This evening we come to our final study. of the book of Jude. We come to the final verses that are words of deep comfort and of high praise. We're looking together tonight in the book of Jude. You can find the book in Jude towards the very back of your New Testament. If you find the final book, the book of Revelation, and go back one, it's a short book, you'll come to the book of Jude. And this evening we're looking together at verses 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 God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. With these words, Jude concludes his short little letter. And this conclusion is very unique among New Testament books. Many New Testament books, towards the very end, there will be words of greeting, perhaps a final farewell. A benediction, perhaps a request for prayer for Paul or other writers for the advance of the gospel. The writer giving assurance of his prayer for the people of the Lord Jesus. But here we find the book concluding with a doxology. Now the book of Romans also concludes with a doxology, but before that are words of greeting to various members of the church there at Rome. But Jude, in bringing a doxology at the end of his book, the end of his letter, is in keeping with biblical precedent. We find in the book of Psalms, at the end of each of the five books that comprise the book of Psalms, each concludes with a doxology. And we find in many of our New Testament books, Ephesians, Romans, 1st and 2nd Peter, the book of Revelation. Praise to God, doxologies extolling the glory of Christ, the greatness of the gospel, and the mercy of our God. Well, here in this conclusion from Jude, in verses 24 and 25, we find Jude picking up something that he mentions earlier. If you look back into verse 3 of the book of Jude, Jude writes, a half-brother of our Lord Jesus, he writes, Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, His desire was to write of what we share together in the Lord Jesus, of the great mercies and blessings of God, what God has accomplished in the Savior. But he continues this verse, in verse 3, after he mentions of his desire to write of a common salvation. Jude writes, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. as he desired to write about the glory of Christ and of the gospel, he felt like there was a pressing need to drive home one of the issues that the people of God were dealing with. For there were false teachers that came into the church, that crept in. and who disturbed, sought to disturb the faith of the genuine believers. They argued for the grace of Christ through the work of Christ, but then, after one comes to know the Savior, that one was able to live as one likes. doesn't have to live a holy life. One doesn't have to seek to be pure by the grace and mercies of God in the gospel. And here we find in the book of Jude that false thinking, wrong thinking about God always leads to wrong living. and right and proper thinking about God always leads to right living. And while the false teachers were pushing their poison and their wayward lives as Jude compares it to many events in the Old Testament, as they argued for the grace of Christ, giving a license for a life of immorality, a life that displeased the Lord. Jude felt like he needed to encourage the Christians to contend for the faith. to be strong for the Lord Jesus. And we saw last week in our study together as he writes for us to contend for the faith as Christians. He calls upon believers to own a responsibility for their own spiritual lives. In verse 21, he speaks of our keeping ourselves in the love of God. And then we find as well an emphasis in the verse 20, that we are to be those who are building ourselves up in the most holy faith as we seek and anticipate the glorious return and coming of our Savior. He calls us not only to be concerned about our own spiritual growth, but to be up and doing for others. These verses 21 through 23, he calls us to show mercy to those who are doubting, to show a measure of urgency in bringing the gospel by God's grace to bear upon the lost, and wisdom and sensitivity to those who are struggling in their faith, who may be in a time of backsliding. He calls us as his people to purity. All of this while the teachers themselves, these false teachers, were encouraging immorality. He exposes the insufficiency of the false teachers of their wayward lives. He calls believers to contend for the faith. But in verses 24 and 25 he picks up where he left off at verse 3. In verse 3 again he spoke of wanting to speak of a common salvation. And now in 24 and 25, he speaks of what God has accomplished, what God has done, and what he shall do, and of the glory and praise that God is worthy of receiving. You see, Jude is a wise pastor who doesn't want the people of the Lord discouraged. The strong words that he gave, the admonition on error and the dire consequences of false teaching are things that could lead for genuine believers to begin to question, to doubt. They've been exposed to untruth as well as the pure gospel, to the subtle ways and the clever devices of false teachers. And he wants them to be stabilized in the true and pure gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and of living their lives in light of who our Savior is and what he has done. And so he writes to encourage them and perhaps to answer some nagging questions that may have been plugging them. Maybe even as the enemy himself, our adversary, seeks to beat us down, he seeks to destroy and discourage believers. Some of the questions they may have been wondering, how will I reach heaven? But these false teachers certainly will not. How will I? How do I know that I have not been deceived? How can I be sure that I'm walking the right path? I'm tired. I'm weary. I feel like throwing in the towel, giving up the fight of the life of the Christian faith. And Jude reminds these Christians who may have been confused and troubled that God is the one who is able. He calls upon them to look to the Lord Jesus and to the gracious and powerful working of God that He has begun to accomplish and indeed He will accomplish. He calls them away from lives of anxiety. for them to know that the Lord God will keep them and the Lord God will present them. And so here, as I look at these verses in 24 and 25, he speaks first of all about what God will do, what he has accomplished, what he has promised, that we can count on his words, that he calls us to focus upon him, to look to him, In verse 24, what God accomplishes for us. And then in verse 25, what God receives from us. He points believers to the Lord Jesus, who is able to bring a balm, a comfort to their troubled souls. Well, what is it that God has accomplished? What is it that the Lord God shall do? In verse 24, he reminds us of two things. He reminds us that Jesus is able to keep those who are truly his from falling. And then secondly, we'll see that he plans to present those who know Him as blameless before the presence of the Father. So first we see among the things that God has accomplished that Jesus is able to keep those who are truly His. This word keep is a crucial word for Jude. In verse 1 of his little letter, he speaks of Christians as those who are kept for Jesus Christ. And then in verse 21, he calls upon Christian believers, keep yourselves in the love of God. Here, in verse 24, as he talks about keeping, it's not so much our keeping ourselves as what God does. He is the one who keeps us or the one who guards us from eternal destruction, from eternal ruin. And here, he borrows the language of riding a horse, even in Jude's own day. There were horse riders who would compete even in jumping fences and going through water, various obstacles, going up steep slopes. And here he draws of an image of a sure-footed horse that doesn't trip, doesn't falter, it doesn't stumble. He reminds us that the Lord Jesus brings us, those who know Him, who are trusting in Him, He brings us safely and securely to heaven. Recently, I tried to get up on a paddleboard, a more common way of transporting oneself on water for exercise and enjoyment. And I don't know if you've ever tried to get up on a paddleboard or a surfboard. It can be a very difficult thing of balance. A few years ago, a circus acrobat, Felipe Pettit, was in St. Petersburg, Florida, and he was rehearsing and he fell in the rehearsal 30 feet onto a concrete floor. And he turned himself over to his stomach and he was found there, after having rolled over, kind of pounding the pavement with his fist saying, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I never fall. The mature Christian thinks differently. We know that we are capable of falling. And hearing Jude's words, the words of our God for us, is a great encouragement, a fresh hope, that in the Lord Jesus, He is the one who keeps us. He perseveres us. He enables His own, those who have been given Him by the Father, to finish, and by His grace and power, to finish well. Those in the church that Jude was writing observed apostasy, people who claimed to be starting out for Christ, but they stumbled, they fell, they got tripped up, and their wrong thinking about God and Jesus and the gospel contributed significantly to their fall. And it's a frightening thing. Perhaps we know people who have begun with Christ and have clearly, clearly departed. We have the promise of the Word of God from Philippians as Paul thinks about God's keeping us. He writes, I'm confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you will complete it. on the day of Christ Jesus. Why is Paul so confident? Why is it that he's audacious? Why is he so convinced that the Lord will keep him? Paul knows what Jesus has said in his gospel. In John chapter 10, I gave them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." As we have been reminded from our pulpit on this passage, it is as if we are in the grip of the Lord Jesus, in His tender and strong grip that keeps us and sustains us, in the grip of our Father, our Heavenly Father, who is holding us and strengthening us as well. We can have this confidence because we are saved not by our efforts, not by our merits, but by the person and work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the one who is ever faithful. If assurance was based, if my assurance was based on my own efforts, I would have no grounds of certainty, of assurance. We're saved. by the work of Christ, by His rich grace, by His perfect righteousness, by His record and not ours. So much so that the Apostle Paul exclaims in the book of Romans chapter 8, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. will fully or finally separate us as children of the Lord Jesus from saving faith. Ultimately, we, those who are Christ, will not defect from the gospel to be lost again in their sins. For the gospel, as one of our associate pastors has written in his book in Romans 8, the gospel brings us all the way home. But how are we kept? I'd like to mention a few ways in which God, in His rich grace, His marvelous love, works at keeping us. The first is by His Word. Perhaps you've had the experience of facing difficulty, perhaps a temptation, a struggle. and you're in a Sunday school class, or perhaps you come to an evening worship service, and the very passage that is taught, perhaps when you open your Bible on a daily basis, touches the very issue with which you are struggling, and the light of God's Word breaks in. I like to think of it as traveling on an airplane in the midst of clouds, miles and miles of clouds. Then all of a sudden, the plane kind of breaks above the clouds and the light. That is the power, the grace, and the truth of the Word of God. We say, this Word, Lord, is for me. How did you know? you know, how you love me, how you are the one who cares for me and helps me and is going to see me through this particular struggle. So God uses His Word. He also uses His Spirit. Now the Spirit and the Word are related. We want to be careful not to sever the two. But perhaps the end of Your day, you might feel like you're at the end of the rope, the end of the tether, and you're down on your knees, burdened in prayer at your bedside. And all you're able to say is, Lord Jesus, help, groaning perhaps even in prayer. You find strength and grace to help you in the midst of your prayer. We have the promise that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, especially as it relates to prayer. God has given us His Word. The Lord Jesus has given us His own Spirit who indwells us as we know Him. And then we have the way in which God keeps us through His church, through His people. Perhaps you're discouraged, thinking about your troubles. And the phone rings. It's a friend from church, someone in a Bible study, maybe a co-worker that is a Christian believer. and they speak words of encouragement, of prayer, of the scriptures to you. Perhaps you're struggling with a particular temptation and you receive a text or an email from a Christian of God's gracious providence is working. God works through his people. He also can work through or by angels, and I want to be very careful here because there's so much we don't know, but we do know in Hebrews chapter 1, the angels as ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. Perhaps the Lord allows us to fall temporarily and momentarily into sin, that we might taste the bitterness of that, of having a new resolve to serve and love the Lord Jesus, to walk in fellowship with Him as He allowed in the life of Simon Peter, and as He graciously and gloriously renewed and restored him. Here we are reminded that God is the one who keeps us. He keeps us from something. He keeps us from falling. But he is also able to present us before the presence of something, or in this case, someone. Secondly, as we think about what God has accomplished, we're reminded that Jesus is able to present us blameless. before the presence of God the Father. Here, as he reminds us, and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. Here, the picture is that of God's glorious presence. It's a picture of heaven, of the day of judgment, and of our appearing before our holy and our righteous God. And there we are. We're presented before him as faultless. This is the identity. and the destiny of those who truly know Jesus Christ, that we are faultless. We are before the presence of God without blame. This, I think, is the longing, the ultimate goal of every Christian's heart, that we might be able to stand in the presence of God's glory, unashamed and righteous. And Jude here is borrowing from the language, particularly of the Old Testament, of sacrifice. To present comes from the Old Testament idea of offering or presenting a sacrifice, or that of presenting an offering to the Lord. In the Old Testament we're reminded that it is only the spotless, the animal that is clean, without blemish, that is fit for our righteous God in sacrifice. What were the heretics offering? What was it that they were offering? They argued that one could have eternal life and live then for one's self, to live as you please for your own pleasures. Once saved, you can go ahead and then live as you want. But Jude says that our lives are to be presented to God as a sacrifice. And it is the gospel, the person and work of the Lord Jesus that is in view here. We are holy, we are faultless, without defect, because we are related to Jesus Christ. As we come to believe and trust in Jesus Christ, He takes our sins, our uncleanness, upon Himself. And He clothes us with His own righteousness. He removes the filthy rags and He dresses us and His own work on the cross in blamelessness and righteousness so that we are made perfectly and totally pleasing to God. Peter is using the same word when he writes in 1 Peter of Christ as the Lamb of God without defect. For the Lord Jesus brings us face to face with God, and there we are accepted. There is no charge against those who are blameless in God's Son. The Apostle Paul asked under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, if God is for us, who can be against us? The final judgment holds no fear for the Christian, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We don't have to defend ourselves on that great day, for we have a perfect and righteous advocate from heaven, Jesus Christ. And he covers the sins of those who trust in him, So our salvation is not based upon our deeds, but upon the unchanging person, the perfect righteousness of our Savior. And in Him we are accepted. Real Christianity, Jude is saying, is about salvation to the glory of God in the gospel. When we come to know Christ and are brought to newness of life, we are changed. We have new desires, new ambitions, a new love for God and for His Word. And while we know that we are far from perfect in this world, we want to live for Him. And yet Jude understands that we fail. But He is the One on that final day who presents us as faultless, even as we are righteous in Him even now. And this brings a great joy to our lives. Now we stand in grace, perfected in Christ. But a future day is coming when we will stand in glory. And in heaven, we experience not only the absence of sin, but the presence of perfect holiness and righteousness. We will see Him as He is, and we will be like Him, conformed to His image. And Jude says, standing before God, of being presented before God faultless is through someone. It is through Jesus Christ our Lord. And so we are not to be filled with terror of the day of coming judgment if we know Christ, but filled with great joy of rejoicing, a sense of gratitude to the Lord. If we don't know the love and mercy of Christ, this passage calls us to look to the Savior. He is the one who is able to redeem. He's able to save to the uttermost. There is no sin so great that He is not able to redeem, to forgive us. And I was thinking today of that hymn that we sing on occasion. How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure that He should give His only Son to make a wretch His treasure. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer, but this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom." His wounds have paid our ransom as we trust in Him. We are those who are presented before God the Father as perfect and righteous. And we are those whom God will keep. This is what God has and shall accomplish. This is what Jude is saying in verse 24, but he doesn't end his book with this acknowledgement of what God has done as marvelous and great as it is. He continues to verse 25 where he speaks of what God receives from us. Our response to who He is and the great and glorious things that He has done. Christian life is that of a response we find in the scriptures, teachings about our Savior and our God. What might be considered the grammar of the indicative, a declaration of who God is and the marvelous things that He has done. And then we find in the gospel indications of imperative, in light of who God is, how we are to live. Here, the grammar here perhaps might be more indicative of what God has done. And then I'm trying to think of the proper grammar expression of exaltation and praise to God. Here, verse 25 is a beautiful expression. of praise for the greatness and the glory of the Lord. It's very likely that these verses were sung in the early church. The church was full of praise and gratitude for what God had done in the gospel and what God would do in the full and final redemption of His people. And here in this inscription of praise, in verse 25, Jude points the believers to rejoice in the one who is the only God, our Savior. When he refers to God as the only God, he speaks in the tone of an echo of the Old Testament. with that distinctive indication that there is only one God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. And it speaks to us in our own day, a day of coexistence, a day in which there is an embracing of all religions, of many avenues to God. Perhaps these false teachers were advocating ways that were not in keeping with the pure and true gospel found in Jesus Christ. The New Testament tells us that there is one true God who has revealed himself through his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. He is the only God, and he is the one who is our Savior. Here again, in the Old Testament, those in the Old Testament considered God as the One who was their Deliverer, the One who was a mighty God, a glorious Savior. And here we are reminded of the Father who has called us to Himself. of God the Father and God the Son who died and who was raised as He died as the representative of those who were given Him by the Father. We are kept in Christ as He says in verse 1. We are kept for Jesus Christ as we are the beloved in God the Father. And then he reminds us as well in verse 19 of the presence and help of the Holy Spirit who enables us to pray and to receive the grace and strength that Christ provides as he continues into verse 20. The picture here is that of the believers in united corporate worship, extolling and praising God for what He has done, for who He is, for the glory and splendor and majesty of His name. It says, people, we are to be caught up with worship, with praise to who He is. Praising God is our eternal privilege of all who know Christ and who share in God's grace in the Gospel. And on that day, that day without end, God will receive the fullness of praise that is due to His name. We are prone to speak of the things that enthuse us. Perhaps you have a favorite sports team, a favorite brand of coffee. Many have. Particular food or a restaurant. I think this is restaurant week in our community, in our state. People talking about various restaurants and which one is the best as they're enthused about a particular restaurant or food. I was reading a book by C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, where he says, just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it. And he elaborated how the Christian is to be full of spontaneous praise to our great God. We are to speak well of Him to others. Jude, as he speaks of God in this doxology, speaks in a very deep and personal, intimate way. He uses this pronoun, our. as he describes these attributes of God, these four divine attributes that are found in verse 25. These words of glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. These words are words that are used of a king, of one who rules, one who reigns. These words carry with it the idea that we are those who submit ourselves willingly to love and to serve our God, that He has every right to receive worship, to be loved and adored and followed. Psalm 110 reminds us of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who in the day of His power, His people were willing. The picture here is His people willing in the day of His great power. What are the attributes described here of His kingly and His righteous rule? First, He's described as the one who is to be given glory. Glory from the Old Testament speaks of God's weighty presence, of his fame, his adoration, his moral splendor compared to everything else in all of existence. He is the one who is heavy, the one who is to be worshipped, and the one who is indeed glorious. And then he speaks, secondly, of God's majesty. of God's greatness, His transcendence from the rest of the world that He has made, His kingly status, His sovereignty. He is the one who is altogether majestic in His rule and in His reign. And then thirdly, He speaks of His power, His unrivaled strength. the mighty force, the kingly power of our God, of His control over the world. And then fourthly, He speaks of His authority, His intrinsic right to rule over all things. The freedom of His actions to control over the world, His use of power for his own purpose, his own will. Here, Jude is pulling out all the stops as he reflects on the greatness and the might, majesty and power of God. This God who is the only God and the only Savior, the one to be worshipped by the Lord's people. Then he ends with a reference to time as he speaks of this God, the one who is worthy to receive glory and majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever. When should we bring praise to God? When is it right that God be acknowledged as the one who is worthy of honor and praise, to whom we are to obey and love and follow? As Jude grapples with this, he makes just a mind-boggling statement. He begins, he goes back even before the beginning of time, before all time. And then he tells us to ascribe glory now. And he goes on to declare that God will be worshipped forever. Here is that three-fold reference to the past, the present, and the future. And as I think about this doxology of praise to God, I especially think of a motto that was developed most clearly during the Reformation. Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. There were many famous composers But Bach, during the Baroque period, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, he would ascribe these initials, S-D-G, as an abbreviation for Soli Deo Gloria, to his composition at the beginning. and at the end with the desire that every aspect of that piece of music might bring glory and praise to the Lord. I believe he even ascribed these initials with the desire that God be glorified and even some of his compositions that would be deemed as more secular, less designed for church. He desired in all of his music to bring glory to his God and his Savior. What is it that you can ascribe solely Deo Gloria to? That you serve the Lord Jesus Christ. That you struggle perhaps with some of the things that the Christians struggle that he writes with here. The Lord has placed you where he has, in our places of work and study. our homes, our neighborhoods, that we might be His faithful representatives, that we might worship Him, that we might be His people who are faithful to Him, who make Him known. Let us live as those who have the certain hope that we are being kept by Christ and that a day is coming in which we will be presented as righteous. Let us live in light of these glorious truths. We are being kept by the Savior. Let us all the more give ourselves to Him. We might love Him and serve Him. Our senior pastor at his I believe New Year's Eve service talked about as a congregation and that we are not to be those who are holding back. but that we might freely give ourselves as knowing that Christ has offered the perfect sacrifice, but in light of what Christ has done by the mercies of God, that our lives might more and more be living sacrifices that bring glory to His name. And may we, because we are those who one day will be declared as faultless, Let us be those who live, who are growing in the grace of God, as Jude reminds us about growing in purity in his admonition here, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. May we be growing in holiness by the grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus as he is at work in us, that these truths that one day will be fully realized in our lives, where the very presence of sin will be removed from us, that we would labor and pray that we might more and more die to sin and become more and more alive. May God work among us as we're mindful of the great God and Savior that He is. Let's give thanks together to Him. Let's pray. Our great God and our glorious Savior, our hearts are filled with thankfulness and praise. How Your love is beyond our comprehension as we know the reality of our lives. our own need of You, and the great things that You have done through the perfect work of Your Son. We praise You that as we have come to know Christ that there is a certain promise that we are those who are being kept by our Savior. So we pray that we might give ourselves to Him and be faithful to Him, that we would not stray or displease Him. We rejoice that a day is coming in which we will be declared faultless and blameless in the Lord Jesus. I know that we have no righteousness of our own other than being dressed by our Savior and His righteousness. And we pray that we might be changed to become more like Him. We pray that you would make us a people who are filled with worship, a sense of your greatness, of your glory, that you are our only God and our mighty, gracious Savior, that we might seek to give you glory and majesty, acknowledging your dominion and authority. This we pray in our Savior's strong name. Amen.