Jude 24-25
Amen. Turn to the book of Jude. We’ll conclude tonight with the
last two verses, verses 24 and 25. While you’re making your
way there, I’ll ramble just a second about doxologies. We sing a couple
of doxologies in the life of the church, usually glory be
to the Father and to the Son. and to the Holy Ghost as it was
in the beginning. Now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.
And then we also sing, praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him, Father, Son,
Holy Ghost. So we sing these doxologies.
There’s a bunch of others in the Bible. And I don’t know if
you’ve noticed, but after the creed in the morning, I try to
find a Trinitarian hymn that’s in the hymnal. Christmas season,
try to put a Christmas one there, that kind of thing, so that we’re
not just in our little Gloria Potri rut. But we do sing the
Gloria Potri about every eighth Sunday, I think. But remember,
a doxology is simply a glory saying. Doxa, Greek word for
glory. So a doxology is like a gloriology. You see doxologies frequently
in the Apostle Paul’s writings, especially like Romans 11. He’s just talked in chapters
nine, chapters 10, and chapter 11 about the future of Israel.
And he says, my mind’s gonna explode, all the depth and the
riches of the glory of God, who can search out his ways. There’s other places. So here
at the end of Jude, we have a wonderful doxology. Gotta be picky. A doxology is different than
a benediction, right? A benediction is a blessing on
you, right? So benedictions are different
than doxologies. Benediction is God placing his
blessing on you. Doxology is us giving praise
to God. So let’s hear the word of the living God together from
verse 24 of Jude. It says, Now to him who is able
to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before
the presence of His glory 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. So the Christian life is a foot
race. It’s a lot of other images, but
we’ll land on the foot race for a minute. We have to run the
race with endurance. We have to make it to the finish
line and we have to not stumble. If you stumble in a foot race,
you might not get up. You might be injured in such
a way that you have to be sidelined and you don’t finish the race.
So Jude is challenging the early church. Remember, they have all
these, seems like we’re in the nasty passages of the Bible lately.
Remember these last couple of Jude studies, the people that
are in the midst of the churches Jude is writing to, they’re bad
people, right? They pervert the gospel. They
live sensual lives. All this, and it won’t help the
church grow. It won’t help feed their souls.
And so he’s concerned, and he’s gonna end this little bitty letter,
just a 25 verse letter saying, yes, all that is true. Hard times
in God’s church in the early first century. Same for us in
the 21st century, whatever it is. 2022 now, but we’ve got to
run and we’ve got to keep our eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus,
but we’ll get tired. There will be obstacles. We will
want to quit. And we might stumble, we might
become injured along the way, but what God starts, God finishes. That’s the glorious thing we
know about the gospel. What he begins, he completes. He who began a good work is faithful
to complete it. And we will be presented at that
day. That’s the line of thought here that Jude gives. Our Lord knows our race and he
knows our needs. That’s what we want to think
about tonight. Our Lord knows our race. He knows our needs. And we give praise to him who
keeps us and presents us spotless before his throne. So a couple
of things to think about as we think about this race and our
Lord knowing our needs. The first is our God who is,
well, he’s able and worthy. He grants us perseverance to
the end. He grants us perseverance to the end. Look at verse 24. Him who is able to keep you and
present you And then down in verse 25, the only God, our Savior,
be glory and majesty. This is our God who is able and
worthy, and he gives us perseverance to the end. In fact, if you’re
in our Sunday school class, that’s what the P is here in our order
of salvation, it’s perseverance. Maybe some of you will remember
in our reading through the catechism several weeks back when we were
in the justification, adoption, and sanctification section, It
says, what benefits do either accompany or flow from justification,
adoption, and sanctification? Well, I still have this in my
head when I had to learn that catechism. I usually learned
them on my commute into Charlotte to school. I have it in my mind,
APGIP. See, perf, jest, that’s not my
only little acronym. APGIP, assurance of God’s love,
peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, Increase of grace,
and the P? Perseverance, there into the
end. So if God justifies you, he’s
going to preserve you. He doesn’t save you halfway,
or part of the way, or one fourth of the way. What he starts, he
finishes. And our God, who is able and
worthy, grants us perseverance to the end. Now we live in a
world of phobias, you know, arachnophobia, spiders. I’m the official spider
killer in our house. having three females in the house
and they’re not here tonight so I can talk about them. If I hear
a squeal from down the hall, I know I probably better get
there and, you know, grab a tissue and squash it and, you know,
it’s a little scary. Maybe we have phobias of heights.
I don’t know what that’s called, but we don’t like tall bridges.
We have phobias of the wind storms, you know, lightning storms, phobias
of this, phobias of that. Well, we have phobias as Christians,
too. Does God love me? Is he gonna
save me? And these are needless phobias,
because when God promises, all the promises of God are yes and
amen in Christ, and what he said he is gonna do. It may not look
like it at times, but our Lord tells us to fear not. He knows
the numbers of the hairs on our heads. He considers us more important
than the sparrows. He considers us more glorious
than the lilies of the field, and are they not clothed? Are
the sparrows not fed? And does not a hair fall from
our head without it being the will of our Heavenly Father?
So, who is able? God is. What is he able to do? He’s able to keep watch over
your soul and to preserve you to the last day. Well, what does he keep you from?
He keeps you from stumbling. If you’re running a foot race,
maybe a cross country, rocks, a fallen limb, another runner,
but he’s able to keep you from stumbling, from falling into
sin, from falling away from the faith. He’s able to keep you
from being tripped up by providing you with a healthy church, with
right teaching. He’s able to keep you upright
from lapsing into sin, from falling prey to Satan. And this is a
Trinitarian guarantee. Look down at verse 25. our Savior through Jesus Christ
be all glory. It doesn’t mention the Holy Spirit
there, but you don’t get two without the three, right? But
this is a Trinitarian promise. Our assurance is rooted in God’s
everlasting decree. Our assurance is rooted in His
justification. Our assurance is rooted in all
the promises of God, and when we are weak, he is strong, and
he is mighty. Flip back to the first verse
or two of Jude. It says there in verse one, midway,
to those who are called, to those who are beloved in God the Father,
and to those who are kept for Jesus Christ. Four or five weeks
ago, we looked at those. Those are past tense verbs with
present and ongoing blessings and benefits. So if you are called
and kept and preserved and in the hands of Almighty God, he
is not going to lose you. And so our God who is able, our
God who is worthy can grant us perseverance. Compare this, though,
Compare this to, I think, of Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon,
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and he uses a very obscure
Old Testament passage, and the theme of his sermon is their
foot shall slip, and I finished the sentence, in due time. Y’all are terrible historians,
y’all don’t know that famous sermon, their foot shall slip
in due time. Isn’t that very different than now to him who
is able to keep you from stumbling, from falling? Sinners in the
hands of an angry God was Edward’s famous sermon, which apparently
y’all know nothing about, my goodness, among Philistines here. But the Christian life, it’s
a dangerous journey, right? It’s a dangerous journey, but
God is at his century post. and he is watching, he is granting
you safe passage. And we think about Christ, his
high priestly prayer, John 17, and he prays agonizing over his
disciples, agonizing over the church, and he prays, remember,
not only for those who are here today, but for all those who
come to faith, and he prays there’ll be one, he prays for unity, but
he prays that they will be with him in the place where he is
going. And so we have a shepherd, we
have a high priest, who is constantly praying and what the son asked
for, guess what? The father gives and he receives
it. But we are called by God, beloved
by God, and kept for Jesus Christ. He will not disown the apple
of his eye. No, he’ll preserve you. You can never ask too much
of him. He may not give you all you ask,
because you may ask outside his will. You cannot exhaust his
grace. He will never adopt you as his
child and then disown you. And so those are the things that
we think about. And God will preserve us to the
very end. So let that sink in. Let your
present pain, your present hardships, let that sink in and compare
that to your future glory. And one will pale in light of
the other. So our God, who is able and worthy, He grants us
perseverance to the end. But he does a second thing that’s
quite amazing. He presents us blameless in heaven. And that’s again in our little
doxology at the end of verse one. He is able to keep you from
stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence
of his glory with great joy. We have an invitation to see
the king. We’re going to enter in the presence
of Almighty God one day. It will be by death unless we’re
alive at the second coming. But we will be invited to see
the king. You make preparations for that. You get an invitation
to the White House. Maybe you’re from across the
pond. You get invited to see the queen
or the king. You make preparations. You get
your hair cut, your clothes pressed. You probably brush your teeth.
Things you ought to do when you’re coming to see the king on Sunday,
right? But you also learn protocol.
You learn proper protocol. You get the right attire on because
you are going before the presence of Christ, before the presence
of Almighty God. But there’s something about the
clothing here. You read this in the book of
Revelation a good bit. You can’t come into the presence
of God with dirty clothes. You can’t come stained with sin. In fact, you have to exchange
your unrighteous, filthy rags for righteous robes. During the
Christmas season in our morning service, our creed was the Word
made flesh that we used out of the back of the hymnal. For us,
he kept the law, atoned for sin and satisfied God’s wrath. He
took our filthy rags and gave us his righteous robe. The only
way you are fit to go into the presence of God is through Christ.
And it’s through that great exchange of robes. And he will present
us blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. We speak of that fancy word justification,
our little fun definition to help us remember what it means.
Justification, just as if I’ve never sinned and just as if I’ve
always obeyed. Maybe the 50 cent definition
would be our catechism. Justification is an act of God’s
free grace whereby he pardons all our sins. He accepts us as
righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ that
is imputed to us or credited to us and received by faith alone.
That is the great gift of almighty God. He makes you fit for his
presence and he does it with great joy. We don’t think about
this very often, but God is a proud Papa. In Zephaniah chapter three,
verse 17, It’s a passage Caleb and Ashley used for their wedding
the other week. It speaks of God will rejoice over us with
shouts of joy. I don’t know how often we think
of that, but when we get to heaven, God is going to sing over us.
We’re going to be singing to him. We’re going to be singing
holy, holy, holy, and all the rest, but he is going to be singing
over us a proud papa. Because he has loved us with
an everlasting love and our presence is now with him. I can think
back to days when I was away in college and I come driving
up the driveway and dad would be at the window. He’d be at
the window waiting and watching, and you see that door open, and
that’s a small picture of what it will be like when we get to
heaven. God is waiting like the father and the prodigal son,
waiting to receive us and to bring us into his home with banqueting
and feasting forever. Well, we want to think about
a third thing from the passage. Our God is able and worthy. And
he grants us perseverance. He’s able and worthy. He presents
us blameless in heaven. But he’s able and worthy and
he is due all our praise. You would think if you listened
to Christians in America that we should come to church and
probably spend about 15 minutes singing to ourselves. Because
doggone it, we’re pretty good folks, right? I mean, after all,
we chose God. After all, we had something to
do with our salvation, right? After all, we’re just good folks,
right? We’re good people. God ought
to be, he’s just, he ought to just be happy that we’re on his
roll, right? That’s the way we think. So we ought to spend about
15 minutes of worship saying, you know, great job me, good
job for choosing God. That’s not the way it is. It’s
all of the Lord, isn’t it? It is all of the Lord and praise
is due to him alone. We sing, to God be the glory,
great things he has done. We sing of our salvation. We sing of God’s character. We
sing of God’s action or his work. We sing of his promises. And
a doxology really is just a busting out. This is probably a terrible
way to think of it, but you know, you’re sitting at the table talking
with your family and somebody says something funny and something’s
going to come out of your nose, right? Somebody’s going to choke
on something. It’s because you can’t wait,
right? You can’t wait to laugh. You can’t wait. And there’s a
little bit of that sort of built up, maybe pent up praise in our
lives. We come to church and what do
saved people do? They sing. And how to save people
sing at the top of their voice. I’m still amazed at our little
congregation out singing our organ. That’s a pretty good thing.
You know, Elaine can hit the gas and y’all will hit it even
harder. We had the same problem back
when Keith was playing for us. It’s interesting. I stand up
front where all your voices kind of come towards me. It is amazing. Our little congregation can out-sing
an organ. But that says something to me.
It says one thing, you like to sing. That’s good. But saved
people sing. What did Jesus say to the Pharisees
when the children sang his hosannas? Somebody’s gonna sing, and if
they don’t, the rocks will cry out. That’s right. So God, who
is worthy and able, is due all praise. Praise is due to Him
alone. He is the only God. He is our
Savior. He is Jesus Christ. He is our Lord. He is mighty
to save. And there’s so many reasons to
praise Him. In fact, it gives us a little list. the only God,
our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and it says that we
should ascribe to Him glory, we should ascribe to Him majesty,
we should ascribe to Him dominion, and we should ascribe to Him
authority, and then it gives a time, before all time, now,
and forever. So when do we praise God? Always. So glory. Glory is that Old Testament
word, the kavod, the heaviness, the weightiness word. God is
so weighty and so heavy, his presence, his names and his attributes
are so weighty and so heavy that we can’t help realize that we’re
in the presence of God. I know some of you have come
here because you were tired of coaxing jokes, maybe is a good
way to put it. There is a sense where you walk in the house of
God and you don’t mess around. I think we kind of caught that
today with Ananias and Sapphira. God is not to be missed with.
One of the quotes I didn’t use today, I wish I had mentioned
it, was the little girl Lucy asking about Aslan. Remember
Aslan, the lion, the God figure? Is he good? Oh, he’s good. but he’s not safe. And that is
our God. He is a consuming fire. It is
a terrible thing, the book of Hebrews says, to fall into the
hands of an angry God. And so all glory, all weightiness,
all radiance is due him, but also his majesty. He is a God
who is a king and his majesty is over the whole earth. When
we look at creation, when we look at springtime in December,
Right? We just had that. When we look
at a snowstorm or see the wind and maybe we go to a beautiful
beach or into the mountains, we see God’s creation and we
realize this is a creation that is still marred by sin. Oh boy,
what will the new heavens and the new earth look like? But
God’s majesty is all over the place. And then his dominion,
his his strength, his might, his power, his rule. His dominion
is the whole earth. It is the universe. It is time
immemorial. It is past, present, future.
His dominion is over all things. I think it was Abraham Kuyper,
the late 1800s theologian, but also the prime minister of the
Netherlands or one of those places. He said there is not one square
inch of this earth over which Christ does not say, it is mine. And his dominion is an everlasting
and a far reaching dominion, but also his authority. God is
king, God is Lord, God is sovereign. And so we give praise to God
for all that he is, and all that he is is way more than we could
put in our little brains. There is so much to think on
here. So, how is your race? How is
your progress? How are your footholds? Are you
encouraged? Are you discouraged? I never
see happy runners, do you? I do not understand running.
I’m too fat, my knees are too old, my hips are too raw. But
we live on the little Burlington Greenway and since COVID and
that thing opened, people run by our house all the time. And
I haven’t taken an official scientific survey, but I don’t think one
of them has been happy yet. And they talk about when you’re
running that you hit a wall and you just don’t know if you can
keep on going. And I think Christians hit that wall. Too many just
gut punches, sickness and sorrow and hardship. And that’s why
we have the book of Job. That’s why we have two letters
from Peter, count it all joy when you endure trials of many
kinds, but how is your race going? Are you encouraged? If you’re
discouraged, let me encourage you by saying, eat your Wheaties,
come to church. Eat your Wheaties, sit under
the word. Eat your Wheaties, get that table top back there.
Read the Bible at breakfast, pray with your family. Come when
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is served. Feed your soul. You’ll be thankful and glad that
you did. But it’s good for us to see this
wonderful doxology. Our God, who is able and worthy,
can persevere us to the end. He’ll present us into heaven,
but he’s worthy and due all our praise. So amen, let’s pray together. Lord, bless us with a little
glimpse into your greatness, your power, and your mightiness
to save this night as we go. Grace, would you remind us of
these things so that we can live another week for your glory,
not discouraged, but full of hope. We pray all this in the
name of Jesus, amen.