Multistreaming with Restream.io
2024-09-08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUnE4YxKlYA

Just a couple bits of housekeeping before we dive into these last couple verses of Jude. One is, if you're following along in your handouts, your handouts may seem to be a little abbreviated, and that is because when I was putting them together, I had them formatted the same way as I do my sermon notes, which means a much larger font, so I can see them. And I was like, "Why are these four pages long?" And so I got it down to two pages, and then realized the font was like size 16. And then when I made it the right size font, it went down to one page. So they were longer, but because I can't see, and I was evidently not thinking about what I was doing. So your notes are a little abbreviated. You can follow along on those or in Scripture. Also, next week we're beginning this series called

to follow. And we're doing something probably a little bit differently than we normally do. And one of the things we see throughout, and one of the things if you've been in church very long, you know that Jesus calls us to follow Him. And what we want to do during the next six weeks is both for those who maybe don't have a relationship with Christ and who haven't heard the gospel or haven't heard or haven't responded to the gospel, we want to share that call of Christ to come follow Him. But also, for those of us who are Christians, whether it's been a short period of time, or whether it's been our whole life, we want to follow Christ more deeply. And I was thinking about this, this week, and Martin Luther once said that all of the Christian life is repentance, meaning that we are constantly setting aside things and turning our eyes toward Jesus. And so as we think about following Jesus, it's tempting to think that's

just for people who haven't followed him yet, but it's also for us as Christians as we grow more deeply in our relationship with him. And we're going to start off by talking about Jesus is a savior for the skeptical. And once again, that's easy to think about. Yeah, those people out there who are skeptical. But if you read through the New Testament, there's a lot of people who follow Jesus who are skeptical. And one of my favorites, and we're actually going to talk about him a little bit this morning is a guy in this little town. And there's a man who has come to town specifically to persecute Christians. And God calls this man Ananias and he says, "Hey, I need you to go tell this guy about Jesus." And Ananias goes, "Are you really sure that you want me to go talk to the guy who has been murdering Christians and tell him about you?" And so being skeptical of the call to follow Jesus isn't just

about following him for the first time. It can be in those areas where we are struggling to live obediently to him. So a couple of things I'd encourage you, maybe invite some friends, but also, and I think most importantly, be in prayer for us as we do that. So we're going to be in Jude. And this is always throws me off whenever I have preached a sermon from Jude, because there is one chapter. The way it works, instead of saying Jude 124, you just say 24 and 25, which is just, there's no chapters, one chapter. So I will try not to get too confused. So let's go ahead and pray this morning. Father in heaven, be with us this morning. And we cast all of our cares on you knowing that you care for us. May you strengthen us. May you give us peace. May you give us clarity as we look at this marvelous and life changing song of joy. May you lead us to the good news of the gospel.

May you help us as we participate in that good news, in the bread and the cup, that you would remind us that there is hope and joy and righteousness, not of our own doing or not in our own strength, but in your son and his sacrifice for us. So help us this morning. May we, if we are discouraged, may we be encouraged. If we're fearful, may you make us brave, not in our strength, but in yours, that you would help us to see that there is hope. That if we're tired and we feel like we're overwhelmed, may you help us to see your goodness so clearly this morning. It is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Probably most of us have found ourselves in those moments where it just feels like we are tired and overwhelmed. And one of those moments that sort of strikes me is one of those moments for me where I just wanted to sit down and give up. We were getting ready to go.

My brother and I, I think my parents joined us a day later, but our church had this all church camp out at the end of the summer in Vermont. And so Brent and I had both, I think he may have still been in school, but I had worked all day. We came home. We really didn't plan a lot. We just kind of threw everything into the back of our parents' Honda Element. We drove up to like the two hours to where the church was camping. We got unloaded. We fell asleep, woke up first thing in the morning, grabbed the kayaks, paddled around the lake. It seemed like we were constantly moving and somebody goes, "Hey, let's hike into the top of this mountain." And for some reason, we said, "Oh yeah, let's do that." And about 30

minutes into the hike up to the top of this mountain, I was like, "This might be the worst idea in all of my life." And I just remember, like, I was tired because we didn't sleep well, because you generally never sleep well the first night you're camping, because you're uncomfortable and you're not tired enough to sleep well. And we'd done a bunch of running around the day before. We kayaked around a lake already that morning, and I just wanted to sit down and give up. And somebody comes and goes, "Well, you can do it. The view from the top is going to be worth it." And so I just remember slogging up that mountain, right? Didn't walk, it was like kind of oozed up to the top of the mountain, because I was done. And let me tell you, when people tell you when they're hiking, and they say the view from the top

is worth the struggle to get there. It's not, right? You can get on Google and see a picture of the top of that mountain. You don't have to walk to the top of it. And I just remember that feeling of just like part way up just being like, "I am so done. I just want to go, and I want to sit down in the hammock, and I want to take a nice like 11 to 12 hour nap. I'm just done." Probably most of us have found ourselves maybe not necessarily physically in that situation, but maybe spiritually. We live in a world that is filled with struggle, and maybe we're struggling. We have friends we know who are struggling. And so what do we do when we feel like we're climbing this mountain, and we're struggling, and we just want to quit? It's interesting, because this is, I think, in part, the audience

of Jude. He's writing to a group of people who are struggling. He wants to write them a nice letter. It's interesting, because Jude wants to write them a letter that is encouraging and good. In fact, he says this, starting in verse 3, "Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation." He starts out by saying, "Hey, I wanted to write you a letter, and I wanted to celebrate the salvation that we have together in Christ, and it was going to be joyful." And he goes, "But I found it necessary to write appealing for you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." And you find out this is a church in conflict, and Jude is writing specifically to the church to say, "Don't stop fighting." And I wanted to write for you joyfully, but now I'm writing for you that you don't

stop fighting, because you have people who have crafty and unnoticed, who long ago were designated for condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a small battle. When you are denying Jesus, this is not just a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation. This is active hostility, and the church that was supposed to get a joyful letter gets a letter that calls them to battle. And there's conflict, and there's sin, and there's division, and there's fighting, and all of those things. If you've ever experienced that kind of conflict, it is exhausting. And then toward the end, he'll say, "Keep your relationship strong with the Lord." And then, in addition to that, not only are you to fight, not only are you to try to keep your relationship strong

with the Lord, but he says, "Go after those who doubt." And the picture here is the church dashing in toward a burning building and pulling those out who are in trouble and in danger. And if we look at all of the things that are called and all the conflict that goes on, we go, "Well, how is that possible?" And I think the answer that Jude gives us is in these very last verses. In this doxology that he writes, let's read it together. "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, and our Savior, and our Lord, be glorified now and forever. Amen." And there is this picture in this doxology that responds both to our fears and

our insufficiencies. Our thoughts that say you're not good enough, you're not strong enough, you're not brave enough. But before we take a look at how this addresses our tiredness and our overwhelmed state in the midst of our struggle, I want to address something. This is not just a good word for those who are tired and struggling in the battle. This is also for those who maybe haven't started yet. There may be some who you haven't started that good fight, and maybe you're following Jesus, but you're just sort of staying in the same place, right? You're not struggling because you haven't moved. Following Jesus is a big deal, and as we're going to talk about in the coming weeks, it can be a little frightening to think about when Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me," or that people will hate you, or to the young man to whom he says, "Sell

everything." And he's speaking to this guy not because money is bad, but because the guy loved this physical thing more than anything else. And Jesus is saying, "As long as you love that, you can't love me." And it may not be money for us, but it is probably something. And we're scared because we're not sufficient, and maybe we don't have enough, and we say, "How can I?" And we haven't really started to follow Jesus. We say, "I'm not strong enough. I'm not good enough. I don't think I can." And Jude's answer is, "Now to him who can keep you from stumbling and present you blameless before the presence and before the presence of his glory with great joy to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ the Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority from all time, now and forever. Amen." Right? It's not just for those who

are in the faith, but it's for those who are near the faith, and maybe looking at the faith, saying, "I don't think you can do it." Jude's point is that you are exactly right, that we can't do it, but there is one who is able to do it, and he is our hope. So I want to unpack this promise, and then we'll take a look at the two promises in this text. This text contains two promises and a song of praise, and these are big promises, and we know that because big promises get us big results, right? When we see a big thing happen, right, our joy generally is big as well. And what you find is that Jude's response to the truth that is presented in verse 24 is not sort of a, "Oh, that's nice," or, "Wow, that's really cool."

It's a song of praise, right? The promise in verse 24 is to him from stumbling. That's promise number one, and promise number two is to present you blameless before his presence of his glory with joy. Jude hears that. He keeps me from stumbling, and he presents me blameless before his glory. And he's like, it overflows into this song of praise. And there is something in these verses that should make our hearts sing. And I want you to see the focus of these promises. Just as this, now to him, right? To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to him, right? Not to Brandon. Not to you. Not to some random person. Not that person, this person. To him who is able to God. I want us to understand that the one who is making and keeping these promises is God.

And it's important because both of these promises, both to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless, we try to do both of these things ourselves. You see, we love to try to be our own Savior, right? If I could get this, it'd be great. If I could have that, it would be great. And so we pursue those things, and what we're doing in that,

and to be arrogant about what we have done and about what we have accomplished. And we can end up proud or arrogant just about everything. And that even includes who we are in Christ. If you remember when Paul writes to the Corinthians, they're arguing about who brought them and who they follow. I follow Peter. I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. And then there's some guy in the back who goes, "Well, I follow Christ." And he's not making a differentiation between, "I don't follow these people." He's just trying to trump everybody else. And here, in where they heard the gospel from, they begin to develop pride. And the point is, "Look at me. Look what I have. And look what I have done." The point of these promises isn't so that we can talk about how awesome we are, but rather we can see how amazing God is.

It's to move us to wonder, praise, and thankfulness. This type of Scripture, it's called the doxology, comes from two Greek words, doxa and logos. And logos, it just means a glorious word or a song of praise. And there are a lot of doxologies in Scripture. And most doxologies have two parts. One is the reality of the situation. In this case, it's to him who is able to keep us from stumbling and present us blameless. There's the truth and then the response in joy. And throughout our Bible, there are these sort of couplets or verses that present a great truth and then respond in a song of joy. What God has done and our reaction to it. So I want us to see, before we look at these two promises, that it's centered on God. Both is the one who gives the blessing and the one who is praised for the blessing.

And so understanding that these are promises, and that these promises lead to praise, and that they are centered not on what I can achieve, but on God. Let's take a look at the promises. We're going to start with this. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling. And Jude uses a picture all of us can understand, right? When we stumble. Every time I go to the doctor, one of the things they always ask, and I don't know if it's now because I'm over 40, or if it's just something they ask everybody. But you get there, and they go through the check-in. Is your insurance still the same? Do you need help seeing or hearing? And then they'll always ask, "Have you fallen in the last six months?" And I'm always curious about that, because most of the time I have fallen in the last six months.

But it's not because I've lost my balance. It's because I've done something stupid, like try to ride my kid's skateboard down the sidewalk. And what they want to know is if I'm walking across the flat ground, and I've tripped and fallen, not if I have done something really dumb and fallen. And all of us have tripped and fallen. And sometimes we can just be walking along, and we trip, and we fall, and maybe we don't fall, and we catch ourselves. And then we look around, and if nobody's seen it, we're okay. And if we look around, and everybody's watching us, we try to act like we were intentionally doing that. This picture of falling, and the feeling when we trip, and it's sort of out of our control, and we begin to head for the ground, it's not a great feeling. And when Jude talks about stumbling, he is not talking about sort of physically losing our footing.

In fact, one of the pictures the Bible uses for our spiritual life is walking. It can be in our terms of our relationship with God, right? Sherlock walked with God. Noah walked with God. It can be used to following God's commands in Deuteronomy chapter 5. It talks about "walk in the way that the Lord your God has commanded you." Or in Micah 6, where it talks about "walk humbly with your God." It can be about avoiding sin in Ephesians 4. "Walk no longer as the Gentiles do." He's given them food. Repeatedly. And then they go, "Well, I don't like this food." As if Moses can just run to Food Lion and buy more food. And here, under the burden of the people's complaints, here's what Moses says. "I am not able to carry all these people alone. The burden is too heavy for me. If you treat me like this, kill me at once.

And if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness." And Moses, under the burden of a bunch of complaining people, goes, "Lord, just take me home. If you loved me and if you cared for me." And their life feels like it is crushing us down. And when we try to carry that weight on our shoulders alone, what happens? It's so easy to trip and to stumble. But sometimes our stumbling might come because we're trying to avoid something that we're afraid of. And it doesn't always lead to stumbling, but it can so far. In fact, we talked earlier about Ananias sent to preach to Saul. And he goes, "Lord, I have heard many times about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem." And here he has the authority from the chief priest to bind all who call upon your name.

And he goes, "Do you really want me to go there?" Now, Ananias doesn't stumble. He trusts God, and he goes and he follows God. But so many times in our fear, right, we can go, "I don't know if I want to do that." I'm going to end up dumbling because of opposition, if you think about Elijah in 1 Corinthians. Everybody's against me. I'm here by myself. Let me show you, though, from the Psalms, how temptation sometimes can sneak up on us. I'm going to begin reading in verse 1, and we're going to kind of walk through part of this psalm. The psalmist starts like this, and it's sort of this slippery. God is good to Israel, and to those who are pure in heart. For I was arrogant, or for I was empty. The purity of wicked.

And the psalmist looks around, and he sees all of the bad people doing really well. Their lives are flowing, and he begins to become jealous. And he says, "Look at this, I owe you, but look at what catches him. But when I thought to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God and discerned their end." He says, "I almost stumbled until I ran to the place of God, and I looked to him, and the one who holds the future, and I began to understand." So look at where he ends up. Instead of stumbling, right? By taking this to God, what happens? "Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me into glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." And Jude says, "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling." Here the psalmist, under the weight of looking around and seeing everybody doing wrong and getting all the good things, right? He says, "My foot almost slipped. But by turning my heart to God, He keeps me from stumbling." Now there's a lot of ways we can stumble. But look at this promise to Him who can keep you from stumbling. And I want you to know this morning that in your burdens, God removes our burdens, but He doesn't always. Sometimes what He does is He strengthens us to carry them.

If you remember the apostle Paul who says, "I cried out three times to God." And God doesn't remove His hurt, and He doesn't remove the burden. But what He does say is that my grace is sufficient for you. And in our hurts and our fears. We still may face those things, but through Christ there is peace, and we're giving courage. And in our opposition we're promised that we are not alone, and in temptation we are guided. Don't you understand how wonderful it is that we are kept? Not that we won't have troubles, but there is one who can keep us from stumbling in the midst of them. The second picture here is first of all we are kept, and the second is that we are presented blameless. That God is able to present you and I blameless.

And I have some questions about that. The first question being simply how, right? I'm not blameless. You're not blameless. No matter how much we like to present ourselves as such, we are not blameless. God could make excuses for us. He could simply remove justice and make it all go away, but He would not be a just God. So how is it that a bunch of broken people are presented blameless? It's because of what Jesus has done. The one who died for our sins and who rose again to bring us into life, 2 Corinthians says. For He made our sake, He made Him to be sin at the cross. The one who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. That Jesus takes our sins, but then gives to us His righteousness.

And He does so because Jesus was righteous. When I was unrighteously disobeying my parents, when we lie, when we don't show compassion or mercy, right? Jesus is obeying. He's telling the truth. He's showing compassion and mercy. And not only does He take that sin and the price of that sin away, but He gives us His righteousness. And so here, clothed in righteousness, we stand. One of my favorite pictures is in Matthew, the 26th chapter, that helps us understand. And I don't know how it works, but for me, every time I do a wedding, one of the things I always ask is, right, how formal is your wedding? And there was a time where a wedding just meant suit and tie, and I would change my tie to match the colors of the wedding. But I've now done weddings in a lot of varied places, with a lot of varied different people, from just a few moments outside of a courthouse

to one time standing on a boat in the middle of the lake. And so one of the things I always ask is, what am I supposed to wear, right? Do you want me dressed formally in a suit or jeans and cowboy boots? Okay, what do you want me to wear? Now in the first century, that was frequently not a problem, because when you would go to a wedding, especially a royal wedding, the king would provide a wedding garment. So you just simply come, and you get there, and there's a robe you put over your clothes, and you're wearing these wedding garments. And in Matthew 22, Jesus says this. This is a group that is all supposed to have been given the wedding garments. The king came in to look at the guests. And he saw a man who had no wedding garment,

and he said to him, "Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?" And this man was speechless. And the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness, that in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are called, but few are chosen." And the picture here is that in Christ, when we are brought in to that wedding feast of the Lamb, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And this man, for whatever reason, either didn't want one or didn't think he needed one, and said, "I'll stand on my own." And it does not end well. You see, we are given the right to Christ. If you're watched an infomercial late at night, and you're watching along, and maybe they're doing one of those blenders,

and as you watch, the longer you watch, the better the deal gets, right? So it starts with, here's this amazing blender that can chop everything from golf balls to gold nuggets into a fine dust. It will pulverize everything you own, including your cell phone. Here is this amazing blender, but wait, if you call now, we'll give you the mini blender, we'll give you the measuring cups, and we'll give you the recipe book. We'll throw in this amazing dog brush, and you'll get all of these extra things to go along with your fancy blender. And what they're doing is they're trying to get you into something, a deal that you can't refuse. And most of the time when you get there, you find that that deal is not quite as wonderful as it seems. Now the promises of God are the opposite of that.

There's always more, and there's always more wonderful, and when you get them, it's not a disappointment, but you say, "Man, I never knew that there could be even more." And so Jude says, "Now to Him who is able to present you, or to keep you from stumbling, that as you're walking through the burdens, the struggles, and the hurts of life, God can keep you from stumbling, but also He gives you the righteousness of Christ to bring away your sin, and now you can walk blameless." He tells us two more things, right? That our blamelessness is such that we can be presented before the glory of God, and also we can have this happen with great joy. That God keeps us from stumbling. He presents us blameless. He is more. And notice what it says first, before the presence of His glory.

The glory of God is like a bright light, like a spotlight. And when we encounter the glory of God, what it does is it allows us to see clearly. And what it does is it allows us to clearly see the brokenness of our life. That as God's glory shines in, we see the reality of our sinfulness. We see the depth of our brokenness. It's what happens in Exodus, as God's people stand before the mountain. And God's glory descends, and they say, "Moses, you go speak to God, lest we die." It's what happens in Manoah, before the birth of Samson. Where Manoah says, "We have seen God, and we shall certainly die." It's what happens in Isaiah chapter 6 and verse 5. As Isaiah stands in the presence of God, says, "Woe is me, for I am lost!

I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, and the light of God's glory shines on his life, and he sees all the brokenness and all the imperfections." It's what happens in Luke 5, when Peter falls down before Jesus, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." Now, this is hard for us, right? We don't want to stand where all of our brokenness is revealed, because we've become so good at pretending we don't have any brokenness. One of my favorite gifts of all time from Rachel, is I woke up one Christmas morning, and she says, "I got you something." An outside of T6, no different colors, and the bed at some point had rusted away

and had been replaced with a piece of plywood. And I loved that truck so very deeply. And I loved it so much, even though you had to hit the starter with a stick in order to get it to start, that it didn't have anamorphosis, and throw a block of wood at it. Dad and I built some bed rails for it. I saw nothing wrong with this truck. In fact, I was riding with someone and he said, "Oh look, in your climate control there in the middle it has AC." I was like, "Oh no, no, I took the AC cable off the compressor to give it some more horsepower." Definitely not that the AC compressor was froze up and didn't work. And I loved that little truck so very much. But I didn't see anything wrong with it.

Until the time came, we had to go get some parts for Rachel's car. And she was like nine months pregnant. It was 105 degrees out. And I'm like, "Sorry, I've got to park on a hill so we can get it started again when we leave." Right? I didn't see anything wrong with it. Most of us are like that about our righteousness. We can't see the broken compressor and the rusty spots and the different colored paint and the fact that there's pieces missing. We just say, "Man, I love myself. I'm great and I'm good." And the problem is when the light of God's glory shines into our life, we begin to see that we're broken and we're hurting. And we're sinful. And so when Jude says this to us, that we are presented blameless before the presence of His glory,

what he is saying is that in Christ you can do something you never were able to do before, and that is stand in the presence of the glory of God and not run away or fall to your knees saying that you are going to die, but rather joyfully in the presence of God. He keeps you from stumbling. He presents you blameless, even in the brightest light of the glory of God. He's telling us that our righteousness in Christ is complete, that in Christ we do not tremble in fear. And then look at the second thing he adds to this. He says, "With great joy." We find ourselves there in the presence of God in joy. There's a fear oftentimes in our lives that we're not really wanted, right? We've probably been somewhere, or been invited to something, and we always maybe in the back of our minds say,

"Am I invited because they really want me there, or am I invited because I overheard them inviting someone else, and they just simply wanted to be polite?" And there is a fear that manifests in the lives of God's people frequently that we're not really wanted by God, but he sort of brings us in out of obligation. Maybe God feels like it's an obligation that he has to bring us in. One of my favorite verses in the Gospel of Luke just simply says this. It says, "Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." And Luke, as he records Jesus' words, and Jesus says, "Look, you bring a little flock." He almost uses it as a nickname like we would with a child. And he says, "God doesn't just save you, but he's your dad, and he takes

joy and pleasure in giving you good things." Now, to him, who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless in the presence of his glory with great joy, the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen. In your tiredness, in your difficulties, in your fear, in your insufficiency, there is this promise to God's people that there is one who walks with you to keep you from stumbling. That it is through his righteousness he can present you blameless, that you can stand in the glory of God and do so joyfully. And there is this song of joy. To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forever.

From eternity past to eternity in the future, there is a song of joy that runs through God's people when we hear this. And so, as we come to the table this morning, it's a meal for those who are tired and who are struggling. It's a meal for those who are afraid and overwhelmed or insufficient. It's a meal for those of us, maybe in our pride, who think we've got it all. It's a meal that says not by our strength, but by the sacrifice of Christ. The way that I and we don't stumble is not because we're good or great. It's because Jesus is good and great. The way we're presented blameless is not because I haven't sinned, but because Jesus paid the price for our sin. And as we come to this table to remember that sacrifice, to be nourished, to call to be

strengthened in Christ, to be refreshed in Christ, to have our fear driven away by Christ. And if you are not a Christian, this moment of quiet is a moment for you to consider the invitation of Christ to come to those who are weary and heavy laden, and He will give rest. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to partake in the Lord's Supper together. Father in heaven, we are so thankful that you are the one who keeps us from stumbling, and that you present us through Christ, blameless. We are so thankful. So we ask that in this meal you would nourish our weary and hungry hearts with the good news of the gospel, that you would help us to see the grace and the peace that has been bestowed upon us through your son. We thank you for his sacrifice. We ask that you bless this bread and this

cup. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. If you would take the bread with me as Jesus shared with his disciples and tells him, "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."