and practical matters. Also, doxologies come as if they were prayers and wishes for attribution or credit to be given unto God. And that's really where it has to end, is that we give all the credit to the Lord. As we read, as we study through everything, as we consider what's said to us in the Bible, we have to give the credit to the Lord in the end. And yes, all matters of doctrine and practice of the Christian faith ought to be focused upon the Lord and His doings and attributes. So we see this here. Coming after this intensive, very intense, and important matter about false teachers and apostates, and coming after our responsibilities that are necessary to be successful in this conflict on behalf of the Christian faith, we see this doxology. So we come out of it with Jude switching the focus off of self and others and upon the Lord, who is able through the entire conflict and through all time to preserve the truth and those who believe it. It really ends with the Lord. And ultimately speaking, it's the Lord who's going to endure through all this, and He's going to help us endure. And without Him, we would not be able to endure. Now, this is really the end of the matter. We could dissect all day our responsibility to ourselves and with others in this spiritual warfare against falsehood. We could do that, and we did. In verses 20 through 23, we dissected what is our responsibility and what is our responsibility to ourselves and to others. We could explore all the tactics and strategies needed to keep ourselves and others from going off the rails doctrinally and spiritually. But really, it ultimately comes down to this doxology as the final statement on the whole matter. Whereas we want to say or think or purport that the responsibility of spiritual security rests upon our shoulders, or that the responsibility of helping others not get swept away with the errors of the age rests upon us believers, this doxology is here to remind us that ultimately our spiritual security and that of others is in the safekeeping hands of God. That's where it rests. Now this is not to say we do nothing. People pendulum swing. So what you're saying is we should do nothing. No, we already spent 20 through 23 on what we ought to do. But this is to say that we ought to have our eyes, our focus, And the credit be upon the Lord, who does the safekeeping of the soul. And if it weren't for the Lord keeping us, we would be lost and in big trouble for the future. So we're going to see this as this is given to us. I've used this verse, verse 24, quite a few times in my evangelism whenever I talk to somebody about eternal security. Because where does eternal security lie? It lies with God. Thankfully, that's where it lies. It's not with me. It's with God. So we're going to see that. What we're going to see first in verse 24 is the activity of God, our Savior. Here, the Lord is given credit for an eternal power to perform two activities that secure a believer before the heavenly throne and for all eternity. This word, able, maybe you think of the song when I gave you the title, Our God is Able. He's able, okay, all right? But he is able. And that's what we're reading here. It's a typical word for power, ability. But here it's functioning as a substantive participle, means it's pertaining to God, who is able. I mean, God is the one who is able. That's how you could say it. God is the one who is able. The Greek word speaks of ability and power to do something, and as it pertains to God, it speaks towards his being all-powerful, strong and capable to perform these two things, which we'll get to, these two tasks that are undoubtedly necessary for the eternal security of the believer. And that brings such a necessary comfort and consolation to our wearied soul when we prevail through the storms of falsehood. When you go through the storms of persecution and falsehood and the threats of spiritual danger and all these things that we've been talking about, these various characters that are out there, these various religions that are out there, false brethren and they creep in unawares. When you think about the battle, it's like trench warfare. You think about it, it's wearisome. And it's nice to have verse 24 and verse 25 as giving us some comfort and consolation to capsulize everything here. Because it is stormy, false men, apostasy all around us in a wicked time. That's descriptive of our time. These words here teach and they give comfort in light of all the context before it. God is all-powerful, very strong, eternally strong, and therefore He is powerful to perform His promises concerning the security of the believer. Because he reads through it, it's like, do we have any hope? As we think about this and how threatening these falsehoods are, and these false teachers, how alluring they are. He's like, do we have any hope as we go through this storm? This is our hope. Considering the massive onslaught of error and false men in the world, this power of God we lean upon. for our safety and for our consolation. And so we consider two things that God is able to do for you who believe. This is written for us to read, to know, to understand. So two things we see here. First thing we see here is preservation. Preservation. It says here, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling. We see that as preservation. It's the Greek word philoso, which means to guard a person that he may remain safe, lest he suffer violence, spoil, hurt, et cetera. It means to protect a person, to preserve a person, or to guard a person from being lost or perishing. Take quick note here that it is God who does the saving, but also does the keeping. He is the keeper of our souls. Our eternal security rests upon Him. It doesn't say now unto us who are able. It says now unto Him that is able. He is the one who does it, not us. We are not lost because He preserved us from being lost. We will not perish in perdition because He is able to preserve us from it. For instance, we know the Bible says He has not appointed us unto wrath. So we see that it's in His hands, not ours. So this verse here is a good verse for supporting eternal security of the believer. So if you want another verse to put in your arsenal for teaching eternal security and helping someone understand what that looks like, it's right here. And there's many other verses you can go to, but this is one of them. We notice here the presence of the personal pronoun you, says keep you from falling, it's actually there. And it's there for emphasis, so you can read like this, noun to him that is able to keep you from falling. There's emphasis. Jude was emphasizing that though many in the then known world were getting wrapped up in false doctrines and getting pulled away by false teachers, these Christian readers could rest assured in God's work on their behalf. And so they need not to fret over the times in the world or over the many spiritual threats. It is not to grow nonchalant, though. We're not to grow nonchalant. We've been through that. We're supposed to be doing something. We're supposed to be on guard ourselves, be vigilant. But at the same time, we're not to get too scared or get worried. Because God is our keeper. Our souls rest in his hands. So we can be thankful for that. We can rest assured that by God's grace, believers will persevere in the faith as we see now. It says here, from falling. This is actually an adjective modifying you. That is the readers of this epistle. That includes us. We're reading this. These are believers of the Christian faith. This modifies us. This is the only usage of the word itself. It means not stumbling, standing firm, being exempt from falling. Now the root word is found other places, such as Romans 11.11, James 2.10, James 3.2, and then 2 Peter 1.10. And the root word means to cause one to stumble or fall, to err, to make a mistake, to sin. Also means to fall into misery and become wretched. And so we read that and say, that's a terrible thing. That's a terrible thing to happen to somebody. I mean, that speaks of apostasy, right? Departing from the faith. But God is able to preserve the believer to be one who does not stumble, fall into errors and sins, or fall into a state of being wretched. All through the epistle, has been the warning of false men who are able to creep in and cause disruption to the teaching and practicing of the Christian faith. And our responsibility, as we see, is to contend for it, is to fight for it. We need to fight for what we believe. There are times where we actually, maybe you personally, you have to actually stand your ground and fight for what you believe because you're going to have people who are going to push back at you and question you and cause doubt to come upon you or try to procure doubt in your mind, try to attack you basically. You need to stand your ground. And so we see this warning of false men who do this. They cause this disruption to teaching of the Christian faith. They become serious threats for those who are simple and easily influenced into a wrong direction. That's what we read in 2 Peter 2. Those are the ones they go for. They go for the simple ones, the ones they can get. But the consolation for us believers is that we have the Lord keeping us from falling into errors, falsehood, and apostasy. It won't happen for a believer. Or at least he won't continue in that state. even if he has slipped a little. We all have our times of slipping. We all fall into error sometimes, but not for long. That's not what is characterized by a believer. You see, this is characteristic of a believer here, not falling. Believers are characterized as being not-falling Christians. I mean, that's how it could be said here. It could be said as this, now to him that is able to keep you, keep the not-falling you. Because it's an adjective, it's describing you, not-falling you. You who are not-falling. You ever been on a cliff or been on some high, well, not on a cliff. You think about that. But I mean, imagine that. You know, if you were tipping over on a cliff and someone grabbed your hand and he's holding on to you, he's keeping you from falling. God is able to keep us from falling. And so it won't be characteristic of us that we are falling away, as many do. Many in the world do fall away. Why is that? It's probably because they're not saved. We don't fall away because God is the able keeper of the believer from falling and stumbling. It's because the believer is established in a position and characteristic of being a not-falling person. So our God is able to preserve believers. He preserves us. But God is not only able to preserve us and our firm standing in the faith, He's preserving us also to be able to present us later. It's like a trophy. A person who will continue to polish and pay attention to the condition of a trophy so that it will be good for the day of presentation. Such the Lord does with us. And so the second thing he does is presentation. So we have preservation, now presentation. It says, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Now this word present means to stand, to stand before something, It further means to bid to stand by, to cause one to make his appearance, or to cause or make a person to stand for a presentation. This is the second ability of God concerning our spiritual condition. He has the power of our presentation in the last day. Who will present us in the last day? Who will present our souls? Who will present us? It's God. We won't present ourselves. It won't be the fact of, look, here I am. I'm great. So wonderful. What a wonderful person I am. Here I am. No, we won't be presenting ourselves. God will present us. He is able to present us in the last day and to present us as a particular condition. This presentation of us is planned and secured by God, says here, to be faultless. And that sounds like, what? Faultless? Oh, boy. I wish I was faultless. All right? But in that day, we will be presented as faultless. This word means without blemish, free from faultiness, as a victim without spot or blemish, like a spotless lamb, as we see in 1 Peter 1.19, referring to the Lord as a spotless lamb, His precious blood. It means without blemish, fault, and blame, without rebuke, blameless in character and conduct. It's found also in Ephesians 1.4, Ephesians 5.17, that's speaking of the church, Colossians 1.22, Philippians 2.15, and Revelation 14.5. But consider such a standing. When we consider our own selves, we honestly don't see that. Like, could we honestly say to ourselves, yeah, I'm faultless. No, okay? We think of ourselves, hmm. We find ourselves failing to what is said faultless. That's what we see with ourselves, right? That's because we look at it from our own standpoint. Us as being in our sins and committing sins in the flesh. We still commit sins in the flesh as believers. We still have things that we do wrong. But we are reminded here that it is the precious blood of the Lamb without spot and without blemish that has washed away all our iniquities from us. And because of that, he can present us faultless, without blame. We find ourselves incapable to present ourselves before the presence of God's glory. We just can't. This is why we need the Lord to be our advocate and to be the one to present us in the last day before the presence of the glory of God. We need an advocate. We need someone to stand for us, to be there with us. We can't stand alone. That's basically what we're seeing here. The Lord is the one who's going to present us, not us. Without His advocacy and presentation, we cannot stand in the presence of God's glory. The Lord is our representative to stand for our case, to claim His own blood for our sins and faults. And He sits at the right hand of God, of the Father, and He's making intercession for us. And he's looking forward to the day. He's anticipating the day to present us clean and blameless in the presence of divine glory forever and ever. He's looking forward to that day, the day of presentation. Now this is a knock to all those who are striving to live a good life. You'll hear that as you go door to door. Yeah, I'm trying to live a good life. Yeah, I'm trying to do my best to live a good life. Do their best in life to do the most good. What are they thinking? So they can present themselves to the Lord? This again is someone who is trying to earn and keep his own spiritual condition to be ready for the day of presentation. That's not what we see through scripture. And such a person will never be ready until he relinquishes all trust in himself and places full trust and confidence in the work of Christ. The work of Christ is the only way And God, our Savior, is the only one who can present a person faultless in the presence of perfect and divine glory. No trophy will dust itself. No trophy will polish itself to be ready for the big day. And no trophy can present itself on the big day. This is all God's job of preservation and presentation. And thankfully it is not in our hands because we would do a horrible and insufficient job. Our hands and doings would fail us for the big day. It is also for us to direct people to the only one who can do this job because you got a lot of people out there who are trying to do this job. They're trying to save themselves. They're trying to secure their own souls and they're failing. Lots of people out there are failing and they know it. They know they're failing. That's why we need to go out there and tell them how they can stop failing at this and start trusting in the Lord. Get their eyes and focus off themselves and onto the power of God to perform these tasks. And so we see these great things here. Now the beautiful wonder of God's presentation of a believer is this phrase here. It says, with exceeding joy. He will do it with exceeding joy. The Greek word means exultation, extreme joy, or more exultant joy. You ever had your kids bring something to you, like a picture or some craft they made? And they're always very excited about it. And you look at it like, oh, OK. Nice. Nice scribbles. I mean, what I meant was, OK, all right. But they're really excited about it, to present it to you. God is going to be very, very, very, very, very excited to present us in that day. Because this is his work. We are his work. We are his workmanship. And he's excited for the day to present us. This joy has been used to describe the oil of gladness that is found in the ceremony of anointing at feasts. This kind of joy is found throughout the Psalms and it refers to the joy in God's redemptive work, which is exactly what we're considering here, God's redemptive work. It reminds us of what Jesus said about one sinner that comes to repentance, all heaven is rejoicing. lifted up with joy and rejoicing and excited and celebrating over one sinner that repents. Thus, it is God's great pleasure and enjoyment to present to us believers to be faultless, without blame, without blemish before the presence of His glory. He's looking forward to it. Now, this is no ordinary joy. This is exceeding joy. It's the kind of joy that goes beyond measure. We are his redemptive work and he is glad in it. And he's looking forward to the day to show his great work, the work of his grace. We are trophies of his grace. We are. Where would we be without God's grace saving us? we'd be lost. Verse 25, we see the attribution unto God. So verse 24, we see the activities of God. Verse 2, we see the attribution unto God. Now we see two attributes here, given, says to the only wise God, our Savior. God is noted here to be the one who forms the best plans and uses the best means for their execution. God's plan of redemption and eternal security is perfect and the best. Our plans are not. His plan is the best. And there are other plans out there. You can choose your plan. Don't choose the wrong plan though. But there's only one plan that is perfect and the best. It's God's plan. He is the best one to execute the plan. His redemptive plan is a sure testimony to his perfect wisdom. You think of all redemption that is laid out from Genesis to Revelation, you think about the entire story of redemption, that is perfect wisdom. You think about it from page one to the last page of scripture, and you're just like, wow. Wow, there's no way that man could ever think of that plan. Only God can think of that plan and execute it perfectly. There's only one who is perfectly wise. Therefore, only he is able to devise, was able to devise a perfect redemptive plan, and only he has the wisdom to put it into action, put it into effect. And so we can trust him. We can trust his wisdom, trust that he's the only one who can do this. And then our Savior. God is noted here to be the deliverer in this plan of redemption. God is the one who saves and who delivers. It's not man who saves and delivers. It is the Lord who is able to deliver one from the depths of falsehood and from the grips of false teachers. How do we survive through this storm? of false teachers and falsehood in the world. How do we survive this time? And sometimes you think, how are our kids going to survive through this time? Well, salvation. Then you come to the Lord and God is able to preserve them. Not us. Okay? Now, we do our part, of course, but ultimately, you know, as we get into parenting, the big thing about parenting is prayer. Pray for your children. Pray for them every day. Think about them in your prayers. Okay? We see also here four accreditations. Four things that belong to the Lord. Four things that God deserves to be credited to Him. He deserves them because of His eternal power and wisdom and deliverance. These four things belong to Him. They need to be acknowledged towards Him. They should go to Him most of all. We see here glory, majesty, dominion, and power. Glory speaks of majesty that belongs to God as supreme ruler. He's the supreme ruler. It speaks of his judicial majesty that will be exhibited in the last day. I think of a lot of verses, but I think of Romans 3.23, that all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Then I think of the great white throne and how glorious that will be. Great white throne, the word white means bright. means bright so it'd be very bright very glorious and that reminds me of Moses when he's on Mount Sinai he sees the glory of God well at least the back parts of God's glory because that's all he can handle we think of God's glory so majestic so so awesome truly awesome and that is majesty that is power but it's also judicial there's power behind it majesty that will be exhibited in the last day. Well, this majestic position, this position, this power belongs to him. All judicial majesty belongs to him in the end. I know kings and presidents and prime ministers and all the titles that you have out there, czars, they all have their power of position. In that day, in the last day, and even now, as we read through the book of Daniel, what do you see through the book of Daniel? God is sovereign. Though the nations of the world present themselves as sovereign, as all sovereign in the world, in reality God is sovereign over the nations. God is sovereign over all, and that's what we're seeing here. This glory, this majesty that He holds, this belongs to Him. Then we see the word majesty. This means greatness. Other passages use this word to speak of the Father as being the majesty on high. Hebrews 1, 3 and Hebrews 8, 1. So the Father is noted as the majesty on high, the greatness. It's terming His greatness. All greatness, all true greatness belongs to the Lord. You talk about people who are great in the world, you know, you got your celebrities, your sports stars, and all those things, and they're great, alright? Not as great as God. God is all great. God, the greatness, really belongs to the Lord. And in the end, people will see that. But even right now, And we're talking about the present time, because it says now and ever. Now and ever, both now. Right now, greatness belongs to the Lord. And people ought to be attributing all that greatness to the Lord, not to themselves. Of course, we don't live in a world that does that. We live in a world where people attribute greatness to themselves. But that will end someday. We also see dominion. This speaks of force and strength, of God's mighty deeds, His works of power, that He has dominion. My mind is thinking of when Jesus walked in the water, and when He calmed the winds and the waves. He has dominion. He can walk on the water. He has dominion over the water. He has dominion over the winds. He can command them. He can walk on them. Because they don't dominate him. He dominates them. This is mighty. These are works of power. It can be understood as manifested power. Power that is manifested. My mind is thinking of things like the opening of the Red Sea. That is manifested power. That is amazing power. Only God can do manifested power. The fact that God can use force and strength to work mighty deeds and manifest His power, this belongs to Him. All the credit goes to Him. And as we read through all these attributes, glory, majesty, dominion, and power, and we think of it in light of verse 24, He does the keeping. He does the presentation. Wow, He's the one to be trusted. We can trust Him. Power. This is the word that speaks of authority. Authority. The power of rule or government. is the power to which others must submit to its will and command." Authority. He has the authority and God possesses all authority, all sovereignty, all command. And it deserves to be said so of him and acknowledged as so. And so he's deserving of us, not only us, but everyone else to look at him as the one in charge. The one who has the power, the one who has the rule, the one who has the authority to command, to do his will, and people submit to that will. That belongs to him. So glory, majesty, dominion, and power, all these should be credited to the Lord. And we see this eternal attribution. So we see these two attributes, we see four accreditations, and we see eternal attribution. All this accreditation and attribution should happen not only now, but for all eternity. And that's what it reads here, both now and ever. For all ages of time and beyond time, these characteristics, these attributes belong to Him. And this is the great wish and prayer of Jude the writer. And to all this, we see here the Amen. To all this, as do many of the other writers of the New Testament do at the end of their epistles, Jude claimed that all this about false teachers and their end, and about believers and their role against false teachers, and then about God's eternal work For the souls of believers do claim so it is. So it is, so be it. May it be fulfilled. That is amen. May it be fulfilled. And so as we come to the end of this, so let it be that false teachers will come to an end of condemnation and damnation. So what we've been reading through the whole book here is that we see the end of false teachers, we see the end of their falsehood, It's a train wreck. It's a car crash. It's going to be bad. It's going to be eternal perdition. So let it be. So let it be. And that's what Judah is saying here. So let it be that they go to that end because that's where they need to be. And God is going to make it happen. So let it be. So let it be that believers need to keep themselves in the love of God and then help others who need help against false men. So let it be that. And so this is acknowledging here that in truth, indeed, verily, this is our responsibility. We need to keep ourselves. We need to build ourselves up, identify ourselves, to be praying through this whole storm. We need to keep ourselves to be looking unto the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, looking upward towards the coming of Christ, and Christ rectifying everything here, and then helping others. That our responsibility is to help others who need to see what a distinction is between falsehood and what's true. Some people need that support, and then some people just need rescue. This is our duty. Some people need rescuing from these tight situations that they're in. And we see that with ministry. There are some people who are just in tight situations, and they just need help. They need help to get out of it. And so that's our responsibility. So let it be that this is our responsibility, not only to ourselves, but also to others around us who need this help. And then so let it be that God is able to preserve and present the believer that this is His work. And you can rest assured that this is His work. And that He should receive the acknowledgement that this is His work, that this is His plan, that this is Him doing it. That He has all the ability, that He has all the attribute to be able to perform it. He has majesty, He has greatness, He has mighty deeds, and He has great authority. You think about those four things. The majesty, He is greater than us, He's greater than our sin. Isn't that wonderful? He's greater than Satan. He's greater than all the false teachers in the world. He's greater than all the false religions that are around us. They seem great. They seem powerful. They seem like they have authority, but our God has all authority. And with His authority, it puts down all the authority of what's false around us. And then the mighty deeds. He's mighty. And we look forward to the day where His might will be shown more. As we read through the book of Revelation, we see His might, His mighty deeds, His mighty wonders that He does. But even now, you know, the Lord is working and He does mighty things by providence and by His grace. He's probably doing mighty things in our lives that we need to take note of. We need to acknowledge that. And we say, so let it be. that God is doing these things, that God is, this is who He is. He's this great, He's this mighty, He's great authoritative. He has this great authority, and He is the one who is going to be the preserver of our souls, and then the presenter of our souls. And so we walk through this life of false doctrine, false religion, false man, false brethren, People who are like Balaam. People who are like Cain or Korah. People who are like the children of Israel. People who are like Sodom and Gomorrah. All kinds of different variations of falsehood that is out there that we're dealing with. And each are different kinds of cases. And each are different kinds of strengths and of falsehood and all those things that we deal with in this world. It's like dealing with different kinds of enemies. And we are. We're dealing with different kinds of enemies. It's like there are different waves of enemies that we are dealing with, and they all have their different characterizations. We're living in a hotbed of warfare, spiritual warfare. That's our time. And through it all, we have to believe that the Lord is able to carry us through this, to get us through this, to preserve us through this, to keep us through this, and to provide us the grace to be strong enough to stand in the day. Now we're told in Ephesians 6 to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. To stand! And those are commands. To stand with the whole armor of God. And so we have this great thing, but obviously we can't do it all without the Lord with us. And the Lord who is mighty, who is majestic, who has great dominion, who has great authority, and he's fighting with us, he's by our side. We have it very good. We have it very good. And so we have to keep strong in all this, because we're going to face a lot of challenges. a lot of cases, a lot of things that come against us and sometimes they surprise us, right? And we need to be strong in those times and we need to go back to books like this and remind us that they are present in the world and what we need to do in those times. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would strengthen us as believers to be faithful to you, to be faithful to fight against the sinful and false trends of this world that are all around us, that are tempting, that are alluring. and are trying to draw away people from what is true. Lord, I pray you would give us the grace that we need. I pray that you would strengthen our minds, strengthen our hearts to be ready to combat those things, but always to put our trust in you. Always put our trust in you, to pray to you, to rely upon you, for help, for grace, to fight against these falsehoods, to have wisdom on how to do it. And Father, we just pray that you would strengthen us as a church to be unified, to be faithful in doctrine and practice, to not give it up, not to be relaxed and nonchalant about it, but to be careful. and to be faithful to what is true. So Father, we pray for this help in Jesus' name. Amen.