenting what he thought an insult, and springing forward with a cry, he only then discovered that it was a friendly act to save him from an awful death.

You boys and girls are in danger of falling. You go to school one morning determined to do the right thing. Things seem to go all right at first; you think so at least. But in the playground you come down. You fail to “play the game.” You speak behind someone's back; you misrepresent something in telling it; you even tell a lie. Did you ask God before you left home to help you to do right? He can guard us from stumbling, but we have to keep asking His help day by day. Even if one day we seem to get on well, the very next morning may see us in the mud. God does not give us an unlimited supply of strength, leaving us to spend it as we please. His promises only are unlimited; and He fulfills them as they are presented.

Boys and girls can help each other to keep from stumbling. In climbing steep Alpine tracks no man is independent of his neighbor. Sometimes the members of a climbing expedition are roped together. And it is always the weak one of the party who must be considered. His failure would be the failure of all. The slipping of the feeblest might endanger the lives of all. Remembering the difficulties of life and how easy it is to make false steps, won't you be a helper of those who are weaker and have had fewer advantages than yourselves?