Far Above Covid

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Don Filcek; Jude 24-25 Far Above Covid

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series,
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Short Letters, Big Stuff, a study in 2nd and 3rd John, and also Jude. Let's listen in.
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All right, welcome to Recast Church, or at least welcome to the weekly message from Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and I am so grateful that people tune in to this teaching every week.
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I know that by this point, some of you may very well be tired of this format, and I recognize that.
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I long to preach to a room full of people instead of a camera, and at the same time,
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I recognize that this is a good thing that we have an opportunity to do. I'm so thankful for the technology, but I so look forward to gathering together with these people, and I know you do too, and I've had a chance to interact with many of you over this past week on Facebook Live, and in various ways, calling on the phone and stuff, and I know that we're really missing each other and looking forward to getting together.
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I want to remind everyone that as we begin the process of getting back together, which we're hoping is going to happen in the next couple of weeks, three, four weeks, it's going to be gradual, it's going to be in step with our governing authorities.
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We are going to do the best that we can as a church to follow those governing authorities, and so as much as I would love to plan to have a huge potluck gathering, or big meet and greets, or social events, or things like that, even our first week back is probably going to be subtle and slow, it's likely going to be an incremental return to normal, and so I just want to remind us all of that and prepare your hearts for that so that you're not discouraged and disappointed when we get back together and it's just in groups of ten in people's homes or something like that, and so just know that it's going to take an incremental, and just like kind of things kind of moved into like, oh, all of a sudden we're not having services, we're probably going to end up moving back into services slowly, too, so our mission as a church, though, remains the same, and I want to clarify that in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of any season, the church,
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Recast Church particularly, has the same mission, and it is simply this, we are seeking to worship
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Him and find more worshipers for His name, and that doesn't change because of social distancing.
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As a matter of fact, this right now, at a time when people are considering all kinds of frustrating circumstances, whether people are angry at the government, whether people are afraid or are actually kind of rolling their eyes at this whole thing, whatever it is, people are thinking more deeply right now than ever, and this is a great time to point people toward the worship of our great
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God. And our mission is tied very closely to the definition of one particular word. You'll notice that it occurs twice in our mission.
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We seek to worship Him and find more worshipers for His name, and if you misunderstand that one word, you will miss the very reason why
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Recast Church exists, and it is simply this word, worship. Worship is vital.
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It is the heartbeat of the follower of Christ, and worship is not, hear me carefully, worship is not synonymous with singing.
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I think far too many of us, and unfortunately so much of the church has misdefined the word worship to the point where we think of a worship pastor who gets up and leads what?
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Songs. Well, he doesn't go with you to your work, he doesn't ride with you in your car, so in what sense is that worship?
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But worship is everything that we do that shows and demonstrates the great and awesome worth of our holy
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God. So listening to His word and going out to live that word in your week is worship.
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Driving in a kind and courteous manner is worship. Competing in athletics with an attitude of love and gratitude and respect for God is worship.
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Plumbing well is worship. Doing an electrical job well is worship.
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And it doesn't mean that every wire and every pipe has a little cross etched in it in order for it to be worship.
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It is enough to do what you do for the glory of God and out of a thankfulness for what
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He has given to you, that can be turned to worship. Delivering packages can be worship.
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Teaching children remotely from your home can be worship. And I know some of you are in that challenging activity right now as teachers trying to teach a group of kids classrooms from home.
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I can't imagine what that challenge looks like, but that can be turned to worship. Or even enduring stay -at -home orders with patience can be done as worship to God.
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Think of it this way, whatever we do that is done with a heart that is beating like this,
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God is supreme, God is highest. God is supreme, God is savior. God is supreme,
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God is provider. God is supreme, God is good. And as your heartbeat becomes thoughts about God, it becomes about Him being supreme in everything.
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Not that every moment of the day is a worship service in your mind that you're singing songs to Him, but that every moment is a moment in recognition of how much higher, how glorious, how awesome
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He is. And that your very breath is dependent upon Him. Your muscles' ability to metabolize the things that you take in from the environment is on Him.
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It is Him and Him alone and so it is to worship Him in all that we do. And of course we recognize that when
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I say whatever we do that has a heartbeat of God is supreme is worship to Him necessitates that we understand that sin is quite the opposite of this.
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You cannot worship God and sin simultaneously. It's not possible. When we sin we are always declaring something else is higher than Him.
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Think about it. We are either placing ourselves higher than Him, we are placing money over Him, we are placing sex over Him, we are placing fame over Him.
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Sin always pushes aside His right, His supremacy, His freedom to call the shots and instead acts like we know better.
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And so in our text this morning we're going to see two short verses that exist for the very purpose of lifting
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God high in our hearts and in our minds. And boy do we need this message during this COVID quarantine.
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Here at the conclusion of Jude the author will fuel us with the hope that God is the one who can overcome our sin but He is also alone the one who is worthy of all worship.
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So if you're not already there open your Bibles to Jude. You can grab a device or whatever.
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You can pause this if you need to go get a Bible. But Jude verses 24 and 25 way at the end of the
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Bible and then way at the end of this little letter at the end of the Bible. So Jude 24 and 25.
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Short passage. Powerful punch in terms of a doxology, a word of praise and we're going to be reading it together.
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A word of glory. Recast God's precious and holy word with the power to change and transform us.
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Jude 24 and 25. 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
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God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.
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Amen. Let's pray. Father I thank you so much for the opportunity that we have to take in a word together.
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Even though we can't be together we can come to your word. The same word in each living room that is listening to this and each family group and each individual that is listening to this.
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Having the opportunity as Recast Church to take in your word together is glorious and it's powerful and it's got the potential to change us.
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Father I pray that you would speak through me with accuracy. That you would allow only what is true to be stated of your word during this time.
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I pray that you would speak through me with clarity. You would allow all of the distractions to fall away and that the things that I say would connect with people in their hearts through the power of your spirit.
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And then that Father you would speak through me with passion and zeal. I love your word. I love what your word does in my heart cutting off the rough edges and drawing me in deeper into the worship of you through Jesus Christ.
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And Father I pray that you would do so through the text of your word and through the explanation of that in me
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Father that I would have a zeal that is consistent with what I'm talking about and that is your glory above all things.
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I thank you that you've moved me this week as I've studied it and I pray that you would move others through this opportunity that we have to hear from you together in Jesus name.
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Amen. Okay. Well, get comfortable. You better be comfortable.
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You're probably in your own place right now. I hope that that's the case. I hope you got some donuts or some coffee or something that you like there and dig in.
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Remember you can pause this at any time and come back to it. I just encourage you that way because I think early on in this process my family and I think many families have kind of this attitude and this idea that it's like if everything's distracting and everything's frustrating, well this is church.
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Everybody sit down and pay attention. But if there's some distractions it's totally appropriate to pause this and kind of move through that and work through that and try to figure out what the next steps are.
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But the false teaching that Jude has been addressing was two pronged in this text. This entire letter, it's a short letter,
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I spent a few weeks in it and you can go back and you can listen to those but he was addressing two types of false teaching.
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He was addressing a crisis in that early church where people were twisting God's forgiveness into a license to sin.
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They were basically saying, you know what, God's grace covers your sin and it's okay you can live however you want now.
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You can completely walk away from any kind of moral ethics, from any kind of compass and you can just kind of keep going and so do whatever you want to do.
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They crept into the church unnoticed and brought that false message. And verse 24 correlates well with that problem that faced the church here at the end.
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And then the second issue was that these false teachers taught that Jesus Christ isn't Lord and Messiah. That he isn't the master.
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He was a good moral teacher but he really has no moral claim on our lives. He doesn't get to call the shots, you get to call the shots.
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Well that's a pretty popular message, right? How many of you think that we could build a church pretty strong, not a strong church internally, but certainly a large church if you just give people what they want.
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Let them eat cake. Let them have whatever they want and so at the end of the day just give them the good stuff might be the idea and at the end of the day just tell them that they can do whatever they want, live however they want and be okay.
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And they were gaining traction there in the early church with that kind of teaching.
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You don't really have to follow Jesus. He's just saved you. That's it. And so verse 25 is going to address this well.
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Placing Jesus as the one through whom we offer praise and worship to the Father. Tying Him very closely with the
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Father here in this text. In verse 25. But let me say here that the challenge in preaching some text for me, a text like this, is the fear of destroying the beauty by dissecting them.
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So in other words, this text is glorious. It's grand in its sweep and scope and the things that it declares in its doxology and this word of glory about God.
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It stands alone and so sometimes I fear that in teaching it or in talking about it, I can turn it into something that kind of kills it in the process.
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And in this sense I'm going to try to let this text fly with its own wings. The more we get down into the details and the more academic, the more that the purpose of the text will be lost for us.
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So God forbid that we leave this message from this recording with more information.
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Merely more information about Jude 24 and 25. Now I hope you do get some more information but I hope you get much more than that.
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My goal is that we leave this message with awe and wonder of our great
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God who is our only hope. And he is the only one worthy of our praise and worship and I hope that your hearts are moved as you hear taught about this great and glorious God.
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So verse 24 describes God and verse 25 describes our reasonable response of worship to him.
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So verse 24, Jude here in the text just immediately jumps into talking about who
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God is and the word doxology. You might notice that some of your headings in your Bible that are not necessarily revealed from the original but they're kind of subheadings that basically try to help us understand what the content of this well in my
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Bible in the ESV it says doxology there. Doxology is a word that means word of glory or word of praise.
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And many New Testament writers conclude their letters with this kind of giving of praise to God.
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And so the opening phrase shows that Jude wants to declare something some things belong to God.
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Now to him he says. Do you see that at the start now to him? In other words something belongs to God that Jude wants us all to reflect on but first he wants to identify the him.
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He wants to tell you who is the him that we're talking about here. And the him, now to him the him is the one who is able to keep you from stumbling and the one who is able to present you blameless before his holy glory with great joy.
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That's the one we're talking about. We are being called to worship through this text and we are being called to worship the one who can keep your feet under you as you wander in this dangerous world.
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And I think we're all identifying that this is a fairly dangerous world. There's all different kinds of ways we can go out of this world pretty quick.
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It's a dangerous place. So where is our stability found? Where do we have our footing?
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And our footing is based on the one who is able to keep us from stumbling.
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The one who will hold you up and deliver you to that final day without falling off the path is the idea.
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And I want to clarify that I don't believe that this should be read into the details of individual and personal sins.
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I truly believe that Jude is here attempting to give us the big picture so that nobody can look at this text and say you ought not to use this text in this way.
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Well I stumbled, sinned and some people might read the word stumble and think the word sin and fill in the blank there and if you think of it as just merely sin he is able to keep me from sinning and therefore
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I sinned today so because I sinned today he hasn't come through on his promises.
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This word doesn't matter. No, it's about the big picture of your life. He is the one who you are leaning on.
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He is the one who his followers and those in love with him are leaning upon him to make things right in the end.
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It doesn't mean that you don't have any responsibility in trying to keep yourself in his love and working towards that but it is ultimately at the end of the day that you are leaning on him and hoping in him to guide you and direct you every step of the way and that you trust that he will indeed finish this.
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He is able to keep you from failing and where the word stumble often has the notion in the
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New Testament of falling headlong, tripping over something and falling. It's a journey ending kind of stumble here.
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It's not just merely any type of sin. It's the kind that leads to destruction and he's saying he's able to keep you from that kind of stumble, from that kind of fall that hits your head and you're done.
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Like that kind of stumbling. That's what he's going on about here. So that's the big picture. God is able to guard your life to the very end.
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Your security is in his hands. Who is it that will keep you to the end? Is it you?
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Is it your strength? Is it your grip on God? No, it is he who is able to keep you from stumbling.
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Even as he commanded us to guard ourselves in the love of God in our text last week, here he acknowledges the one who has the power to hold us through all the twists and turns of life.
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And closely tied to this is another glorious and hopeful truth about the character of God. Not only is he able to keep us through this difficult present life and to keep us from falling away, from destroying ourselves, but he is also able to present his church, that is the people of faith in Jesus Christ blameless on that day.
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A glorious and mind -boggling word applied to people that I know, including myself.
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The word blameless. It's related to the Old Testament sacrifices in that this is a word that means spotless or without blemish.
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You might recognize that if you're familiar at all with the Old Testament with that Old Testament system of sacrifices where they had to bring a lamb without blemish.
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Now I don't know about you, but spotless or squeaky clean and unblemished would not rank up there in the top words that I would use to describe myself.
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Would you describe your life as spotless, unblemished, perfect?
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Is blameless the word that you would use to describe yourself? I think all of us know that we are not worthy of standing in his presence.
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As a matter of fact, left to our own power, I believe each one of us would have stumbled and fallen out of the race a long time ago.
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We would be done with God and on to our own things. But he is the one who is keeping our feet on the path.
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He is the one who keeps us moving towards that finish line with him. But how is it possible that God could ever present someone unholy and stained by sin like me as blameless, spotless and unblemished before him on the great day of reckoning?
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How in the world is that possible? And to add to the possible incredulity,
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I believe that the idea of coming into his presence with great joy could be difficult for us to grasp.
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Not just coming into his presence and being presented blameless and spotless and unblemished, but being present with the almighty holy one and have the primary response of our hearts be joy?
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What is this? I thought I was called to fear God, you could say. I can almost hear you saying that through the camera.
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Shouting, what about fear, Don? I thought I was a sinner unworthy to come into his presence.
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I mean, think about the song I Can Only Imagine and all the different thoughts of I can only imagine. What's it going to be like?
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Am I going to fall to my knees? Am I going to stand and praise him? Am I going to dance for joy? What's it going to look like? Jude is telling you, you're going to be full of extravagant joy on that day.
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That's what he's saying. He's answering the question. How am I going to worship? How am I going to praise? What's it going to look like for me when
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I meet God face to face? And it says here that you are going to have abundant, extravagant, extreme joy is the word that's used here.
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He's going to present you blameless before his glory with great joy.
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I don't deserve that. I'm pretty confident you don't either. The only way for us to be kept from stumbling, the only way to be presented blameless, the only way that we're going to reach judgment day with great joy is if our problem with sin is dealt with.
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Because we know that in our sin we will enter his presence with great fear, with great trembling, with nausea, and with just shakes and sweat, right?
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What would it be like to enter the presence of the holy God with your sin in your hands? Woe is me,
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I'm undone. It's over. That would be the only proper response if our sin is still with us.
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So, has our sin been dealt with? And I would say to you, indeed, if you are in Christ, your sin has been washed away.
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Your sin has been dealt with. We've been washed. We've been cleansed. And as the apostle Paul put it, he who knew no sin became sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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But back to the main text here. Jude wants to remind you, he wants to remind me, who is our
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God? He is the one who can keep you all the way to the end. And when you reach the end, what's that going to look like?
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He will present you like a gift to the Father, blameless before the presence of his divine glory.
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Amen? Anybody excited about that? And the emphasis on the presence of his glory only serves to heighten the wonder.
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He will present us before the Father, the almighty creator, the one who can rightly be defined as his glory.
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His glory, in verse 24. His splendor, his radiance, his holiness, his eminence.
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Why do I have hope that it will go well for me on that day of final judgment? Not because of anything I've done, not because I'm worthy, not because I've stuck with it, not because of my faithfulness.
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Only, only, only because I believe that God is the one who has dealt with my sins through the cross of Jesus Christ.
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Why will that day be a day of great rejoicing rather than a day of devastating loss for Don?
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Or for you if you're in Christ? Because we must be trusting in him to keep us, even as we seek to keep ourselves in the love of God.
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So then the question becomes, why should we keep striving? Why are we still engaging? Why are we still involved? Why aren't we sleeping in on Sunday morning?
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Why are we trying to do some good actions? Why are we trying to love our neighbors as ourselves? Why are we serving?
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Because we are trusting in the one who can keep us from stumbling. We cannot both trust in the one who is able to keep us from stumbling while being okay with stumbling.
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This would be like saying, I trust you God to keep me from stumbling. I know that you don't want me to stumble, but since you are the one who will keep me from stumbling,
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I'm going to work hard over here at tripping over every single rock. The hope that comes in a
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God who is able to keep you from stumbling presupposes that you recognize that stumbling is a bad thing and you don't want it.
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But after giving us titles of encouragement in God, Jude returns now in verse 25 to the task at hand.
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He has encouraged us through encouragement titles of God, the one who is able to keep you from stumbling, the one who will present you blameless on that last day before his great glory with great joy.
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And in verse 25 he picks up what he started. Now to him, remember he started with that, now to him, to the one who can keep you, to the one who can present you blameless, to the only
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God, he says in verse 25, to our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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You see, he's piling on titles here. There is only one God, he says at the start of verse 25, the true, living, eternal creator
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God who is over us and he is the one who has become our salvation. He is Savior, the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all three persons of the triune God together forged salvation for his people through the cross of Jesus Christ and through that empty tomb.
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So that our worship of God comes through Jesus, the anointed and sent Messiah, who is the rightful king and ruler over a redeemed humanity.
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The phrase through Jesus is very key to our understanding of worship. We praise
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God through Jesus, through his Son, through the
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Messiah, through the chosen one, through our Savior. Only in him and through him has a person, any person, been restored to a right and true worship of the
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Father in spirit and in truth. He is the gate, he is the way, he is the door to the
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Father. I am the way, the truth, and the life, said
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Jesus. No one comes to the Father except through me. And without faith it is impossible to please him.
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The only way to please the Father is through the Son and faith in the
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Son. And so through Jesus, the way of worship has been reopened for humanity.
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That fellowship of glad and pure worship for God that was broken through sin in the garden is now being restored through Jesus Christ as our
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Lord. In Jesus, God showed himself to be Savior. And through Jesus, we are now able to recognize that God possesses glory.
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God possesses majesty. He possesses dominion. He possesses authority. We, hear me carefully church, we do not give these things to God in worship.
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If you have any notion that in your praise, in your singing, in your life, in your day to day, boy, I'm just giving
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God stuff left and right. He's getting my time, he's getting my money, he's getting my activities, he's getting all of this stuff.
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In worship, we are recognizing the thing he already possesses. He already has glory.
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He already has majesty. He already has dominion. He already has authority. And when we're living for him, we're acknowledging his authority.
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We're acknowledging his majesty. We're acknowledging his glory. And that he is worth every breath that I take.
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Every place that I go, he is worth that. He is worth my conforming to his principles and his ways.
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That everything that I do ought to line up with him. And the purest worship would be the most righteous life.
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In that sense, Jesus is the model of pure worship to the Father.
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These words need some definition when we think about it in the text as he concludes here. Glory and majesty and dominion and authority.
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Because there's a lot of significant overlap in these words. Glory and majesty overlap a lot.
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And so do dominion and authority. But glory encompasses a radiant brilliance but also a weight or a heaviness.
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There's a seriousness that surrounds God. A way that is awe inspiring, that's jaw dropping, that's inexpressible in words that you can't quite get to.
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While majesty instead points our eyes more upward towards his regal nobility. It's more of a kingly type word.
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And then dominion and authority sound very similar. But the word for dominion is more better, I think, translated might.
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It's kratos in Greek. It's power or might. While authority, exousia, is the right to exercise that power.
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So let me quickly illustrate those two. Because I think this is one that really ties in a little bit in our understanding.
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The difference between the word for dominion and the word for authority. An illustration that might help you discern between those two words.
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Might and rule or dominion and authority. A Lamborghini has the power to easily, easily, easily go 130 miles per hour.
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Like that. Any Lamborghini can go 130 very simply. But it doesn't have the authority to go 130.
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I happened to look it up this week and that Lamborghini, by the way, can hit 130 in about 10 seconds.
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10 seconds from stop to 130 miles per hour. That's some power, right?
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And just this week I read in the news, I don't know if you guys got a chance to see this, but it was actually on MLive. A man going south on I -75 was ticketed for doing 110, not 110 miles per hour.
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110 miles per hour over the speed limit. 110 over the speed limit, southbound
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I -75 north of Detroit. He was going 180 miles per hour in a 70 mile per hour zone.
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Power without authority is a problem with humanity. But it isn't with God.
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I think all of us have experienced that place where we've got the ability to do something, just not the right to do it.
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We've got the ability to meet in groups, we just don't have the right to do it right now.
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Put these together and think about what Jude is saying that we need to ascribe to God here. How is
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God different than us? And here we go. To God is the weight. To God is the gravity, the awe, and the wonder that is implied in the word glory.
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He is blinding in His radiance. He is unwaveringly at the center. He is terrifyingly awe -inspiring.
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He is graciously condescending. And I use the word condescending to jar your minds because the fact of the matter is we don't like the word condescending.
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The only way we'd ever use it is in a pejorative, negative sense that somebody's like talking down to somebody.
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He always is talking down to us. Every single time that God interacts with humanity, He must condescend.
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He must bring Himself down. Every single time that God has interacted with humanity,
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He has brought Himself down so that we could make sense of Him.
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To Him be glory before all time, now and forever.
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To Him belongs the majesty, the text says, the great worth of regal and exalted standing.
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He cannot be compared to any other. He occupies a category of His own. He is the king over all kings.
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He is preeminent in His nobility. He is justified in His austerity. He is benevolent in His revelation.
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To Him be majesty before all time, now and forever. To Him belongs all dominion, which could be rightly translated power or might.
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He is unreasonably capable. He is indescribably potent. He is unceasingly mighty.
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He is perpetually powerful. To Him be dominion before all time, now and forever.
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To Him belongs all rule, which is better translated authority. He not only has the power, but He also has the right to exercise that power.
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He is the eternal creator. He is the owner of every square inch of the cosmos. He is right and true in all exercises of that power.
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He is the only one who has or ever will have His title. And He wears His title with truth, with justice, with goodness, with mercy, with patience, love, faithfulness, and eternal and never -ending holiness.
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To Him be authority before all time, now and forever. And Jude ends his entire letter with a fist -pumped, yes, yes, yes, yes to Him.
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When we talk about worshiping God and finding more worshipers for His name, it flows out of an understanding of who
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God has shown Himself to be in the pages of Scripture. And do you add to Jude's enthusiastic yes, your own?
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Do you add to his yes, with your own? He is the one who holds us now and keeps us from stumbling.
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He is the one who has washed us clean so that we can be presentable to the Holy God on that final day.
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What He has done for us is enough to bring us out of fear of that final day to the anticipation of great joy.
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But through Jesus Christ, we now recognize God in His glory. We see
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God in His majesty. Our eyes are open to His rightful dominion and His correct and true authority to rule past, present, and future.
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So, what do we do? Well, we trust Him with COVID. We trust
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Him with our finances. We trust Him with our work. We trust Him with our families.
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We trust Him in all of our relationships with others. We trust Him to lead us rightly into the principles that He has laid down for us.
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So, if you belong to Jesus, then I truly believe that the only right response to this message is to worship
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Him. Certainly, praise Him with music and song. That's great. I encourage you to do so.
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The scriptures encourage you to do so. But praise Him also with your everything. Praise Him with your work.
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Praise Him with your speech. Praise Him with your online interactions. Praise Him with your trust in Him to get you through.
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Praise Him by living a life that shows that He has glory. Praise Him by living a life that shows that He has majesty.
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Praise Him in a way that shows others that He is the power in your life that you trust.
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Praise Him by living a life that demonstrates His authority and not your.
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Trust Him. Show others that you're trusting Him to get you through.
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But some of you may be listening right now and you're not praising God through Jesus. You haven't asked Him to save you from the just consequences of your sin that will indeed be borne by you when you come into His presence without great joy.
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If you are listening right now and that describes your life, I don't care how old you are, I don't care how long you've been attending church or where you've been or what you've done, let me encourage you to trust
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Jesus Christ by faith, by believing, by trusting that He died on the cross to forgive your sins.
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Ask Jesus to forgive you and to be your King, your Master, your Lord. Say, Jesus, I want
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You to rule and reign in my life. I want You to have the authority in my life. I long for You and Your Majesty to reign supreme,
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Your glory, Your dominion. Ask Him to come into your life in that way and He will forgive you.
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He will cleanse you and He will lead you. And then you also can have hope that He will keep you to the end and present you blameless before the presence of God the
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Father with great joy. Recast, our God is worthy of all glory and all praise and all worship.
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So, please today, let's worship Him and let's together find more worshipers for His name.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank You so much for Your grace and Your mercy. I thank You for the way that You have led us to Jude for a season like this.
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That You have orchestrated this in Your authority and in Your majesty and in Your power and in Your dominion.
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You have brought us to this place of this text for an encouragement here at a time where I'm confident that all who could even stumble on this right now need encouragement.
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So, Father, I pray that You would move in our hearts to recognize that for those who belong to You, our future is secured and it's declared to be great, exuberant, mega joy.
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That is the reality of the future that You have for us. Father, if there's anybody who is not defined by that today, that You might allow today to be a day of salvation for someone listening here who maybe for the first time is recognizing their need for a
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Savior. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, guys. Thank you.