Jude 24-25

The Beauty of Jude’s Final Doxology

Amen. If you've heard me preach at least once, I say that this is my favorite verse. Today is my favorite verse as well. Actually, I really, after we've been through the book already, all 25 verses now, I really do think that this is my favorite verses in the whole book.

I want to start by telling you a story. I was in Colorado. I was very, very fortunate as a young enlisted army guy. And maybe the reason I remember this story this week is because my son just shipped off to the army.

He is now in Oklahoma. And when I was in Fort Carson, I was 2 ,400 miles or however many miles away from my family that I'd never been by myself before. So on long weekends, what I would do is I wouldn't go out to the clubs.

I would get in my car, and I would drive. And I would just look at the mountains. And I would go down different highways. And one week, I'd go to Aspen. Another week, I'd go to Vail. I wouldn't do anything because I didn't have any money.

But I would just go and look. And there was this one abandoned shabby little dirt road that I think I rode past 100 times. It was nothing impressive at all. It was just this pitiful-looking little dirt road on the side of the highway.

And there's this one day that I decided to go down it. I turned down it, and the potholes were bigger than they are in Massachusetts, which is saying a lot. There were many times as I was going down this road that I thought I was going to turn back.

It was densely wrapped with forest on both sides so that you couldn't really see more than 10 feet into the forest. It's kind of like a great picture of a horror movie. So I started getting pretty nervous, thinking that someone was going to kill me and jump out with a Jason mask.

I was shocked, though, after about a mile of driving down this dirt road, that it opened up into the most beautiful lake I've ever seen in my life. The lake was like a sheet of glass because it was wrapped on all three, or three and a half sides, with actual mountains.

There was three literal mountains that were all the way touching the lake so that if you got into the lake and you swam up to the shore, you could touch the mountain. And because of that, it shielded it from the wind, so the lake was this beautiful sheet of glass.

The sun perfectly shone down on top of this water, and it was breathtaking. And I was like, why is this accessible only through a pitiful and sorry-looking dirt road? Why hasn't someone figured out that this could be an amazing tourist spot and pave it?

Well, in many ways, that's kind of what the book of Jude has been like. In our day, the New Testament, there's many books that people would call their favorite. Jude is usually not one of them. Jude is a neglected book.

Jude's the little pitiful dirt road on the side of the highway that most people don't wanna travel down. And as you go along and you see the thick, dense forest, and you're thinking there's nothing good that can possibly be here, if you do start the book of Jude, often, around verse four, maybe if you make it to verse eight, you stop and you say, I don't understand this book at all.

But if you continue down this book, if you get to the end, it opens up into the most beautiful and glorious picture of the grandeur of God. Just like that old road that I traveled down when I was a young soldier.

The road that we've been on now for 12 weeks has had three kind of bends in it as we've been traveling down it. And it might have felt like it wasn't leading anywhere to you. The first was who we are in Christ.

Verse one kind of begins with, we're slaves of Jesus Christ. We've been purchased by Jesus to be his slaves, like Derek was reading earlier. We are called by God, we are beloved by God, we are kept safe by God.

Mercy, peace, and love is multiplied in our life. That all sounds good. Verse 17 through 20, it says, we're people of the truth, people of the spirit, people who live in these last days. That was kind of the first theme of the book.

The second bend in the road that Jude has been laboring to show us is where most people turn back. That's who are the wolves. We've learned in verses eight through 16 that false teachers are always sneaking into the church of God with immoral living and bad doctrine.

With their divisive attitudes, they're seeking to break up and destroy the church of God. These are men who hate God's word, these are men who hate God's people, and these are men who hate godly living.

These are wolves who come into the church to destroy the church, and this has happened for the last 2 ,000 years. But the book has taught us that these men will certainly, totally, eternally be destroyed by God for their rebellion.

While these wolves are dangerous, you imagine driving down a dirt road and you seeing wolves on the side of the highway salivating as they see you, looking at you like they wanna devour you. While they're dangerous, the book of Jude has not taught us to be afraid.

That's what the third bend in the road has taught us, is that while they're dangerous, while they're scary, we can do six things. And that's what we learned last week, that while the wolves are seeking to tear down the church that we are called to build it up, while they are devoid of the spirit of God, we are told to pray in the spirit of God.

While they will be kept in the eternal bonds waiting for the judgment of that great day, we are told to keep ourself in the freedom of the love of God. While they wait anxiously for the day of Christ, we wait anxiously for him to return.

While they've prayed, P-R-E-Y, on the week, we are told to have mercy on those who doubt. And while they are throwing people headlong into their heretical flames, we are called to snatch people out of the false doctrines.

We are told to teach them right teachings and a proper view of God. We are told to contend. The overarching theme of this book is that we are told to fight for the truth because the road doesn't end here.

We're fighting for something eternal. We're fighting for that moment when it opens up into eternity. We're fighting for a purpose. We are to spend our lives here in these last days fighting against false teaching, fighting for the church to remain pure, fighting for our children to be discipled so that they will grow up and they will be healthy, godly citizens in this country.

We are fighting for our marriages to be grounded in the truth of Christ. We are fighting for our relationships to be pure and honoring to God. We are fighting for our minds not to be devoured by every wind of doctrine that comes into this country and their legion.

We are fighting for our emotions to be surrendered on Christ so that when trouble happens or when cancer happens or when everything else happens, we are fixed and secure in Christ because we are grounded in him.

We are fighting for our hearts. We are fighting for every facet of our lives to be in alignment with Jesus Christ. That's what the book is teaching us in this first three sections. Maybe you felt like this road was a little windy and you didn't know where it was going, but today I want you to see that it opens up into the beauty and the glory of God.

Jude does not end with what we are supposed to do. He ends with what God has done, and it is glorious. So if you will, turn with me to verse 24 and 25 as we examine who this God is. Last week, we learned that we can do six things.

This week, we're gonna learn six beautiful realities of who God is, and when you know, this is the theme of today's message, when you know who God is, you will praise. When you know who God is, and we're gonna talk about six realities of God, you will praise.

So let's read. 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, now, and forever.

This passage teaches us six attributes of God that will fuel our praise. First, that God will, not might, God will keep you from stumbling. God will make you stand. He will sanctify you. Like a good Baptist, I'm using all S's here.

So just in case you missed it, I'm really proud of myself this week. He will keep you from stumbling. He will make you stand. He will sanctify you. He is singularly able to do it because he's sovereign over salvation and because he is superlative in every way.

That last one was hard. Notice what he says. Now, to him who is able to do all of these six things, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. Because God can do these six things that we're gonna talk about, he is worthy of worship.

That's the theme that we're gonna tease out again and again tonight. As we realize who we are in Christ and as we realize who God is and what God has done, we will worship. We can have joy. As we build up our life, we don't have to do that religiously with no joy.

As we pray in the Holy Spirit, it doesn't have to be a duty. As we keep ourself in God's love, it doesn't have to be bland and rote. As we do the things God has called us to do, we can have joy. We don't have to be miserable in our relationship with God.

We don't have to be discouraged. We don't have to lack hope. We don't have to live in our suffering because of who God is. The first thing it says is he will keep us from stumbling. He will. It doesn't say that he might.

Now, I have talked to so many Christians over the years who have felt so discouraged in their walk with God because they do not feel like they're doing it right. They don't feel like they know enough.

They don't feel like they measure up. Because they don't understand the Bible, they don't read it. Because they feel awkward in their time of prayer, they don't pray. Because they can't remember the Bible verse that they really wanna share with their friend, they don't share.

I see so many people feeling discouragement, feeling like they've stumbled. But here God says, I will keep them from stumbling. So either they are right and that there is this standard that is hanging over our heads that we have to know a certain amount of information about the Bible or we can't share it.

Or we have to pray a certain level of prayer before we can speak with God. Or we have to be a certain level of religious before we can have a relationship with God or it's a lie. And according to the scripture, it is an absolute lie.

God will keep you from stumbling. You may feel like a baby Christian. You may feel like that you wobble and bobble about in your relationship with God. You may feel like that you have no skill at all in the spiritual realms, but God promises here that he will keep you from stumbling.

It's like a child. I've got a baby now who is just now learned to walk, but a few months ago, she would stand up and fall down, stand up and fall down. And there was something in her that motivated her to continue to walk.

And when she reached out her hand and she grabbed hold of my hand, I held her safe. I held her secure and she would walk. She wouldn't stumble. That's what God is doing for us. You've never seen a baby that refuses to walk.

You've never seen a child that says, nope, I can crawl way faster and I don't wanna walk. Some are slower than others, but you've never seen an 18 year old who doesn't know how to walk. You know, I was thinking about this today.

Even though the baby has no mastery of it, there's something that's fueling them to stand up. Even though they don't know anything about the concept of standing, even though their legs aren't even fully straight, they've got this funny little bend to them that when you look at them, it's like, how do they do that?

They still understand that they need to reach out and grab for their father's hand because they long to walk. They refuse to sit down, which is exactly what we are called to do. We're not called to sit down in our faith.

We're not called to remain discouraged. We're not called to lose hope. We must stand even if we bobble because God has promised that you will not stumble. You might not feel perfect at it, but you will not fall.

We must take the hand of God and know that he is not gonna let us fall flat on our face. He will keep us from stumbling as we build ourself up in the faith. He will keep us from stumbling as we learn how to pray.

He will keep us from stumbling as we eagerly try to keep ourself in the love of God and fight for joy in our relationship, even when it doesn't make sense, even when our circumstances don't make sense at all.

He will hold us. He will keep us. He will be there with us holding our hand. He'll keep us as we strive towards obedience. He'll keep us as we learn how to read the Bible and as we learn how to pray. He will keep us as we begin having mercy on others.

He will keep us as we attempt to rescue others from error. Do you see the last six things that we learned last week? God is promising that if we will do them, he will keep us, that we cannot fail if we will hold onto God's hand as we do them.

This tells us that God is present in our lives, that God is providing you the grace that it's gonna take in order for you to follow him. In your flesh, in your own strength, you cannot walk with God, but when God supplies the grace, you can hold his hand and you will not fail because God has given you the grace to walk with him.

God has given you the grace to obey him. He's given you the grace to worship him. He's given you everything that you need to be sustained in your relationship with God. And because of that, we can praise God.

Think about it. If we know who we are, we can't walk with God. And if we know how holy God is, he should not love us, but yet he has reached down and he has grabbed us and he has saved us for some unimaginable reason that I cannot fully explain to you why.

And because of that, we are to praise. We are to praise. God is so infinitely glorious that he can take sin-stained rebels, creatures of wrath that were destined for destruction, and not only save us, but get us walking.

Think about that. He didn't just save us and leave us at the cross. He didn't just wind up the faith and then leave us like a blind watchmaker to go and do life on our own. He saved us and he helped us.

Like a father who gets down on the floor and plays with his kids, he has not abandoned us. The death of Christ is insanity if you try to wrap your head around it. God sent his precious and perfect one and only son to die for enemies.

Why would he do that? Why would he do that? Even more than that, why would he go beyond that? He crushed his son at the cross and yet he remains with us. After Jesus died, he gave us new life. Jesus grasping for his last breath and yet he gave us the breath of the Holy Spirit that will nurse us back to health.

God, when he turned his face away from Christ, turned his loving face towards us. As his child laid immovable in a borrowed grave, he decided to grab our hands so that we could walk out. What amazing God would do that.

It fuels our praise. Knowing who he is fuels our praise. We praise God because of the overwhelming love that he displayed in not only saving his enemies but in keeping them from stumbling. That's the first reality of who God is.

The second one in this passage is that he will make you stand. Beyond just bobbling around as an infant, he will actually make you stand in full maturity. It says, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, present tense.

That's our life. And to make you stand in the presence of his glory. That's what we were destined for. We may bumble and stumble and fall around now. We're not gonna fall because he's holding us but we are destined one day to stand in the presence of God.

He goes beyond just saving us. He goes beyond just helping us live a good life or live a life dedicated to Jesus. He has gone to the utter insane lengths of destining us to stand in his presence. It's like a child who is not gonna remain out of balance forever but is destined to grow up into maturity.

So the Christian will spend this life like an infant. You won't get much further than that. You'll need to learn how to walk with God. You'll need to learn how to talk with God like a newborn baby trying to mouth words.

We won't do it perfectly but the Holy Spirit will help us in our weakness. We will need to learn how to read the word of God and absorb it. We'll learn how to rely on the Lord for everything. We might make it to spiritual toddler level before this life is over but that is not the end goal of our existence.

We were not made to simply arrive at toddlerhood just like humanity was not meant to end there either. We were meant to grow up into maturity. We were meant to stand with all the muscles and the strength and the ligaments that that requires.

And look at where God wants you to stand. This is utterly amazing to me. I'm running out of words to describe what this is. God is not content to have you stand on the outskirts of his grace. God is not content to have you stand at a distance in heaven.

You know, I heard somebody say one time that I'm just looking to be a janitor in heaven because I'm so wretched, I'm so bad. God, that's the best thing that could possibly happen to me. No, no, no. You are destined to stand in the presence of his glory if you've been given Jesus Christ as your savior.

If you've given your life over to him, you will stand in front of him. Not on the outskirts, not outside the city limits. You will stand in his presence. You will stand where Moses could not stand. Do you remember in the Old Testament when Moses begged and pleaded with God, show me your glory.

And God had to put him in a rock. God had to show him only the backside parts because his glory and his presence was so beautiful and so infinite that if he showed him everything, it would have destroyed him.

You get to see more than Moses. We get to see more than the disciples who Jesus called to follow him, who followed three of them, went up to the mountain of transfiguration and Jesus literally peeled back reality and showed him his glory, showed him his presence and they did not stand.

They fell on their faces in fear because the magnitude of who Christ is and yet it says in this passage that in the end, you will stand in his presence. Peter fell on his face, John fell on his face, you will stand in his presence.

Why? Because what is true of us was not yet true of our brothers in the New Testament and our brother Moses and others in the Old Testament. Christ had not yet died. Christ had not yet raised to life.

The spirit of God had not yet been sent. It is easy for us to forget how good the gospel is because every day we do our life. We have our Bible, we read about it. The good news has become old in a lot of ways.

No one stands in the presence of God, but yet you will. No, that is not old. We need to revisit this. We need to remember this. We need to think about this. Think about the magnitude of the fact that you and all your frailty will stand in God's presence.

At the cross, you and I were washed clean. There's no sin that is counted against us. No sin that can keep us from God's, what we read in Romans earlier. He took our shame, he took our guilt and he gave us perfection.

Not because we earned it. It's a free gift of God's unimaginable love. And he's the God who now keeps us from stumbling and he's the God who will make us stand in his presence. It doesn't say that we'll stand on crutches.

It doesn't say that we'll stand feebly. I imagine this like an Olympian standing on the platform after victory. We will stand in the presence of God, bewildered by his goodness, blown away by his glory.

I think it'll be like mouth wide open. All that we can do is praise. You know, we think often, how are we gonna praise God every single day for all of eternity? Because you don't yet know how good God is.

And you don't know how overwhelming his presence is gonna be. And you don't know yet how thrilling it's gonna be to stand in the presence of his glory. In this life, we're still gonna bumble and wobble.

We're still gonna need God's help every step of the way. But when we arrive, we will no longer bobble. We will no longer sin. We will no longer have cancer. There will be no more pain. There will be no more tears, no more brokenness.

Everything that afflicts you in this life will be taken from you and you will stand in the glorious freedom of Jesus Christ. And all that will be left for you and for I to do is praise. Think about that.

We will be in sheer freedom. No longer bound by addictions. No longer bound by brokenness in relationships. No longer bound by the hurt that we've experienced. Free. Free to praise. That's the second.

The third, it gets even better. It's building as we continue. It's already at the level of insanity. So if you will, just continue to follow me in just how good this is. He will perfectly sanctify us.

It says, 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. God will not only make you stand in his presence, but he will do so by making you blameless.

You're gonna be wiped clean when you're in front of God. Every lie will be gone so that the only thing that will remain is the truth. Every time that you felt abandoned in your life will be replaced by his beautiful and loving presence.

Every lustful thought erased in the concentration of his purity. Every chain, every addiction, every brokenness, all of it will be delivered. I think Hebrews says that every chain will be thrown off of you and in that moment, you will be declared perfectly righteous because you're in the presence of God.

That day is coming. It is not a myth. It is not a well-wishing that Christians have. That is a real historical moment that is going to happen. I don't know if it's today or 10 ,000 years from now, but at some point, Jesus Christ is gonna return and he's gonna make you stand blameless in the presence of his glory.

And it says that you will do that with great joy. When you have no more blame, you will have nothing left but joy and great joy. You will praise him because he saved you. You will praise him because he's kept you.

You will praise him because he didn't allow you to stumble in this life and he delivered you safely into heaven. You will praise him because he is beautiful and magnificent and glorious and you will see him in all of his beauty.

You will behold your God when you wake up in heaven and it will be breathtaking. When that day comes, the legal status that you have, you, Christian, have been declared righteous, but there's many days that you don't feel righteous.

There's many days where you feel like you're still a sinner, where you're still a screw-up, where you're still a failure, where you still fall flat on your face. All of that I get that's real. We still have times where we feel guilt and shame.

We still struggle with sin. We do the things that we don't wanna do and we don't do the things that we want to do, but you've been declared righteous. On that day, though, that declaration will become your reality.

You will not be just declared righteous. You will actually be thoroughly righteous. Every tear gone. The only thing that will be left for you in that moment is the freedom to praise, to magnify the name of the God who did all these things for you.

That's the third reality that we are told in this passage. There's a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, so we will continue. He is singular. He is the one and only God. Look what it says. 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 be glory now and forever.

What this is saying is that God is the only God, which means that we may only praise him. He is unrivaled. He is unparalleled. He's the only God. There's no other deity, no other power, no other force, no other theory, no other hypothesis.

God is God and God alone shall be praised. If we worship in this life, anything other than the God of the Bible, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, as laid out in Holy Scripture. If we worship any other deity, if we prioritize any other relationship ahead of Christ, if we toxically allow ourself to dwell in our emotions, if we obsess over anything that rivals our affection for Christ and that is full-blown idolatry because God is singularly God, meaning that he is God alone and he's worthy of all of our praise.

To not give it to him is cosmic treason. I'm repeating this because we understand this with our minds, but our lives, my life tells a very different story. He alone can keep us from stumbling. Nothing else in your life can.

He alone will make you stand before him blameless. Nothing else in your life can do that. He alone, the triune God of the Bible and all of his breathtaking glory alone can do these things. And to withhold praise from such a beautiful God is to woefully misunderstand who he is and to maximally overestimate who you are.

To yawn at God is like a candle yawning at a supernova. It would be like a speck of dust unimpressed with the Sahara Desert. It would be like a drop of ocean scoffing at the Atlantic and it would be like a pebble boasting in front of Everest.

When we begin to understand how magnificent and great he really is, and we begin to understand the finitude of how low and how small we really are, it causes us to praise. It causes humble, ardent, forceful praise to come out of our mouths to God.

If we live a praiseless life, it's because we do not know who God is. If we worship him out of duty instead of delight, we do not yet fully know who God is. If we behold an image instead of seeing him for who he is in his person, we do not fully know who God is.

If we are content with a taste instead of a feast, if we are content with a jewel instead of a treasure, we do not yet know the fullness of who God is. Because he is only God, he is worthy of all our praise.

That's the fourth. Reality. All of these realities about God fuel us to praise him. The fifth is that he is sovereign over salvation. Sovereign just means control. He is in control over every facet of our salvation.

This week, I was blown away at the fact that God is sovereign over our salvation, past, present, and future. If you think about it, salvation is not just a past event at summer camp when you raised your hand and you gave your life to Jesus.

It's not that time when you were in front of your television and you said, I wanna follow Jesus. It's not when you're in the back of a youth van and you were singing, I have decided to follow Jesus 900 times in a row, because that song is really great, the 899th time, but the 900th.

Salvation is more than a past event. Salvation is past, present, and future. Salvation is in the past when God justified you and made you righteous before God. Salvation is in the present where he is currently saving you from your sin.

Salvation is in the future when he rescues you from this life and puts you in eternity in front of God. Salvation is past, present, and future. There's three moments of salvation and the triune God is involved in all of them.

The Bible says that the Father, before eternity passed, before the world was even created, he knew you and he called you by name, meaning that God, before you were ever created, the Father knew you and justified you.

Christ came to earth and for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross so that he could justify you, so that he could make you right with God. Justification means that Jesus took your stain of sin and he gave you his beautiful perfection in this great exchange.

You got what you did not deserve. He also got what he did not deserve and Christ came in space and time in ancient history 2 ,000 years ago to do that. And at some point in your life, whether it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago, the spirit of God awakened you and gave you the gift of salvation.

He regenerated you and woke you up and caused you to choose God because you would not choose God on your own. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all in the past working to save you. And it's not just a past event.

God is also currently, the triune God is at work in your life. It says in 1 Thessalonians 5 .23 that the Father is working to sanctify you completely. So the Father is working in your life as a Christian to sanctify you.

That means to make you holy. That means to take all of the parts of you that are broken and fix them and redeem them and make them look like Jesus. Galatians 2 .20 says that the Son who died is now living inside of us and not only living in us, he's living through us so that he is making us look and act and think and breathe and talk and walk like him.

Galatians 5 says that the spirit is producing fruit in the believer. Again, in the past, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit was sovereign over your salvation. In the present, God is sovereign over your salvation.

And in the future, the triune God will deliver you safely into eternity. In Romans 8, it says that God the Father will do this. It doesn't say that he may do this. It says that he will glorify you. That means to take you and perfect you in the new heavens and the new earth.

It says in Colossians 3 .4 that Jesus will make you stand in his presence in ceaseless praise. God and Christ both involved in the final moment of your salvation. To me, I thought this was the most beautiful one.

Revelation 22 .17 says of the spirit of God, this is when you come, this is when you die, this is when you arrive, this is when you're worried for a moment. Am I really saved? Did I really know Jesus?

The spirit and the bride say, come, and let the one who hears come, and let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who wishes to take the water of life without cost come. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, intimately involved in your salvation, past, present, and future, and knowing that should cause us to praise.

That's point number five. Number six, the one that didn't quite fit in my barrage of S's is that God is superlative. Superlative just means that he is the best. It means that there's nothing greater. It means that he's higher than our thoughts, that he's greater than our ways, it means he's bigger than our wildest imaginations, and he is better than we could ever possibly dare dream.

I'm gonna read the whole verse now again to you as we finish off our time. Now to him, the triune God, 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, now, and forever.

Because God is owed infinite glory, God is better than anything. God is greater than everything. Glory just means honor, fame, and renowned. In the Bible, when we talk about glory, we're talking about something that's weighty, something that's heavy, not overweight, something that's significant.

I'm weighty. God is significant. There's a difference. It's kind of like a gem. Imagine the clearest diamond, like the hope diamond. You're standing there in front of the case. It's put in a case because it's weighty, and it's significant.

It's not common, and it's not ordinary. You can't just pick it up and touch it. Imagine going to Paris and seeing the Mona Lisa. You will not touch the painting itself. Go to Washington, D .C., and look at the Declaration of Independence.

These things are weighty and significant things, and they cause us to look at them differently than we look at a magazine or the Times or whatever else that we're looking at. God is infinitely better than all of these things, so it should cause us to look at him differently.

It should cause us to praise when we start to see who he is. Imagine a king who comes to this country. I met a president one time. I don't know if you liked President Bush, the first one, but I met President Bush.