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Jude 24-25 Culmination 11.3.19 · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Let's get to our text this morning. Verses 24 and 25, the last two verses in Jude. If you would stand, if you're able, in honor of God's Word. I'll read it. We'll pray and begin. And hear the Word of God. 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.
• 0:32
  and forever. Amen. Truly, there is no rock like our God. And Lord, you cause our hearts to rejoice. You cause our strength to increase. Lord, you are a God of knowledge. You see all things and judge all things. You break the power of the mighty who rise against you. You clothe the feeble with strength. God, you raise us up when we're low and you don't snuff out the smoldering wick.
• 1:09
  When we are weak, you stoop down and scoop us up. And we worship you and we praise you, God, almighty creator, judge of all the earth. You are a God who speaks. And so we ask that you reveal your word to us now. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen, church. Amen. Thank you. You can be seated. Well, this is our final sermon from Jude's brief letter to the churches. And next week, we begin what I think will be a two-year study in the gospel of Luke.
• 1:42
  I think it's always good to circle back around to the Gospels every few years. And it has been a few years since our last Gospel study as we went through the Gospel of John. It was Brennan Manning that I heard one time say, every morning I wake up and take a walk with Jesus. Meaning that every morning when he woke up, he read a portion of the Gospels. And my goal will be for our church to take a walk with Jesus for about 100 Sundays.
• 2:11
  Just quick review to catch us up. Apostasy, we've said, was rampant in the first century church. People who had once professed belief were abandoning their faiths due to persecution and false teaching. They began turning to a different gospel, which Galatians 1 says was really no gospel at all. And in the book of Jude, we have contrasted two groups that often exist both in the world, but also even within the church. The two groups are spiritual pretenders and spiritual contenders.
• 2:39
  And Jude issues a challenge to those genuine believers to contend for the faith delivered once for all, to get in the game, to join the fight. J.C. Ryle said, the church is at war. The church is at war. And many within it don't seem to know. Caused me to ask the question, what's it like when a nation goes to war? This coming December 7th, we will celebrate the 78th anniversary.
• 3:14
  of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, one of the most lopsided Japanese victories of World War II. At the conclusion of that attack, Admiral Yamamoto, who was the admirable admiral of the Imperial Japanese fleet, he was commander-in-chief of their combined fleet, famously said, or was said to have said, in that moment of great victory, I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and to fill him with terrible resolve.
• 3:46
  And in mid-December of that same year, only days after Pearl Harbor, a man named Lieutenant Colonel Guy Drury asked then-president of Chrysler Motor Company, K.T. Keller, to begin making bullets instead of cars. Can you imagine if that were done today? You go to the president of Ford or the president of GMC and you say, you know what, instead of making trucks this year, is there any way that you could make bullets?
• 4:15
  The president of Chrysler immediately agreed and told the U.S. government that they would devote one entire plant to the effort. When asked what type of bullets they needed, they were told .45 caliber. And when asked how many they needed, the response was three billion. Three billion. And so that's what they did. Chrysler's Evansville Arsenal.
• 4:42
  as it became known, produced 96% of the military's .45 caliber cartridges. 3.264 billion rounds. And if you do the math on how long it took them, it works out to 12.5 million per day. 12.5 million bullets a day. That same plant, also in the same amount of time, produced almost half a billion .30 caliber cartridges, hundreds of thousands of specialty rounds.
• 5:12
  They reconditioned 1,600 Sherman tanks. They rebuilt 4,000 army trucks. They delivered 800,000 tank grousers. Now, those are those track extensions that would be used on tanks because the tanks kept getting stuck in the mud. And they were, when the war ended, preparing to make 7 million firebombs. At the end of that effort, the vice president of Chrysler named Charles Jacobson came to the president, K.T. Keller.
• 5:43
  and asked them why he agreed to do such a thing. Why would you agree to do that? And here was his response, and I love this response. The president of Chrysler said, in war, you can't say no. In war, you can't say no. And if they want 12 and a half million rounds per day, we will figure out how to give it to them. Brothers and sisters, read your Bibles. We're at war. 1 Timothy 1.18, this charge I entrust to you, wage.
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  the good warfare, holding fast to the faith. 1 Timothy 6, verse 11, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness, fight the good fight of the faith. Ephesians chapter 6, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in that evil day.
• 6:51
  2 Corinthians 10.4, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 1 Peter 2.11, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. We are at war, and yet many of us feel like we can just tell the Lord no, or we don't feel called, or we don't feel peace about it. We decide to spend our lives on other things.
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  If I could ask the American church at large one question, it would be this. When will the sleeping giant awake? When will we begin to act like we are at war? When will we reprioritize our lives to line up with the spiritual reality that the scriptures teach? Tim Kiziar said this, the greatest danger to the church is not failure, but rather success, but in things that don't matter.
• 7:55
  We can succeed in a hundred different things, he says, but many of those things make no difference for eternity. Now, nobody doubts the church's devotion. If we weren't devoted, we wouldn't be posting record numbers in church attendance across the country, which is crazy to me, but we are. We're devoted, but our devotion must be focused. We must not become like the church at Ephesus, doctrinally sound, passionate, busy, and yet missing the point.
• 8:28
  We must not become like those who have forgotten their first love. The reason we gather the Lord Jesus Christ and the beauty of Jude's concluding remarks is that they focus the reader's attention on the one who will win the war. To this point, Jude's letter has been about apostate believers. The subject matter, however, is about to change. Rather than talking about those who would forsake the faith, he talks about the one who will win the war. Notice in verse 24, it says,
• 8:58
  now to him. The subject of the letter is about to change. And Jude, the Lord's half-brother, could have filled volumes with stories of boyhood Jesus. But rather than writing about Jesus' past, he chooses to write instead about his present and his future. He sees Christ for who he is now, enthroned, seated at the right hand of the Father, exalted.
• 9:29
  Psalm 34 and verse 8 says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. And the taste of Jesus that he's about to give is what he wants our eyes fixedly focused on. It's the taste that Jude wants to leave us with. And like a fireworks finale, Jude fires all of his best stuff, all of it, all at once. And it comes in verse 25. Now to him, he says in verse 24, but in verse 25, to the only God, he is unique.
• 9:59
  And He is sovereign. Our Savior, He says, our Redeemer. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. He is glorious and majestic. He is the King. He has dominion and authority. And He is never-ending and unchanging before all time and now and forever. And when you think of Christ, that's how you should picture Him. Because that's who He is.
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  One man has said, King Jesus has never been mainstream. If you find a Jesus who fits the mainstream, he says, I guarantee you haven't found the real one. This king doesn't take orders. This king gives the orders. This king doesn't kowtow to requests. This king is the one who will be obeyed. Now, this is not the only doxology in Scripture. In fact, there are several, but each of them begins the same way, and I love it.
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  One from Jude, two from the Apostle Paul in Romans and Ephesians. They all start with, now to him, now to him. And Lord, give us grace to live out this phrase. May we direct and condition our lives the same way. Now to him, not now to us. Now to me, now to him. Psalm 115 and verse 1 says, not to us, not to us.
• 11:35
  but to your name give glory. And the culmination of Jude's letter turns our attention away from those wicked apostates and toward him, the great high priest, the great high prince of our faith. And if you guys are taking notes, I have two quick points. The first one, the great high priest and our preservation. Notice what verse 24 says, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling.
• 12:05
  Our preservation. He is able to keep you from stumbling. I love that he begins with the ability of God. We talk about God's power. We talk about God's presence. We talk about God's intelligence. But very rarely do we word it this way. The ability of God. Whatever the greatest obstacles in your life. Whatever are your trappings and your failures.
• 12:32
  Whatever you have proven again and again that you are unable to overcome, God is able. Steve Lawson has said, put your feeble life into God's powerful hands. When I was a kid, elementary school age, my best friend was a kid who lived down the street. His name was Andrew. Andrew and I hung out every day after school. We were about the same age. We loved playing outside. We loved pretending to be army soldiers and other things.
• 13:02
  guns out of everything, you know, the way that little boys do, pretended that we were fending off the Soviets at the time, right? And so, you know, we played these little games and all this, and we used to do crazy stuff. We'd jump off of roofs. We'd walk along walls. One time, though, we decided that we were going to make a zip line, and Andrew had a massive cottonwood tree in his front yard. It probably extended up 40, 50, 60 feet tall, a huge cottonwood tree.
• 13:31
  And we decided that we would make a zip line from the top of the tree down to the ground, you know, the way that soldiers do. And so, you know, third, fourth, fifth grade, we're climbing to the top of this cottonwood tree all the way up to the top. We tied on a rope using whatever nonsense knot we knew, took a rope, tied it to the top, and then ran that thing down to the ground at a slight angle, right? And then staked it to the dirt at the bottom. And our idea was that we would take a piece of PVC pipe.
• 14:02
  And that we would thread the rope through the PVC pipe. You hold the PVC, right? You're going to go. And I'll be darned, that thing worked, okay? I mean, it totally worked. I don't think at the time my parents knew because there's no way, you know, there's no way they would have let us do that. Now we'd had, you know, shin guards and arm guards and helmets and everything else. But man, it was just us and shorts and a tank top, you know.
• 14:25
  And man, we started grabbing onto this PVC and jumping down to the ground. Whap! You hit the ground because there was no stop at the bottom. Man, but the thing worked. We were having fun. And I can remember the first time. You know that feeling when you're going to do it the first time?
• 14:43
  to a fourth grade, you know, 40 feet off the ground. It is a long way. And you're just staring down at dirt underneath. And, you know, and Andrew had gone first. And so that was good. I saw that it was going to work. But there's that pit in your stomach. Like, if I jump right now, is this going to hold me? Is this going to hold me? There's that feeling. I went and it was fine. Climbed back up. We were going over and over. We thought it was the greatest thing. Until...
• 15:13
  You know, that PVC creates friction and an incredible amount of heat. And eventually, that PVC actually burned through. And praise God it was on Andrew's turn, okay? Because about a quarter of the way down, he jumps, you know, a quarter of the way down, PVC is gone, and now he's just sliding on hands. Ah, you know, all the way down to the bottom, whap.
• 15:39
  You know, and I felt bad for him, but secretly I was like, better you than me, dude. I'm so sorry for your pain. Imagine the feeling of that pit in your stomach. Is this going to hold me? The first time you're standing on a ledge and you're going to jump into water below. The first time you're going to take a plunge. The first time you're taking a risk. Is this going to work? And the reason you have that pit in your stomach is because you don't know if it's going to work.
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  And the older you grow, the more wise you become. Actually, the more cautious you become because you have begun to met people. You've met people now who it didn't work for. Like, man, that is miserable. Scraped all the skin on their body off. You know, like, oh man, I don't want to endure that. I don't want to go through that. And so you become more and more and more cautious because you've seen how many times it doesn't work. You know what I love about our doxology this morning? Now to him who is able.
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  He's able. The problem with all of those little contraptions when you're a kid is that they will inevitably fail. The difference between the Lord Jesus Christ is that He will inevitably succeed. You can put your life in His hands. There will never be a time where the PVC burns through and you will drop. He is able. And notice what He is able to do. It says to keep you from stumbling.
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  To keep you from stumbling, the Lord Jesus Christ is our high priest. The whole book of Hebrews is about that. His job as priest is to keep his people. The word for keep is the same word as to guard or to watch, and he keeps a ceaseless watch on his own. He is the one, Revelation 1 says, who walks among the golden lampstands, the church. He is the one who builds his church, Matthew 16. He is the one who maintains his church.
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  1 Corinthians 1 says, God is faithful. He is always at his post. He never slumbers, nor does he sleep. Psalm 12 and verse 7, you, O Lord, will keep them. You will guard us forever. He's able to keep you. And notice he continues, he's able to keep you from stumbling. He's able to keep us from stumbling. The Lord can keep us from making a false step. Now,
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  You would say, well, does that mean he can keep me from sinning? Well, he has decided in his sovereign decree that you have the ability to choose to rebel. If you want to rebel and you want to go headlong into sin, he will not stop you. But you say, well, then what does he keep me from? What stumbling does he keep me from? And I think it's to keep you from false...
• 18:32
  thinking about sin and the Savior. You know, even if you run headlong into sin, you as a believer will know that it's wrong. The Holy Spirit will continue to convict, to call you back to repentance and integrity, honestly, holiness. Charles Spurgeon has said this, when I had heard it said that the Lord would keep his people right to the end. When I heard it said that Christ said they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. I must confess.
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  that the doctrine of final preservation, that is keeping you to the end, final preservation of the saints, was a bait that my soul could not resist. When I heard that Jesus is not only able to keep me for 20 minutes or for 20 years, but all the way to the end and into eternity, he says it became a bait for me, which my soul could not resist. He continues, I thought it was a sort of life insurance.
• 19:34
  an insurance of my character, an insurance of my soul, an insurance of my eternal destiny because I knew that I couldn't keep it myself. The reason it became bait for me, he said, because I tried to keep my soul myself and I couldn't. I couldn't. I knew I was going to fail. It's always funny to me. It is funny to me. And if you believe this way, that's okay. This is not a gospel issue by any means. If you disagree with me on this point, that is all right. But it's a strange thing to think that you can lose your salvation.
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  Strange thing to think that way. Because if God is the author and finisher of our faiths, if God's work is what earned your salvation, then what sin do you think you can do to dis-earn it? It doesn't make sense. If you find yourself eventually in hell, then I would wonder what you were ever saved from. This says, Charles Spurgeon, he says, I heard that it was said that he could keep you from stumbling, keep you to the very end. It was a bait for my soul. What is it about Christ?
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  that first baited you? What was it that was so tantalizing and looks so good that you bit and he's hooked you ever since? What doctrine is it? The doctrine of grace, probably for most of us, because we know the depravity in our own hearts. We know. So the doctrine of grace is just such a relief and a release. We don't have to keep ourselves in the faith that Christ does the work. What is it?
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  about Christ that first baited you. You know, I love to fish. I've told you that. I love fly fishing. You know, there are some fly patterns which just work every time. If you live, and most of you guys don't care about this at all, but I'm telling you, if you live on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, then any ant pattern followed by a parachute atoms, can I get a witness from the congregation? You are going to catch fish.
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  You will, I'm telling you. They can't stop. The colors don't matter. There are some little variations that you can do to make it look better or whatever presentation and all of that stuff. But an ant pattern followed by a parachute, Adams, you are going to catch fish. What is it? What pattern was it? What doctrine was it that you looked at and you said, that is irresistible? Can I encourage you to come back to that doctrine again and again and again and again and again? It will keep you.
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  close to Christ and keep you from stumbling. That's first, the great high priest and our preservation. Second and last, notice the great high prince and our presentation. It says, our presentation, verse 24, not to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. The Bible describes the day of presentation as a fearful day.
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  The day where we will all stand and give an account before the Lord is a fearful day. Hebrews 10, 31. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. But listen, not for those who know the Savior. It would be terrifying to stand before the Lord if not for Jesus. Absolutely. Nobody would want to stand. In fact, I don't even think people would stand before the Lord without Jesus. I think that there would be a hitting of the deck.
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  right? Hope that he doesn't notice you. Get behind a crowd of people and don't make eye contact. I think that's what it's like without Jesus on that day, but not for those who know the Savior. Scripture says that when Christ returns, and beloved, there will be a day when Christ returns. Scripture says that when Christ returns, he will be wrapped in the clouds, the same clouds that went before the tabernacle.
• 23:47
  The same cloud that dwelt in the Holy of Holies. The same cloud that descended upon Mount Sinai so many millennia ago and promised to consume any living thing that touched the mountain in the presence of God. But notice this promise. He doesn't just present us. That would be terrifying. But this says in verse 24, make sure, circle the word if you need to, He presents you, what does it say? Blameless.
• 24:18
  Blameless. And this is why we can live without fear. Not only is He going to keep us from stumbling, He is going to present us one day as if we had never sinned. Amen? Perfect. All of that garbage that's in your heart and in your mind, all of those things that you're passing, you look back with regret. Man, I wish I could have my early 20s back. What a waste. I would love to have my 19th year back. Wasted and hurtful and full of regret.
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  This says he presents you as if you'd never done it, blameless. You'll enjoy on that day the full redemption of your body. You will complete on that day the journey for which you set out. That day of presentation, you will be fully sanctified, no longer struggling with temptation or sin or guilt. And this is why on that day we will be filled with great joy.
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  You see verse 24, look how it ends. He will present you with great joy. I would encourage us, church, to heed Jude's warning. The church is at war. We have been for thousands of years. And in war, you can't say no. If you belong to the church, you've got to join the fight. You've got to contend for the faith.
• 25:55
  And the reason is because there are those who would seek to destroy and nullify your faith. Some will even claim to be followers of Jesus. But the Lord, our great high priest and great high prince, has given us everything we need to overcome. He's given us his word. He's given us fellowship. He's given us his indwelling Holy Spirit. But we must not grow apathetic. We must understand that lazy faith is dying faith.
• 26:26
  We must understand that the corrosive false teaching of apostasy has already infiltrated many churches. It would threaten ours as well. But the Lord, the Savior, the God who is king and sovereign over creation is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless on that day. And so let us entrust our feeble lives to him. Amen? Amen. And Lord, thank you for the letter of Jude. Thank you, God, for the truth.
• 26:56
  revealed therein. And Lord, I pray that as we prepare our hearts for communion now, God, that you would rejoice over this remembrance. God, that we would not receive this in an unworthy manner, but Lord, you would remind us of the great sacrifice that it took in order for us to be saved. God, we thank you. We thank you for your grace this morning, abounding grace, grace upon grace represented in the bread and the cup.
• 27:31
  Lord, we rest wholly on that grace, like Spurgeon said, drawn because of grace to you, because we know, Lord, that if it were up to us, not only would we not be saved, we could not keep our own salvation. We cannot keep our own souls. And so, God, thank you for being the priest and the prince who keeps us from stumbling. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.