Jason Helopoulos

As a preacher, there are some things I like to preach a lot more than other things in the Bible.

I like to preach a good gospel narrative.

Give me just Christ up front and that, that delights me as a preacher.

There are other texts that are a little harder to preach and have a hard word in them.

and yet I still preach them.

Why?

Because it's necessary.

It's necessary and he sees that there is necessity here.

And a lot of people don't like the book of Jude for this reason.

It's not just that Jude is kind of tucked in there in our Bibles before you get to the exciting revelation that it gets looked over.

It's not just because there's some odd things, as we're going to see as we get further in this book, that we're going to have to wrestle through.

But a lot of people accuse Jude of just being heavy, of being absent of love, of being absent of grace.

Well, I think you only have to return back to our introduction in the first lesson or go to the end as we will see the benediction to say that that is just faulty and wrong.

Jude is filled with the love and the grace of Christ and the hope of the gospel.

But he's going to speak a hard word because he's concerned.

There's something that is before him that he is concerned for these churches that he is writing to.

He feels compelled to write to them.

In fact, this letter finds its entire reason in these two verses, in 3 and 4.

My favorite city in the world is Edinburgh, Scotland.

Love Edinburgh.