Welcome to the Covenant of Peace radio broadcast, the teaching ministry of Pastor Blair Bradley. This program is dedicated to bringing you the glorious truth of God's Word, one verse at a time. We are living in powerful days, and we are seeing tremendous changes in our lives, our culture, our nation, and in the Church. So now more than ever, we have a great need to exercise spiritual discernment and to know what the Bible teaches about the important issues that we all face today. So let's join Pastor Blair as he continues our study on the Word of God. Welcome again my beloved in Jesus Christ. We're continuing our verse-by-verse journey through the epistle of Jude and today I want to continue to look at what Jude taught about God making us able to stand in his presence blameless with great joy. So let's read Jude verses 24 and 25 again together. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, 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. Now over the last several broadcasts we've been examining verse 24 and I've been going over just how God is able to make us stand in the presence of his glory blameless with great joy. And the way that this verse reads it would seem that in order for us to be presented blameless is that we must be in fact blameless. But if that is true then what about the fact that we all still sin after we're saved? What do we do with that? Now some people today teach that once we are saved that it doesn't matter that we still sin. These people reason that somehow being justified makes sin to no longer be a problem anymore or that because we are saved God no longer regards our sin or that he just looks the other way. I've even heard some people say that the reason that Jesus died on the cross is so that when we sin we just don't feel bad about it. These kinds of statements are unbelievably naive and show an incredible lack of understanding just how offensive sin is to a holy and righteous God. Listen to me, sin matters to God even after we are saved. Sin is an insult to the holiness and the majesty and the righteousness of our great God even after we are saved. No sin can enter into heaven, not a single one. God's requirement for anybody to go to heaven is that they must be perfectly righteous and they must be continuously righteous in thought, word, and deed 24 hours every day and seven days every week. In other words, the only people who can go to heaven are those who are just as righteous as God himself is. And so that leaves us in a very terrible position, because not only is it true that only perfect and continuously righteous people can enter into heaven, it is also true that all unrighteousness is going to be punished in hell forever. So the greatest question that every man, woman, and child on earth needs to ask themselves is this, how in the world am I going to be able to stand before a holy and righteous God and pass through his judgment on my life? And there are only two answers, possible answers, to that question. Number one, either you and I have to develop our own personal righteousness and raise it up to the level of being perfect and continuous, or, number two, we need the sinless, spotless righteousness of Jesus Christ to be miraculously and supernaturally imputed to us by the agency of faith alone. Option 1 necessarily involves a lifelong process of elaborate rituals, ceremonies, the keeping of sacraments, memorized or written prayers, long times of fasting, education, and money until our own personal righteousness is improved enough to be acceptable to God. In the case of Hinduism or Orthodox Catholicism, even after going through this lifelong process of improving your own righteousness, you're still not good enough for heaven. So they provide those who buy into their teaching with either reincarnation or purgatory in order to complete the lifelong process of making their own personal righteousness good enough to go to heaven. And as we have studied in Islam, even after you spent your entire life trying to earn righteousness, the Quran clearly teaches that Allah can still send you to hell just because he doesn't like you. And that is why college-educated people are willing to blow themselves up because the Prophet Muhammad taught that only by killing yourself in an officially declared jihad can anyone in Islam know for sure that he's going to heaven. This is exactly what believing that we need to improve or develop our own personal righteousness brings forth. Even in secular humanism that teaches that man is his own god, it still requires that person to better himself through education, culture, and through the acquisition of money, power, and possessions, so the net result is the same. All of those religions and philosophies that have been invented by men and which teach the doctrines of devils say the same thing, that man has to improve his own condition, make himself righteous in order to go to heaven. Some of these false religions try to smooth this over by saying that it isn't just us, but that somehow we cooperate with God in the development of our personal righteousness. But no matter how you slice it or dice it, the conclusion of every single religion and philosophy that espouses a salvation by works is the very same. All of them teach that it is our own personal righteousness that must be improved or perfected through a lifelong process and the end of the matter is that each of these religions and philosophies teach that we one day reach a place where our own personal righteousness becomes good enough to please God and therefore we get to go to heaven. And then there is biblical Christianity, which is option two, which stands alone, and all by itself, and it teaches that our own personal human righteousness is as filthy rags, and that by virtue of the fact that we are human, we cannot ever improve or develop our own personal righteousness to the point of being perfect and continuously righteous, no matter what we do. And so at the very second that we as lost sinners who deserve eternity in hell for our wickedness, that at the very second that we trust Christ for salvation, that by the agency of faith alone, apart from any works or any act of cooperation, that by faith alone, God Almighty imputes or credits the sinless, spotless, perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ upon us in the greatest act of mercy and grace that the world has ever known. And as that Holy Blood forgives us, and we are declared to be righteous, even though we are in fact still sinful, we are declared to be righteous by a sovereign act of God. And at that very moment, we are made fit for heaven. You see, option one teaches in all of its variations the same thing, that it is our own personal human righteousness that must be developed or improved upon to make it acceptable to God. Only option two, biblical Christianity teaches that the righteousness that allows anybody to go to heaven is not our own personal righteousness, and that it will never be our own. but that it is Christ's righteousness that allows us to go to heaven. So option one in all of its various forms teaches that people go to heaven because they develop or improve their own personal human righteousness through works. And option two alone teaches that people go to heaven only because the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed or credited to them by faith alone apart from any works. Now, this is vital because if verse 24 of Jude is true, and if verse 24 is real, and if we are in fact going to be presented blameless before God's presence with great joy, if that's going to happen for any of us, then one of two things has got to be true. Number one, either my own personal righteousness that I develop over my lifetime must rise to the level that I literally cease from sin or number two I am already presented to God as being blameless at the very second that I'm justified by virtue of the sinless spotless righteousness of Jesus Christ being imputed to me by faith alone while in fact I am still sinful. So if you can think at all, who in their right mind would ever pick option one? I mean, why do we have billions of people on earth today working so hard, traveling so far, going through all that they go through so that somehow they can develop their own personal righteousness and work their way into heaven? And to think that most of these people are doing this because they have either been taught wrongly about salvation or they've not been taught at all. Think of all the human suffering that could be avoided if the gospel was preached rightly and fully and fearlessly to all these people. Yet in spite of all this that I have taught you this past year, some would still say, well, what's the big deal, Brother Blair? Who cares about all this? It doesn't matter what you believe. As long as you're sincere, God will see your heart and allow you to go to heaven as long as you believe in what you're doing with all your heart. Is that a fact? But if that's true, then what did Jesus mean when he said in John 14, verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me. This passage tells us that salvation cannot possibly come through anyone or anything else except Jesus Christ. So based upon this verse, we can narrow it down real quick by saying that only Christians can go to heaven. But we need to go even further because Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and various cults all call themselves Christians. I met a man at a secular radio station the other day who told me that he was both a Muslim and a Christian. So let's turn and read Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Now, this passage tells us three things. Number one, salvation is by grace and salvation is through faith. Number two, saving faith is not of ourselves. Number three, salvation is not of any human work in any way. So if the words of Jesus are true, and if the words of the Apostle Paul are true, then by virtue of these words, Jesus is the sole and exclusive way for any human to ever go to heaven. By default, that means that any attempt by anyone for any reason to try to get into heaven any other way except through the Lord Jesus Christ is false and wrong. And biblical Christianity is the only religion on this planet that teaches that what Jesus said here is true by upholding the basic concept that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone apart from any human works. But if that is true, then again, by default, every other religion except Biblical Christianity and every other human philosophy of man is a lie and is in fact leading billions of people into hell while they think that they're heading toward heaven. So you see this stuff really does matter. And it is very important how you believe that you are justified in God's sight. And it really does matter whose righteousness you obtain. Yours are Christ's. Because if you are in a lifelong process of developing your own personal righteousness, and that is what is going to qualify you to go to heaven, if that's true, then the entire Protestant Reformation was a lie, Reformed theology is a myth, the Bible is not true, and we cannot trust in anything that Scripture says. But if the Bible is true and if we can rely on and trust the inspired words of Jesus and Paul and Peter and John and Moses and Isaiah, and if it is true that the righteousness that we need in order to go to heaven is not ours at all, but is Christ's, and we acquire that righteousness not based upon any human works but we obtain it by the agency of faith alone then every other religion on earth that teaches differently from that is a lie and cannot be trusted and that is why Jude wrote this epistle to expose those people and those teachings that are contrary to the inspired truth and so Jude ends this great epistle with this doxology Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, 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. And this is why We need to earnestly contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. Well, I've got to stop right here, but please join me again on the next broadcast as we continue our journey through the epistle of Jude. May God help us all. Dear friends, if this radio broadcast of line-upon-line, precept-upon-precept teaching of God's Holy Word is a blessing to you, will you prayerfully consider supporting us financially? We want to increase our exposure here on the Gulf Coast through more radio stations and through the Internet. Would you pray about coming alongside of us and help us do that, to God's glory? For further information about how you can partner with us in seeing the gospel triumph in our area, or to receive a copy of today's broadcast, go to our website, www.covenantofpeace.net. Until next time, may the peace of God keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.