God is Able and Worthy of Praise

Transcript

GR 2302
10/18/2020
God is Able and Worthy of Praise
Jude 24,25
Gil Rugh

Invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Jude, that little one-chapter book, just before the book of Revelation at the end of your Bibles. The world is a chaotic place and we experience some of that chaos in our own period of time, even in our own country in these days. Seems like most of the attention is on the changes that might occur with an election, you hear this is the most momentous election of our time, and things like that. But we have to remind ourselves that the New Testament times, a period of time in which Jude was living and writing and other writers like Paul and Peter, those where difficult times. I was thinking of that as looking at the end of the book of Jude and what he has written about and what would have been going on. Jude doesn’t give a clear time when he is writing, most writers would probably put him sometime in the mid-sixties AD. Now, I was looking at some of the Roman emperors of this time and probably one of the most well-known by name after Julius Caesar, the first of the caesars, is Nero. Nero ruled Rome as caesar from 54 AD to 68 AD and that would have covered much of the ministry of the apostle Paul and some of his most well-known times. As you know, Nero as his life progressed as caesar he deteriorated into what could some consider madness, but he was just a godless man, reaching to the point where his own people drove him to suicide. You realize that Caesar is ruling the known world then, and now he is going to be gone. And there are men like Paul and Peter living during this time and will die in those closing years of Nero’s life and the persecution of believers. It was an unsafe world in that sense. They realized when Nero died the chaos didn’t go away. In the next year, a little more, there would be three different Roman caesars, one after the other, it was a time of turmoil and unsettledness. Then settled down, then you get a little more stability for a little bit of time.
You think about the turmoil, the changes going on, a world in which Christians could be put in the colosseum to be torn apart by wild animals, men of stature being used of the Lord as greatly as Paul and Peter being executed by Nero. Yet we read a letter like the letter Jude writes and you would know none of that that was going on. That is true of the letters of the apostle Paul as well and Peter. You don’t get the idea, boy, these were tumultuous times and uncertainty in the world. You know what Jude was concerned about? Not what was going on in the world but what was going on in the church. How were believers doing? What were the things would unsettle and undermine the testimony for Christ? And that is what he addresses. He started out this letter, as you are aware, in chapter 1 by encouraging the believers to contend earnestly for the faith. That was in verse 3 of Jude 1, I’m writing “that you contend earnestly for the faith.” They didn’t say anything about contending, being ready, doing battle with the forces of the world and ungodliness in the world and the opposition we face from caesar on down and throughout the empire. No, no, no, but we contend earnestly for the faith. Why? Because unbelievers have infiltrated among the church.
It’s not the world out there that is the big danger to believers; it’s the world that gets in here. And the world that gets in here that God is concerned about, that these servants of the Lord write to challenge us about. Jude has unfolded the dangers to believers and to the church of Jesus Christ when those who profess to be a believer come in in a disguise are not recognized for what they are. And they become a danger to the church, a danger to believers. They are like the hidden reefs as we talked about, the waterless clouds, the fruitless trees. They come in looking like they have something and they lure believers into the trap of their error. It’s not the world out there that destroys the church and disrupts believers’ lives. It’s what was within, within individual believers and then what was allowed to come in among believers. The church is to be a pillar and support of the truth, is to be the place where believers are built up and strengthened in their faith. When that is weakened by the devil and his servants then the testimony and impact of God’s truth is weakened and undermined.
The world needs the impact of believers and where are they going to go for truth if this is not in the church, God’s family, and in the lives of God’s people as they testify by word and by lifestyle of what godliness really is. Jude wants us to be strong, he wants us to recognize apostates. We have to keep a balance here. He deals with three really basic groups. Apostates are those who look like believers, act like believers to be accepted by believers and among believers as genuine. But if you examine them it should be crystal clear they are not. This is where we begin to get corrupted, we make allowance, I have used illustrations. It happens wherever believers are gathered together. There are those who claim to be believers but if you look carefully they deny basic truths of the word of God. They are comfortable encouraging conduct that is contrary to what God says must be true of His people. When we choose to overlook that then we open ourselves to be infiltrated and ultimately corrupted. So he told us in verses 17-19 as he summarizes what he talked about, about these apostates and their danger. Verse 19 concludes “these are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.” They can’t be anything else but a disruptive, harmful influence among believers, they don’t have the Spirit of God, they are driven by worldly thinking, they cause divisions. Why? Because they are divisive, they are the children of the devil, we are the children of God. There is not a meeting point, they must bow before our Lord and Savior, we cannot go where they are. So you recognize them.
Important in this is that we keep ourselves strong and pure. Verses 20 and 21 dealt with that, “keep yourselves in the love of God”. He expressed that in three participles how to do it, keep our focus proper. If we get weak spiritually, how are we going to deal with it? It’s like we are dealing with the virus and everything seems to get drawn back to that. The people with weakened immune systems have to be more careful, they are more vulnerable, that is why the younger population and the stronger are less impacted. That’s the way we have to be spiritually. We allow ourselves to be weakened, we will be vulnerable to the influences of error, falsehood that comes in. We want to realize we just don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and that is what we looked at last time. You know the end of verse 21 says we are “waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.” Keep our eyes on the goal, the ultimate realization of God’s mercy, being brought into the glory of His presence.
You know, along the way we are going to have people who are wounded in the battle who become casualties so he gave the three groups you have to deal with. Those who are doubting, they have just been shaken in their faith, we just don’t write them off, we don’t have room for doubters, this is the place of strong faith. No, we want to show them mercy because we are the recipient of on-going mercy from God. For those who have gotten more confused and more drawn into what these false teachers are advocating, they are like branches that have to be grabbed out of the fire. They haven’t been burned up but they have been scorched a little bit, you show mercy. We don’t give up on believers. Then the most serious kind, you have to be careful, they have become so entangled it’s hard to tell if they are identified with the apostates or with the believers. What are they? But they profess to be believers and we want to bring them back, it’s a rescue mission, if you will, we want to be careful here. We went back and saw Matthew 18, often what’s known as the church discipline passage, is really the church rescue, the believer rescue. Because as we read in Matthew 18 God is not willing that one of His little ones would perish. In those three groups he mentioned in verses 22 and 23 we follow through those steps and we don’t give up. Now if they persist and go out into the world and live like the world and commit themselves to the world then they are like I John writes, “they went out from us, but they were not really of us.” Their going out just revealed it, they were never really part of us, those were clearly apostates and they weren’t tolerated within. Come back to II Thessalonians 3, Paul concludes this letter to the Thessalonians and they were a church going through trials and difficulties, persecutions and pressures as was true of the churches of the New Testament. In II Thessalonians 3, Paul has to deal with those who Jude was writing about as well, false teachers promoting false doctrine, encouraging godless living. And he writes in verse 6, “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us.” The tradition he is talking about is the word that he has communicated to them, not traditions like we think of extra-biblical. Traditions, the word of God as it had been handed down. You know, he says keep away from every brother if they are leading an unruly life and not according to the word of God that the apostles taught. Maybe they’re not believers, maybe not, but they profess to be brothers, but you have to keep your distance from them. That would be like the third group that Jude talked about, you hate even the garment with the smell of the burning or like the third group in the steps of restoring a wandering believer. You have to disassociate, that can’t remain in the fellowship as a corrupting influence but you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You just don’t say good, we are done with them, we can move on.
Come down to verse 13, “you, brethren, do not grow weary of (well doing) doing good.” We ought to keep ourselves in the love of God. What goes on should not shake or move us. Then he says in verse 14, “if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him , so that he will be put to shame”. You say good, but we don’t stop there. “Do not regard him as an enemy”. Up in verse 6, he called them a brother and not an enemy. He professes to be a believer, admonish him as a brother. We don’t give up on them even though we may disassociate from them. We look for opportunity, maybe contact them, say would you be open to get together, like to talk further, I want to be a help in any way we can. Open to sit down, talk about, show them from the Word, their conduct is unacceptable. It may come to a point…
And I’ve had a number of these conversations over many years of ministry where, yeah, it happens. You say you profess to be a believer, I accept you on that profession, that’s why you can’t be a part of the fellowship of believers. But something is wrong when you claim to now believe, the lifestyle you are now living does not fit with what the Bible says is true of a believer. I’m concerned that you consider carefully whether you really have trusted Christ and are one of His children. Something is wrong that you are comfortable with ungodly lifestyle, anti-biblical teachings. We want to be honest with people, but we want to be careful, I can’t see a heart. All we can only deal with is what externally comes out. So they profess to be a believer, some may adamantly say I’m a believer, well, then I have to counsel you this way. That doesn’t mean, well, come back in and be a part of us, no, cause you do damage, but we don’t give up.
Come over to James chapter 2, that is all the way back almost to Peter, after Hebrews then you get these smaller books. James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1 and 2 John, then you will be to Jude. James 2:13, warning we want to do mercy and this is where we left off from our study previously, “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” That is true for us, we are looking for mercy at the coming of Christ, not I get my due because I trusted in Christ and now I live a life without sin. That’s not where it is. So we want to be careful, we want to understand mercy and we noted is one of the outstanding marks of a believer, one who is truly a child of God because mercy is what characterizes God and His dealing with us. If you are one that finds it hard to show mercy, you need to back up, judgment will be without mercy. You know what that means, we saw that at the end of Matthew 18, it is the fullness of judgment, now to be without mercy is to indicate you’re not a child of God. Chapter 3 while you are in James, verse 17, “But the wisdom from above,” which is from above, “is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy.” Full of mercy, the New Testament writers never lost sight of the fact I am a testimony of God’s mercy. I’m a living evidence that God is a merciful God. I am living proof that God will show mercy to you if you will place faith in Him and submit yourselves to Him. So we show that to others, “good fruits, unwavering.” We want God’s wisdom, so they deal with life and every aspect of it. I want to be one of godly wisdom. Those are the things that characterize godly wisdom.
We come back to Jude, you have these things you have to deal with. You have apostates who are just children of the devil who are always constantly infiltrate and subtly, half-step at a time, lead you away from faithfulness, purity of devotion to Christ as Paul phrased it in II Corinthians 11. This makes it more difficult, they cause divisions, they don’t have the Spirit, they can’t help but be a sources of soreness, conflict, and division among believers. Then you have believers that somehow get entangled, they have a weak faith, they begin to doubt. You know, that can be discouraging. You don’t want to have them wander off so you have to be ready to show mercy and help them. And then you have others that get more off the track. And then you have those who are out there, they claim to be believers, we are reaching out to them as, but the reality of it is time will tell where they end up. In all of this you might think Jude is discouraged, let me just wrap this up and say, well, it’s going to be difficult, hang in there, hopefully it will get better.
You know what he ends up on? Just like some of the songs we were singing. “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.” You say well, I thought it was going to be different. You know what happens? He wants to pull our attention back to where it has to be before we get off-track. I get my attention on me, you get your attention on you, each of us on ourselves. You know what that is? That’s a life of unsettledness, a life of perpetual discontent, a life of uncertainty. So he concludes with this great benediction doxology and it’s not discouraging. The Christian life is not a life of discouragement, we are not to be a down people, we are not to be a people living with a little bit of joy occasionally. What he does at the end, he has talked here about these different ones we have to deal with. We have to go to war, we have to contend for the faith. We have to rescue confused believers. We have to deal with divisions that have been caused and try to get people sorted out. Now let me end this letter, ‘Now to Him who is able.” Encourages me and you might want to do it, I have went and looked at different passages where it has that expression, to Him who is able, He is able. That’s why I get off-track, He is able and I’m talking about me. ‘Now to Him who is able,” he is talking about God. Verse 25 will bring that out clearly, “To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ”. Let’s talk about God, who He is, what He does.
That’s good, you know all that theology is good but I’ve got problems. Yeah and your biggest one is you have lost sight of Him who is able and mired down. What am I going to do? How am I going to get out of this? How are we going to fix that? What will happen if I don’t think I can handle this? Well, that is the first step, realize you can’t handle it, you are not able but “now to Him who is able.” That word translated ‘now,’ little two-letter word in Greek, ‘de,’ we bring it over, it’s one of the words for ‘but.’ It would be translated ‘now,’ like our conjunctions have a range of meaning. But realize, let’s get our attention back to where it is. And now it’s to Him who is able. Word means to have power, ‘dunamai,’ its related to the word for dynamic, dynamite, dynamo. It’s one who has the power, He is able because he has the power to do it, He is able to keep you from stumbling. Back up here, who is going to keep me from getting drawn into this? What’s going to keep me from getting off-track? What’s going to keep me? Well, the One who is able.
Come back to Romans 16, we are going to get to Romans 16 if the Lord doesn’t come or I don’t die, either one is ok, I would prefer the Lord coming, and this is all to give you a chance to get to Romans 16. Paul’s now going to conclude this long letter. Jude’s was a short letter compared to Paul, you could put all of Jude into one of Paul’s chapters as we have it. But the same conclusion. How is he going to end this letter? Verse 25, “Now to Him who is able to establish you”. Does it get any better than that? That’s the end, I’m putting attention to where it needs to be, the God who is our Savior, the God to whom we belong, the God whom we serve, He is the one who is able, has the power, He will establish you. He goes on, its according to the gospel, the preaching about Christ, what God has revealed. Verse 27, “to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen.” That benediction doxology, it’s is all about God. Again, when even a world is pressing on, even Christians get caught up, we are bombarded all around, keep in mind the Roman world was an unsure, unsettled world. Paul had to travel in that world and didn’t know whether he would get stoned, or whether he’d get imprisoned, or whether he would get beaten. Then you add the other things, ship-wrecked, sleepless nights, hunger, and then the head of government is changing all the time. “Now to Him who is able.” That is all under control. You know, I think of it like you have a little child who’s 2, 3, 4 years old, there is a lot of things to be worried about, none of them matter. To him they could be, he could start to cry, he can be afraid, scared to death, you comfort him and you say everything is fine, everything is alright. Why? Because you are the parent, you’re taking care of him, that it’s alright, you’re ok, you don’t have to be afraid of that. This is what God is saying, turn your attention back to Me. Come back to Jude. This God who is able, who has the power. This is not just He could but I’m out here, but He is going to take care of me. He is the God who is able, in Jude 24, “to keep you from stumbling,” to keep you from stumbling.
He is the keeping God. Now this word ‘keep,’ our English word, was used four times before. This is a different word but carries the same kind of concept but gives you a little different perspective on it. Let’s look at the previous four words. For God keeps us. Come back to the beginning, verse 1, Jude is writing to those who are the called. You know where he started out, let’s talk about who God is and what he has done for and to us. We are the called, we are the loved ones in God the Father, we are kept. That’s used four times. He is the one who keeps us for Jesus Christ. That carries us to the end, that is where we are going. We are looking for the mercy that will be given to us at the coming of Christ, to keep that perspective on. And there is a God who keeps us, that guarantees that we arrive there as victors. We are not just struggling on, hope I get through the day. I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m going to make it. What do you mean? We are going to make it! Now you may die before the day is over. Paul died at the hands of executioners but he made it because we are looking at the ultimate end. He is the God who is keeping us for Jesus Christ.
Then you come down to verse 6, we noted this in the middle of the verse, there are others who are being kept for judgment. For example, the fallen angels, He has kept them in eternal bonds, their destiny is settled just as certainly as ours. Come down to verse 13, you have the apostates, godless unbelievers. No matter how they disguise themselves, they are what they are. They may be hidden reefs, they may be waterless clouds, they may be fruitless trees. No matter what they look like here is what they are. In verse 13, they’re wild waves of the sea, after he talks, uses those pictures I mentioned in verse 12, they’re “wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars, for whom the black of darkness has been (and there’s our word) kept forever.” They translated it here differently but it’s the same word that was in verse 1 and 6 basically, reserved, it’s kept for them. God is a keeping God, He keeps all of us, He keeps everyone. Just a matter of what you are being kept for, some are being kept for life in His presence and some are being kept for doom and an eternal hell. But He is a powerful God, He has the power, He is able.
The last use of that word ‘keep,’ that’s the third, then come down to the fourth, verse 21, where we are told to keep ourselves in the love of God. We say, well, there’s the problem. Well, it is the weak spot, if you will. But you know what? When God commands me to do something, He provides Himself as the powerful enablement to do it. I get in trouble when I decide I will do it my way. At this point I don’t see how what God said will work out, I got to step out on my own. I’m no longer keeping myself in the love of God. I keep myself where God says I should be, where His love is in its fullness on me. That protects me from the things that would be damaging to me. Doesn’t keep me from all hurts because some hurts are good for me. Like the spanking of your child, you keep your child from certain hurts like that you have not helped them. God loves me so I keep myself in His love and we looked how you do that.
Now when you come down to verse 24 we have it translated by the same English word, keep or kept, but it is a totally different word. That other word is ‘tereo,’ this is ‘phulasso.’ I just mention them because you can see they even sound totally different but they overlap in meanings like many of our English words, that’s why they translated ‘keep’ here. Keep is not a bad translation but this word has the idea of guarding and protecting, that brings that added dimension. How does it keep us? Well, He protects us, He guards us. I’m going through this miserable world that goes from one confusion to another. A world that is in opposition and hates me as a believer because it hates the Savior that I belong to. A world that is filled with pain and heart ache and sorrow but I go through it under the protection of God. So the only thing that dings me are the things that He allows to come in for His purpose. And they can be harsh like Job. It can be the loss of a precious loved one, children. Who wants a child to die? You know that is painful to a parent. Job lost all ten of his kids and left with none but God was sovereign. God was protecting Job, God was protecting Job’s family. This was all best at the right time, that’s the confidence I have. He is the power to keep me, protect me.
So whatever comes, however it comes, He protects me from going down, falling on my face, being crushed and destroyed. That’s what he means in Jude when it says He “is able to keep you from stumbling.” Stumbling here has the idea of going down for the count. You know, it would be like in a boxing contest where a person gets hit with what we call a knock-out punch, we know he may stumble around the arena a little bit before he goes down on his face. We are not stumbling to go down like that, this is not a fatal stumble. Like Paul talked about concerning Israel in Romans 9, 10, and 11, they didn’t stumble so as to fall, God wasn’t done with them. This is a stumble in contrast to a fatal fall. He keeps us from stumbling in a sense of losing the battle. Again, it doesn’t mean He keeps us in pain, He doesn’t keep us from sin because we saw in verses 22 and 23 there are some who will become entangled with sin of one kind or another. Even the first group, which were the easiest ones, they were doubting. Well, whatever is not of faith is sin. So when I begin to doubt God I have taken a step on the road to sin. I need to be careful because that is a road that leads me further the wrong direction. So yeah, we are not saying He keeps believers from sin because we still do rebel at times. Jude says we can be sure we all do because we all sin with our tongue and the other sins to be concerned about but even that won’t be fatal for me. I won’t be lost because God who is able will keep me from stumbling.
We looked last week but I want you to go back, I was just going to quote it because it is so simple but come back to Matthew 18. His concept of God’s mercy is so key. Here he is talking about God’s children who wander away. We came back to this passage in our previous study. Verse 14 is what I want you to mark, look at. I hope you mark it in your Bible or if you use an electronic device do it however they do it on there. But it ought to stick out in your mind. When you come to Matthew 18, the verse that jumps out to me first and foremost before I read anything in the chapter is verse 14, “It is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish,” that is what Jude is saying. You know why I don’t perish? God is not willing, it’s not His will, and no one can override His will because He is able to guard me and protect me. It’s like your child, you know he is going to get some bumps and bruises on the way and sometimes it’s going to be because he didn’t do what he was told. He had to touch the hot stove when you told him no. It didn’t keep him from getting burnt but you are not going to let him burn himself up if you have it in your power. Now God has all things in His power so I am perfectly secure. So even the best human analogy breaks down. We can appreciate the analogies but when it comes down to it God is the one with such sovereign power I can tell you with assurance He is guarding me so I will never stumble and fall. I will never lose my salvation, I will never be lost. Alright, that is what He keeps us from.
What’s the other side to put this? What does it mean to keep us from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless, with joy, great joy, mega joy. We will look at that word in a moment. Mega has gotten to be used in the polictial realm a lot, that is the Greek word here, mega. A compound word with mega on the front. I’m going to stand, I’m not going to fall. Why? He is able to make me stand in the presence of His glory. Remember we read in verse 1 we are kept for Jesus Christ, in verse 1 of Jude. At that end of verse 21 of Jude, we are “waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.” The full expression of how great the mercy of God has been to me, when I will stand before the throne of a God who is holy, holy, holy; who is pure and I will be accepted in that presence, I will stand in the presence of His glory. There is a victory in that. Why? I will be blameless. It get any better than that? That’s why we are looking for the mercy of our Lord. How do I know I will get it? Cause God cannot lie. The God who cannot fail says it’s mine. I live under mercy today but I won’t realize how great that mercy is until I stand in His presence blameless. Can you imagine that? I know some of you better than others, this is a pretty raunchy group. This is a preacher who fails more than his share of the times. We look at each other as what? Redeemed by His grace, experiencing His mercy, but as James said, “We all stumble in many ways,” (James 3:2). We sin with our tongue. Not one of us here who probably got through this whole week, just one week, without sinning. Having a thought we shouldn’t have, saying a word we shouldn’t say, failing to do something we should have done or doing something we shouldn’t, on it goes. Yet we will stand before the God who is perfectly holy and He will say blameless. Nothing, nobody is going to step up and say I knew him better than you. No, nobody knows me better than God, He has declared me blameless. Who can overrule God? Blameless with great joy, that is why it keeps it in perspective. Today may be hard, it may be a hard day to have joy. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and I want to have it. Some days are days of tears, they’re days of sorrow but even in that if I keep my attention right there is joy. Cause I know whatever is taking place, I may not understand the why but I know God is doing what he has planned for me. Even when I sin, then I get back, Lord, here I am, you know I fail. I don’t have to worry. Get out of here, I have run out of mercy with you. Let’s face it, if I was going to run a list, it would take one of our most capable computers to put a list together of all the ways I have failed and sinned, even since I have become a believer. My goodness, how often do I sit at my desk and I say, “Gil, you ought to be further along than this, I would have expected more out of you.” And then grace. We don’t want to make us soft. When we really have a biblical perspective it doesn’t make us want to sin more. Doesn’t make us more satisfied with our sin but it does make us appreciate mercy and grace more. So we will be declared blameless.
Come back to Ephesians 1, we can’t let this go, Ephesians 1, look at verse 4 and this is one of Paul’s sentences. Begin in verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ”. Not with some blessing, that would have been enough, I would have been glad to grab onto a few. “With every spiritual blessing.” God doesn’t hold back in the heavenlies. “Just as He chose us in Him,” in Christ, “before the foundation of the world.” Wait a minute, this goes back, (we are going to get to this at the end of Jude) this goes back to before He created the world He chose me in Christ, “that we would be holy and blameless.” Those two words are often used together, holy and blameless. The word ‘blameless’ here is the word we have. Incidentally, it’s the same word used in the Old Testament when they translated it into Greek a couple hundred years or so before Christ, the Septuagint. This is the word they used for the sacrifices, they had to be without blemish. If you read commentators they will sometimes translate this ‘without blemish.’ You couldn’t bring the sacrifices that were defective. I’m going to… I’ve been chosen so I would be holy and blameless before Him. If God says I am blameless, who is going to step in and say, no, he’s not. Anyone more powerful than God? No. Why can He declare me blameless? Because He has provided the Savior through whom I can be completely cleansed, declared righteous. All charges are removed because they have been dealt with in full, penalty paid, holy and blameless.
And it’s predestined us to be placed as sons, verse 5 said, according to His good pleasure. We know… we talk a lot about the sovereignty of God. This is as far back as you go. Why did God do it? Because He pleased to do it. They can’t go any further back than that. Why didn’t he do it for everyone? I don’t know. Because He chose not to. Well, that’s not good enough for me. That is what Paul answered in Romans 9, “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God,” (verse 20). He doesn’t owe me any further explanations, He doesn’t owe me any explanation. Just like He doesn’t answer why didn’t God provide a Savior for angels who sinned. Because it didn’t please Him to do it. Sometimes we think we can get in a debate with God. No, we just come to hear what God says and that is the way it is. We are here because, verse 6, we will be “to the praise of the glory of His grace.”
While you are in Ephesians come to chapter 5:27, and here He is using the analogy of husband and wife and the picture of Christ and the church, and the picture of the wife who submits herself to her husband as the church submits to Christ, and husbands love their wives as Christ loves the church. He “gave himself up for her,” at the end of verse 25, “so he might sanctify her.” There is our word, related to the word holy, sanctified, saint. It comes from that same basic word, means ‘to be set apart.’ God is holy because He is perfectly set apart from all sin, all defilement. So He did that to sanctify us so we would be set apart as God is so we could be holy as He is holy. When I stand in His presence then I will be fully seen and realize fully the depth of His mercy that I am there as one who is perfectly holy in His sight because there is no charge to be brought against me. We are going to verse 27, He did this so “that He might present to Himself…” Remember we stand in the presence, we are presented to Himself, before Himself -- Christ, and the Father, the Spirit, it’s the triune God, one God, eternally existing in three persons -- “present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and…” there’s our word again, “blameless.” Boy, that’s about good as it gets. There is nothing there, perfect in our beauty, the beauty of the holiness provided in Christ, the righteousness provided in Christ that enabled my account to be marked paid in full, nothing owed, blameless.
On the way back stop at Colossians 1:22, verse 21 for the sentence, “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.” How good… when I begin to lose sight of this… This is the ultimate goal, when every day, Lord, whatever You bring into my life this is what You have prepared to prepare me for the glory of Your presence. I want to draw upon Your grace and Your enabling power to live this day as You would have me. To keep myself in Your love, if you will, so that Your purposes can be accomplished in my life. Do we believe God is able? Then we accept what He has provided.
Come back and on your way back to Jude stop at I Peter 1: 8, and this is a long sentence so we can’t read it. It started out in verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again.” That is a whole study in it’s self, God’s great mercy. How many times are we told, it was His great mercy that caused us to be born again. Now come down, verse 7, “so that the proof of your faith”, there is a testing process that reveals the genuine, that is one thing, there must be divisions among you so that those who are approved, who passed the test, can become evident. We count it all joy when we have various kinds of trials James 1 said, in our life, because it is the trials that refine us and strengthen our faith. So these give evidence that our faith is genuine. These are people, in verse 6, who are going through various kinds of trials. You see it in perspective, it’s my God at work, my heavenly Father. Like we tell our children, I’m not doing this to damage you, I am doing this so you can mature and grow, it’s necessary. That is what he is dealing with here, “the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold… though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” We see the ultimate end of mercy, “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not know see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,” That is what Jude said, ‘blameless with great joy,” and the joy will only get greater, we have mega joy. Maybe we ought to start using that in our witnessing, let me tell you about how you can have mega joy, great joy. Now we experience it, we rejoice now in our trials with great joy. Why? We are looking for the outcome, the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Once I turn my attention, come back to Jude, I will get off-track, so verse 25, puts it in the form of a doxology, “to the only God our Savior”, He is the only God. Deuteronomy 6, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one”. That’s who He is, “to the only God.” I don’t care what else is going on in the world, I don’t care what other rulers they have, there is one true and living God and He is our Savior, that is what matters. The next election doesn’t matter because God is my Savior and He is the One who is able and has the power is what matters to me. That is why the writers of the New Testament aren’t entangled and ensnared in the passing trials of this life, it is too dated, it has gone out of date. Even in my short life, I can’t think back 40 years and all those trials. What were they? They seemed overwhelming and what was that I didn’t know I could get through? We forget them because they are irrelevant today. That’s it, “to the only God our Savior,” He is our Savior, salvation comes from the living God, it’s through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now God exists eternally in three persons but here we are talking about the Father and then the Son. Up in verses 19 and 20 and 21 he mentioned all three persons of the Godhead; mentioned the Holy Spirit at the end of 19, then again at the end of verse 20; then he mentioned the love of God, about God the Father; then he mentioned the Lord Jesus Christ. The triune God here, God’s our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
There is only one God, there is only one way to the one God, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus said, “no one comes to the Father but by Me.” There is one God, there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. You come to recognize your sin and guilt before God. Recognize that Christ Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sin. The living God is your enemy. When you place your faith in Him and Him alone there is a transformation that happens in an instant, you are born again, you are made new, you belong to Him and all the truths we have been talking about become your truth. The God who is able, cares and protects you.
“Glory, majesty, dominion, and authority,” all belong to God. Glory is His magnificence, it is all He is, all His attributes. All the honor and all the praise is on Him. Quit thinking about yourself, get your eyes off yourself, your feelings, your thoughts, your desires. He is the only God, all the glory goes to Him. Majesty, that is a word that has the word great on the front of it also, His greatness is beyond human comparison. I went back and read Isaiah 40 cause I was working with Isaiah 40. I am the God who created everything. Who would you compare me too? I am the incomparable God. Incomprehensible -- His greatness, His majesty, His dominion, and these words overlap. Ephesians 1 talks about the strength of His might and His power, ‘kratos,’ (Greek word) His might and His power. The next word is authority, He has absolute sovereignty, it’s His creation, He does as He wills, and no one can ask Him what have you done. He is my Savior, He is my God, He is my protector.
“Before all time and now and forever.” I love the way that is put, before all -- all the time, all the ages. You know the world, this word sometimes translated ‘world,’ the world has the idea of the all-encompassing sphere and the things that characterize it. ‘Ages’ carries the concept of time. So the way he puts it: before all the ages, before all the ages, we saw that before the foundation of the world God was acting on our behalf as His children. Before all the ages, all the periods of time and now, this period, now age is which we are living and into all the ages yet future. All these attributes of God’s glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, so we are secure. This is the way it was before the world came, He was the eternal, awesome God, that is the way it is today, that is the way it will be in the succeeding ages to come. No matter what we face, no matter what comes into our life, once you placed your faith in Jesus Christ you belong to Him for time and eternity. We say, “Amen.” Brought over from the Hebrew, just transliterated into Greek, then transliterated into English. Amen, ‘let it be,’ we are giving our assent, our agreement, true. Do we believe it when life presses in, the world seems to be going crazy? Come back and read Jude 24 and 25, it puts it back into perspective. Lord, I am glad it is all about You, I am glad You are my protector. I need to put my attention on You, get my eyes off of me, quit thinking about my situation. I want to think first about You, what You are doing for me, where I am at this point in time and in this age, and rest in Your protection and Your care.
Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of Your word. Thank you for the encouragement it brings. Pray the Spirit will impress these truths on our hearts. And we pray in Christ name. Amen.